Chapter Eighteen

Darien

As Saturdays went, today had been eventful, and all without leaving the house. It had started innocuously enough, Felix and I barely getting out of bed before we’d found ourselves back there, bodies entangled and Felix fucking me so long and slow that there were times it resembled torture more than sex. There’d been nothing torturous about the orgasm the slow build had led to, though. No one had ever made me come like Felix did, the man able to play my body like he was a virtuoso and I was his violin. It was inevitable after such exertions that we’d fall asleep afterwards.

And then Hayden had arrived like a mini typhoon to interrupt the post-coital bliss. I might have played it down to Felix by claiming that my brother’s intentions were pure—which they were—but that hadn’t stopped the conversation from being fraught. Hayden had made me feel like I’d let him down, like he’d put me on a pedestal as a perfect human being, only to discover I was human after all, with all the frailties and base desires that came along with it.

Felix listening in on the conversation had come as a shock. Which, in retrospect, was na?ve of me. Had I really thought he’d cower upstairs? Felix wasn’t the cowering type. The worst thing about what he’d overheard was that I should have said it to him first. It was hard to work out why I’d never told him I believed in his innocence when I knew it was precisely what he wanted to hear.

After the conversation where I’d done my best to right some of the wrongs of not talking to Felix, he’d gone out. Supposedly to get ingredients for the chili he planned to make, but the passage of time said he’d gone elsewhere. I hadn’t questioned him on it when he’d returned, letting him hide away in the kitchen and use cooking as his therapy. He was so intent on what he was doing that the few times I’d popped my head in the kitchen to check he was alright, he hadn’t noticed.

That meant that sitting down together to eat at the kitchen table was the first opportunity we’d had to talk for some hours. Felix had outdone himself, producing not only chili and rice, but tortillas and a sour cream dip he’d made himself as well. The flavor burst on my tongue as I took my first bite of the chili. There was heat, but nothing I couldn’t handle, Felix gauging it perfectly. “Jesus! This is good,” I enthused. “One of the best things I’ve ever tasted. I hope you cooked enough for there to be leftovers.”

“You don’t need to go overboard.” Felix’s stare was as cool as his words and I wondered if the snarling dog had wandered into the kitchen to take up a position at its master’s feet, ready to jump into action if need be.

“I wasn’t. It’s really good. ”

There was no wine tonight, Felix perhaps realizing things were too uncertain, too raw, between us to introduce alcohol into the equation. I studied him as he ate, his expression giving nothing away. “If you ever need to talk about him, you can, you know.”

Felix’s fork stilled before he caught himself and carried on collecting chili and rice on it. He brought it to his mouth and chewed slowly before speaking. “Talk about who?”

I was walking on eggshells, the need to get him to open up warring with the niggling suspicion that I should let it go. For today, at least. “You know who. Julian.”

Felix’s mouth twisted, but he said nothing. We both carried on eating, enough time passing for me to assume that was the end of the conversation. When he put his fork down halfway through his meal, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d got up and left. He didn’t, sitting back in his chair instead. “What do you want to know about him?”

“Anything you want to share?” Realizing that was too vague, I fine-tuned my question. “How did the two of you meet?”

“At a work do. He was dating a friend of mine.” Felix gave a little laugh. “I sometimes wonder if everything that happened after was karma for flirting with someone who I knew had a boyfriend.”

“Did you steal him from your friend?”

The look from beneath Felix’s long lashes told me the question required thought before he could answer it. “Define steal.”

“Deliberately setting out to take him away from your friend.” He wouldn’t be the first person, and it wasn’t the biggest sin in the world. There were worse crimes. Like murder.

More consideration. “No, then. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel an immediate attraction toward him. I thought he was incredibly handsome. ”

“I’ve seen photos. I don’t think anyone can dispute that Julian Blackwell is a good-looking man.”

“And I’m sure I did a shitty job of hiding my attraction to him. There was a quick turnaround from him splitting with Theo and dating me.”

“How quick?”

He shrugged. “A week. Ten days at most.”

“And how did Theo take that?”

“He wasn’t happy. You know, bro code, and all that.”

“You probably saved him.”

“Yeah.” There was very little conviction in Felix’s voice, though.

“You don’t think so?”

“Julian always said…” Felix’s gaze dropped to his plate, his body language changing in an instant.

“He always said what?”

“That I brought out the worst in him. That I pushed him beyond his limits, and I needed to take responsibility for some of his behavior.”

I put my fork down, the urge to eat any more of the chili disappearing. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

Felix raised his head to meet my gaze, his eyes stormy. “I met two of his exes. They only had good things to say about him.”

“Then he hadn’t started being abusive to them yet. Emphasis on the yet.” I leaned forward over the table. “How long were you together before he showed his true colors? Because I’m guessing you wouldn’t have moved in with him if he’d already been a bastard to you.”

“Just over a year. He was the perfect boyfriend until then. You couldn’t ask for someone more romantic. We’re talking gifts, romantic dinners, the whole shebang. I thought the sun shone out of his arse.”

“I bet his exes were with him for less than a year.”

Felix shrugged. “I don’t know. ”

“It’s a typical page out of the abuser’s handbook.”

His brow furrowed. “What is?”

“Making the victim believe that the abuse is their fault. That he only did what he did because you drove him to it. And it’s bullshit. No one can make anyone do something they don’t want to do. I don’t know exactly what went on between the two of you, but if you pissed him off, he had numerous options. Walking away. Ending the relationship. No one becomes abusive unless it’s already in their nature.”

Felix traced patterns on the table with his fingertips. “I didn’t say I believed it. I just told you what he used to say.”

“You didn’t say you didn’t believe it either.”

A one-shouldered shrug, his fingers still making patterns that only he could see. “I had a lot of time to think about it while I was inside. I could have handled some things better than I did.”

I laughed, but bitterness laced it. I’d dealt with abused people before, and this was so often a factor. Julian had done such a number on Felix that even years later, and after everything Julian had done, Felix still struggled not to take at least some of the blame. Although they could acknowledge the abuse, they still couldn’t fully overcome the mental conditioning. “Who in a relationship couldn’t do better? Nobody’s perfect. I’m certainly not.”

When Felix lifted his head to meet my gaze, I was struck anew by how handsome he was. “You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

The words wrapped around my heart and had me struggling for what I was supposed to say in response. Was I supposed to deny it? Say thank you? Brush it off? In the end, the silence went on too long and the opportunity to say anything passed. I focused on Felix’s half-eaten meal instead. “Are you going to finish that?”

When he shook his head, I started clearing the plates, scraping the rest of the food into the bin before filling the sink to do the dishes straightaway. It was a domestic habit we’d fallen into easily. Felix cooked, and I cleaned up afterwards—the perfect division of labor.

I was elbow deep in soapsuds when Felix started talking again. “We’d been at a party on the night he first lost his temper.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t turn, figuring he’d find it easier to talk to the back of my head.

“I spent too long talking to another man, apparently.”

Jealousy was a common trigger for abusers. I didn’t say that out loud. “Were you flirting with him?”

“I don’t think so.” A pause. “No. I wasn’t remotely interested in him. I was just being friendly… making conversation because that’s what you do at parties. I can’t even remember what we were talking about.”

I rinsed the plate under the tap and placed it on the draining board. “What happened?”

“He hit me. Not that hard. Not that night. It was more the shock of it. It was enough that I slept in the spare room. The next day he couldn’t have been more apologetic.”

“Let me guess, he said it’d never happen again?”

“Yeah. And it didn’t for a couple of months. I can’t even remember what I did the second time to trigger it.” I could hear the frown in Felix’s voice as he struggled to recall what it might have been. “Things went downhill from there until it felt like I couldn’t do anything right. The meals I cooked were never good enough. I started ordering food from the restaurant down the road. At least then, if he didn’t like it, it wasn’t my fault. Of course, then it became that I hadn’t ordered the right things, so it was still my fault. I was supposed to know he’d stopped eating fish without him ever having told me. If it wasn’t the food, it was something else. If I didn’t put my clothes away, I was too messy. If things were too tidy, I was hiding stuff from him. Then he started finding fault with how much time I spent with friends. There was one in particular he didn’t like.”

“Male and good-looking?” I queried.

“Yeah, but it was ridiculous. Tom was straight and married to a woman he adored. They had three kids. He could have gotten blind drunk and he still wouldn’t have been remotely interested in me.”

“But you stopped seeing him, anyway?”

“Yeah, it was just easier than arguing about it. Tom and all the rest of my friends, even the female ones.”

Dishes washed, I started on the drying, careful not to look Felix’s way and risk him clamming up. “That’s a move straight out of the handbook as well. He wanted you to rely on him and only him. That way, you were less likely to leave him.”

“I did leave, though. Three or four times.” Felix let out a sigh. “But I always went back.”

“Why?”

The pause that followed was a long one. I slowed down on the drying, wanting to prolong the task as long as I could. If this was the one and only time I got Felix to open up, I didn’t want to do anything to stall the torrent of words.

“I don’t know. Given everything that happened after that, I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times. Because if I’d left and stayed away, my life would be different now. I wouldn’t have lost seven years of it. I wouldn’t have to avoid people on the street. My mum wouldn’t hate me.” The more reasons Felix came up with, the more strident his voice became. “I’d have a future.” He slammed his hand down on the table, water from his glass sloshing across the surface. “Fuck! Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I went over there, using the tea towel to mop up the spillage. “It’s only water. No harm done. ”

“I guess I loved him. They say that love is blind, don’t they?”

“They do,” I agreed.

“I kept thinking that he was just stressed from work or something, that one day I’d wake up and the man I’d known from the first year of our relationship would be back. How fucked up is that?”

“You’re not the first to think that, and you won’t be the last.” I threw the wet tea towel on the kitchen counter and got a fresh one out of the drawer.

“And instead it just kept getting worse.”

“How bad did he hurt you?” My question was calm and measured, which was a miracle given the emotional whirlpool going on inside me. There was a part of me that wished I’d never brought the subject of Julian up. Be careful what you wish for.

“Nothing major. Black eyes, split lips, bruises, sprains.”

Leaning against the kitchen counter and facing away from Felix once more, I closed my eyes against the rush of anger that made me want to pay Julian a visit and see if he liked it. Which was odd when I’d never been a violent man. Even at school, I hadn’t been the type of kid that got into fights. I hadn’t needed to. Not when I had a protective brother, happy to steam in there if anyone even looked at me in the wrong way. Our differing temperaments, along with us not looking anything alike, had been one of the telltale signs of Hayden being adopted. It hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference to me. He’d been my brother in every way that counted. He still was.

“Did you ever hit him back?” I asked. Felix wasn’t a small guy. No doubt, he had packed on some muscle in prison, because of having a lot of time on his hands and few choices in how to spend it. But he’d been fit enough before. The old photos I’d come across on the internet had shown that.

“Would you have? ”

I put the last dry plate in the cupboard, and having run out of things to do short of reorganizing the cupboards when they didn’t need it, turned to face him. I leaned against the kitchen counter while I thought about it. “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s something you can answer unless you’ve lived it.”

Felix gave a terse nod. “No. I never hit him back. Maybe, in retrospect, I should have done.” His mouth twisted. “But then I’d do a lot of things differently if I had my time again. Maybe if I’d stood up to him, Lily Reynolds would still be alive.”

“That’s not on you.” In response, Felix only bowed his head. “It’s not!” I rounded the table to stand in front of him. “Move your chair back.”

When he lifted his gaze to mine, he looked about ten years older, like even talking about this aged him. He did what I asked, though, scooting his chair back a few inches. Once there was space, I lowered myself onto his lap, moving slowly enough that he had ample time to push me off. When he didn’t, I took him in my arms and cradled his head against my chest. “I’m sorry for everything you went through. It wasn’t fair. No one should have to live through something so horrible.”

Neither of us spoke for the next few minutes, Felix’s eyes closing and his breathing slowing, almost like he might go to sleep. All I could do was stroke his hair and mumble meaningless nonsense meant to comfort.