Chapter Thirty-Seven

The water was fresh and warm. Thanks to the pool company, they’d completely emptied, cleaned and refilled the pool in two days. Dax slid into the water and pulled the goggles over his eyes. He began a smooth front crawl stroke, careful not to over-exert with his arms. They felt okay, though. The break had healed, and although there was still a little residual weakness in his right forearm, it was getting better every day.

His back didn’t ache too much, but after the swim, he used the steps to get out of the pool, rather than hauling himself out via the side, as he usually would. He grabbed his towel and made his way back into the house. The same few words were buzzing around his head, as they had been doing for the past week, since his arrival back home.

“You said you’d catch me if I fell, but it was a lie,” he hummed to himself. “I fell so damn hard and well, you just watched from the side.”

There weren’t just words; there was a melody now, too, and he didn’t even bother getting dressed as he walked into the pool house and grabbed the guitar on the wall. It wasn’t really for playing: it was the guitar his favorite singer from the sixties, Alton Coy, had played on his last tour. He was only twenty-seven when his plane crashed in Alaska. His guitar was being taken by truck. The guitar made it to its destination, but Alton did not. Dax bought the guitar a little after his first album went platinum.

It was a little out of tune after having been stuck on the wall for a couple of years since Dax had bought the house, but it didn’t matter. He just needed to get the melody that was in his head down through his fingers, onto the strings. He was a great believer in muscle memory. Feeling the wire press into his fingertips made it seem more real.

He very rarely wrote his own music these days. The times that he was in the studio were when he was recording the kind of stuff that other people had written for him. Some of it was good, and catchy, and he liked singing it. But some of it was utter shit. Formulaic. Cliched. Sometimes he asked for a guitar to try out a chord he liked and a verse he penned, but he was usually cut off as Grant butted in on the mic and told him to “just stick to the script, okay?”

So he did. He stuck to the script. It was a script he’d stuck to for the past fifteen years and sure, it had worked. Grant knew what he was doing when it came to making records, especially the kind that made money. But every morning since arriving home, Dax had had words in his head that he couldn’t shift. Words that went well to new melodies.

He took the guitar into the main house and into the studio in the basement. He had no idea what all the dials on the deck meant, but it didn’t matter. All he wanted to do was to get the first few chords down onto a file that he could save and keep for another time. He wrote the words down on the computer. He set up a microphone and tuned the guitar properly. Then he recorded the first line of the song he’d been humming. He wrote down some more words, and plucked a little more at the guitar.

By the time he looked at the clock again, he saw he’d been making a new song for nearly two hours. And it was done. He emailed it all to himself and went back upstairs. He was still wearing his swimming shorts. “Where have you been?” Kelly asked. “I’ve been sitting here with coffees for twenty minutes.”

“Sorry. I was in the studio doing something.”

Kelly smiled at this, seemingly no longer annoyed about having been kept waiting. “Really? Have you been sent some new stuff?”

“No. It’s something I wrote.”

He didn’t want to go any further. He was so used to being shot down whenever he talked about his own work that he didn’t bother anymore. Instead he picked up his drink and changed the subject. “The coffee place still doing well?”

“Yep. They’re thrilled you’re back, of course. I think you kept it going. When you were out of town they probably had to let half the staff go.”

“God, I missed good coffee when I was over there.”

“Was it no good?”

Dax thought back to a memory of he and Cameron in the kitchen, long before anything had ever happened between them. Cameron was making instant coffee, with a spoonful of granules that looked as though they’d been cremated, not just roasted. Dax had pointed that out to him at the time, and he’d enjoyed seeing that way Cameron laughed. And he’d further enjoyed seeing the way Cameron brushed his auburn curls out of his eyes, as he always did.

“Hello? Earth to Dax?”

“Sorry.” Dax blushed and sipped his coffee again. “Uh, it wasn’t great, let’s just leave it at that.”

But I got to love it, he thought. Because of the guy who made it for me.

“What else did you miss when you were away?”

“Besides you?”

“Ah, you flatter me.”

Dax sat up at the kitchen counter and stuck out his bottom lip as he thought about the question. “Let’s see. What did I miss? Sushi. Definitely sushi.”

“Want me to go get you some?”

“You’ve only just got back from getting coffee.”

Kelly sat up at the counter with him and stared at him for a moment, her head titled to one side. Her gaze seemed to look right through his soul and Dax had to ask her what on earth she was looking at. She gave a slow smile. “I don’t really know,” she said. “It’s just that you’ve changed. Not in a bad way. At all. You’re just more… thoughtful.”

“Huh?”

“Well, at one time, if you wanted sushi, you’d damn well make me go out and get it, no matter what time it was. Or if you wanted pizza or a burger or a seven hundred dollar bottle of champagne. And now… I don’t know. You don’t want to send me out because I’ve only just got back? It never would have mattered to you before now.”

“I’m sorry for all the times I treated you like a slave,” Dax said. He took a deep breath. “Damn, I really am a spoiled little brat, aren’t I?”

Kelly shook her head. “Nah. You were, but not anymore.” She grinned playfully, but her eyes were probing. “What was it like, being cooped up in a barn in a field with that guy?”

“It wasn’t quite a barn. You’d be surprised to hear we had hot water and electricity and everything.”

“And mega-fast Wi-Fi?”

“Ah, you’ve got me there. No. No mega-fast Wi-Fi. No internet at all, actually.”

“What? You never mentioned it as something you missed! How can you have put sushi over the internet?”

Dax thought about this. “You know, once I was there, and I didn’t have phone calls every two seconds, and messages and more phone calls, I just liked the silence and I didn’t miss it.”

“And now?”

“What about now?”

“Do you miss England?”

“Scotland.”

“Hang on. Where’s London?”

Dax laughed. “London’s England. But Ca— the place I stayed after the hospital, that was Scotland.”

“Oh.”

There was a silence and for just a second, Dax could smell the freshly-cut hay outside, and could even hear the baa of the sheep calling for their lambs.

“You really liked him, didn’t you?” Kelly asked softly.

Dax froze for a second, but then swallowed, and nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered.

“And why did you leave?”

“Why do you think? I’ve got shit to take care of here. Grant’s already talking about getting on talk shows and being photographed in public again. Jesus, he’s even mentioned calling Alicia and trying to get that started again. I couldn’t stay in my barn in the field when I have too much going on over here. You know what it’s like. Grant complaining about losing millions every day… all that shit.”

“So why didn’t he come with you? Cameron, I mean.”

Chewing the inside of his cheek, Dax shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t want to.”

“Did you even ask?”

“No. But he wouldn’t anyway. He doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore. He hates me.”

“What?”

Without going into too much detail, Dax relayed the conversation he’d had on the phone with Cameron, when he was at the airport. “I asked if you’d paid him, and he just said he’d check. He was cold. Then he told me not to call him anymore.”

“And you listened to him?” Kelly sounded incredulous, and Dax was confused.

“Of course. He doesn’t want to hear from me. He’s mad at me for leaving. Grant says he’s sure Cameron’s pissed that he isn’t earning any more money from the deal. Which I was surprised at, really, because he never seemed to care about the cash side of things. I even offered for him to keep the car and he took it back and used his own, which was an old—”

“You’ve got no idea how this works, have you?” Kelly asked, cutting Dax off.

“How what works?”

“Love.”

The word hit Dax like a freight train, and in his confusion and embarrassment he tipped up the coffee cup to his mouth too fast and spilled it down his front. “Shit,” he muttered. He leaped down to get a washcloth. He dabbed at the stain, not wanting to meet his assistant’s eye, but Kelly wouldn’t let it go. Instead she jumped down, too, and walked to him, putting her own cup on the counter.

“He doesn’t want you calling him because he doesn’t know how to deal with losing you,” she said. “Jesus, Dax, I only met the guy a handful of times in the hospital but even I know what’s going on here. He’s hurt. He doesn’t hate you. He pretty much the opposite of hates you.”

Dax was quiet. Then he shook his head. “That’s not what it feels like.”

“Did you really just up and leave without saying goodbye?”

When she didn’t get an answer, Kelly sighed. “I knew you liked him when you were in the hospital but I didn’t know whether he was, you know…”

“Yeah.”

“And he made you well and then you guys fell madly in love? God, it’s so romantic.”

“I hadn’t even thought about that before,” Dax said.

“Well, think about how you feel now. Do you think about him a lot?”

“All the time.” The words were stuck in his throat for a second, and when they were released in a strained whine Dax was pretty sure he was about to cry.

“And do you dream about him?”

“I can’t sleep most nights.

“Oh God, you’re totally in love with this guy, Dax.”

Dax didn’t reply. Because he knew it was true. He was in love with Cameron, and it had taken his assistant, of all people, to finally spell it out for him. But he was five thousand and seventy-seven miles from Cameron. He knew because last night, on his phone, he’d been lying awake unable to sleep as had been the case for the last seven nights, and he searched the distance between them.

It was too late. He should have told Cameron how he felt when he had the chance, but he’d fucked everything up. Just like he’d almost fucked his career up by racing through the streets of London with Andy that night. Hell, he’d nearly fucked his whole existence up.

Maybe it was better that Dax had left. Because all he ever did was create chaos. That’s how it felt. It made him sad. The whole thing made him want to cry. And as Kelly slipped her arms around her boss’s waist and hugged him tight, he finally did. He began to sob, huge, racking sobs that echoed in the large kitchen. He slid to the floor and wept, tears running down his cheeks as he sat with his back against the kitchen counter.

“I lost him,” Dax sobbed. Kelly sat beside him but Dax was barely aware she was there anymore. All he could feel was the hurt and pain, the hole of Cameron’s absence now throbbing in his chest.

“I walked away from the only good thing that’s ever happened to me. What the hell was I thinking?”

He looked up at Kelly and nodded.

“You’re right. I love him.”