Page 98 of Oleander

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t know what the L stands for.” He smoothed his hair back and avoided my eyes. “My father’s name began with an L. Or at least, that’s how she referred to him in her journal. The mystery was her parting gift to me.”

“So she did care about you then,” I said a little too energetically. “If she loved him and named you after him, then she must have cared about you.”

He gave me that look he sometimes did, the one which suggested he thought I was the stupidest person he’d ever met. But then I saw it, the tiniest glimmer, a dance of light behind his eyes. Innocent hope. It was snuffed out in an instant.

“Christ, I would like to live in your world for a day, Jude,” he sneered. “Is it summer all the time? Are the rivers flowing with chocolate? Unicorns prancing around?”

My cheeks flamed. “I was only pointing out th—”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

I didn’t want him to go on this note, not after this week and just now and because of everything that I felt and wanted from him now. I moved toward him.

“Okay,” I said placatingly. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again.” I bent my head to kiss him. His lips were cold, mouth unmoving. “Please. I’m sorry.”

His mouth opened like a flower, the inside warm and sweet, and he let me kiss him.

“I have to go,” he said when I pulled back. “I’ve not finished packing.”

He moved to go and I looped my hand around his wrist. “You’ll call me tonight? When you get there?”

“Yes, Jude.”

Letting go of him physically hurt.

“Cas,” I said as he pulled open the door.

He paused.

“I’ll see you in six weeks, okay?” I said.

Six weeks felt like a lifetime to me then. Impossible and vast.

“Yes. Good luck with the rest of term.”

“Thanks, I’ll need it.” I’d meant that getting through the rest of it without him here would be so brutal that I could barely let myself think about it. But if he guessed that’s what I meant, he didn’t react in any way.

I drank in every inch of his face – the perfect, elegant structure of it, the slope of his nose, the graceful way he seemed to breathe – as though it might be the last time I ever saw him.

In many ways, I wish it had been.

Twenty-eight

Despite his strange behaviour the day he left, he called me when he returned to school just as he’d promised. He looked tired, a little deflated at being back there, I supposed – but it was nothing that worried me. He was how he always was on the phone; moody, sharp-tongued and occasionally flirtatious, and soon we were back to our usual arrangement.

Except that this time, I knew what it was to have him. To hold him and kiss him and touch him. This time, when we did those things on our calls, the absence of him was far harder to bear.

I longed daily for summer; summer meant he’d be home, and the planning of the rest of our lives could begin. I still studied in the library at Deveraux, and occasionally Gideon would pop his head in the door asking if I’d heard from Caspien, if I was hungry, or if he could disturb me a moment while he grabbed a book. I never saw Xavier Blackwell at the house again. In fact, I hadn’t thought about him in weeks. I’d never mentioned it to Caspien in the end, I never wanted his name uttered between us ever again if I could help it.

And so it was with a cold startle of shock that Gideon was the one to bring him up to me one Saturday afternoon about a fortnight after Cas had returned to La Troyeux.

He’d come breezing in wearing a light-coloured suit – I’d rarely seen Gideon in anything but a suit. Normally a three-piece, the rich fabric tailored so well to his body as though he were dressed for his wedding. That day, he wore only the waistcoat and the trousers, almost white, with a cornflower blue linen shirt that was open at the neck. The only change between his summer and winter wardrobes was the absence of a tie. He looked well. Handsome and well rested, but nothing about him that suggested he was in one of his merrier (intoxicated) moods.

“Jude, how are you this fine day? How is the revising coming along?” he asked with a dramatic sigh. “Gosh, I loathed revising. Truly.”

He had a stack of books in his arms, which wobbled precariously. I jumped up and rushed over to help him.