Page 19 of Vine (Island Love #3)

CHAPTER 18

CASPIAN

Leaving on such a dramatic note was an obnoxious, childish thing to do. But aren’t all obnoxious childish actions nothing more than a cry for help?

Anyhow, despite me behaving like a five-star bastard, Max followed, shuffling behind, twitching his fingers and muttering to himself. My stalker. No, not stalker. That was mean. And implied I didn’t like his attentions. I hadn’t been supposed to, but I’d sure missed them when they’d disappeared.

At times, hunky Max and his long peaceful silences felt like the only barrier between me and the cliff edge. But now? Him and his gang of well-meaning friends and family couldn’t do anything for me now. The only thing that could take the edge off was screaming my name from the bathroom sink. And this time, I wouldn’t bother with dressings. I wouldn’t need them.

“Please don’t do that.”

Max, right behind me in the bathroom doorway. Telling, not asking, like my mind wasn’t already made up.

“Sorry, Max, I must have missed the moment I invited you in.”

“You didn’t.”

“Glad we’ve cleared that up. In which case, be sure to close the front door on your way out.”

I stared at the train wreck also known as my face in the tiny mirror above the sink. A fine sheen of sweat coated my upper lip. Above, hollowed red eyes told the story of a thousand sleepless nights. And over my left shoulder hovered a giant, anxiously weaving from side to side and wearing an expression as petrified as my own.

I picked up the razor. As I’d walked back to the gatehouse, an idea formed in my mind. If I rid myself of Max, then this time, I might actually pluck up the courage to do it. Put everyone out of their misery. All that remained was to choose which wrist.

“Please don’t, Caspian.”

“Give me one good reason why not.”

“Because I don’t want you to.”

As if that mattered. Shrugging, I hummed a badly out of tune version of you can’t always get what you want . No doubt it flew straight over Max’s head; I reckoned he was a more of a late-night talk radio kind of guy.

With my fingertip, I tested the blade. Not the sharpest, but I wasn’t fussy. Even blunt blades drew blood if you pressed hard enough. And ragged wounds took more time to clot. The kind of detail people who’d never tried didn’t know. Honestly, I was surprised cutting wasn’t more popular. It was so easy once you started. Like slicing salami at the deli counter. An eternal love affair between warm skin and a blade.

Left wrist today, I decided. My right hand shook less.

“This is your last chance, Max,” I warned. “Unless you’re planning on shaving off that lush beard after I’ve finished with the razor? In which case, have at it. Just give me a couple of seconds in private with it first.”

His panicked eyes betrayed his intentions way before his lumbering body sprang into action. When he reached around to pluck the blade from my sweaty fingers, I was ready for him. Too fast, I danced away, brandishing it aloft like a street fighter. “I saw you in the mirror, Max. You’ll have to be quicker than that.”

Agility: moving nimbly and lightly in a graceful manner. Adjectives I’d never have associated with Max before he wrestled the razor from my grasp. And, to be fair, not after either. Less lion creeping up on a gazelle, more rhino trampling through the undergrowth.

After an unseemly scuffle, during which I sank my teeth into his shoulder (and not in a sexy, seductive way), the razorblade found its way from my clammy little hand into his giant paw. As though I’d brought a butter knife to a lightsaber fight.

Scooping me up, he hugged me, one of those tight ones that took your breath away. Tight, as if he was trying to push all the crazy pieces of me back together. So tight, in fact, I could feel his heartbeat, flustering like a trapped bird against mine. The razor slid from his hand. It hit the hard tiles and skittered across the floor, the plastic head springing free from the base.

“Please don’t do this, la mer Caspienne ,” he whispered. “I can’t bear it.”

“I don’t know if I can stop.”

“Promise me you’ll try. I’m strong. Let me help. Let the doctors help.”

I let out an ugly snort. “Tried that, didn’t work.”

“Try me, then. Please. Give me a chance. Come for a walk.”

One of my old drama teachers once said if you breathed deeply and imagined something, you could be there. You could see it, feel it. As Max and I faced each other in a good old-fashioned stand-off, I gave it a try. I closed my eyes and clung to my rusted dreams. I couldn’t even remember them. Except for the hope that, one day, all the fear coiled beneath my bones would vanish.

“Please?” repeated Max. “Come down to the beach with me.”

Being a very big person with an even bigger heart had its advantages. People followed your orders. Placidly, like a child promised an ice cream, I let him take my hand and walk me beyond the vineyard and down to the thin strip of pebbly beach. Edged with a thick layer of seaweed and pebbles, it did not entice tourists. On the border between late spring and the high heat of summer, the day held only the hint of a breeze and clear open skies.

Nonetheless, I shivered, my sick body shrugging off the warmth of the sun’s rays.

Max released my hand. Side by side, we surveyed the diminishing shore, the tide on its lazy way in. Now he’d rescued me, seemed he hadn’t a clue what to do next.

I poked at the sand with the toe of my trainer, making a hole. “Is this where you find your treasures?”

“Sometimes.” He made a hole of his own. “I have other beaches. Do you want to kill yourself. I asked you before and you said no.”

Deep down, my answer hadn’t changed. “No. Not really, although I scare myself that I might do it by mistake in the heat of the moment. I think… I think what I really want is to escape myself for a few hours. Or days.”

Unable to resist, he kicked at a shell before stooping to pick it up. And the one next to it. And then another a few paces away, big, white, and smooth, as if he’d forgotten I was there.

Wearily, I dropped to a flat rock and watched him ferret about. Whenever I looked at a beach, I saw a strip of itchy sand bordering a cold, wet sump of pollution and fish piss. Max saw collages of colour, useful pieces of bark, and a passionate tide kissing a sandy shore.

As I watched him bend once more to rub at a frayed nubbin of rope before tucking it away, my fragile soul stilled a fraction. Maybe he could help me.

“Sorry,” I said. “For being so vile back there. You don’t deserve that. I know you’re trying. And sorry for sinking my teeth into your shoulder. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Didn’t hurt,” he said, his back turned. “But I don’t own a cape. Just so you know. That was the only bit of your shouting that didn’t make sense.”

“It was a joke. A nasty one.”

“Okay.”

He studied a piece of driftwood bleached to a dry bone by salt and the sun, running his fingertips over the ridges. Hesitantly, he passed it to me before picking a rock to sit on a few feet away. Turning the wood over, I tried to think of a use for it, getting as far as kindling material. In Max’s mind it was already a rustic coat hook or a candle holder or one side of a bespoke picture frame.

“I’m trying to understand you, Caspian,” he said. “It’s hard.”

“Why are you bothering?”

“Because I like you. And because you have perfectly shaped earlobes.”

He mocked himself with a gentle shyness and a strained smile on his lips.

I liked him, too. For what it was worth. “You have perfectly shaped forearms.”

“I know.” He examined them, bare below his rolled-up sleeves. “I’m very muscly.”

Was Max the only person in my life totally incapable of deceit? Probably.

“You need to see somebody who can help you stop hurting yourself, Caspian.”

“I do,” I agreed. “And I did for a while, back in England. And then I quit because it wasn’t working. Because all my problems were still there. Until I find a way through those, my urge to cut will always be there.”

“Do you want to cut yourself now.”

I blew out a sigh, wishing I could blow out the nagging ache behind my ribs alongside it. What must I look like to a guy like Max? I had it all, didn’t I? A career, education, enough money, physical health, and passable features when I wasn’t strung out on anxiety. And yet here I was, chasing this elusive, ethereal, fragile thing called happiness. Or at least contentment.

However it was labelled, it was wrapped up in a sense of self-worth and self-love. And until I found and dealt with those, I might as well be chasing a mirage.

“Not right now, no. You’ve… distracted me. The feeling inside is… it’s hard to explain, but it’s like a pressure cooker—the valve needs releasing. And that’s when I cut.”

“But I turned it off at the switch on the wall.”

In surprise, I glanced up at him. Max and metaphors didn’t mix, but here he was, producing a great one out of the blue and frowning at me uncertainly, worried he might have got it wrong.

Tears pricked at my eyes. “You did,” I managed. “I’m grateful. I think.”

“Why do you still take the tablets if they don’t stop you hurting yourself.”

That was a very good question. “They help with mood.” I glanced up at him. “Believe it or not.”

His brows pinched together, he studied a shell from his pocket, rubbing his thumbnail across the smooth edge. Plotting its future, maybe. The raw material for a keyring, or, as it had a pink hue, a friend for all the other pink-hued shells stored in an old jam jar on his desk, next to another jar of blue-tinged ones.

Resting back on my elbows, I closed my eyes and tilted my face up to the sun. Then restlessly sat forward again. Even sunshine sparked irritation in me. “Christ, Max, I’m so fucking tired of feeling like this. You know that second of fear when you’re walking down a flight of stairs and you misjudge a step? That lurch?”

He didn’t look up from his shell, but he was listening. “Well, I feel that in my stomach all the time. I can be minding my own business, standing in line at a café for a muffin or filling out my taxes, and I’m battling pulses of adrenaline like I’ve been rear-ended driving seventy down the motorway.”

A few seconds ticked by before he answered. “That’s irrational, Caspian.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t sleep. I’m on edge—I can’t get off the edge. And it makes me a self-centred dick.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.” For reasons only known to Max, the shell failed to make the grade, and he tossed it aside.

“You’re supposed to disagree.”

“Okay. You’re not a self-centred dick.” That shy smile again.

“I let Leigh—that’s my ex—get under my skin. Partly because we’ve created this fictional double act which pays the bills, so I can’t fucking escape him. But also,

I can see all the things I loved about him. All of them, from his confidence to go out and take what he wants, to his... I dunno... hatred of Pepsi because he thinks it has a weird texture. And I absolutely don’t love those things about him anymore. But I miss them. And more than that, I miss the person I used to be before all this television shite got in the way. The ambitions I used to have.”

“You don’t like the television stuff.”

More of a statement than a question. “I hate the television stuff! I mean, it has its moments of fun. Some of the challenges were incredible, like learning to drive a race car. What kid hasn’t dreamed of doing that? And when I bought my flat, I saved myself a fortune in plumbers. I fitted the whole bathroom myself.”

“So why do you do it.”

Another brilliantly direct question. One pricey therapists took eons to get around to asking.

“For him. I used to do it for him. Because he loves it, he lives for it. Being a TV star is all he ever wanted. But now it just sucks me down.”

Silent, and with his lips pursed in thought, Max dragged his feet through the fine sand, making a pile between them. I bet he spent hours and hours here as a child, lost in his thoughts, fiddling in rock pools and digging holes. “So, everything that makes Leigh feel happy makes you feel sad.”

“God, yes. Yes!”

And there it was, the sum of all my anxieties, all my restlessness, the sleepless nights, the pills gulped down dry, my unhealthy relationship with a razor blade. Crystalised into one simple sentence. Everything that makes him feel happy makes me feel sad. Uttered by a guy with shovels for hands and facial hair I could lose myself in, and with a voice so thunderous I braced for the approaching storm.

But there was no storm. The only sound now was the rustle of new growth creeping along the shoulders of the vines lined up in rows behind us. And my own heart, thumping valiantly, fighting back against the ever-present hot pain.

Everything that makes him feel happy makes me feel sad.

Seeking warmth in a cold place, I ended up in Max’s sturdily constructed lap. Later, I’d wonder why, but right now, nowhere was more welcoming. My chilled hands found themselves in Max’s warm hoodie pockets, placed there by him, that simple act of kindness opening the door for my pent-up tears to run amok.

“Shh…” He rocked me gently, petting my hair and stroking my back. Patting my thigh like I was an infant with a scabbed knee. And yeah, those big arms and that broad lap were every bit the soft landing they promised and then some.

After an embarrassingly long time, I unpeeled myself from his shirt, and he fished a grandad-style cotton handkerchief from deep in a pocket of his jacket.

“Fix your face and blow, Caspian.”

If those sweet words weren’t designed to get me blubbing again, then I don’t know what was. After I thoroughly destroyed his pristine white square, he lifted me from his lap.

“If I let you out of my sight, will you go home and cut yourself?”

“No. I mean, maybe. But I don’t think so. I just want to… God, I’m tired. I want to sleep for twelve hours straight. The kicker is my brain will wake me up after two.”

“You sleep in my bed.”

There was a mischievous twinkle in his guileless brown eyes and a naughty quirk to his lips, like maybe he had a few life-saving tricks hidden back there. If only I could find the courage to let him show me. “Is that an order or a precis of my previous visits to your place?”

He folded my hand into his. “Both.”