“You’re breaking my heart, Bug, but if this is truly what you want, I’ll walk away.”
His eyes meet mine, and the words tumble out of my mouth.
“If I thought you had a heart, I might feel bad for breaking it. But you don’t. Goodbye, Huxley.”
The corner of his mouth pulls up like a master pulling his puppet’s strings.
“Remember, this is what you wanted.”
And there’s the real Huxley. His threats are always lurking somewhere deep in the shell of his body. He’s never far.
I keep my mouth shut as I think he’s about to leave, but instead, he walks over to my wardrobe and the little clothes that are still hanging on their hangers are ripped off the rail.
“What are you doing?” I shriek as he throws each piece of clothing to the floor.
“I’m making room for the rest of your shit when it gets here.” He stops dragging my boots and boxes of old clothes out onto the floor when he catches me staring. I must look confused.
“What? You didn’t think I’d keep your shit, did you? Well, apart from everything I bought you. The rest of the cheap garbage you had you can have back. In fact, let’s go.”
It only takes him three longs strides to cross the room and take hold of my arm. His grip, as always, is too tight, and I can already feel the bruise forming.
“You can come pick it up now and bring it back in your piece of shit car,” he viciously spits out, pulling me toward the stairs.
For a moment, I think he’s going to throw me down the stairs, but he doesn’t. I tumble down with him, trying to keep up.
“If we’re not together, I don’t want any of your shit around me, reminding me how much of a bitch you are.”
He pushes the button on his car fob and the passenger door opens. He shoves me down onto the seat and waits for the door to close, thinking I’ll make a run for it.
Before a minute has passed, the car is dangerously backing out of my parents’ drive and leaving tire marks on the pavement.
“I never thought you were one to hold grudges,” he continues, driving way too fast. “So fucking selfish. I could be with someone who actually smiles when they look at me. I could have anyone in this town. Hell, I could probably fuck your mother and have her wanting more.”
“Huxley!” I gasp. “Don’t be so disgusting.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve never ever been able to tell him what to do, how to act, not anything.
“In fact, once you’ve cleared your crap out, I’ll have a party and see who’s up for helping me get over you. I’m sure they’ll be plenty of girls willing to help distract me.”
His mania is taking over, but I believe every word he says.
“Jennifer, Melanie, Lucy, they’d all be a great distraction, and they’d be happy to take your place.”
I leave him to rant to himself and swipe away the loose tears that are betraying me by falling.
I’ve heard this spiel from him before, and it used to hurt, but now it’s just sad. Is that a sign I don’t care as much as I did before? Maybe.
Bailey Cove Corner is coming up, and Huxley is driving way too fast to take it and not crash.
“Slow down, Hux.”
“Maybe we should just pummel into Cove Corner? We both know I can’t live without you. We both know I’ll never let anyone else have you. We both fucking know it’s us or nothing.”
The car begins to swerve the harder he presses his foot to the gas, and pure fear takes over.
“Stop this!”
“Say you love me!” he yells back.
I can’t believe he wants to hear this now, right this minute. He’s mad.
“You know I love you! Stop!”
“Say you won’t leave me!”
The words die in my throat, a lump forcing its way down as I swallow. I can’t take my eyes away from the road as he speeds up, coming up to the next corner. I haven’t been down this road before, but it isn’t difficult to work out that it goes nowhere.
“There’s nothing but ocean, Bug. Say you won’t leave me, and I’ll stop!” His voice breaks as he yells at me.
“I won’t leave you!” I scream, and he slams on the brakes. It seems like forever before the car comes to a stop a foot from the edge of the cliff.
My heart pounds in my chest, deafening me to everything but our heavy breathing filling the car.
With shaking hands, I unclasp my belt and open the door. I stumble out and my knees buckle, causing me to fall to the ground.
Closing my eyes, I try my best to even out my breathing and convince myself I’m still alive.
Arms wrap around me, and when I look up at him, he has me cocooned in his hold as he sits on the roadside with me.
“I’m so fucking sorry. I lost my mind. That’s what you do to me when I think I’m losing you.”
His heart is racing against my arm as he tightens his hold on me, and more tears come. I can’t stop them. The adrenaline is too powerful, and I don’t have the energy to fight.
“You hurt me all the time, I don’t like it. And I don’t like you always telling me to do things. I want you to be nice to me.”
I couldn’t sound more pathetic.
“You make me sound like the Devil, Ally. I know I can be overbearing sometimes, but that’s my love for you, you know that. I’m crazy in love with you and I can’t control it.”
“I need you to.”
“You need me,” he whispers, only hearing what he wants to hear.
“I can’t promise to change because I don’t know how, but if I promise to control my behaviour, will you stay with me?”
Our bodies are rocking back and forth, and his hand is sweeping over my hair soothingly.
“What if you can’t? Relationships aren’t meant to be like this. Surely you see that?”
“Of course I do. Like I said, I love you too much.” He pushes me away a little so he can see my face. “If I can’t change my behaviour when it comes to you, I won’t stop you from leaving me again, I’ll let you go.”
The conversation comes to an end. He rises to his feet and pulls me with him. This is him calling time on our fight. The moment for any more promises to be made is over.
He pulls me against him and tips my chin up so I’m looking at him.
“Kiss me, Bug.”
His mouth devours mine the moment our lips meet, and his tongue, as possessive as ever, sweeps over mine. Pulling away marginally, he plants three separate, hard kisses on my mouth, and then makes sure I’m looking at him.
“We belong together. Let’s go home and spend the day alone.”
He leads me back to the car, and before he closes the door, he smiles, and I smile back. Is it real? I have absolutely no idea anymore.
“I love you.”
“I love you more.”
Trenton’s small travel case covered in spaceships sits at the bottom of the stairs, along with Tobias’s new case covered in a character from his favourite game. And then there’s mine and Huxley’s cases, all sitting pretty in a row.
Benjamin’s shoes tap against the marble floor as he strides through and picks up the boy’s cases.
“I’ll put these in the car and then I’ll be ready to take the boys to their grandparents’.”
“No, hold on a moment. Don’t do anything until I’ve spoken with Huxley.”
I make my way to the office of loneliness, and like his father before him, Huxley is seated behind the grand oak desk.
“I’ll be ready to leave in half an hour, so be sure to say goodbye to the boys. You won’t see them until Monday.”
“That’s why I’m here. It should be us who drops them off.”
He doesn’t grace me by looking up when he speaks. “Benjamin will take care of them.”
I step farther into the room and he finally looks up, watching my every move.
“The boys would love it if it was us
, together, who waves them off. I’ll smile and hold your hand. I’ll even make you believe I’m besotted with you.”
Tapping his thumb on the desktop, a cold smile takes over his lips.
“You and me, together?”
“Yes.”
He ponders my request and nods. “Okay. Let Benjamin know we’ll deal with the boys. He can take the weekend off.”
A small victory.
I could jump for joy.
I refrain from showing any gratitude and leave before he changes his mind. I acquired a cell phone in town yesterday, and before Huxley, Benjamin, Ryder, or Dash can appear from nowhere, I take the short trip to the game room.
Both boys are glued to their iPads. Neither of them look up until I say, “Tobias, I have a gift for you.”
This gets his attention, and the iPad is forgotten about in no time. I didn’t raise him to be materialistic. This is what happens when spending time with Huxley.
“What is it?”
It’s sad how he has so quickly forgotten how to show appreciation for such gifts.
“Come here and see for yourself.”
Trenton’s little head peeks up and quickly returns to his game when he sees I have nothing for him.
He has so much of his mother in him. He has his father’s dark hair, but everything else is Kayleigh. To be honest, both boys do look like brothers when they’re side by side.
I pass over the phone, and he instantly knows how to switch it on. His fingers swiftly move over the screen, and for the first time in as many days, he smiles at me.
“I’ve saved my number in the contacts, and I put your dad’s in there too,” I’m careful to add so he doesn’t feel like I’m fighting Huxley again.
“You can call me at any time this weekend and I’ll answer.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
He’s already mastered his father’s knack for dismissing my words. I’m not standing for it from the boy I gave birth to.
“Tobias—” I start, but the fight leaves me. I guess I am standing for it. “We’re leaving in thirty minutes.”
It’s absurd to think I’m sunbathing on a luxury yacht and enjoying myself with a man I loathe. Oh, how life works, especially when it’s occurred to me that he’s brought me out onto the water where it’s possible I could be involved in some sort of accident. It’s what he implied might happen back at Conner’s gravesite. The water is calm, and the sun bounces off the surface and shimmers over the yacht. Huxley is currently leaning on the railing, smoking his cigarette. I’ve noticed he doesn’t smoke around the boys; more specifically, around Tobias after he confronted him about it in the car. His sunglasses sit snugly on the bridge of his nose, hiding his amusement at the situation.
His shoulders, bare of a shirt, are broad, and the muscles move fluidly as his shoulder blades push together when he pushes away from the railing.
“Tell me what made you fall in love with the investigator.”
I’m surprised he wants to know. Huxley is more of a what-he-doesn’t-know-doesn’t-care type of guy.
“I guess it was his smile.”
“His smile?” he snorts.
“Yes. It was curved just so, that it involuntarily made you smile. It pulled you in,” I say, smiling at the memory of when he first caught my eye. “It was so unlike yours.”
He lazily helps himself to a cold bottle of beer from the ice bucket and makes himself comfortable on the lounger next to mine.
“What made you fall in love with me?” he asks next.
Rolling my head to the side, I see he’s being serious.
“I don’t think what I felt for you was ever love. I was young, easily led, and you took advantage.”
Shaking his head, he says, “You loved me, and you’re painting our past to your own benefit. You were easily led because you wanted the adventure that came with being with me.”
Sitting forward, he grabs his smokes and lights another cigarette.
I sigh. There’s no point in keeping the truth from him. It’s like he thrives on it, knowing I’m keeping something from him, and his need to pull it from me grows.
“It was the night you stayed with me at my parents’. You snuck into my room and climbed into bed with me. You were different that night. You weren’t Huxley Bailey-Vaughan, you were just my boyfriend who told me how beautiful I was and held me all night.”
My parents didn’t know he had climbed through my bedroom window for the fourth time in a week, and we watched our first movie together. As the credits started to roll, I thought he would make his excuses and go home, but he climbed under the sheets and we laid in the darkness, whispering about anything and everything until we fell asleep.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“When did you fall out of love with me?” I don’t need to think back on it. I know exactly when.
“The night you hit me. I didn’t know it then, but looking back, it was that night.”
He inhales on his little white stick of death and exhales a long stream of smoke into the sea breeze.
“We’re still here together, today, like this.”
He’s so cocky.
“Yes, but I don’t love you.”
And the cockiness fades.
“Do you think you could again?”
I can physically feel the frown line deepen between my eyebrows as they knit together in confusion.
“How do you think that’s possible? Honestly, Hux? How do you see me loving you when you threaten me with my son, you control every minute of my day, and you go out of your way to make my life a constant battle?”
“You fight back this time.”
“You can’t seriously think me fighting against you is my way of fighting some sort of romantic feelings that are coming back for you?”
Swinging my legs over the edge of the lounger, I sit up and lower my sunglasses.
“I don’t feel anything for you. I’m not playing games with you when I say it, and I’m not trying to catch you out and play with your head. Too much has happened between us, and so much time has passed. I feel nothing.”
He mimics my sitting position and lowers his sunglasses. His stare bores into mine, but I don’t flinch under the weight of it.
“Time is the only thing I can’t buy, but the only thing that will show you that we are for real, that we’re for keeps.”
I’m starting to think he’s not well, as in, needs medical help. Therapy at least. He lays back down and slides his sunglasses back up his nose. It’s like going back in time to our teenage years. I say what I’m feeling or not feeling, while he looks at me like he’s listening, and when I’m done, he acts like he heard something completely different than what comes out of my mouth.
I, too, lay back down and stare at the sky through the darkened lenses.
“How did you manage to make Kayleigh fall for you?” I ask him, not expecting him to answer.
He doesn’t hold back wanting to know about me, it should be the same for me about him.
When he speaks, I listen without interrupting him. Who knows when he’ll be this open again.
“I was in a bad place after you left,” he sighs. “She kept coming around questioning me. She didn’t believe you would up and leave without telling her, and she would accuse me of hurting you, burying you out in the garden or some shit. But after a while, she saw I was a mess. When she came around, she would sit with me, she’d cook, and we’d talk. After a while, it felt like being with you because she was your best friend. When I was with her, it felt like we were back at school, and you were there somewhere, I just couldn’t see you.”
Only because I know him do I see his logic, but I still say, “That’s messed up.”
“I didn’t claim it wasn’t,” he says in defence. “Anyway, Craig came back to town and I didn’t see her as much. I didn’t like it, so I took her from him. I had no idea what I was doing. I got it into my head that she was what I needed because of you, and that was that
.”
And there it is. He wanted her and he got her. It’s as simple as that in his head.
“And her getting pregnant?” I can’t imagine him going out of his way to purposefully have a child. They would take too much attention away from him.
“That wasn’t a part of the plan. I felt nothing but anger throughout her pregnancy, but I paid for the best doctors, and she gave birth on a cloud of fucking luxury. I nearly missed him being born because I was that bitter it wasn’t you having my child. How fucked is that? You were gone, doing fuck knows what, and I couldn’t get you out of my head. But I made it there in time and he made the crazy shit I’d done with his mom justifiable.”
“What would you have done if you’d found me before she died? She lived in your house, she had your son. It’s not like we could’ve lived as one big family.”
“I didn’t want her, Allison, I used her. If I’d found you, she would have left, and believe me, she would have been more than fine about it.”
“You’re so cold, and you wonder how I can never love you again, how I can never trust you.”
“Enough!” he barks. “I’m done with memory lane. I love you, you’re home, and we’re getting married. The boys will have a mother, and I’ll have the wife I always wanted. That’s how our story goes. You can have what you want, clothes, jewels, anything. We’ll watch the boys grow into men who take over the family businesses, and we’ll live to watch this town revolve around us.”
He thinks the world revolves around him, not just this town. “I don’t care if you have to drink too much wine to cope being with me, or pop pills just so you can sleep. You do what you must to make peace with being mine, and in my own sick way, I’ll enjoy every minute of it because I get you.”
He doesn’t even look at me as he speaks. He has all these plans for us, and there isn’t room for negotiation with him. I don’t bother trying.
The sun heats through me, but the chill of Huxley is always there in my bones. I used to think it was fear, but now I think it’s the temperature of his soul as he tries to suck mine out of me.
The sky is a beautiful collection of reds and oranges, mixed with strokes of pinks and blues. The ocean is calm this evening, a contrast to my erratic pulse. One more night with him to endure out here, and then we’ll be heading back, where I’ll feel a lot safer on land and around other people, and where I’m in the same house as Tobias.
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