Eight

Igot back to the car a couple of minutes before Caspien did, sneaking back out the way I came and sliding into the back seat. If Luke noticed anything was wrong, he said nothing.

When Caspien got into the car, redressed in a clean T-shirt and shorts, he pulled his seatbelt on and apologised for taking so long. He didn’t look at me in the rearview the entire journey to the cottage, which I noticed because I could barely keep my eyes off him. I needed to get him alone and ask him about the man in Gideon’s house. Was he still there? Waiting?

Throughout the barbecue, my skin itched from the questions bubbling under it. Caspien was cool and calm and entirely placid in the face of my questioning stares and heavy looks. He ate two burgers and a hot dog and picked at his bowl of salad while answering Luke’s questions about the beach, Gideon’s trip to London, how his studies were with his tutor, and if he missed boarding school.

I watched in awe as he answered them all politely and without any hint that he’d just kissed a grown man in his uncle’s reception room as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“You should stay the night,” Luke suggested as we helped clear away the plates. “We have a blow-up mattress. You can sleep in Jude’s room. I’m sure Gideon won’t mind.”

My legs faltered so that the plates I was carrying almost toppled to the floor.

What would he say? Actually, my older boyfriend is waiting for me at home. I have to get back.

Instead, in true Caspien style, he shocked me by saying, “That would be nice.” He looked at me. “Just as long as Jude doesn’t mind.”

My face must have done something strange because Luke said, “He doesn’t have friends stay over much; that’s why he looks like you’ve just suggested he swim once around the island.”

“Why not?” Caspien asked me.

I still couldn’t think properly, so my mouth opened and closed like a dying fish for a moment before Beth said, “He doesn’t like people in his space.” She used her fingers to motion quotation marks around the word ‘space’. “Goodness knows what he’s gonna do when the baby gets here.”

It was true. I didn’t like people in my space – I was only just about getting used to Ellie coming over and touching things and leaving her flowery, sweet scent around my room. But having Caspien alone in my room, that was to say, to have him alone where I could ask him about exactly what I saw back at the mansion, was too good an opportunity to miss. And the fact that he’d agreed to stay meant that he must be at least willing to talk to me about it. Because he surely knew he wasn’t going to get away with not.

I looked at Caspien with intent. “I don’t mind.”

His eyes took on a sharp, knowing look as he nodded. “Then I would love to stay over. Thanks.”

I helped Luke blow up the airbed while Caspien helped Beth with the dishes. I couldn’t imagine what they’d be talking about down there, but their voices were a steady drone coming up through the fireplace.

“I think he’s lonely, you know,” Luke said in a half-whisper. “Living up there in that big house with just Gideon for company. Needs some friends his own age if you ask me.”

“Did Gideon tell you that?” I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly responsible for Caspien’s social inclusion – but it seemed I was.

I wondered what Luke would think about what I’d seen earlier. I’d not stopped thinking about it, and yet, as the night had gone on, what I’d seen had become far more incredible and unlikely. Had they actually kissed, or had I just imagined it? Had I imagined the noises the man holding him had made? Caspien was my age, fifteen. And that guy had been Luke’s age. An adult. It made no sense that they’d have been kissing. But then I thought about what he’d said, about how he’d tell Gideon that Caspien had seduced him...about how he couldn’t stay away...about how he missed him all the time.

It made that sick, twisty feeling in my stomach come back.

When the bed was made, Luke disappeared downstairs, and I sat at my desk and quickly checked my socials. Georgia had uploaded some photos from the beach, which I scanned and liked, lingering too long on one of the two girls with Caspien in the background.

In the middle of the afternoon, Caspien had gone for a long walk along the shore on his own, and the shot captured him standing staring out at sea, looking serious and pensive. His hair had begun to dry by then, and it sat fluffy, thick, and golden on top of his head. His blue shorts hung low on his waist, showing sharply angled hip bones, a delicately curved spine, and strong thighs and calves.

“So your friends are predictably boring,” came the voice from behind me.

I started; he’d been checking his phone the last I’d looked.

My cheeks flushed at the idea of him having caught me looking at the picture, but then I relaxed. Ellie was in the foreground in a bikini. He’d assume I was looking at her.

I brushed a hand through my hair and sat up, turning in the chair to face him.

“And yours are twice your age and should probably be in prison,” I said.

He stiffened before reaching out to close the door, shutting us inside together. He eyed the airbed.

“I’m not sleeping on that.”

I shrugged. “Then go home. To your friend.”

He smiled and moved to sit down on my bed. Leaning back on his hands, he studied me. “Tonight was the second time I’ve caught you spying on me, Judith. If you aren’t careful, I’m going to start thinking you fancy me.”

My face heated, but I managed to make a scoffing noise. “Yeah, you’re really not my type.”

“Stupid, giggling airheads are more your type; I forgot.”

“And what about your type? Old perverts, is it?”

He snorted. “Christ, you’re such a child.”

“We’re the same age?!”

“Yes, and it’s as much of a shock to me as it is to you, believe me,” Caspien said. “Look, ask me whatever it is you want to know. Say whatever it is you want to say – but get it out of your system now because it’s not something we are ever going to talk about again.” The look he gave me was harder, more threatening. “And it’s not something you’re ever going to mention to another soul. Not Gideon, not Luke, and not your stupid, idiotic friends. Do you understand?”

Rage and something else rose in my chest. I wanted to defend my friends, but they could be stupid and idiotic, even I knew that.

Anyway, this was more important.

“Fine. Who is he?”

“What does that matter?”

I couldn’t think of a single reason why it did. Except that, I wanted to know his name. I wanted to know so that when I was older, bigger, stronger, I could hunt him down and hurt him in some way.

I vowed to myself at that moment that I’d find out his name some other way. “I guess it doesn’t...” I chewed my lip as I thought about what else I wanted to know.

“Do you love him?” I asked, completely unsure why and completely certain he wouldn’t answer anyway.

He gave me an odd look as though he thought I might be joking, then when it was clear I wasn’t, he said, “No, Jude, I don’t.”

I tried not to care about the soft way he said my name. Softer than he’d ever said it before.

“Does he love you?” It had looked like it. I miss you all the time.

“Certainly not.”

I frowned at this. At the certainty with which he said it. Then I asked, “Was he the person you were talking to on the phone when I...before?”

He smiled, slow and amused. “You think I have a whole squad of them?”

I raised an eyebrow. If anyone did, it was him.

He rolled his eyes, but he answered. “Yes. He was.”

“And do you...like...you know. With him...”

Caspien’s eyes narrowed devilishly, lips parting. “Do I what?”

I looked at the floor. “You know...”

“If you want me to answer it, then you’re going to have to say it.”

I kept my eyes lowered. “Do you have sex with him?”

“I’m fifteen years old. Of course I don’t.”

When I lifted my eyes, he held my gaze a long time without speaking. I sensed the lie in it, or I thought I did, perhaps because everything Caspien said felt crafted and careful, intricate in a way that hurt my brain trying to decipher.

He glanced away, sighing as he added, “He’s not a complete idiot.”

Did that mean he wanted to?

“He says he’s happy to wait.” Caspien was staring at my bookshelf.

At first, I thought he meant wait at the house until I realised that wasn’t what he meant at all. My head filled with noise, and my breathing turned hot and quick again. I felt angry and helpless all at once.

“And you’re going to? With him? Some old guy you don’t even love?” It was out before I could think about how it sounded like I cared.

His eyes found mine, a mocking look on his face.

“Oh, so you only have sex with people you love?” He said it like it was ridiculous. “Do you love her then? Your stupid girlfriend?”

“Stop saying that,” I snapped. “She’s not stupid.”

“She’s not very smart either.”

“How would you know? You barely spoke to her.”

“I didn’t have to; it’s painfully obvious.”

“Well, I suppose if forty-year-old men are your type then you would think that.”

“He’s thirty-two.”

I shrugged. “Same difference. He should be in prison.”

Caspien gave me a very serious look. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.” If it meant he’d be away from Caspien maybe that’s exactly where he should be. Behind thick bars and high walls.

He stuck his chin out. “I’ll be sixteen in three months.”

“And he’ll still be a man twice your age. It’s disgusting.”

He studied me closely, eyes turning mean. “Are you sure it’s not the fact he’s a man, Jude? Is that really what disgusts you?”

I felt my face screw up. “Eh, no. I don’t care if you’re gay, Caspien.” That he thought I did pissed me off.

But then, we barely knew each other, not beyond this weird tenuous acquaintance we’d been forced to cultivate. He didn’t like me; that much was obvious. He also thought I was several social and intellectual levels beneath him. So, of course, he thought I was a homophobe too. I didn’t think I was. I didn’t know any gay people, except for maybe Charlie Eastman, but I didn’t even know if he was gay. It was just something people at school said about him. Actually, I hadn’t seen him this term. The thought hit me like a bucket of ice water. “Was that why you left school?”

“What?”

“Because you’re gay?” I asked. “Did people at your old school have a problem with it? Is that why you never went back?” The thought of him being bullied over it made me surprisingly angry. He had a vicious tongue and the quickest brain of anyone I’d ever met, so verbally, I knew he could stand his ground, but physically? I drew my eye over his neat frame. He was lean and soft-looking. Delicate in ways boys weren’t. He could be an easy target. For an idiot.

“Boarding schools are really nothing like your comprehensive cattle farms. You’d be surprised at how many boys like to stick their cocks into the holes of other boys and call it recreational fun. It’s basically a rite of passage at boarding school.”

An assortment of images I didn’t ask for and didn’t want flooded my head, hot, melting heat filling my gut.

I swallowed. Caspien looked amused.

“So you’ve...done stuff with other boys? At school?”

He shrugged. “It’s really not a big deal.”

Not a big deal. It wasn’t right, I think I knew then that it wasn’t right – a child shouldn’t be so casual and forward about things like this – but Caspien wasn’t like any child I knew. He didn’t speak like one or act like one, and when I was around him I found myself drunk on his worldliness. Intoxicated by the things he might be able to show me or teach me that no one else could.

“But not with the person you saw at the house. I’ve never let him inside, even if I’ve wanted to sometimes. Many times.” He let out a low, breathy noise very similar to the one I’d heard him make on the phone. “It feels like nothing else on earth, you know. Completely overwhelming, like you might die. But then you don’t, and it’s...well...it’s very good.”

I wanted to yell at him to shut up. I wanted to say that this was all wrong and that I didn’t care what went on in boarding schools in Switzerland or wherever, but here in England, what he was saying and doing was illegal because he was a child, and I wanted no part of it.

But then his voice changed completely. He went from sounding dreamy and breathless to sounding uncertain and a little afraid.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you? About him. Really, nothing has happened, I swear.” When I said nothing, his eyes darkened a fraction. “If you do, I’ll only deny it and make up something awful about you. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

“You’re probably the most horrible person I’ve ever met.”

“You live on an island with a population of one hundred thousand. You’ve barely met anyone.”

“Oh, it will take a lot to beat you.”

“A compliment?” He smirked. “You really are smitten with me...”

I glowered at him.

“Boys, do you want some hot chocolate before bed?” Luke yelled up at us from the bottom of the stairs. I got up, walked over to the bedroom door, and cracked it open.

“We’d love some, Luke, thanks!”

“You got it!”

I closed the door and turned to face Caspien. “I’ll keep your dirty secret for you,” I told him.

His face broke into a relieved smile that lit his eyes and softened his pink mouth.

“On one condition.”

He stiffened, face turning to stone.

“You don’t see him anymore. You won’t talk to him on the phone or text him or whatever else you do with him. It stops. All of it. Or I’ll tell Luke, and trust me, he will believe me.”

He looked faintly shocked, like I’d surprised him. He thought about this a moment, then gritted out through his teeth: “Fine.”

He flopped back on my bed, pulling out his phone to begin typing. “I suppose your stupid friend Georgia could entertain me for a little while. You know, until I’m legally allowed to fuck whomever I want.”

I reached out to snatch the phone from him. He was faster, pulling it out of reach instantly.

“Don’t do that,” I fumed.

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t even like her, and she’ll get hurt.”

“But I need someone to play with, Jude. And since you’ve just taken my toy away...”

“Oh, stop being such a dick, will you?”

I was standing over him as he lay on my bed. His T-shirt was ruched up, and I could see the golden stretch of his stomach, hard and flat above the waistband of his shorts.

Suddenly, his legs shot out, and he hooked them around the back of my thighs, locking them together. He smirked as he held me there.

I didn’t know who this Caspien was. He wasn’t the cold, serpentine boy from the mansion. He wasn’t even the stiff, serious boy who’d washed my hands clean of Oleander plant. It wasn’t the boy at the beach or the boy who chatted warmly with Luke. This was someone else, maybe even the same person who kissed men in dark rooms and whispered provocative things to them down the phone.

There were so many sides to him. He was a kaleidoscope, one that I couldn’t look away from. I was entranced.

I tried to get loose, but his legs were strong. He rode a huge horse every day, I thought. Still, I pulled against them for a bit, trying to use my hands to prise his legs apart, but the angle was awkward. A shift and pull from him at the back of my knees had me tumbling forward onto his chest.

There was a moment, one strange, stretched-out moment, where I could do nothing but stare into the ice blue of his eyes. Then, at his mouth. And then back to his eyes again.

It came from nowhere, but I felt it everywhere. The need to kiss him. I imagined the soft, wet pink inside of his mouth, the taste of his lips, the shape of his tongue. It was an onslaught of want. Loud and hot and violent.

As my senses rushed back in, I felt something hard and warm between my legs. Whether he felt it too, and it’s what made him release me, I don’t know, but I practically threw myself backwards off him, staggering back into the desk.

Caspien sat up on his elbows and stared at me, his own breathing quick and his eyes alight with something dangerous. He was looking at me as though seeing me for the first time. As though, for the first time, I interested him. But it was a dangerous sort of interest –the sort he might give a bug he’d trapped under a glass.

Confused and terrified, I fled from the room, muttering over my shoulder that I was going to get the hot chocolate.