Eight

That night now is like a fever dream to me.

I remember, vividly, the sensations. The pleasure. Endless and extreme. The things I did to him, the things he let me do. I had not known I was capable of them. They were filthy and depraved, and I never wanted to stop. Lust and alcohol and pain and desire coalesced, turning me inside out, so that I was a red raw mass of animal with a single goal. Take. Fuck. Survive.

We passed out, and my next memory was of me thrusting inside him again. I had rolled over in my sleep and took him; his body was soft and pliant and covered in me. He opened for me readily, his mouth and hands reaching for mine in the dark as he came awake. I came inside him again.

This. This was all I needed. All I wanted. All I’d ever wanted. I needed nothing else to survive but this, and I slipped back into sleep while I was still inside him.

When I woke again, the room was cold and milky white, and he wasn’t in the bed.

I sat up to find him sitting at my desk, writing something. He was dressed in only his shirt and trousers, completely absorbed in whatever words he was scratching into what looked to be my notebook.

“Don’t bother,” I said, and he startled, turning. “Whatever you’re writing, don’t bother.”

He looked down at the words, then tore out the page and crumpled it in his hand.

“You were seriously going to leave without saying goodbye?” I asked in a cracked voice.

Caspien stood, coming toward the bed to sit beside me. The neck of his shirt was open, and I could see early shadows of bruising on his throat. I didn’t feel powerful looking at them. I felt sick. Though maybe that was the cheap vodka.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked, not answering my question. “Now that you’ve gotten it out of your system, will you move on?”

I blinked at him, speechless. Then, fury, hot and sharp. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said, sitting up. “I had fucking moved on! You came here. To my university, to my dorm. You provoked...whatever that was. I had moved on.”

Christ, I wanted to be who or whatever I’d been last night again. I felt small and childlike, like the Jude from the birdwatcher’s hut. I thought about pulling him to me and forcing him to take me again, but whatever dark spell had been cast over me had been broken by the daylight.

“Oh, please,” he said. “The constant updates you let Gideon feed you – though, why you’d believe anything he tells you is beyond me – the drunken phone calls, the Instagram stalking. Messing around with Finlay.” Of course, he knew, and he sounded as though he wasn’t in the least bit jealous about it. “Jude, it has to stop. You’re here, at Oxford, living your bloody dream. Stop living in the past, or whatever fantasyland you now inhabit: be sensible, please.”

I felt the mortification incinerate me. I turned my face to the wall, unable to look at him. There’d been a couple of times where I’d slipped and tried to call him. Where I’d been weak. Twice, maybe three times. The last time had been more than six months ago. He’d never answered.

“You should block my number if you don’t want me to call,” I said miserably. At least he didn’t know about the emails. That ghost account only I had access to.

“And what if you ever need me? For something important?” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like the way I needed him now wasn’t.

I wanted to scream: This is important. How I feel now, today is important. How much I want you still is the most important thing in the fucking world. How certain I am that I’ll break down and cry the moment you walk out that door is fucking important.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all. He let out a tired-sounding sigh and stood, moving to where his sweater was balled up on the floor. As he pulled it on, the fabric of his shirt rose up, and I froze.

There were bruises scattered over his ribs and the dips of his hips.

I climbed out of bed and went to him, lifting up his shirt to peer at the patchwork of purple over his skin. His wrists too. Vomit and shame rose in me.

“What are you doing?” He snapped, but I felt him stiffen. He tried to turn his body away from me, but there were more on his lower back near the base of his spine.

I ignored him, pushing his shirt and sweater up to examine him fully. There were a few more at the top of his back, and something which looked very much like a bite mark on the space where his shoulder and neck met. Finally, he managed to pull away from me. He turned, a very strange look on his face.

“I’m so sorry...” I whispered, deeply ashamed.

I’d hurt him. I’d really fucking hurt him. Last night, I’d wanted to hurt him, and I’d done it. I’d marked his skin in bruises in what, some twisted attempt to make him feel pain? Was this who I was? What I was? I sickened myself.

Caspien blinked a few times, looking lost, but then he swallowed and righted his clothes, tucking both his shirt and sweater into his trousers before doing up the belt.

“I told you to make it hurt,” he said without meeting my eyes. “I’m hardly going to hold it against you now.” He pulled on his long dark coat and dragged a hand through his hair.

“That’s not the same,” I said, very seriously. “I didn’t mean for it to be like...that. Cas, I’m —”

“It’s fine,” he said. His voice was impatient now, clearly wanting to move on from it. But how could I?

But then he said, “I’d like for you to stop seeing Finlay.”

I reeled a little. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t like the idea of it. Imagining you and he together is...” He thought about the word. “Unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant,” I repeated. I’d wanted him to know, to hate it and to ask me to stop. But not like this. So casually.

“Yes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to do anything to make you feel unpleasant, now would I?”

He looked at me suspiciously before nodding. “Right, okay, good. I have to get back to London – I’ve a flight home to Boston very early tomorrow morning.”

Home. Home to Boston.

That wasn’t his fucking home.

“So, that’s it,” I said, panic and fury making my breathing hitch. “You’re just gone. Again. Back to Boston.”

He was typing something on his phone so was only half-looking at me. “It’s where I live, Jude.”

“Why did you come here last night?” I asked him. “You never answered me when I asked. Did you come here just to fuck me up again? Is this really all some big game to you?”

He stilled, lifting his head to level a smirk at me. “I fucked you up? Oh, I have some bruises which say otherwise, sweetheart.”

The guilt almost floored me, but his tone felt like a slap in the face.

“Look,” he said patiently. “Both of us had a fun time last night. Nothing more than any other student does after a party on a Saturday night. Not everything has to be laden with meaning, Jude. You don’t have to have an existential crisis over some rough sex with an old friend.”

I could barely believe my ears. I was beginning to suspect he practised this. That he spent hours picking over the right words so they’d do the most damage. Our history, our connection that ran bone deep to me: it was carved into my fucking soul. But to him, I was some fun way to spend a Saturday night. He was poisonous. I’d been infected with him, and every time we were face to face, he’d twist his tainted blade that little bit deeper.

“I’m not going to stop seeing Finn,” I said because it was the only thing I could think of to say that might piss him off. “I like him, he’s great at blowjobs and I don’t see why I should stop doing something I enjoy just because you asked me to.”

He glared at me, nostrils flaring ever so slightly. “You once stopped masturbating for a whole week because I asked you to.”

My balls clenched from the reminder. “Yeah, well. Things change.”

“You said you were friends,” Caspien reminded me in a low, threatening voice.

“We are.”

“So, then you’re friends the way we were friends?” When I said nothing, he took a step closer, smirking again. “You do realise that you don’t have to stick your dick in the holes of all of your friends, don’t you? It’s not a prerequisite of friendship.”

“Why do you even care? You’re not jealous, surely?” I knew he wasn’t. I knew he felt nothing like jealousy about my being with Finn, but I was drowning, so I clutched at anything I could.

“I care because you’re being an idiot.”

“Well, now, that is a prerequisite of friendship with you, so you can’t really blame me for that one.” I thought this very clever and smiled at him triumphantly.

He, however, did not look amused.

“You could have anyone,” he said. “There are thirty-six colleges in this university and you could have had anyone – male or female – and you chose Finlay. What am I supposed to glean from that, do you think?”

“I couldn’t give less of a fuck what you glean from it, Cas. It’s nothing to do with you.”

He lifted his chin and looked me square in the eye. “Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? I think you chose the one person you knew it would disturb me most to learn of you being with.”

“Disturb you?” I almost laughed. “Explain to me what is disturbing about it, Cas? Explain to me how it’s any more disturbing than you being with him? With the person who groomed you as a fucking child?!”

He blanched, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the loudness of my voice or the words.

“Lower your bloody voice,” he said very quietly. “They are not the same.”

I lowered my voice, seething as I said. “No, you’re right they’re not the same. One is illegal. Blackwell should be in fucking jail.”

“Finlay is my cousin,” he said.

“Barely. What else?”

He studied me. “I had no idea you cared about him so much.”

“I don’t fucking care about him!” I shouted again. “That’s not the point!”

I realised what I said too late, of how easily I’d walked into his trap. Anger and despair and that ever-present stupidity around him had loosened my tongue, unravelling me before him again.

Caspien looked satisfied. “You’re fucking him because you think it will hurt me, even though you know that isn’t possible.”

“Of course, I know it isn’t possible; you’re a fucking shell of a human who cares about no one but yourself.”

He wasn’t even mildly offended by the accusation. He looked almost satisfied, blissed out, even. His eyelids fluttered a little as he brushed a hand through his hair and took a step back from me. I heard his phone vibrate, and he glanced down at it.

“My car is here,” he announced.

“Wonderful,” I snapped, moving to pull on some clothes. I’d been standing arguing with him naked. Not that I cared. I’d barely even noticed.

He opened his mouth to say something, that cruel red mouth that haunted my fucking dreams, but then closed it again. I could barely believe this was how it was ending: no, it had already ended. Whatever last night was, it wasn’t the start of anything; I knew that.

I tried not to think about how long it might be before I saw him again.

He picked up his gloves and scarf and moved to the door, where he stopped and turned back.

“He won’t believe you,” Caspien said. I gave him a confused look and he went on. “If you get any silly ideas, and think telling Xavier about this will achieve something, he won’t believe you.”

I hadn’t thought about it. The idea of telling a soul about what had happened last night was the furthest thing from my mind. It was mine, ours. I wanted to wrap it up and keep it hidden from prying eyes. So that when I was alone, I could unwrap it carefully, examine it for things that didn’t exist: soft eyes, gentle pleas, tender touches. Giving any part of it to Blackwell made me want to murder something. I’d destroy it first.

“I’ve spent a lot of time convincing him of my mortification over your little childhood crush,” Caspien was saying, “that telling him about this would sound so farcical he would laugh in your face. So, truly, I would not advise it.”

I felt breathless and embarrassed.

“Childhood crush,” I managed through the knot in my throat.

“Hmm.” He nodded, looking at his phone again. “I’d like you to consider my request regarding Finlay. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask you not to fuck my family members, it’s a matter of manners, surely?” he said reasonably.

I went toward him fully planning to manhandle him out of my room by force if he didn’t go voluntarily. I wouldn’t hit him, ever. But he made me the kind of violent I wasn’t sure I could control. Last night had proven that.

He looked a little nervous as I approached him, but I saw his eyes dip to my mouth, too. He licked his tongue over his lips and let out a soft breath as he let me crowd him into the door. It had the same effect it always had on me, his submission. Fireworks went off down my spine and my cock stiffened, pulsing and hungry for him.

I pressed it into him. Imagined forcing him around, tearing down his trousers and thrusting inside him raw. I felt a little of whatever haze had overtaken me last night settle on me again as I lowered my mouth to his ear.

“Don’t come here again,” I warned. I felt his entire body tremble, and my soul glowed from it. “In fact, the next time you’re stupid enough to come into any room I’m in, then I’m going to assume that you want me to fuck you again, how about that?”

He let out a small, desperate whimper.

“You can stand there spouting whatever poisonous lies you want, Cas, but your body never lies to me.” It was a gamble; I knew that. But when I slid my hand between his legs and felt how hard he was, it felt as though the score line had nudged ever so slightly in my favour. “You want this.”

I was careful not to say ‘me’ because then he could reply saying it was a mere physical, chemical reaction. Something out of his control.

But he was turned on; that much couldn’t be disputed. I stroked my thumb over his length, then cupped his balls. He shuddered.

It took every ounce of willpower I had in me to step back from him then and let my hand drop away from his dick. He sank forward as though all that had been holding him up had been me. His face was flushed and beautiful. He lifted his head and stared at me in something like awe, before he stuck out his chin.

“Goodbye Jude,” he said in an unstable voice, that to me sounded like bloody birdsong. Then, with a final lingering glance, he pulled open the door and walked out of my life again.