Page 131 of Oleander

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!Youcame 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 timeswhere 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’dreallyfucking 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.