Page 18 of Vine (Island Love #3)
CHAPTER 17
MAX
“Breathe,” I screamed at Caspian, making the dog flinch. “Breathe.”
I’d heard all the commotion. Who in the fucking vineyard hadn’t? But no one except me sprinted across to the source, because no one except me cared about Caspian, except for perhaps his friend Emma. But she was in her own pool of misery, slumped against a wall of the big house with tears streaming down her cheeks.
I didn’t understand the words, of course, but I didn’t need to. All I saw was Caspian’s ex-husband and another big man looming over him as he cowered, white-faced and trembling. A fly trapped in one of the frosted silk webs stretching between the vines, back when winter had blanketed everything.
And no one except me caught him before he fell. I swept him up and over my shoulder a split-second before his head thunked on the ground, spiriting him away somewhere safe.
His breaths were coming faster than a man half drowned in a shipwreck. We needed to break the spiral, change the programme on the radio. Colette had taught me that, for moments my agitation threatened to swamp me. “Tell me three types of fish,” I barked, shaking his shoulder. “Go on. I’ll start: carp, haddock, cod.”
“What? I…” His eyes, glassy and unfocused like the sea on a foggy day, squinted up at me. He weighed nothing, lighter than the last time I’d carried him, nothing but a lifeless sack of bones and flesh and sadness.
The sadness I’d deal with afterwards. Right now, I needed him back in the present. “Just do it! Now!”
Noir cringed behind my legs.
“Um… trout. Fish… er… goldfish, your oysters.”
Not fish. Bivalve molluscs of the genus ostreidae . I didn’t correct him, though I would later. “Now I need three types of dog. Pomeranian, poodle, wire-haired fox terrier.”
“Christ, Max, I don’t fucking know.”
“Do it! German shepherd, ridgeback, Spinoza.”
“Collie, spaniel. Pug.”
“Good. They have mean weights of 16, 15.2 and 8.5 kilos respectively, by the way. And mean gestation periods of 63 days.”
He shot me a peculiar look. He was coming out of it, I could tell. “Now name three alcoholic drinks. Lager, brandy, pastis.”
“Fuck… I don’t know! Wine, beer, and whiskey. I think I need some. All together in the same glass.”
“No you don’t. It will make you sick again.”
“I think I’m going to be sick again anyway.”
I’d not brought him to my house. Fresh air would be better, and I wasn’t ready to have him inside, more so if he was nauseous. Instead, I smashed through the row of beech trees behind and dumped him on a broad upturned log, maturing for a season before I sawed it into firewood. Emma had hurried after me, filling me in on the quarrel that had brought me running in the first place. I’d thanked her, badly, then shooed her away. One upset person was enough; I couldn’t be expected to cope with another.
As if an invisible force bore down on him, Caspian slumped over, his head buried in his arms.
“Concentrate on breathing normally. Actually no, don’t, because it’s really hard when someone tells you to do that. Don’t think about breathing at all. Think of ten more fish species instead. I’m phoning éti. And then I’m phoning Colette.” Waiting for éti to pick up, I jiggled from foot to foot like I needed a wee, never taking my eyes off him.
Caspian’s whole body shook; he made a noise like a sob. “Max,” he mumbled into his sleeve. “I know you put a lot of store in these women and their opinions. But I have a feeling this is even beyond your éti’s realm.”
“Shh, she’s answered. I need to talk to her.”
For once, éti let me speak without interrupting. Whatever was spreading over the British news made no sense to me, but éti was reading from her phone and translating as she spoke.
“éti says you must delete all your social media. Now. Straight away. And don’t download it again for a week at least.”
Nodding, I listened carefully as éti issued more instructions, then clapped my hand over the speaker. “It will be really hard, she says, but resist the impulse to physically hide away. Carry on with your normal daytime routines.”
Caspian huffed out a miserable laugh. “What, like cutting myself?”
“All except that one. I haven’t told her. I think she means eating and drinking and going for walks. Normal stuff like that. Shush, she’s speaking again.”
For now, éti was winding up. This was her bullet-point emergency first aid kit. I’d caught her while driving back from Paris; no doubt she’d expand on it later.
I turned a few feet away from Caspian and spoke as quietly as my booming voice ever allowed. “I’m scared, éti,” I almost whispered into the phone. “I don’t know what to do. He’s taking medicine for his anxiety, and it’s not working properly. I’m scared he might…” I scrambled for something to say that wasn’t a lie. The truth was private. “I’m scared he might hurt himself.”
“Then stay with him,” she answered promptly. “Look after him. Don’t let him out of your sight until we’ve asked Colette’s advice. You can do this, Max. I know you can.”
We ended the call, and I turned back to him. “She says you can have her phone number.”
“Lucky me.”
“Yes. You are. She hardly gives it to anybody. Literally, about six people in the entire world have it.”
“Cool.” Caspian rubbed his wrecked face. “Fuck, Max. I’m… Christ, I don’t know what I am. Maybe smacking my head on the ground might have been better.” With his elbows resting on his knees, he stared at his feet.
I was at a loss for what to do. If I had eight limbs like an octopus, I’d hug him with all of them. I still wouldn’t know what to say, though. What was the point of talk when you had nothing meaningful to add?
Unable to communicate with words, Noir didn’t have that problem. He snuffled around Caspian until he relented and ruffled the thick, soft fur at the back of his neck. Another thing I admired about dogs: they recognised when you were down but couldn’t ask annoying questions.
“So, now you’ve met my ex-husband.” Caspian was talking to me, not Noir, though his eyes stayed on the dog. “And Jonas,” he added. “That’s Leigh’s new partner. And one of my oldest friends.”
“I don’t think he is your friend, Caspian.”
“No.” Caspian shook his head sadly. “I don’t think he is either.”
“Do you know any of these people writing nasty things about you.”
Again, Caspian shook his head. “No, probably not. And they don’t know me.”
“So why does what they think matter.”
His blue gaze drifted up, trapping mine, and he chuffed like it should be obvious. “Because the social media gossip is only the beginning. Trust me, it will get much worse, a thousand times worse. I’ve seen what’s happened to other people in the public eye. These online accounts, even though I don’t know the people behind them, they invade your space and your mind. I’ll be scared to open my phone to make a call because it will have been invaded by cruel messages. And the cruelty will ramp up because they won’t just stop at my marriage. They’ll spew hate about my weight, my hair, my voice, my ability to do my job, my mental health, not to mention my sexuality. And then the threats will start—how much they’d like to kick me, rape me, send me to North Korea, flog me in public, hang me from the fucking gallows. And then all that will spill over into my real life. Even if it doesn’t, because I’m not actually a very big deal, even after they’ve forgotten me and moved onto some other poor sod, I’ll still be scared to open my phone and my front door.”
“Oh.”
That was quite a speech, rendering me speechless. I really hoped he didn’t disappear to North Korea. Seconds of silence stretched to minutes as Caspian stroked my dog. I shuffled my feet and counted my fingers, trying to ignore a creeping urge to rock. I managed to stay still as he regarded me, thin-lipped.
“They won’t find you here.” Unable to rock, I did the next best thing and shifted from foot to foot. Which possibly made me even more ridiculous. “And I won’t let anyone near you even if they do.”
My jiggling must have increased his agitation because he suddenly flung his hands up in the air. “Why are you doing this, Max? You got some sort of saviour complex? Does it give your ego a boost? Throwing on a cape and flying to my rescue?”
“No! I don’t know! Why are you self-destructing?”
“Who cares?”
“I told you, I do!”
“But why?”
“I don’t know!” God, I needed to rock. Like I’d never needed before. Otherwise, I might burst into tears. “Maybe because you have perfect earlobes and pale cheeks!”
He shook his head, his eyes fixed on the row of beech trees slow dancing in the late afternoon breeze like they always did, as if nothing was wrong. His expression reminded me of the sad-eyed look Noir fixed on me whenever I left the house without him, convinced I’d never return.
After a few minutes, he stood, brushing himself off. “Sorry, Max, I can’t do this right now. I’m going back to the house. I have an appointment with a razor blade.”