The next day, I called a car to take Nik to the airport—just about managing not to ask Bellerose’s permission this time—and since I wasn’t exactly overendowed with things to do, went along with him.
Which was a daft move because saying goodbye at the airport turned out to be awful. It felt all final. And I got clingy as hell, trailing around the concourse with Nik, holding his hand like a kid at the supermarket. But then he wasn’t exactly shaking me off either.
We parted at the last possible moment with a pathetic amount of hugging. I was crying openly and Nik was snuffling manfully.
“I’m going to come back and visit all the time,” he said. “I really need another one of those facials.”
I nodded. “You’ll need it. America is bad for the complexion.”
“And we can still Kik and buddy watch stuff.”
“Yep yep.”
“And you can obsessively like all my Instagram posts.”
“I only care about the ones where you’re shirtless. Fuck this cappuccino foam art bullshit.”
“I made a little cat.”
“But were you shirtless?”
He laughed, then checked the time on his phone. “Shit, I’d better go.”
I wiped my eyes and put on my best brave face. “Travel safely.”
And that was…it. I guess that was the thing about goodbyes: they were always smaller than you expected.
The flat seemed even quieter and emptier without Nik. And the worst of it was the cleaners had hit hard. The duvet was back on the bed—actually it was probably a fresh duvet, the other having been whisked off to be scoured of all traces of humanity—the leftovers were gone, and the champagne glasses were back in the cupboard. It was like Nik had never been here at all.
And there was still no Caspian. Not surprising, honestly, because he’d warned me he was very busy. Probably he wasn’t even in the country.
I located a branch of WHSmith and popped out to buy a copy of Milieu. Spent the rest of the day trying to be witty and gay on the subject of…of…well, that was kind of the kicker. Molten shell treatments? Finnish premium spring water? I tried, I really tried, but it didn’t go well. I was too full of sads. And, in the end, I broke and rang Bellerose.
“Yes, Arden?”
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
“Yes, Arden?”
“Is Caspian away?”
“No, he’s at a meeting of the CBI. Why?”
“Oh. No reason. I just. Um. Thankyouverymuchsorrygoodbye.”
Well. That had…been a thing that happened. What was still more excruciating, though, was the text I got from Caspian a few hours later. He said he’d be coming round that evening, and I couldn’t tell whether it was nothing more than a coincidence or if Bellerose had told him.
Mr. Hart—oh wait, he called him Caspian. Caspian, the annoyance you installed in your Kensington apartment wants your attention.
Or, y’know, maybe now was not a reasonable time to descend into a whimpering pit of paranoia. Because it was very possible he genuinely wanted to see me. And the fact that he hadn’t given any indication of doing so for nearly a week could have meant absolutely anything.
Not necessarily that he was bored of me already.
Urgh my brain. It was like I had this insecurity pendulum: I’d just about convince myself everything was okay and then it would swing back even harder and hit me right in the face.
I managed not to be visibly freaking out when Caspian finally arrived. I’d spent the intervening time profitably at any rate. Okay, that was a lie. I’d showered and painted my toenails blue and silver and tended my…uh…whatever the male equivalent to the ladygarden was. The boylawn?
Nothing major—just a delicate trim to frame the general area and the personal eviction of a few non-brunette hairs. It was the St. Ives family curse: brownish on top, reddish below. At least, I assumed it was genetic. I hadn’t asked my mum about her curtains or anything. But her head hair matched mine. And what that meant for me was the occasional bright ginger pube, waving wildly from amongst its more socially acceptable fellows like a Miley Cyrus fan at a Taylor Swift concert.
Anyway, Caspian arrived, looking blah blah gorgeous, because did he ever not, his intimate hair probably perfectly groomed beneath his pinstripes. He was carrying a bottle of something. Dark green glass, silver-gold label. Uh-oh.
He held it aloft, his lips curving into what—on a less austere face—might have passed for a teasing smile. “I understand you’ve developed a taste for this?”
“Well, we drank a couple of bottles the other…Wait a minute, how do you know that?”
“The app monitors the contents of the fridge.”
“That’s incredibly creepy.”
“It’s for restocking, Arden. Not spying.”
“Tell that to the milk.”
He laughed and went to replace the champagne. And, after a moment, I trailed worriedly after him.
“It was okay, wasn’t it? For us to drink it, I mean.”
“Of course. You might, however, want to go a little easy in the future.”
Ouch. Although considering my postfinals performance, it was no wonder he’d concluded I was a burgeoning alcoholic. “I know you probably won’t believe this, but I’m not really a big drinker. I’m not going to drain your cellars dry or anything.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just this happens to be somewhat of a rare vintage.”
“Somewhat?” My heart curled up like a dead slug. “You don’t mean somewhat at all, do you? You mean…extremely or remarkably or exceptionally.”
He didn’t have to say anything.
I windmilled my arms. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Why was it just in your fridge? That’s like a totally irresponsible way to store expensive wine and shit. Even I know that and I know nothing about expensive wine and shit. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, Arden.”
“Don’t laugh. This isn’t funny.”
Caspian closed his eyes. Brought up a hand and pressed his knuckles to his mouth.
“I said don’t laugh!”
He laughed.
A great undignified spluttering thing and if I hadn’t been so angry-appalled I’d have been delighted. Because to see Caspian anything less than absolutely controlled was a victory.
“How could you let me do this?” I wailed. “I’ve never even heard of clos du mes…mes…whatever it was. Although I guess that should have clued me in to not drinking it.”
He drew in a rough, unsteady breath. And, within seconds, was almost his usual self again. “I don’t care that you drank it. Since I’m neither a collector nor an auctioneer, that’s what wine is for.”
“Not wine like that. It was just in your fridge.” I was repeating myself like a traumatized crime scene witness. “Why would you have something like that sitting in your fridge?”
“To impress the people I usually have staying here.”
“That’s…a little bit wanky.”
“I work in financial services.” His mouth softened with a faint, fleeting trace of mischief. “I know a lot of wankers.”
We were silent for a bit, hovering awkwardly in the kitchen. Now the initial shock had worn off, I was beginning to calm down.
“I don’t want this to happen again,” I said finally. “I get you’re amused. But I feel really bad about it.”
“You didn’t enjoy yourselves?”
“Well, of course we did. It was the most amazing champagne I’ve ever tasted. But I can’t in all honesty say I derived sufficient pleasure for the likely cost.”
“My little puritan.” His fingers traced the line of my jaw before gently turning my face up to receive an unexpected kiss. “No pleasure is worth the cost. Some things are beyond price.”
Unfortunately, I’d gone weak-kneed and wobbly and wasn’t really up for a discussion of the transience of material wealth and the transcendental nature of the superficial. Because mouths and hands and bodies and—“Nrgble.”
“I want you to be happy, Arden. You know, you can have whatever you want.”
I made a sort of lunging nuzzle into his palm. This was sweet of him. And confusing. But not quite what I needed to hear. Basically it was emotional umami. And I didn’t know how to answer. Except then I blurted out, “But I don’t want things. I want you.”
Caspian froze. It was like lights going out. Security doors coming down. Then he leaned in and kissed me again, and it was all teeth, all savagery. He spun me round, driving me back against the fridge, his mouth still on mine, one hand trapping my wrists and the other sliding down to rest against my throat. It was a pretty threatening way to be pinned, with my pulse beating under his palm and the heat of him surrounding me.
So, obviously, I was super into it.
He finally broke the kiss, leaving me breathless and dizzy and full of the taste of him. Pressed in even closer, his eyes a flare of ice blue—sun glare across glaciers—and his lips a little red from mine. “No, you don’t.”
“How do you know? Don’t you trust me?”
His thumb circled a shivery spot below my ear. “It’s me I don’t trust.”
“What do you mean?” Swoony with sex feels, I swayed into his touch. Maybe I should have been more concerned about the whole hand-around-my-neck thing but…I wasn’t. It was intimate—intimately scary—and I liked it.
“Oh, Arden. I want so much I shouldn’t.” Abruptly he let me go, but it was only to gather me close for a moment, his breath shaky against my skin. “But most of all I want to be good for you. Please, let me be good.”
He didn’t often let me get my hands on him. I took major advantage and wrapped him up tight tight tight. “You are. You’re amazing. And I want to be amazing for you too.”
“I can’t seem to control myself very well around you.”
“Why do you have to?” I threaded my fingers through his hair. And this time it was me, gently urging him to lift his head. To look at me. “Unless you’re trying to tell me you’re going to eat me with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?”
He gave me a startled look. The man paid so little heed to popular culture he might as well have been an inadvertent time traveler: one of Georgette Heyer’s exquisitely sophisticated Corinthians adrift in the twenty-first century without his matched grays and his gentleman’s personal gentleman. (Though, let’s face it, the whip was transferable.) Once, it might have made me laugh, but now it was just another weird gulf between us. Another way we couldn’t communicate or understand each other.
“I mean,” I explained hastily, “unless you’re trying to tell me you’re a serial killer or something.”
“I’m not a serial killer. But you should still be wary of me. I’m just…I’m not good at caring for people. I try. But it becomes such a twisted thing.”
This was starting to scare me. Not because I expected him to chop me up and put me in the freezer, but because he sounded so completely fucking desolate. “I don’t believe this for a second. You’ve been extraordinarily nice. And, frankly, ridiculously generous.”
“You deserve nothing less.”
“Call me easily pleased, but that seems a pretty decent level of caring to me.”
He made a soft, frustrated noise. “You don’t understand. Yes, I care for you. Yes, I want to make you happy. Yes, I would lay the whole damn world at your feet if you would let me. But I also want to hurt you. I want you on your knees. I want you in chains. I want to have you crying and screaming and begging for me.”
“Would,” I squeaked, “would I get a safeword?”
He tore out of my arms and slammed his hand hard enough against a cabinet to make me jump. “Arden, this isn’t a fantasy or a game.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I tried not to get shouty. But it happened anyway. “You’re the one who acts like it’s a game. Like you can keep me in a pretty box and only ever show me this…I don’t know…perfect benefactor you’ve decided I need.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I can protect myself.”
“Which I suppose is why,” he snapped, “when I found you in Oxford, you were about to be raped in an alley.”
Well, he did say he wanted me crying. Mission accomplished.
Fucking bastard.
They were the worst tears though: the kind that happened when somebody made you feel so utterly small, your body couldn’t cope with the immensity of your emotions anymore. And then they burst out of you in this rush of humiliation, fury, and salt.
I couldn’t even think of a fucking retort.
Nothing that would properly communicate my shock and betrayal. He’d used a moment of vulnerability against me when I was already vulnerable.
When I was making myself vulnerable for him.
Because I thought…oh who knew what I thought.
I walked away. And as I passed the dining area table, the roses threw back their heads and laughed at me with red mouths.
I picked up the vase, turned back to Caspian—who, of course, was as calm as fucking ever—and very deliberately let it slip between my hands.
The smash was epic. Glass and water and bloody petals.
For about 0.3 seconds, I felt better.
Then I felt worse.
And still Caspian didn’t respond. Just watched me with those high windows eyes of his: deep blue air, nothing, nowhere, and endless.
Fleeing into the bedroom, I locked the door and dived into bed. It was childish as fuck but I didn’t know what else to do since Nik had been right about me. I didn’t stick around in relationships long enough to reach the god-awful row stage. What happened now? Did I have to go back out there? Was Caspian supposed to apologize? Was I supposed to apologize?
Because that was never happening.
Weeping helplessly, I stuffed my head under the pillow so Caspian wouldn’t be able to hear. Was that how he saw me? One—admittedly fucked up—misjudgment and I couldn’t be trusted to know my own mind? That I was nothing more than a victim waiting to happen? Was that what people thought about Mum?
Movement in the hallway outside.
I went still as a rabbit, not sure what I wanted. Part of me wanted him to push his way in and apologize. Hold me and comfort me. Tell me he didn’t mean it. The rest of me would have bitten him if he’d come within range.
But, no. He was just leaving. His footsteps receded. Another door closed.
Taking advantage of having the place to myself, I let go and cried in earnest, with abandon. I really wanted to phone Nik but he was forty thousand feet in the air, somewhere between London and Massachusetts. Actually, he’d probably landed but Sobbing!Arden wasn’t exactly the welcome to Boston call he needed.
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly stay here after that. Whatever Caspian believed, I had some pride. Or maybe it was nothing but a misunderstanding and he would…fix it.
Except he’d just gone. But, then, so had I.
And I’d also broken a vase.
But he’d—
Arrgh. My head had gone all ouroboros. And I wasn’t quite sure where right and wrong began or ended anymore.
Just that I was angry and sad and confused and fucked up.
So, what with one thing and another, I wasn’t exactly paying much attention to time passing. But it was probably an hour or two later when I heard someone come in. And, even though I’d been lying there, swearing myself blue in the face that I was going to be a stone whatever Caspian did or said, and probably leave in the morning anyway, the possibility that he’d come back made my stupid little heart do the fandango.
Hurling myself out of the room, I crashed straight into one of the cleaners. Apparently he’d been called in to deal with a broken vase.
Which…y’know.
Of course he had.