Chapter 20
. . .
Xavier
Reuben follows me out of the cottage and down the path. “Where are we going?” he finally asks.
I flourish the key. “I have a place.”
“Of course you have. You’ve only been on the island for ninety fucking minutes.”
“It’s my natural charm. It brings all the boys to my yard.”
He doesn’t reply when he’d usually snark, and I look sideways at him. His face is set and hard to read. I wonder what my own face says. I think probably anger and sadness mixed with complete and utter understanding for the first time.
We go another several steps and then I come to a complete stop. He turns instantly. “What is it?” he asks urgently.
“Erm, I don’t actually know where I’m going.”
“Oh, dear.” His lip twitches, and then he bursts into laughter. It’s loud, and he has a startled look on his face as if it’s caught him by surprise, and it makes me laugh, too. That stops abruptly when he drags me into his arms.
“What is it?” I say as he presses his face into my neck, breathing fast. My hands roam over him, squeezing his shoulders, all my attention on him. “Tell me, baby.”
He looks up at that. “Swear that you haven’t changed your mind.”
“About you?” I say incredulously. He nods, and I cup his face, enjoying the bliss of finally being free to touch him.
It’s a pleasure-pain, like my limbs have been winter cold, and now I can feel the first touch of spring.
“Did you hear what I said on that beach, or have the years eroded your hearing?” My goal of annoying him is achieved when his eyes narrow.
“I believe my hearing is as good as ever, thank you very much.”
“Maybe it’s your brain, then, Reuben. I said I love you.”
He stares at me, looking completely gobsmacked. “Actually, you didn’t.”
“What?”
His smile is the gentlest I’ve ever seen. “You never said it, Xavi.”
I gape at him, my mind frantically running back over the conversation. “Oh my god, I didn’t say it back.”
The silence stretches for a long moment. “Hmm,” he finally says.
I wave my hands in the air. “Well, of course I fucking love you.”
He gasps, and his face is suddenly full of such open joy. “You do?”
I nod frantically. “I never stopped. The truth is that you’re the only man I ever really see.
The only reason I hated you so much was that I loved you at the same time.
” I rub my foot on the sandy path, feeling the grit catch against my trainers.
“I know I haven’t been exactly celibate,” I add awkwardly.
“And that’s completely okay.”
“But I really only slept with them to get back at you.” I grimace. “Bad choices, all, but actually more proof that you are the only man in the world to me.”
“I adore the way you look at things.”
“Well, you’ll really like this outlook, then.
I love you. My love for you has worked its way into my blood and bones.
You’re complicated, irritating, and entirely convinced that you are always right.
Your sense of humour veers more into sarcasm than most people find comfortable, you take brooding to obscene levels, and—”
“I’m not completely enjoying this particular perspective.”
“But you’re mine, and I’m yours, and that’s just the way it is. The way it’s been since I picked you up in a bar when I was nineteen. You’re probably the only person in this world for whom I’ve ever felt real love, let alone admitted it.”
“I’m sad at that.”
“Of course you are.”
He drags me into him, and I wind my arms around his waist. I can’t get close enough, and neither, it appears, can he.
We sway in the breeze, and for the moment, all I can feel is this happiness that’s so bright but still so fragile.
Like a bubble in a storm. We have so much still to talk about, to get through.
As if echoing my thoughts, he looks down at me and asks, “What did Grey actually tell you?” He brushes a wave of hair back from my forehead, his fingers soft on my skin.
“Don’t be angry with him.”
“Why? I thought you hated Grey.”
“That was because you made me feel that, you absolute twat. No, I think I actually could be friends with him.”
“Good god. I’m not ready for that.” I laugh, and his face lightens for an instant, but then his brow furrows and he repeats his question. “What did he tell you?”
I hesitate. “Don’t you want to talk at the Airbnb?”
“No,” he says simply. “I’ve been without you for years. I don’t want anything between us for another second that could damage my getting you back.”
I want to smile. Of course, we’re not going to have a civilised conversation in a civilised house. We’re going to do this on an island path bordered by wild grass and the sea under the wide-open sky, where anyone could come upon us.
I step back so I can see him properly. “He told me a charming little tale of Jez blackmailing you to fuck me off.” He winces, and I suck in a breath. “It’s true, isn’t it?” I knew Grey was being honest, but a tiny part of me hoped he might be exaggerating. “Oh my god, Reuben.”
He holds up a hand. “I don’t want you to think badly of Jez.”
I stare at him. “Why not? He wasn’t exactly a stellar example of a human being, was he?”
That seems to stop him for a second. Then he rallies. “He was your father. I hurt him by what I did, and he lashed out at us.”
“What you did?” I throw up my hands in disbelief and spin to look at the sea for a second.
“Don’t turn away,” he rasps. “Stay and fight your ground.”
I face him again. “Oh, I’m not going anywhere. Not this time. This isn’t about what you did, it’s about what we did. You’re always doing that, Reuben. You make it all about your decisions and never mine.”
“You were so young, and I should have known better.”
“Oh, fuck off. I hadn’t been young in a long time.
I was legally an adult, and I had been standing and falling by my own decisions for a while before I met you.
By taking all the blame, you remove my agency.
Just like Jez did.” I feel satisfaction when he jerks in surprise.
He obviously hadn’t thought of it that way.
I carry on when he seems struck dumb. “And what we did was up to us and completely unrelated to him. After you knew who I was, did you carry on fucking me because I was his son?”
His mouth creases in revulsion. “Fuck no, of course not. You were bright, bold, and when I was near you, I felt good in a way I hadn’t felt in way too long, if ever.”
“I’m cutting you some slack for that. I was pretty irresistible.”
His mouth tilts. “Thank you.”
“And I thought you were surface-of-the-sun hot.” He runs a hand through his hair, the dark strands lifting and shining in the cold sunshine. “And I still do,” I add firmly.
His eyes widen. “Really?”
I nod. “You bloody know it too. You’ve always got to me. I might have wanted to fuck you over, but it was obvious I just wanted to fuck you too.” I eye him. “So, Jez told you that if you didn’t dump me, he’d excommunicate me?”
He licks his lips. “Basically, yes.”
“And you decided that I would be better with that shithead of a person than with you?” I shake my head. “That decision took away from me someone who put me first. The only one who cared about me for me.”
He swallows hard, his eyes full of a wild grief. “I’m so sorry for that. I never thought of it like that. But let’s call a spade a spade. I fell in love with you at first sight, but I didn’t realise what was happening.”
“Well, it was the same for me. Jez had never been a parent to me, and he never would have done even if he’d lived.”
“You don’t know that. You didn’t know the real Jez.”
“And I had no desire to. That person was your friend. I don’t personally think he’d been a genuine friend to you for a while, but you couldn’t see it. I wouldn’t have met him again after the Cotswolds.”
“But you were getting on with him.”
I groan. “I put that on to make you happy.”
He goes completely still. “What?”
“Sorry, but it’s the truth. I didn’t like him, Roo. And he didn’t like me.”
“That’s—”
I hold up my hand. “Please don’t bother.
He didn’t like me. He didn’t like responsibility, and he resented me.
I might have been young, but I wasn’t stupid or a masochist. I found him petulant, childish, and selfish.
Why on earth would I have wasted time on that person when the only thing that connected us was an involuntary emission of sperm? ”
He stares at me for a few moments. Then his body seems to fold in on itself and he staggers to a nearby stile and sits on it. “Shit. I wish I’d known.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
He looks up, struck at the calmness of my tone. After a few beats, he shakes his head. “No, I would still have finished it.”
“Because of what you were going through? The PTSD.”
He hesitates and then nods. “Yes. I was a mess, and I couldn’t inflict that on you.
You were at the start of your life, and I felt so old, like I was at the end.
” I wince, and he offers me a sad smile.
“But if I’d known how things truly were between you and Jez, how you felt about him, I wouldn’t have ended it the way I did. ”
“Grey told me what happened.”
“I’ve always hated what happened in that hotel room. Between the three of us.”
“Why did it? Why did you say those things to me?”
His face spasms. “I am so sorry, Xavi. You were everything to me, and I deliberately made you feel like nothing. I didn’t mean any of it.
Not one word,” he says with emphasis, looking at me until I feel my shoulders relax.
Something unwinds inside me that has been tight for so long.
He takes a breath. “I knew I had to push you away. I didn’t want to be the cause of you losing something as important as a parent. ”
“That wasn’t solely your choice to make, though, was it?”