by Sarah Bailey
“I’m sick, Xavier.”
The words played over in my head again and again before I answered him.
“How sick?”
“I have prostate cancer. It’s advanced enough that I need surgery and possibly radiotherapy. They’re in the process of scheduling my treatment. The survival rate is high since they caught it early enough, but it’s still cancer. It’s still…” he faltered, his voice sounding a little choked up. “It could still spread and I could…”
I couldn’t speak. Julian had cancer. Fucking cancer. Jesus fucking Christ, he was only fifty-two. I’d never thought about how I’d feel if I lost him. It never seemed like a possibility which would come to fruition any time soon. I was secure in the knowledge he was rotting away in prison where he belonged. And now? I didn’t know.
He could fade away.
He could die.
And now I understood why he wanted me to visit so he could tell me this to my face.
“Are you still there, Xavier?”
“Yeah, I am.”
What else could I fucking say? My heart fractured. I felt like throwing up. Faced with the reality of my father’s mortality brought everything I’d buried to the forefront. Everything about that day. The one which made him snap. The reason he was sent down for life.
“Will you consider coming to see me? There are so many things I’ve wanted to say to you face to face for such a long time.”
“I don’t know. How do I even know you’re telling me the truth?”
I couldn’t help asking the question. It’s not as if I thought he would ever lie to me about something like this, but you never knew.
“You can speak to the prison, I’ve given them permission to disclose my medical information to you. Will you consider coming here, Xavier? I try not to ask things of you as I’m aware of your feelings towards me.”
I’d told him on numerous occasions just what I thought of him. How much I hated him. How his very presence in my life made me sick. He’d taken it all without much complaint as if he knew I had every reason to feel this way.
“Fine, I’ll consider it.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Julian. Just don’t.”
I wished he’d let me end this conversation now. The emotions inside me were bubbling up to the surface, making it hard for me to keep myself in check.
“I’ll call you when I know more about the dates for my treatment plan, okay?”
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry, son.”
I gritted my teeth, my fingers tightening around the phone as if I could snap it in two.
“Don’t call me that. You lost the right to call me that and you fucking know it. I don’t want your apologies either.”
He didn’t speak and I didn’t expect him to.
“Just call me when you know.”
I hung up and slammed the phone down next to me on the sofa. My hands clenched into fists. The whirlwind of emotion coursing through me couldn’t be contained. Julian had cancer. My father had cancer. The man who ruined my fucking life had fucking cancer.
“Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck!”
I kicked the coffee table in front of me, making it rattle and the remote controls fell off. I didn’t care about the mess. I didn’t care about anything. Standing, I kicked it again. Then I kicked the armchair next to the sofa.
“God-fucking-damn it. Fuck. FUCK!”
Vaguely I heard the front door slam but I was too far gone to even give a shit someone was home. I dragged my hands through my hair, panic and distress setting in. Then a choked hoarse cry erupted from my lips as everything in front of me blurred at the edges. I sunk to my knees, desperate to hold on to my own sanity but failing miserably.
“Xav?” came a little feminine voice from behind me.
I couldn’t say a fucking word. My whole body shook with the effort of holding myself up when all I felt was the world caving in on itself in front of me. The gaping wound left behind by Julian when he took everything from me opened up. The jagged edges were sharp and unyielding.
He can’t die.
He can’t die
Not yet.
I’m not ready for him to die yet.
Then I felt a small, soft hand rest on mine. A warm presence next to my side.
“Xav,” she whispered. “What happened?”
I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her. Why couldn’t I? She was my fucking salvation and yet right now, I couldn’t do a single fucking thing.
“Is he okay?” came another voice from behind me.
Quinn.
“I don’t know… Xav, can you look at me? Will you tell me what happened?”
All my words got stuck in my throat.
Julian has cancer.
Julian has cancer.
The words circled around and around in my head like a broken record. How was this happening? Was this real? Did I really just have that conversation with him?
“E… where’s E?” I choked out in a breathy whisper.
The only person who understood why my feelings towards Julian were so fucked up. The only person capable of calming me down after a phone call with my father. I needed my best friend so fucking badly, it burnt in my chest.
“You want Eric?”
“Need… I need.”
She squeezed my hand. That simple touch dragged me out of the horror facing me. I turned to her. Ash’s eyes were wide with concern. My heart lurched.
My angel.
“Julian has cancer.”
Her face crumpled and she let go of my hand only to pull me against her, my face pressed to her chest as she stroked my hair. I blindly reached out and clutched her waist, holding onto her so tightly I thought I might fucking break her. She didn’t complain, she just held me tighter.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“I hate him… I hate him so much, but I don’t want him to die.”
“I know, tesoro, I know.”
I had no idea what the fuck she just called me, but it made my chest ache. Tears I didn’t want falling pricked at my eyes. I never cried, not over fucking Julian of all people. And she didn’t even know what he’d done. Why all of my pain was associated with him.
“He took them from me.”
“Who?”
“Mum and Katie.”
She kept stroking my hair.
“Who’s Katie?”
“My baby sister.”
The ocean of hurt felt wider than ever. Twelve years had done nothing to ease the pain. Nothing at all. Not even knowing he was behind bars for it.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
I shook in her arms and clutched her tighter than ever.
“I need E,” I whimpered, not caring how fucking broken I sounded any longer.
“Okay. I’ll get him for you, okay? I promise… Quinn, will you call him?”
I hadn’t realised he was still here, but I couldn’t look up to check. I could barely even hold myself upright. Only Ash’s arm around me kept me steady. Stable.
“Hey… I need you to come home,” came Quinn’s voice a minute later. “Xav needs you…. Why, what do you mean why? Julian has cancer that’s why… No, I’m not bullshitting you. He’s a fucking mess. He keeps asking for you… Yeah, okay, good… Fine. I’ll see you soon.”
“Is he coming?” Ash asked.
“Yeah, he’ll be here soon. You okay to stay with Xav? I need to make a phone call. I can get Rory if you want.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got him. Don’t disturb Ror, he seemed a little… out of sorts.”
“He hates being out of the house, he just needs to be alone for a while.”
I heard footsteps leading out of the room. Ash returned to stroking my hair. I was afraid if she let me go, I would collapse into a heap and never get up again.
“Eric’s coming home, okay?”
> I let out a grunt of acknowledgement. She shifted a little and leant back against the sofa, moving me with her. I wrapped my arms around her waist, burying my face in her perfectly soft breasts.
“You want to talk about it, tesoro?”
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
“It’s an Italian thing… it means treasure. I guess you’re my treasure… tesoro mio… I don’t know, it’s stupid.”
“Not stupid, angel… not stupid at all.”
She rubbed my back. Her presence. Her scent. Her everything. It soothed me a little. Kept my tangled feelings at bay. Kept me from shattering into a million tiny pieces.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I mean it though… you are my treasure, Xav. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
The tension inside me eased a fraction. And I felt the urge to tell her everything. All my secrets. All my pain. Everything.
“Julian was abusive towards all three of us when I was growing up. He used to say terrible things to me and Katie, but he beat the shit out of Mum on a regular basis. He was jealous, manipulative and controlling… E was there for me when things got bad… I can’t cope without him, angel. It’s too much.”
She didn’t speak, just dropped her head down and kissed the top of mine to let me know she was right there and listening to every word.
“I can’t forget that night… It haunts me. Mum kept refusing to leave him even though he hurt her so badly sometimes she couldn’t get out of bed for days on end. I shouldn’t have gone out with the boys… I should’ve stayed at home and maybe they would still be here, but I was so pissed with Julian and his bullshit. Quinn, Rory, Eric and me sat out in the park drinking from a bottle of cheap whisky Quinn bought from the corner shop. We were all underage except Quinn. Seventeen and thought I knew it all, but I knew shit.”
I inhaled Ash’s sweet floral scent feeling it ground me further. I could do this. I could tell her what Julian did to deserve life in prison.
“When I came home, there were blood streaks across the floor as if someone had been dragged backwards. I remember my heart pounding in my ears at the sight of it… and I knew. I just knew. So instead of going in, I called the police. They told me to wait outside, but I couldn’t. I had to know for sure.”
I trembled, the memory threatening to consume me. The horror I was about to witness flashing before my eyes all over again.
“I was careful not to step in the blood. There were handprints on the walls and pools of blood further in. When I got into the living room, I swear I almost fucking dropped to my knees and threw up. Julian stood in the middle of the room breathing heavily, caked head to toe in blood. It was all over his shirt, streaked across his face, in his fucking hair. In one hand there was a kitchen knife and a baseball bat sat at his feet, covered in blood and… brain matter.”
I felt Ash’s sharp intake of breath rather than heard it because all I could hear was ringing in my ears.
“Katie was laid out across the sofa, her eyes glazed over with her mouth open in shock. He’d hacked through her neck and torso with a knife… so I knew… I knew she was dead. And Mum… Mum was next to him and… and he’d bludgeoned her to death with the bat… and kept going until there was barely anything left of her skull… He must’ve been in such a fit of rage to do something like that.”
I felt her tears soaking into my hair and her body trembling beneath me, but I couldn’t stop. The story had to come out. The whole fucking miserable thing.
“Julian stared at me. The look in his eyes froze me to the spot. Then he smiled… he fucking smiled. And you know what he fucking said to me? He goes… ‘Now no one can have them, Xavier. No one. They’re mine forever.’ I couldn’t stand it. So I turned and I ran, I ran from the flat right into the police officers coming through the front door. I was so distraught I could barely speak, the only thing I could tell them was he was in there and he’d killed both of them. One of the officers led me away and obviously I had to give them a statement and all that shit. I barely remember anything else from that night, it was all such a fucking blur. But I can’t forget what he did. I can’t forget what he said. I can’t…”
I broke then. My heart shattered. And the tears I didn’t want to fall came. I choked out a breath and cried into her chest. Ash held me and hummed softly to me through her own tears. She didn’t say a word and that was okay. There was nothing anyone could say to make it any better. Even twelve years later, it was still a fresh wound I didn’t know how to heal.
The front door slammed, the sound echoing down the hallway. Then a shuffle of footsteps and lastly a voice.
“Xavi?”
Chapter 27
None of the shit between us seemed relevant when Quinn told me Julian had cancer. All my focus was on how that would make Xav feel. How it would tear him up inside. And how he needed me. He’d always needed me when it came to Julian. Always. So I’d pretty much rushed to get back home. The accounting shit with Geoff? That could wait.
“We’re here,” came Ash’s voice from the other side of the sofa.
I almost froze. He had her so why did he need me? Shaking myself, I realised how stupid I sounded. He’d asked for me so of course, he needed me. And I was going to be there for him like I always had been. Whatever was going on between us didn’t matter.
I rounded the sofa and found them sitting together, Xav pressed against her chest. Ash had tear tracks down her face and a haunted look in her blue eyes. What did he tell her? Did he reveal what Julian had done?
“Tesoro, Eric’s here,” she murmured, stroking his back.
He raised his head from her chest and stared up at me. I could tell he’d been crying. His blue eyes were all watery and it broke something so deep inside me.
“E…” he whispered.
That was all it took. I was on my knees the next moment and he was reaching for me. I held him against my chest. It reminded me of the way I’d held him the day after his mum and his sister died. After he got home from the police station. After Julian had been arrested and charged with murdering both his mother and his sister.
I stroked his hair, knowing that always soothed him. He needed human contact. He always had. Xav had never been a relationship person. The revolving door of men and women proved that much. He didn’t allow many people close to him because of how he’d lost Erin and Katie, but he liked company too much to cut himself off completely. Just another one of the many reasons I’d never told him how I felt. And why his relationship with Ash had me confused on so many levels.
I was still very much aware of her sitting between us. How could I not be? Her presence affected me just as much as Xav’s did. I looked down at her, finding her eyes on both of us as she rubbed her arm.
“Maybe I should go,” she said quietly.
“No!” The raw agony in his voice made me flinch. “Don’t leave me, angel.”
He reached out blindly and grabbed her by her jumper. Ash came willingly as he pulled her into our embrace. I had to let go of him to wrap an arm around her too. Her soft, feminine body was such a contrast to the hardness of Xav’s. My hand rested at her lower back, brushing across her bare skin where her clothes had ridden up slightly. Xav’s face was still against my chest but Ash stared up at me with those perfect baby blues of hers. My heart thumped in my chest. She was so beautiful. So. Damn. Beautiful.
“It’s okay, tesoro, I’m here. I won’t leave, I promise.”
I wondered what that meant. Tesoro. Xav seemed to relax a little at her reassurance.
“What do we do?” she mouthed at me.
What did we do? Normally I’d hold him until he was ready to talk. This didn’t feel like it had done all those times before with her here. Did he need both of us to just be here for him?
“Xavi… Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” he mumbled.
I wracked my brains.
“Do you maybe want to go upstairs with us and we can
hold you properly then?”
I felt him nod against my chest.
“Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”
Carefully, I extracted myself from the three-way hug and helped Xav and Ash to their feet. He gripped her hand tightly. I leant down to her.
“We’ll go to my room, okay?”
She gave me a nod and led Xav out of the living room, me following behind. He looked completely defeated, his shoulders dropped and his back hunched. So unlike the confident man I knew him to be. All we knew was Julian had cancer. Not what cancer. Not what his prognosis was. Nothing. Xav would tell us in time but I couldn’t help worrying about his mental state. About what this was doing to him.
I opened my bedroom door for them when we got upstairs and she took him over to the bed, encouraging him to lay down. He reached for her, but Ash put a hand out and stroked his hair.
“Shh, give me a sec, okay? I haven’t even taken my shoes off yet.”
He nodded and she sat on the edge, bending down to untie her laces. I kicked my own off and chucked my coat on a chair having not even stopped to take it off when I got in. As soon as she straightened, Xav’s hands were around her waist, tugging her into his arms. He held her against his chest, burying his face in her hair as she wrapped an arm around his back. I guess it was down to me to be the big spoon then. I crawled on the bed behind him and lay down before curling myself around his back and wrapping an arm around both of them. Ash’s hand was pressed between us until she shifted it and wrapped it around me instead.
None of us spoke. The only sounds in the room were of us breathing. That was until Xav broke down and the agony which ripped through my chest at how distraught he sounded made me want to take it all away for him. His whole body shook between us and I felt his muscles tense as he clutched Ash tighter to him. And then she started singing softly. I didn’t recognise the words, but the melody was heart-breaking.
“I’m sorry, Xavi,” I whispered against his neck. “I’m so, so sorry.”
We all stayed like that until his sobbing abated and then his breathing turned soft and even. Ash pulled away from him slightly, staring up at his face.
“He’s asleep,” she mouthed to me when her eyes met mine.