Oh God. I was dying.
I peeled open an eyelid and immediately regretted it. Light lanced straight through my skull.
What…what had happened to me? Had I been attacked? Hang on. No. I’d spent the evening with Ellery.
And now I was broken.
Probably the best thing to do was lie very still and pretend I didn’t exist. Yep. That would work.
The sound of a door opening and closing thundered across my senses like a stampede of raging wildebeest. Must have been the cleaners. Twitching my fingers in the direction of the pillow, I mashed it protectively against my face.
“Arden?”
Wait. That was Caspian’s voice. I partially self-excavated. Forced my eyes to work. Then my brain.
There was a human-shape in the doorway.
And, yep, it was definitely him. Not a hallucination. But a vision, nonetheless, in a chocolate brown pinstriped suit and a paisley tie that made him look like something from a jazz-age daydream.
“Good God,” he said. Way too loudly. His voice echoing through the spaces surrounding my wizened, dehydrated brain. “Are you ill?”
I whimpered. “No. But I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow. Unless it’s already tomorrow. Is it tomorrow now?”
“I came back early. I wanted to see you.” The bright blur bobbing about in front of him resolved itself into a bouquet of tulips—and not the fancy kind either, the kind you got from a stall. Just some flowers tied up with paper and string. “I texted. I didn’t realize you hadn’t received it.”
“I’m barely receiving oxygen right now. But I’m always happy to see you.”
His free hand came up in a gesture that didn’t seem to be anything at all and then dropped back to his side. “This was ill-conceived. I don’t know what I was…that is. I’ll come back when we agreed. I’m sorry.”
I tried to croak out something to stop him.
But then Ellery—who, given the vastness of both the bed and my hangover, I’d failed to notice had been sleeping beside me—poked her head up and drawled, “Well, isn’t this sweet.”
Caspian went white. It was awful to watch. Like when somebody gets shot in a movie and there’s this silence. And then suddenly blood everywhere. The tulips slipped from his hand and scattered at his feet. Rainbow shrapnel.
Then he turned and—
Fuck.
I dived off the bed, relieved to discover I was in boxers. And a sock. For a moment, I thought I was going to throw up, but I couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental distress, or a little bit of both. Thankfully the churning in my stomach and the spinning in my head briefly balanced each other out and I managed to stagger after Caspian.
He was almost gone. And I knew, I just knew, I couldn’t let him step out that door. Because while I had no doubt he’d come to his senses, I might never forgive him. For someone so committed to seeing the best in me, it didn’t take much for him to assume the absolute fucking worst.
“Don’t,” I cried. “Wait.”
And because I had no idea what else to do I…flung myself at him. It was probably the least dignified thing I’d ever done, which, y’know, talk about stiff competition. As I moved, I caught sight of my shadow on the wall, outstretched arms doing the full 1922 Nosferatu death scene. But, somehow, I managed to get them wrapped round Caspian’s waist. My cheek to his unyielding back. And there I clung.
He stopped. I guess he had to or look as ridiculous as me. “Let me go.”
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You were in bed with my sister.”
“I’m cuddly, Caspian. I like to sleep with people. I mean literally sleep with them. Not have sex with them.”
He didn’t move. Just stood there, sucking the heat and hope out of me like an ice sculpture of a man who thought I’d fucked his sister.
“Oh come on.” I squeezed him desperately. “Use that magnificent brain of yours. Putting aside the fact that I would be mad to want anyone else while I have you, do you really think I’d be stupid enough to cheat on you in your own house? Knowing you could turn up at any moment? Is that it? Do you think I’m stupid?”
His hand crept up and covered mine. His fingers were cold and trembling slightly. “I don’t understand why you’d…why you’d…”
Given Caspian’s own discomfort with physical intimacy, it did make a terrible sort of sense that he couldn’t imagine sharing a bed with somebody without dicking them. But while that helped me understand a bit more about what was going on, it didn’t make me feel any better about it.
“Why do you do this to me?” I wailed. “I’ve given you no reason to doubt my faith or my…my virtue.” Oh God. Now I was in a Victorian sensation novel. I was probably about to discover I was my own twin brother who had been confined to a lunatic asylum. “And with your sister for God’s sake. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Of course, Ellery would choose exactly this moment to come out of the bedroom. She was wearing my CALLIPYGIAN T-shirt, a pair of cat-head thigh-highs, and a death glare. And I wanted to strongly encourage her to go away but, unfortunately, she spoke before I could. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with him. He thinks everyone’s like he is.”
Caspian spun round so fast it centrifugal-forced me away from him and sent me crashing to the floor. “What,” he asked, with hideous calm, “is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t value friendship so you don’t understand why anyone would.”
This was definitely one of those stay down situations. I huddled, wishing I had a helmet or something.
“The thing is, Caspian”—Ellery’s lip curled with a frankly spectacular degree of scorn—“while fucking you up is one of the few things I really enjoy, I like Arden. And I don’t want to fuck him up as well.”
Caspian sighed. “You’re being childish, Eleanor.”
“I’m not the one freaking out because he thought someone else was playing with his toys.”
“You have no right to interfere in my affairs or embroil Arden in your attention-seeking dramas. He is my partner. He is not your friend.”
“He’s also right here,” I said. “And I’m seriously not enjoying being the stick you use to beat each other.”
There was a brief, profoundly awkward pause.
And then Caspian extended a hand to help me off the ground. “I apologize for my sister’s behavior. She’s been impossible for years and I have no idea what makes her act like this.”
My mouth dropped open. Caspian didn’t so much end arguments as nuke them from orbit. I really didn’t want to take sides here but he was crossing an unacceptable dick threshold. “Um—”
“It’s you.” Ellery wasn’t breathing well enough to be yelling. Her voice sounded genuinely broken, caught somewhere between tears and screaming. “You make me act like this. You’ve made me invisible. You’ve made me worthless. You’ve taken away everyone who’s ever cared about me. Dad. Mum. Lancaster. Nathaniel. Even your fucking self.”
If we were in a movie, this would be the moment that changed everything. They’d hug and cry and lay their feelings bare and promise to be better people and a Sam Smith song would play and everyone would go home all uplifted and shit.
Except we weren’t in a movie. And what Caspian said was, “I’m not having this conversation with you.”
Ellery stared at him with eyes that were so like his and so not.
Then she turned and walked back into the bedroom, emerging about thirty seconds later with her boots on and her bag over her shoulder.
She was gone without another word.
Leaving us standing in the middle of this emotional crater. At least, I was standing in an emotional crater. I had no idea what was going on with Caspian.
My voice floated out of me like a confused poltergeist. “I…I don’t think I can be here right now.”
“Get dressed. I’ll take you out.”
“Um. No? Thank you. I need to”—I made a helpless gesture—“be by myself for a bit. I might go for a swim?”
Caspian had become a stranger. Regarding me considerately. “I see. Would you like me to wait?”
“Would you like to?” Or maybe we had both become strangers, marooned on islands of courtesy.
“I’ll wait.”
I dug out my towel and a dressing gown, and changed into my trunks. Drank about a million gallons of water, grabbed my phone, and got the hell out of the apartment.
Say this for complete psychological devastation: it really put a hangover in perspective.
The pool was as serene as ever, the silvery light soothing my gritty eyes. Slumping down onto one of the fancy lounger things, I rang Ellery.
No answer. Of course not.
I rang again. And again. And again. And again.
Until at last, she answered. “Hi, Mum.”
“No, it’s me, Ard—oh wait, I see what you did there. Are you okay?”
I could almost hear her shrugging. “Sure.”
“You know I’m your friend, right?”
“I know you’re my friend with terrible taste in men.”
“And you’re okay?” I faffed miserably with my towel. “You promise.”
“Yeah, Arden, I double pinky swear. And, for the record, you’re being super-weird.”
“I just…I don’t know…I was afraid you might be…I don’t want you to…”
“What?”
My mouth formed a series of useless shapes. And then I blurted out, “Kill yourself.”
A long silence.
“Because of Caspian?”
“Um. Because of anything.”
She laughed. “Like he’d even care. Talk soon.”
And then she hung up.
I stared helplessly at my phone for a moment or two. Well. At least she was talking to me. And not…um. Dead. Sigh. Sigh forever.
Dragging off the dressing gown and leaving everything on the lounger, I plopped gingerly into the water. Only discovering how numbed-through I was when I heard my own splash before I felt the lap of heat against my skin.
And that was my body. Fuck knew what was going on in my brain.
I swam a few lengths as vigorously as I could given my general weediness, thrashing up and down the pool like a stressed-out basking shark. Not that I had my mouth wide open or anything, on account of preferring not to drown, but if it had been possible to wear my emotional state on my face that would have been me: frozen in an epic oh fuck.
Moving helped. Turned the volume up somehow. Though eventually I just flipped onto my back and floated listlessly. I knew this wasn’t my shit. That it wasn’t about me and didn’t involve me. But, God, it was hard to watch. And it made me a traitor whatever happened: a bad friend or a bad…oh! Caspian had called me his partner. Which would have made me so happy if he hadn’t only done it to hurt someone else. Or maybe he thought he was protecting what was his from a perceived incursion.
And, wow, was that a recipe for all the ambiguous feelings. Because I loved thinking of myself as Caspian’s. I wanted to be claimed and possessed and treasured by him. But in this particular context—when it wasn’t about me or us at all—it was icky. It was icky as fuck.
I lost track of how long I drifted in the water. I wasn’t even sure if Caspian would still be there when I went back. Or how I’d face him. What I’d say. If, for that matter, there was anything to say. I mean, I knew full well that he could be like this. And also that it wasn’t a true reflection of who he was. Apparently, some families could really bring out the worst in each other. It made me extra glad for mine.
Of course, plenty of people thought we had a pretty weird setup. And, in all fairness I could see that, considering Mum and I were hiding from my dad with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s husband in a majorly remote part of Scotland. But while nearly everyone I knew spoke about loving their folks as a duty they were resigned to…I actually liked mine. And I was starting to think that was a very special thing.
Back in the apartment, I found Caspian sitting on the sofa in the living area, his face turned toward the window, and his body thrown into silhouette against the gleaming afternoon.
It reminded me of the time I’d come down to London to yell at him. Before then, I’d only seen him amid Oxford’s golds. But this was his world: high windows and horizons. And later, once I’d got past the anger and the crying and the being kissed and being rejected, I’d thought about how alone he’d looked. An untouchable prince, caged by his own power.
Well, he wasn’t alone now.
I padded across the room and dropped to my knees beside him, a gesture not of submission but of offered closeness.
“Arden.” His hand moved. Then stilled.
I smiled up at him. And very gently nudged his thigh with my cheek. “Hey.”
“I owe you an apology.”
“For whose behavior?”
He had the grace to blush a little. “Mine.”
Silence.
More silence.
“I’m kind of waiting for it here,” I said.
At last he touched me—his fingers gathering a few drops of water from the tips of my hair. “I’m sorry. I’ve…I’ve been…”
He looked like he was struggling so I got helpful. “A complete dick?”
“That seems a fair description.” He went all quiet again for a second a two. “And I hope you know that I…that I don’t doubt you.”
“You say that, but you’re super quick to think I’ve banged your sister.”
He put his hand to his eyes, shielding even more of his expression from me. As if being in profile and tight-lipped just wasn’t remote enough. “I was jealous.”
“Of me and Ellery? There’s nothing there to be jealous of.”
“Of course there is. I’m jealous of how close you are. Of the intimacy you have.”
“All relationships are their own thing.” I pressed against his leg again, until his fingers curled through my still-damp hair. “We have our own intimacies.”
“But I may never be as easy with you as she is. I may never be able to give you that.”
“Do you want to?”
After a moment, he gave a swift, sharp nod.
“Then that’s enough for me.” I caught his wrist and bestowed a fleeting kiss upon his palm. “But you have to do better with Ellery, okay?”
He pulled away slightly. “I’m not sure I know how to.”
“Oh come on, Caspian.” I sat back on my heels. “You’re not a robot or a monster. You know what you did and why it was awful. And I get you were upset but that’s no excuse.”
“Eleanor is different with you. She never responds well to me.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to be…like almost willfully nasty to her.”
He sighed. “I have spent my life hurting my sister. I don’t think either of us is prepared for that to change now.”
“I think maybe you’re not prepared.”
“Shouting at me about all the damage I’ve caused is hardly an effective way to open a dialogue.”
“Actually…it could be. You’re the one who’s refusing to listen.”
“Arden, you know what kind of man I am. You’ve always known.”
“Yes.” I gazed at him steadily. “I do. I know how kind you are, for a start. And I know you don’t treat people badly. So why Ellery? It’s almost like you don’t want to fix things. Like you’re trying to keep her at a distance. Why do you want your sister to hate you, Caspian?”
“Come here, my little journalist.” He reached down and pulled me onto his lap. Kissed me hard enough to make my head spin. “Always looking for an angle or a story.”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
He pushed a hand under the dressing gown and stroked my thigh until I got the shivers. “There is no try. Do or do not.”
“OMG, you are the dorkiest.” He kissed me again and I felt his smile against my lips. “But I know what you’re at.”
“Maybe, but I came here for you, not to talk about my sister.”
“And still at.”
His expression was serious as he met my eyes. “Would it really be so terrible, Arden, to let me? I understand you care about Ellery, but she is not the only person who has been hurt today. And this is certainly not the afternoon I envisioned for us. With your consent, I would very much like to salvage it and celebrate your latest accomplishment.”
I wanted to say yes. And Caspian was certainly doing everything in his power to make it super tempting. Except I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It would have meant accepting things that I was no longer comfortable accepting.
Not after everything that had happened between us.
I shook my head. And gave him a little push, knowing how responsive he was to that sort of thing. Sure enough, he let me go at once.
Gazed at me in obvious dismay. “Arden…”
“I’m sorry. The thing is, I can’t keep ignoring how much you keep from me.”
“My relationship with my sister has nothing to do with you.”
“I know. But”—I swiveled sideways on the sofa so I could see him better, even if it was his profile—“I have something to do with you, don’t I?”
“Of course you do, but there are simply some things I don’t wish to talk about. Surely you can respect that?”
Great. Now I looked totally unreasonable. If the carnage with Ellery had shown me anything, it was that Caspian was good at winning arguments. Maybe because he saw them as something that could be won.
Or, perhaps, had to be.
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t make you tell me stuff. And I wouldn’t want to. I just wish you felt like you could.”
His sneered with Ellery-like contempt. “One of the many toxic facets of modern psychology is the way it teaches us that sharing is inherently beneficial. When often it is selfish, hurtful, or otherwise self-indulgent.”
“Okay, but if you’d told me about the nature of your relationship with Nathaniel, then I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard over the room and probably…” Urgh. He wouldn’t thank me for mentioning what had happened that night “…I wouldn’t have made you feel so bad.”
“Well, if you hadn’t been so determined to pry, then the whole situation would not have occurred in the first place.”
Yep. This was definitely verbal Carcassonne. And I was definitely losing. And there was nothing I could do about it, short of running out of the castle and being attacked by wolves, necessitating a rescue from Caspian that would lead to us eating soup together and playing in the snow and then he’d give me a library and—wait, that was something else.
I tried a different tack. “Look, you told Ellery I was your partner because you wanted to hurt her. Not because it’s how you see me or how you treat me. That’s really fucked up.”
“I’m trying, Arden.” And maybe I was better at Carcassonne than I thought, because he sounded genuinely shaken. “I want to be a partner to you. I want to make you happy. But at some point you’re going to accept that this is who I am.”
“No. It’s who you say you are. That’s not the same thing.”
He turned sharply. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not asking me to accept you as you are. You’re asking me to accept the way you see yourself. Which I can’t do.” I had to curl my hands in my lap to stop reaching out to him. “Because that’s not how I see you.”
Caspian surged off the sofa, obviously frustrated.
“I’m sorry, Arden, but how many times must we have this conversation? Reach this same impasse? You’re looking for something that isn’t there. You must understand. And ultimately decide for yourself if this—if I—can be enough for you.”
Wow. What? No.
How had we got here?
I stared at him in horror. “You can’t just dump the whole responsibility for our future on me. There’s two of us involved here.”
“Yes, but I’m not the one who’s unhappy.” It was his gentlest voice. The voice that often cut me deepest. “I’m doing my best, but I’m tired of disappointing you, Arden.”
“You don’t,” I cried. “You aren’t. All I’m asking—”
“Is for things I can’t give.”
There was a long, nasty silence.
“I should go,” said Caspian, finally. “You need time to think. Text me if you still want to be my date tomorrow.”
I was too stunned to even try and stop him.