I probably hadn’t failed my exams.
I’d written the required number of essays, and while they weren’t likely to be first quality, they weren’t I am a fish either.
It had been an epically unfun experience—a grim ritual of formal wear and frantic scribbling enacted beneath vaulted ceilings—but I’d survived. And it was a relief to realize I’d never have to do anything like it ever again as long as I lived.
My final final was the worst final. It crawled by. Such a vast room and it was still stifling. Full of identi-kit people in black and white, heads bowed over papers, hands moving in jerky lines. Silence broken only by the occasional rustle. The scratchscratch of nearby pens. A long, deep sigh.
Oh. Wait. That was me.
As I scrawled out a few more desultory sentences.
My concentration wasn’t so much flagging as flagged. Post-flagged. Beyond the reach of even the most determined flags.
I shifted in my chair. I was sweating through my shirt. And even my carnation—the red one Nik had given me that morning to mark my last exam—was wilting.
Blah. Fuck it.
I threw down my pen. Watched it roll off the desk and click onto the floor.
Well, I wasn’t going to need it again. I was done. So very, very done.
The ornate hands of the equally ornate clock at the far end of the room seemed to be hovering in the vicinity of 12:17.
Thirteen minutes until freedom. I should probably have been trying to make the conclusion of my third essay more, well, concludy. Or, at the very least, be reading over what I’d written in order to polish it up as best I could. But the idea of having to re-experience my own tawdry drivel was enough to make me want to strangle myself with my badly tied bow tie.
12:18.
I wondered if Caspian Hart would call me. He’d said he wouldn’t, but he’d said that before.
I could too easily imagine it. His cold voice warming, deepening as he told me, I just wanted to offer my congratulations.
I could also imagine lots and lots of ways he could congratulate me.
Although it really wasn’t such a brilliant idea to dwell on them in a room containing approximately nine hundred of my peers and a collection of individuals specifically hired to keep an eye on us. In case we were cheating, admittedly, but given that the proctors—Oxford’s equivalent of Scotland Yard—were willing to fine you for wearing the wrong socks, sporting a massive (well, moderately proportioned) erection was probably against regulations too.
12:23.
My stomach was legit fluttery. I couldn’t tell if it was the anticipation of being done with Oxford or thinking of Caspian.
“Pens down, please.”
Oh!
God.
Joy. Relief. Accomplishment. However ill-deserved that last one.
Great waves of raw feeling rolling through the room, connecting us for a few brief moments in this one immense, shared experience.
Like the world’s quietest, most stationary rave.
What with being an S, it took me forever to get out of there. Watching the rest of the room proceed in an orderly fashion to freedom.
I was itching—aching—to check my phone. Nik was keeping hold of it since I couldn’t bring it with me, but what if Caspian rang while I was still stuck here?
And when had I become so certain that he would?
Finally, I was released, and I made my way through marble corridors, full of yellowing sunlight, and out into the world again. Merton Street was awash with berobed celebrants, the air full of shrieks and laughter, the pop of champagne corks. Glitter glinted riotously amidst the cobbles, such an odd juxtaposition in that ancient, golden place.
I blinked against the glare, feeling disorientated and suddenly less happy than I surely should have been.
And then Nik was pushing his way through the crowd.
“Well done, Arden!” He pulled me into a big, squeezy hug.
I wheezed my thanks into his manly man chest. Mmmm-hmmm.
I’d actually accrued a gratifying crowd: Nik; Weird Owen; Nik’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Sophie; various folks from LGBTQ-Soc; a scattering of other people from various corners of the university. And I was patted and congratulated and cheered and hugged and hugged again and gently glitterified (even though it was against the rules) and someone—Nik, probably—shoved a bottle of cava into my hand and when I tilted my head back to drink, the bubbles poured down my chin and the sky reeled blue and bright forever.
“By the way,” I asked, super caj, “did you bring my phone?”
“Of course I did.”
It was all I could do not to snatch it. No missed calls. Various texts. None from him.
I took another gulp of cava. This time it tasted like mouthwash.
Except this was supposed to be my day. So I let my friends sweep me off to the tapas place where we had mojitos, and sharing plates, and baklava with yogurt and honey.
(No missed calls. No texts.)
Then to Tesco, where we bought Pimm’s and lemonade and more cava. And finally back to St. Seb’s, where we found a spot in the graveyard and lazed there in the dappled sunlight through that long, long afternoon.
Idle talk and laughter. Nobody seemed to expect me to be anything other than utterly dazed.
Nik even let me lie with my head in his lap, his fingers stroking absently through my hair.
(No missed calls. No texts.)
I was lightly Hemmingwayed for most of the afternoon and slaughtered at the point we were meant go on to a club.
(No missed calls. No texts.)
We ended up at Oxford’s only full-time gay bar. Despite being about 60 percent ethanol by this stage, I felt weirdly…unpartyish.
Like I wanted to go to bed.
Which was probably just…anticlimax or something?
But I did a few shots and went to wriggle about on the dance floor. It helped. Made me feel a bit more…real again, a bit more like me, as though my edges were solid, not wibbly.
It certainly didn’t hurt when a guy detached himself from his mates and got all up close and personal with me. It was hard to tell because my vision was blurry and he was saturated in disco rainbows but I thought he was probably hot. Tall, blond, posh. Some kind of athlete if his thighs were anything to go by.
He was not aggressive, precisely, but sure of himself.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that was preferable.
There was this particular type of arrogance that Oxford bred: a shiny invincibility, I half envied and half disliked and had been, I suppose, on some level attracted to. It wasn’t until I’d met Caspian that I’d understood the difference between internal conviction and external complacency.
These boys—for, yes, they were boys really—had never had anything bad happen to them their entire lives. Probably believed it never would. And, probably, they’d be right. There was likely nothing Mummy’s money or Daddy’s contacts couldn’t get them. Or get them out of.
But Caspian (no missed calls, no texts) had earned his confidence.
And this Andy or Rupert or Harry or Marcus was a bloody poor substitute for Caspian.
But he was here.
Touching me. Clearly wanting me.
Which surely made Caspian the substitute. The substitute for a real fucking person.
I tried to slither enthusiastically up to my new friend, except I wasn’t entirely steady, and I fell into him instead. Did the job though. His hands slid from my hips to my arse and urged me against his crotch, where I obligingly ground for a while.
Couldn’t feel much. Just a bumping of bodies. Not even in time to the music. Or each other. An awkward, ill-matchy business.
“Want to go somewhere?” Not exactly a loverlike whisper so much as a bellow in my ear, but it was enough.
“Sure.”
He took my elbow and steered me across the dance floor and out a fire door. Into the alley that ran between the club and the sandwich shop next door, where the bins hunched in the gloom like openmouthed toads.
It smelled of stale smoke and refuse.
My stomach promptly tried to eat itself. And it was a wonder I didn’t vomit immediately.
I was still fighting the urge when my, uh, date spun me around and pressed me into the wall, his breath hot against the side of my neck. When he’d said “go somewhere,” I thought he’d meant back to his room or mine.
But this was…adventurous, right?
Excitingly sleazy and spontaneous.
The wall was moss-slick under my hands. Like it was sweating.
Ew.
My head reeled to match my stomach. Away from the lights, with the music reduced to a distant thump, I felt tired and dizzy and uncertain. Everything was muted: inside and out. I thought I didn’t want to be here, but I couldn’t really remember why, and it didn’t seem so very important, just a low-grade anxiety, sourceless and sluggish.
“I don’t…”
“Oh, come on.” He nuzzled into the crook of my shoulder.
I pulled in a shuddery breath and wished I hadn’t. Now my mouth was full of the taste of fetid air. “Look, I—”
“Stop playing hard to get, you dirty minx.”
It was the kind of shit you could only get away with saying if you were insanely posh. I would probably have enjoyed it under different circumstances, but I wasn’t feeling especially minxish. And only dirty in the literal “I’m not sure this is hygienic” sense of being groped in an alley.
God. What was wrong with me? Why was I doing the sexual hokey-cokey when I’d come here looking for, well, not this exactly? But something like it.
It was what I wanted. Celebrate the end of my finals with—no pun intended—a bang.
Better than sitting around pining for the man who couldn’t decide whether he wanted me or not. The man who made me feel wonderful and awful, sometimes at the same damn time.
And who had made me no promises at all.
It was too late for second thoughts now anyway. I wasn’t a cocktease or a quitter. I was Rizzo, not Sandra fucking Dee.
So why did I feel so…so nothing and everything? So empty and like I was about to cry.
The guy shoved up against me, which meant I got even more intimate with the wall. I pushed back. Wanting away. Wanting him off. But it just brought us closer together. The curve of my arse unintentionally greeting his cock.
He made a breathy approving noise: uh-yah.
I nearly started struggling, but he was just…really solid. Solid and everywhere. And, more than anything, I didn’t want to know how it would feel to be helpless with this stranger. To be forced to confront, in some definite way, that he was bigger than me and stronger than me and I was dependent on his goodwill and cluefulness.
“Stop!” It came out as a wild squeak. Hardly dignified, but at that point, dignity was way down the list of my concerns.
He eased up a little and let me swivel around. I stared blearily into what I should have found a reasonably handsome face: square-jawed and symmetrical, classically English.
“Oh, don’t be such a girl.” He put his hands on either side of me, once again making me far too aware of him for all the wrong reasons. “Getting me all frisky for nothing.”
“Um, sorry…I’m just…” I was in control of this. I had to be. Because I didn’t know what it meant if I wasn’t. I squirmed a hand between our bodies, fumbling for his cock. “How about you let me…” Fuck, I hadn’t meant to say it like that. I didn’t want this to be any sort of echo. It had nothing to do with Caspian. It was its own thing. That I would never, ever have to think about again.
“Let you what?” Hard to tell in the gloom but he seemed both lustful and annoyed. It seemed, just then, like an impossibly unpleasant combination.
“Get you off?”
“Well, mind you make it good.”
He pawed heavily at my shoulder and I realized, with a fresh bout of nausea, that I probably wasn’t going to be able to get away with a hand job. Even a really stellar hand job.
I steeled myself—now was not the time to get all sick and shaky—and slid down the wall.
Which was when…well, I didn’t know exactly what happened.
One moment the guy was standing right over me. Then he wasn’t. Something—someone—pulled him away. Hauled him round. The dull smack of flesh against flesh. And two cries. Both pained and slightly shocked.
“Ow, my—”
“What the fuck—”
My date was staggering, clutching his face, blood squeezing from between his fingers. And behind him was Caspian Hart, looking stern and shadowy and unbelievably there. Cradling his own hand.
I should have been beyond humiliated. I was beyond humiliated. But it didn’t seem like anything that mattered when I was just so happy to see him.
“He was telling you no,” he said in his quietest, iciest, most implacable voice.
“He was offering, you deranged bender.” Sebastian-Miles-Crispin-Whoever dabbed at his mouth. “Shitting Christ, my tooth. You don’t just hit people.”
I was almost glad I couldn’t see much of Caspian’s face because whatever it was doing made the other guy take a hasty step back. “For every rule,” he murmured, “there is a necessary exception. I suggest you leave before you induce me to make it a second time.”
My ex-date squared his shoulders, his upper-class armor snapping back into place—impressive, in a way, considering he was drooling blood. “You’ll be hearing from my family…and my family’s lawyer…and probably the police as well.”
As threats went, even I could see it was trying to do too much at once. But if I’d been on my own, I would still have been fucking terrified. My family had mice in the basement. His family—whoever they were—had a lawyer.
Caspian just handed over his business card. “I shall await your call.”
Tarquin-Robert-Hugo stood there for a second or two longer, radiating dissatisfaction. Then he turned without another word and strode off.
I didn’t see where he went.
I didn’t care.
I pushed myself upright on shaky legs—thank you, friend wall—and ran, thoughtless, heedless, frantic, into Caspian’s arms.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Maybe that he would push me into a puddle as I deserved. But he just held me tight, whispering into my hair, “Oh, Arden, my Arden.” And then in quite a different tone, giving me a little shake, “What the hell is wrong with you? How could you be so stupid?”
“I’m sorry,” I wailed. “I…I didn’t think you were coming.”
“Well neither did I. But that’s no reason to fuck someone in an alley.”
“It was oral sex.”
“I think you’ll find that’s semantics.”
I tried to surreptitiously wipe my eyes on my sleeve. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry. I didn’t want to be with him, not really, but I’d been leading him on all evening and I didn’t think he was going to stop and—”
That was when the tears came. Couldn’t I have one encounter with Caspian Hart where I didn’t cry?
He made an exasperated sound. “Would you…please don’t do that.”
“S-sorry.”
He reached out a hand. Maybe he was trying to comfort me. Or intending to hold me.
If so, it would have been nice.
Unfortunately, my body chose that moment to register its disapproval of that night’s particular cocktail: Shitty Times Up Against The Wall With A Twist. Misery, anxiety, shame, and fear, muddled with far too much alcohol and served long.
It felt briefly like I was turning inside out.
And then I was wretchedly sick.
In that intense, interminable, helplessly disgusting drunken way. Sobbing and heaving and shaking with the force of it.
Eventually I became aware that Caspian had an arm around me, keeping me steady against his body. And then he was pushing a soft, cotton handkerchief into my hand. And, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, I’d probably just thrown up on his shoes.
I opened my mouth to apologize but that just made my stomach decide that more of my innards wanted to be outards. The second wave was even worse than the first. Painful spasms of mortification and bile, when I was already weak from my previous adventure in Vomitlandia.
And when I was done—done again—I felt like lying down in the street, ideally to die.
Caspian sighed.
It was the most devastating noise I’d ever heard.
And absolutely the last thing I wanted from a man who had once maybe fancied me. Fancied me enough to put bits of himself into bits of me at any rate. You probably didn’t feel that way about boys who’d just regurgitated their guts all over you.
I mumbled another sorry. What the fuck else was I going to do?
He sighed again. “For God’s sake, stop apologizing.”
He would probably have stepped away from me—and I wouldn’t have blamed him—but the moment he moved, I wobbled pathetically, and he pulled me back to his side. It wasn’t a kindly hold. It was protective like Kevlar, which was to say: solid and impersonal. But I was feeling so fragile and hollowed out that it was just what I needed. A certainty of strength.
I turned into him, as though I could hide from everything—him, me, the whole damn universe—in the crook of his arm.
“Come along,” he said.
He tugged and I followed, stumbling as the world rocked around me. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to bed.”
I was drunk enough for this idea to swing me effortlessly, and almost instantly, from the depths of shame to wild optimism. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Where you will sleep.”
“Oh.” I peered up at him. Making my eyes as big as they could go.
He cleared his throat. “Alone.”
I flopped against his shoulder as he hustled me along. Vaguely aware we were on the street now. All gold and hazy.
“That’s your stern voice,” I told him. Because it was. “I love your stern voice.”
“Arden…”
“Thass your stern voice too. S’all sweet and shudder-making.” I moaned with longing, stumbling into him this time, trying to get even closer. “Makes me want to get on my knees for you. Feel your hands on me. Your teeth. Your cock inside me. Want to suffer for you and scream and beg and make you happy—”
“This is my annoyed voice, Arden. Because I am annoyed. It’s a wonder you’re not in hospital. Or at the police station.”
I smiled up at him. Floaty somehow. “But you rescued me.”
“I didn’t rescue you. I just…happened to be there.”
“In Pretty Woman, when Richard Gere comes to rescue Julia Roberts, she rescues him right back.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
I was going to answer, I really was, but everything was spinning away from me. Darkness lapping at the corners of my eyes.
I felt weightless suddenly, and I thought I’d fallen.
But there was no ground. Only sky.
And warmth. Such deep warmth. Covering me. Holding me.
Then—
Nothing.