#thunder 39

He chuckled at my strange behavior. We were lying in bed.My head resting on his shoulder, my eyes clenched shut, and my fingers almost clutching at his skin.

“Come on. You must be starving.”

“Nah.”

“Did you just nah me?”

“Nah.”

“You just did it again.” He laughed.

“I just want to stay put. Here. Until I have to go back again.” I inhaled the scent of his skin to make it stay in my brain.

That way I wouldn’t have to miss him as much.

“Well, happy to please. I just worried you’re going to eat me at some point.”

“Oh, I definitely am.”

“Thought as much.” He looked at me with that glinting in his eyes, and I felt the need for him rising. It was almost enough to make me forget that I was actually hungry.

“What’s in the box?”

“The box?”

“The one from Yasmin. The one that I actually travelled all the way here to deliver.”

“Oh, you mean that this was just a job?”

“Absolutely. All of my clients get the same service.”

He laughed loudly at my remark and almost forgot what we were talking about.

“Interesting. Might I add, it’s a very good service. Unparalleled, actually.”

“I know. I’m the leading lady in the business.”

“I’m sure.” He winked at me and moved to exit the bed. I could see the in the way that he moved that the loss of contact was as difficult for him as it was for me. The sight of his naked back and toned legs was making me bite my lip and I utterly regretted that I had to remind him of the box.

I wrapped the covers closely around me and wondered how he didn’t seem cold. We were in the attic of his new pub, where he had a bed, a night stand, and nothing more except candles and cobwebs. The heating up here didn’t work as well as it should, and he had put up a few heaters to make it somewhat bearable. The journey had been long, and the tiredness was beginning to make me feel cold. Of course, we had welcomed each other like we always used to do, including the discarding of clothes and heated, passionate embraces. All of the worries and all of the girls’ warnings seemed to drift away whenever he was close. I both hated and loved the way he was making me vulnerable like that.

“Holy hell.” I was pulled away from my thoughts as I heard him say. He had procured a couple of scissors and had managed to open the box. From what I could see behind his back, it was some sort of scarf.

“What is it?” I crawled out of the bed, still with the covers wrapped around me. I cringed at the feeling of the cool wooden boards beneath my feet.

“It’s …” His voice came out in a strange way. As if he was crying. He quickly managed to conceal it. “It’s … a lot of items back from Nathan’s.”

“Yours?”

I could see him nodding. He was sitting down, crouched over the box, and picking up various frames and other items from inside of it.

“Did you forget to pack them?” I was confused. Why did he seem so moved about items from Nathan’s?

He shook his head and quickly removed something from his eye. I sat down next to him and noticed the glistening of the tears in his eyes.

“I … I threw these things away. When Yasmin overtook the pub, I threw them out. I told her there was no need for me to keep them.”

I laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly. He swallowed and continued.  

“What are they?”

“They’re … a lot of memories, actually. A scarf from when I was a boy. Old football posters. I wanted to get rid of them.”

“Why?” I was completely confused.

“Because everything else was fucked up. No matter what, I didn’t deserve to be happy.”

“Why on earth would you even think that?” I had a fleeting idea why he felt that way, but I couldn’t tell him that. The slim chance that he was actually going to tell me something about his past … or his feelings, even … was something I wouldn’t dare miss.

He looked up from the box and looked me directly in the eyes. The raw emotion in them was making me lose my breath.

“I had lost you. I had made sure you ran away, Cas. I ruined everything back then.”

His words hurt. They made it feel like a knife was twisting in my heart. The strangeness of the situation was making a lump of tears appear in my throat, too.

“You’ve never told me why.” I could hear that my voice was thick. It hurt to talk about these things. I didn’t even know if I wanted his answer. Maybe his answer was terrible, and I would have to leave him, and never look back, and find my way back home from London, somehow. My eyes had fixated themselves onto a small spot on the floor, when he took my hands in his own and prompted me to look at him.

“I was scared, Cas.”

“Scared of what?” My voice was heavy with tears, but I couldn’t cry right now.

“That I was going to ruin everything.”

“You got really damn close, I can tell you that.” Thoughts of that infamous night appeared in my brain. Me, running down the stairs while tears were running down my face. Me, hitting the street while I was crying with desperation. Me, scraping my knees and screaming into the night with the pain that I felt. And the aftermath. The trip to London, the wanting to abort my baby, the desperation, my parents … and Richard.

“I came from … I came from shit, you know that.” He wiped a tear away and took my hands again, squeezing them slightly.

“I … I didn’t.” He looked down. It looked like he was bracing himself for a painful trip down memory lane.

“My dad. He was … terrible. He’d beat us whenever we slipped up and didn’t obey the rules. And well … we did that a lot.”

“Who is we?” I pretended I knew nothing about his family.

“My brother and myself. In time, he managed to fit in. I didn’t. I’ve always seen myself as my Dad’s complete opposite.”

I struggled to see the relevance but stayed put. This was the most solemn I had ever seen him.

“And?”

“When he was younger, he … he partied a lot. He had a lot of girlfriends and stuff. He was never the … down-to-earth kind of guy, or so I heard. When my Mom fell pregnant, everything changed. He began to be really religious. Because now there were kids on the way, and he had to do right by God … or something, I don’t know. Over the years, he changed into the dreadful person he was.”

“Why did you never tell me this?” I remember the things that Nathan had told me. But if Michael had been the one to tell them, so many problems would have been avoided.

“I couldn’t. I … I was afraid you’d think I was some kind of loser.”

“You?!? What the fuck, Michael. If anything, it was I that -” He didn’t let me finish.

“Think about it. I ran into you that day, and you were there, with that funny little accent of yours, and your office dresscode and everything. I was just a worker. I couldn’t go “hey Cas. I’m a poor guy with a terrible background.””

“Well. You could have brought it up along the way. There have been a couple of minutes now and then.” I smiled at him but it was a sad smile. We’d spent so much time together but never really talked. Not until now.

“Everything happened so fast. I was going to ask you to … well. Be a bit more steady than we were. But that night, you ran away from me. I’m so, so sorry about that night. Something had … had clicked inside of me, I …”

I could see his eyes welling up with tears.

“Hold on. What night?”

“Way before all the things with Teddy. The night with the snow. We had been to the pub, and -”

“I remember.” I clenched my teeth at the way he’d made me feel that night. “But that’s long gone now.”

We sat in silence, holding hands, thinking about the terrible things we’d been through. After a while, he breathed in, as if steeling himself for what he was about to say.

“I got … I got so afraid, Cas. I got afraid that maybe he wasn’t mine. I was afraid that he’d hate me. I was afraid I was going to ruin him, you, everyone. What if I turned into the monster that my Dad was. I couldn’t … I couldn’t stand the thought of it.”

I could feel a tear in the corner of my eye and tried to blink it away.

“Don’t you think there was a better way?”

“Perhaps. At the time, I felt I had to make sure that you went away. Away from me.”

The tear from before was now running freely, along with several others. Although it hurt to relive that night again, I knew it was for the best.

“And that was how you knew I would do that.”

“It was. And I am so, so fucking sorry. I hate myself for that night. If I could, I would erase it out of time. Believe me.”

He put my face between his hands and wiped the tears away with his thumbs. “Hey. Hey. Look at me.”

I looked up at him, my vision blurred from the tears, and I saw his deep blue eyes - the ones that he’d passed on to our son - looking into mine. He kissed the tip of my nose and pressed his forehead against mine.

“I won’t ever ask you to forgive me. But please. Just know that I am so sorry.”

I sniffled and rejoiced in his touch, pressing my hand against his. We sat there for long enough to make it feel like my tears had gone away for good.

“What happened after?”

He shuffled back from where he was sitting. He pulled up a football scarf from the box I’d brought along to London.

“Everything went bad there.”

“How?”

He sighed. As if the sheer memory of that time was causing him pain.

“I drank. A lot. I … I tried to forget you. So I tried to hook up with … a lot of people.”

I felt a knot forming in my stomach. The thought of women and Michael never failed to make me feel sick with jealousy.

“And it didn’t work. No matter how, no matter who it was, she wasn’t you.”

He looked down, head bowed in shame. “And every night after one of these … meetings, I’d just drink enough to make me feel numb. And I’d take another one home, and that didn’t work either. And she’d leave, and I’d pass out, and I’d dream about you.”

I could see my hands moving by themselves without me even thinking about it, reaching out to caress him. I had no idea he had felt like this.

“I dreamt about you every night, Cas. You were … you looked so happy. That was all that mattered. In my dreams, you were happy without me. I felt some sick comfort in that.” He wiped a tear away from the corner of his eye.

“The reality was a bit different.” I bit my lip at the thought of the pain I felt back then. He finally looked up from the floorboards and looked me in the eyes.

“I am so, so sorry. So fucking sorry.” He whispered.

I got up slightly, but only just enough to get over and straddle him. At the same time, I wrapped my covers around the both of us. His skin had become cool and I wrapped my arms around him and held him close. I felt his hands on my back, pressing me closer to him as he exhaled a sigh.

“I understand that you don’t want to risk anything.” He whispered against the nape of my neck. “I understand that you can’t come and live here right now. But I’m here. I’m here, if you want me.”

I clenched my eyes shut as a few more tears left their safe havens. I knew that I couldn’t leave Kenmare right now. But by God, the pain of not being near him was unbearable.

“Just hold me.” I sniffled against him and he did as I asked.

( … )

He got up from the floor, with me and the covers wrapped closely around him. He moved through the room, until finally, he laid us down on the bed. Our eyes met, and it felt like we had never been this close. I loved him so absolutely, so completely, and it felt like the love was going to make me explode with emotion. His hand went up to my face, caressing my cheek softly as he looked into my eyes.

“Marry me.” He said lowly. It felt like I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. It felt utterly perfect.

“No.” I replied and kissed him softly.

“Marry me.” He said once more.

“No.”

“Someday.”

“Yeah.”

That was enough for him, it seemed. He embraced me with such emotion that it felt like exactly what it was. A contract of love, sealed by two lovers in the night. He kissed me as though we’d never kissed before. Softly, yet urgent, his lips parted mine as my arms closed around his neck and my legs wrapped around his waist.