by Lily Morton
I grin, but wipe it away as the doctor turns back to me. “If you see anything that worries you about Mr Travers—like unusual personality fluctuations—please ring the hospital.”
“That’s a very wide field, if you know Max,” I say uneasily.
“Maybe if he’s too loud or not making any sense,” the doctor offers.
“Ooh, it’s going to be really hard to tell the difference from the way he is normally,” I say mournfully.
Max glares at me.
The doctor turns back to Max and gives him instructions about how to shower with his injured arm. I tune out the conversation. I’m going absolutely nowhere near a naked, wet Max.
Andrew tugs at my arm. “I need to talk to you,” he murmurs.
I follow Andrew outside, ignoring Max’s furtive glare. “What is it?” I ask. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to drive back to London on your own.”
“Felix, I think I’m probably not going to call you again,” he says with a hushed intonation like he’s making a royal proclamation.
I wrinkle my nose. This revelation is hardly a surprise. “Oh yes,” I say carelessly. “Any particular reason?”
“I don’t think you’re that interested in me.”
“And how did you work that out?”
“The fact that since you ran Max over, you seem to have come to life. And he’s the same. The two of you seem very bright together and suddenly the most alive people in the room.”
I stare at him, lost for words. “Well, I suppose running a person over does tend to make you appreciate the life coursing through your veins,” I finally say.
To my astonishment, he laughs. “Felix, you are funny. You took him to the hospital and stayed and drank coffee while they set a cast. It’s not exactly the Battle of Britain.” He surprises me by reaching out and giving me a hug. “Maybe there’s still something there between you?”
“There is. It’s called snark and bitterness,” I inform him.
He hugs me again and ruffles my hair. “I don’t think we suit at all,” he says solemnly when he steps back. “But I want you to know that my time with you has never been boring.”
“You have no idea how many men have said that.” I sigh and smile at him. He’s not a bad sort. Patronising as fuck and the hair ruffling was getting really annoying, but he means well. “Have a safe trip back.” He kisses my forehead and starts towards the exit. “Oh, and if the hotel bills you for the dressing gown and slippers, I’m sure it’s just a terrible mistake,” I call after him.
He laughs and raises his fingers to his forehead in a salute and vanishes out of the door.
I hesitate and then wander out onto the hospital forecourt. I pull out my phone and ring Zeb.
“Felix?” he says as he answers the phone. “How’s Max? Did you get the signature?”
“Not exactly,” I say cautiously. “He couldn’t really sign the papers today.”
“Why? Was he drunk?”
“Oh no, completely sober, but… I sort of fractured his arm and concussed him when I ran him over with a car.”
There’s an exceptionally long pause that seems to stretch into eternity. “Have the two of you been arguing again?” he finally asks, his tone cautious.
I remove the phone from my ear and stare down at it for a long second before bringing it back to my ear. “No, of course not. For God’s sake, do you think I’d just run him over if he’d annoyed me?”
He says matter-of-factly, “Well, yes, if he was in your way.”
“This is totally his fault.”
“Of course,” he replies loyally and patently untruthfully.
“Anyway, I’m going to have to stay the night to check if he’s got a concussion. God knows how I’m supposed to do that. His behaviour is erratic at the best of times. Can you cover me at the office tomorrow? I’ll ring Bev, and she’ll take over from you.”
“No problem.” There’s a long pause and his voice is soft when he speaks again. “Maybe this is good. You need to have a talk. It’s long overdue. Only, be kind to each other,” he adds quickly. “You both need it.”
“I’ll try,” I say. “But I’m not committing to that because Max has a way of winding me up that nobody else in this world possesses.”
“Maybe you should think about why that is,” he advises me.
He smartly rings off before I can reply, leaving me standing on the hospital forecourt with more questions than answers. I sigh. Fucking Max. It’s a normal state of affairs around him.
Chapter Eleven
Max
I’m hovering at my bedroom door, trying to work out where Felix has gone, when I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I immediately throw myself onto the bed and try to look pitiful. To tell the truth, I feel a bit pitiful. I don’t remember a broken bone hurting this much before. Maybe I’m getting old.
Felix walks into the room, and instantly my heartbeat picks up, beating fast and heavy the way it always does around him.
I remember as clear as day meeting him that morning in the bookshop. My walk into the biography section of Waterstones had changed everything about my life’s trajectory. There, leaning against a pile of my books like a present for me, was the man I now know is the love of my life.
It was his voice that had drawn me first. Warm and posh and, as I learnt later, the product of a scholarship to a private secondary school. Then his laughter had lured me closer, and I’d observed a small, thin young man with a mop of dark, wavy hair and a sharp, fine-boned face with a retroussé nose and the fullest, reddest lips. He’d been talking on the phone, and what sealed my attraction was his expression of sardonic amusement and the quick, biting wit of his side of the phone conversation.
I’d wanted him instantly—the effect sudden and powerful—like a punch in the stomach and balls. It’s a shame I never cottoned on sooner that my immediate need to know him meant he was different from anyone who came before or after. He was different, because there has never been anyone like Felix for me.
Everyone else is boring compared to him.
“Hello, anyone in there?” he asks in his clear, posh voice.
“What the fuck are you dressed in?” I ask, completely forgetting what I’d been about to say. “Is it fancy dress and no one told me? I feel so left out when I’ve got a perfectly respectable pirate outfit in the wardrobe.”
“I can well believe it,” he says tartly. “And respectable is almost certainly the wrong word. Use your dictionary, Max. It’s a journalist’s friend.” He looks down at his outfit of blue-and-white striped pyjama pants, a Russian hat with the flaps down (which I’m sure was last seen in my coat cupboard downstairs), and a navy fisherman’s jumper that’s absolutely huge on him. He grins. “It’s fucking cold in this house, Max. I’d forgotten how hot-blooded you are. Scott of the Antarctic would have been happy living here.”
I shift on the bed and then wince at the shaft of pain. “Shit,” I mutter.
Felix is instantly there, propping my arm gently on a pillow. “Don’t move so fast,” he scolds. “You’re hurt, and you need to rest.”
He carries on scolding me, but his voice is warm and almost fond, and the ache in my chest is worse than the one in my arm. This is the way he used to talk to me. Back in the days when he’d looked at me like I’d hung the moon. Back in the days before I ruined everything.
I look at the play of his eyelashes on his cheekbones and catch the scent of his Miller Harris aftershave that smells of oranges. His body against mine is warm and so familiar that it makes tears prick at my eyelids.
“Are you okay?” he asks, concern clouding his face.
I try not to react to his gentle expression. He’s spent the last two and a half years reminding me forcibly that he can’t stand me, so he’d hate to know he’s letting down his guard at this moment.
“Just painful,” I mumble.
He reaches for the paper bag of pills he set on my bed and then checks his watch. “You can have your painkillers now,�
�� he says judiciously.
He picks up the glass of water on my bedside table and then pauses. “Wait. Is this water or vodka? Because one leads to a Russell Crowe sort of existence, which isn’t for you.”
“It’s water. I don’t know where you get the idea that I drink a lot.”
“Probably from the fact that you actually drink a lot,” he says tartly.
“Not anymore,” I say quietly.
He must hear the truth in my voice because he goes still. “Really? Since when?”
Since I realised that I couldn’t get you back or forget you by drinking and shagging random blokes.
I don’t say it, because he would immediately put that cute nose in the air and hightail it back to London quicker than Dick Whittington. “Early New Year’s resolution,” I say smoothly.
“It’s the middle of January. New Year’s Eve is a good few months away now.”
“You know me and how I like to be prepared.”
He shakes his head. “You’d give boy scouts a bad name.” He hands me the glass, and the sleeves of the ridiculous jumper fall over his long, fine-boned fingers.
“Where did you get that ridiculous jumper from?” I demand. “A mutant werewolf?”
He shoots me a wry smile. “Almost. An ex left it on the boat. He was very hairy, bless him.”
A shaft of jealousy sears through me so fast that I jerk. I know there have been others since me. He’s never hidden it. In fact, he’s almost flaunted them, as if daring me to comment. But how could I? I’d done my share of shagging to ease the despair I felt at losing him. Then I wised up and realised that I was never going to change anything with that behaviour.
“Was it Carl?” My voice sounds like I’m gargling marbles.
He shoots me a look as he hands me the tablets. “No,” he says. “Carl was much the same size as me.”
I affect a diffident expression as I take the tablets, but it’s hard. Carl hurt more than anyone else because he lasted a year, and he really loved Felix. It was learning about him that had flung me into a cycle of drinking and fucking. I don’t know why their relationship ended, because I didn’t see much of Felix during that period, but one day Carl was gone, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Premature, as it turned out, because Carl had been rapidly replaced by a revolving bedroom door of men.
“It’s too big,” I grumble, setting the glass on the bedside table. “And so rough on your skin. Go in my wardrobe and get my green cashmere jumper. That always fit you.”
He looks at me in amazement. “The one the hotel shrank in the wash? Why the hell do you still have that after all this time?”
Because you used to wear it. And sometimes I imagine that I can still smell you on the wool.
To my gratification, he immediately slips out of the jumper monstrosity, giving me a glimpse of his slender torso. He’s built like a dancer, his long, narrow torso slender, with his ribs showing beneath the silky, pale skin. He’s hairless, apart from the black trail leading downwards from his cute sticky-out belly button, but I know the trail leads down to a dark bush around his cock. My mouth waters and my dick stiffens. I sit up hastily, dragging the blanket over my lap with my good arm.
When he turns from the wardrobe, he’s wearing the jumper, and my memory flashes to the first time he wore it in my hotel room, parading around, striking improbable model poses, and making me laugh. I’d grumbled about laundry ruining it, but I’d been fascinated by how the forest-green colour brought out the gold in his hazel eyes and highlighted previously unseen mahogany streaks in his tumbled mop of hair. With his slender, pale body, he’d seemed like some sort of wood sprite from an ancient forest. He still does, even though those eyes of his are older now and more cynical. I console myself that if my new plan goes to shit, I’ll at least have something that smells strongly of his orange scent.
“Excellent,” he says, looking slightly worried. Probably because I’m gawping at him like he’s Charles the First appearing in my bedroom. “Okay, I’m going,” he announces. “I’ve set the alarm on my phone at intervals so I’ll be in to wake you up to see if you remember your own name.” He laughs. “Shame they didn’t know you in the old days. They’d have known that was a shit test. I well remember seeing you in a club last year, and I’m doubtful you even knew what century it was, let alone what your name is.”
He gives me a casual wave and leaves without a backward glance. The pain that comes from seeing him leave is familiar, and although its edge has grown dull over time, it’s never lessened. I want him to look at me again like he used to. Like he loves me. It’s incredible to me that those loving looks of his used to make me panic. Now I would give everything to see one on his face again.
I lie back on the bed. For once I don’t reach for my book or switch on the TV. Instead, I lie quietly, listening to the noises of Felix as he moves around my house and inhaling the scent of his shampoo on the air. I feel whole again, stupid as that sounds.
This inevitably brings back memories of the time I regained my brain function and realised what I’d been lucky enough to find, only to lose it anyway.
When the doorbell rings, I sigh. No way. I know it’s Zeb and I have zero desire to talk to him. I’ve just settled back on the sofa in my study and pulled the woollen throw around me when there’s a steady rat-a-tat-tat on the door and the sound of Mrs Finch's footsteps.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Finch. How are you?” comes my stepbrother’s voice.
“Ah, as well as can be expected,” comes my housekeeper’s brave words. “Given the fact that Mr Travers is living here now.”
There’s a long pause. “Isn’t this his house?” comes Zeb’s cautious words, and I mentally wish him well. He shouldn’t tangle with Mrs Finch. That way lies retribution.
However, his charm seems to work its usual miracle because when she speaks next, her voice is warm and friendly. “You’re right, Mr Evans. Well, I must forebear, I suppose.”
“That’s the spirit,” my stepbrother says heartily. “I think I’ll go along and have a little chat with His Nibs. Is he out of bed?”
“In a very louche manner,” she says. “He’s lying on the sofa in his study where he seems to spend most of the day staring into space.” She sniffs. “Looks like a picture of Barbara Cartland without the Pekes.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Well, let’s see if I can do anything about that,” Zeb says.
I’m sure I do not imagine the slight air of menace in his voice.
The door swings open and my stepbrother appears. He’s wearing one of his expensive suits and a rather forbidding expression on his craggy face, but his eyes are warm and concerned, and I suddenly feel like the young boy I’d been when my mum married the charming wastrel who was Zeb’s dad. My mother gained a whole roster of bad debt from that marriage and a credit score that only a dead person would be proud of, but I was the winner because I got Zeb.
He was a steady and kind presence in my life all through my adolescence, turning up at my school for sports days and to take me out on the weekends, and I clung to him even when I became an adult. He’s the best man I know, and it kills me that I’ve disappointed him.
We stare at each other. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the wedding three weeks ago, and the aftermath from that debacle hangs between us like an ugly curtain I want to tear down.
He’d woken me that night by throwing a pint of water over me. He then proceeded to inform me that Felix had gone, driven away by me because I was determined to be alone. But that was just the warm-up act. He then tore so many strips off me I was lucky to have any left. And every word he spoke came with that heavy air of disappointment.
I deserved every syllable of those words because of what I did to Felix. In truth, I deserved more. Pain twists in my chest at the thought of him and I rub it absentmindedly. As if he senses my thoughts, Zeb’s expression softens, and he comes to sit on the chair opposite me, lifting his feet to rest them on the coffee table.
�
��You look terrible,” he observes.
I sniff. “Thank you. What a lovely compliment.”
“Have you shaved this year?”
I rub my face. “I’m growing a beard. It’s supposed to make me look distinguished.”
“It actually makes you look like Tom Hanks in Castaway. After being on the island and talking to a volleyball for a year.” I open my mouth to reply, but he shakes his head. “Cut the crap, Max. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, rubbing my chest again. “I think I’m ill. I’m not hungry. My head hurts all the time. I ache. Maybe it’s the flu. You shouldn’t be with me in case you catch it.” I hope that he’ll take his far-seeing gaze off me and bugger off back to London. But no such luck. Zeb defines steadfastness.
“Hmm,” he says. “Maybe it’s not the flu. And it’s not a hangover?” He looks at me in question, and I shake my head. He shrugs. “Maybe you’re just missing Felix.”
I wince at the sound of his name. “How is he?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Do you remember me saying that I wouldn’t become an intermediary between the two of you? That this whole fiasco has nothing to do with me?”
“I remember it vividly,” I say sourly. “And for reference, you didn’t exactly say it. It was more shouting it at a decibel level that could have woken the dead.”
“How dreadful for you,” he says tartly. I stare imploringly at him, and he groans and rubs his eyes before giving in. “Felix is fine,” he says. “He’s better than you, that’s for sure.”
“Well, that’s… that’s good,” I force out.
He snorts. “Try and sound like you mean it.”
“I do,” I say immediately. “I want him to be happy more than anything.”
The riveted expression on his face slowly changes to something I’ve never seen on Zeb before. “Why?” he asks.
“Well, why not?” I ask. He carries on staring at me, and I’m the one to give in this time. “Because he’s amazing,” I say simply. “And he deserves the world. He’s funny and so clever and sharp but kind underneath. There’s a softness to him that whoever he ends up with should guard.”
