Fifteen

”I’m sorry, baby,”Nathan said, when I told him about Luke and Beth’s divorce.

He didn’t think it odd that my loyalties were with Luke and not my sister. He said he’d feel exactly the same if he were in my shoes. He knew how close Luke and I were, and he thought the notion that blood was thicker than water was nonsense.

His parents had divorced when he was twelve, and he maintained it had fucked him up in a very specific kind of way, a way that had made him a tiresome over-achiever. (“You’re all grown up though, so you’re gonna be fine.”)

Nathan had rented a tranquil, white-stoned cottage with a herb garden about a twenty-five minute drive from Deveraux. At the bottom of the garden was a wooden gate, beyond which meandered one of the five scenic cliff walks on the ‘What to do in Jersey’ page of the official tourist website.

The house was in a nice spot, perfect for writing a screenplay.

I picked him up from the airport on Monday and drove him to the Airbnb. I’d driven past the cottage on my driving lessons and recognised it immediately as the place after the blind turn.

He’d decided not to hire a car. I’d told him most places on the island were within cycling distance and offered to drive him anywhere he needed to go.

He’d arrived at the arrivals gate with two large suitcases: every item of clothing packed for his return to New York in three weeks’ time. After retrieving the key from the lockbox and lugging them out of the car, we’d dumped them inside the hallway and explored the cottage.

It was smaller than ours at Deveraux; one bedroom with a small study area at the top of the stairs with a view out over the cliff walk. A well-equipped kitchen, a full-size bathroom, and cosy bedroom with a king-size bed which Nathan had promptly pushed me down onto and kissed me senseless.

“Fuck, I missed you,” he said against my lips.

I kissed him back hungrily. “I missed you too,” I said.

After dinner we took the bottle of wine out to the garden where we sat at the small bistro-style table and listened to the waves crash against the cliffs below. After I’d told him about Luke and Beth, he’d told me about the faculty dinner. One of the history professors had gotten drunk and come onto him, though no matter how much I begged, he wouldn’t tell me who. Something about his integrity hanging on by a thread.

When the bottle was long finished and we were both tangled up together on the sofa exchanging soft kisses, he lifted his head and looked down at me. There was some kind of an implicit understanding between us that tonight it would happen. I’d packed a small overnight bag and brought it with me when I picked him up from the airport.

“Have you decided?” he asked softly. His fingers traced the side of my mouth and down to my jaw. I was very hard. We both were.

I swallowed, cleared my throat, and said as bravely as I could, “Yeah, I think I want you to fuck me.”

His eyebrows only went up a little. “You think?”

“No, I mean, I know.” I looked straight into his eyes when I said this. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and I need to know if it’s for me. I’ve been dancing around it for a while now. And I want to try it with you. I mean, obviously you’ll do it properly, not like some knobhead rower from Corpus who likes Tarantino.”

“Obviously.” There was a playful lilt to his mouth.

“So…will you?” I asked him.

“I don’t think there’s anything else I want more, Jude,” Nathan said and pressed a kiss to my lips.

“Not even another Oscar?” I grinned.

He thought about it. “I honestly think two is too many.”

I laughed.

Nathan did know how to do things properly; I’d been right about that. He’d taken me into the shower, both of us standing in the rolltop bath as we crowded under the overhead spray. After washing himself quickly, he told me where to clean and how – thoroughly and carefully seemed to be the main thing – and left me alone to do it. I was to come back into bed when I was ready.

He opened me slowly and carefully with his fingers first, saying things like ‘good boy’ and ‘you’re perfect’ and ‘so beautiful, baby’ as he did. He’d suggested I ride him so I could control the penetration myself, but the idea of it felt too...exposing, too performative, so I lay on my back, pulled my legs up and wide, and thought of England.

He wasn’t as big as I was, but he was still bigger than the fingers he’d used before. Despite Nathan pushing in slow and gentle, I was certain I was being split wide open. It was excruciating. We had to stop several times so he could remind me to breathe. I was convinced I’d never, ever, put myself through it again. Until suddenly, and shockingly, the pain turned to pleasure. A sharp, breath-taking kind of pleasure that seemed to come from a place deep inside me I hadn’t known existed before.

Nathan saw when it did, and he began to move, slow at first and then faster. But the sensation soon went back to pain, and then see-sawed from pain to that strange searing pleasure and back again so that I became dizzy and overwhelmed from it.

When he began to drive into me, I could only cling on. He kissed me and fucked me and told me again that I was good, perfect, beautiful. I gripped the muscle of his shoulders and buried my face in his neck, and waited for it to end. There was some pleasure, fleeting and piercing, and the weight and scent of him all around me was arousing, but I knew I was supposed to feel more than that. I wasn’t a bottom, I decided. It was good that I knew, that Nathan – perfect and gentle and respectful Nathan – had been the one to teach me that. He came a short while later, collapsing on top of me before quickly pulling out and rolling off me to lie by my side.

“Fuck, baby, that was incredible.” He was still panting as he tore off the condom and discarded it by the bed. It took him a moment to come back down to earth. Then he sat up, concern creasing his forehead. “Shit, did I hurt you?”

I shook my head. “No, not really.” I sat up and glanced down between my legs. It felt strange there, loose and wet from the lubrication and penetration. Used. I didn’t like it. “Let me just go to the bathroom really quick.” I made a stupid comedic show of not being able to walk just to make him laugh.

Inside the bathroom I used the towel to clean myself – I hadn’t come, hadn’t been hard the entire time he fucked me – and ran the cold tap until it was a noisy gush. Then I sat wincingly down on the toilet seat and let the usual post-sex melancholy settle over me.

So I wasn’t a bottom. It didn’t need to mean anything more than that. Nathan wasn’t a strict top, and so it didn’t matter. He’d already said it didn’t. He preferred to top, but it wasn’t a deal breaker for him. I’d fuck him and it would be fine.

Had I really been expecting to like it? No. Was I surprised that I didn’t? No.

So why did I feel disappointed? Like I’d lost something? Like I’d failed at something crucial.

Okay, yes, maybe I’d been thinking there’d be some great pivotal shift inside me after I did this thing, which would knock me off the path I’d been on since the moment I set eyes on Caspien Deveraux. Emerging from the chrysalis of heartbreak into someone new and whole and changed. Someone who didn’t need what he’d needed before.

But it hadn’t happened. I was the same. And, somehow, he had slithered his way back into my head so that it felt like he was in the room with me. Sitting on the edge of the bath, staring at me with cold blue eyes, quietly satisfied that I’d failed. Not only at this stupid self-imposed sexual awakening but at removing him from my heart and soul. I loved Caspien, still. I wanted Caspien, still. There was a twisted kind of solace in understanding that had tonight gone differently, those truths would likely still have remained.

Nathan was everything I should have wanted. Everything I should need, but I sat there knowing that what I wanted and needed was something else entirely. Someone else entirely. That’s the only way I was going to feel whole. That was the only way I was going to heal. By having him. By realising what it was to be wanted by him. To be loved by him. And since I knew it was impossible, because he wasn’t capable of it, that knowledge was a new but familiar kind of devastation.

And the terror and hopelessness I felt at having to live like that for the rest of my life, wanting and loving someone who was entirely incapable of wanting and loving me back, was the worst fucking thing imaginable. A great suffocating panic rose in my chest so that I struggled to breathe for a moment. My chest felt tight, and my head was loose and weightless on my neck. I put my head between my legs and forced myself to inhale and exhale, slow and steady, for a few minutes.

Then I heard a soft rap on the door. “Baby, are you okay?” Nathan’s voice was hitched with concern.

I stood and turned off the tap, glancing in the mirror to make sure I didn’t look how I felt. I opened the door.

While I was in there, he had redressed in a navy T-shirt and black shorts. His curled hair was wild, like he’d been pulling at it.

“Yeah, sorry, sat down and couldn’t get back up.” I grinned. “Someone pounded my arse into oblivion.”

This time the joke fell flat.

“Jude,” he said.

“I’m fine, promise.” I kissed him. Quick but firm. He followed me back into the bedroom where I went to my bag to pull on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. I could feel him staring at me from the doorway. Could feel his concern rising.

“I need you to tell me you’re okay, Jude.”

“I already told you I was fine,” I said, a little firmer than was necessary. To make up for it, I went to him, sliding my arms around his waist. “I’m okay. I’m good. But I think, well, I’m not a bottom.”

He pulled back to look down at me. “What?”

“I just think...well, it’s not for me. It had absolutely nothing to do with you, but it’s just, yeah. Not my thing.” I gave him an apologetic look.

“That’s why you’re being like this?” He sounded relieved. “Because you didn’t like it?”

I shrugged.

“Shit, baby.” He pulled me into him and nosed at the hair on the top of my head. He had a couple of inches on me, and this was a common position to find myself in. Pressed against his chest as he stroked my head with his jaw or his nose. “You scared me for a minute there.”

“Sorry,” I muttered into his chest.

“No, I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it, really I am. I wanted you to like it.”

“I’m not saying we can never do it again ever.” Though inside, I was hoping I’d never need to do it again.

“We’re never going to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, ever,” Nathan said. “I told you, it’s not a big deal for me. I like you far more than I like topping, Jude. How you feel when we’re together is more important than which sexual position I fucking prefer.” He sounded a little angry, but it wasn’t at me. He kissed my head again.

What on earth was wrong with me that I wasn’t satisfied with this? Here was a man holding me to his chest and telling me my comfort was important to him, my feelings were important to him and yet my fucking soul ached for someone who’d thought nothing of either. I hated myself as much as I hated Cas in that moment. For who he’d made me. For what he’d stolen from me.

Maybe I couldn’t give Nathan all of me, all those parts that had been broken or stolen and now belonged to Cas, but I could give him what I had left.

It wouldn’t be enough, obviously, Nathan deserved better, and he’d come to realise that soon enough.

And he did. In fact, sooner than I thought he would.