by Lily Morton
I spend a few minutes stretching, enjoying the warmth in my muscles and the smell of the salty air, and then I pad down the stone steps and out onto the beach, enjoying the space that a private beach offers.
I strike up a slow pace taking it steady, knowing that I can’t push myself too hard. In truth it is hard, because running on a beach takes stamina, and I haven’t run since before the accident. It takes me a while to get into it, but steadily I fall into the trance that running gives me and before I know it I’m at the end of the beach nearing the rocks, enjoying the fierceness of the wind in my face and the feel of the spray.
I jog on the spot for a second watching the waves crash onto the rocks sending white spray high into the air, wild and elemental. Then I turn to make it back. I’m halfway down the beach when I hear the distant rumble of thunder and the rain which has been threatening all day starts to come down in buckets. I increase my speed but I’m not really bothered by it because after all I’m already wet so what’s a bit more water?
It’s then that I hear someone roar my name over the noise of the surf, and turning I squint my eyes to see a figure running headlong over the sand towards me. For a second I’m frightened but then the rain eases and I see that it’s Sid. I relax briefly but then as he gets closer I see that he’s in an absolute rage.
He’s still dressed in the jeans and green polo shirt that he went to the hospital in, but he hasn’t even stopped to take his shoes off, and his trainers are caked with wet sand. His hair is a wild mess and looks as if he’s shoved his hands through it furiously, and he has a frantic, angry look on his face.
He doesn’t even wait to get close before he starts shouting. “Where the fuck have you been Nell? I’ve been looking fucking everywhere for you.”
“I’ve just been out here,” I say mystified.
“Then where are your fucking clothes? I got back and you were nowhere to be found. Your clothes and bags were gone. I’ve been driving all over the fucking town looking for you.”
“They’re in the mudroom,” I say faintly. “I put them there out of the way.”
“Why, so you could finally send me round the fucking bend? Is that it Nell? Is that how you’re getting your kicks now, pushing men into nervous breakdowns?”
“How fucking dare you.” I’m screaming now because the last thread of my temper has snapped. “Everything’s always my fucking fault isn’t it? Maybe you should use your eyes and see things and you wouldn’t get so mixed up.”
“Oh, I see things,” he shouts. “I see things very fucking clearly now. Is it Cameron, is that it? Are you waiting to go back to him?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I scream, grabbing handfuls of my hair in disbelief. This is like going through the fucking looking glass.
“That text in the car. You were smiling and laughing.”
“That was just Bram.”
“Oh, you’re fucking him now are you?”
I can’t believe this. He’s the wildest that I’ve ever seen him, almost unhinged, pacing backwards and forwards, his face red. “You paranoid twat. I am not seeing Bram, who is your brother in all but name need I remind you, and I’m not seeing Cameron. I don’t have to open my legs just because a man’s a celebrity.”
“Why? It worked for me?” he says cruelly and I gasp, so hurt that I almost keel over.
“Fuck you,” I say clearly. “Fuck you Sid, this is done.” I turn to go past him and he catches my arm.
“This isn’t done,” he says in a harried mutter. “It’ll never be done. You’re not leaving me,” and then he’s kissing me our faces wet with rain, and it’s like all the passion between us explodes like a champagne bottle that’s been shaken. We’re frantic in our haste as he bears me down into the sand and comes down on top of me, taking my mouth and licking into it with guttural moans. I writhe against him feeling the heat of his erection through my thin leggings and he grabs my arse lifting it up into him so that I can wrap my legs around him and he can rock into my pussy with heavy, hard lunges.
The fly buttons on his jeans are hard against my clit, almost hurting, but it seems part of this rainswept wildness between us. I don’t think that I have ever been so turned on in my life and so in the moment, and I know he feels the same without him having to tell me. It’s written all over his face, in his eyes burning with a feral light, his cheekbones drawn tight and his fixed, unseeing expression.
We kiss frantically, our tongues almost duelling in our mouths, and his hands are rough and unguarded, ripping my bra up so that my breasts bounce free, and covering one with his lips, sucking hard until I let out a choked scream. It isn’t pretty or slow or any of the things that I’ve thought it would be over the last few weeks. Instead it’s animalistic and wild.
He reaches down and with jerky movements pushes my leggings down my thighs just enough to bare my pussy and open my legs. Pushing two fingers into me to measure my readiness he groans. “You’re fucking dripping down my hand.” Then we both tear frantically at the opening of his jeans. He raises himself enough for his dick to spring free, then his narrow hips fall between my partially open thighs and he forces himself inside me with one long, hard shove of his cock. We both pause for a second.
“Are you okay?” he pants, momentarily suspended over me.
“Yes, yes, don’t stop.” I dig my nails into his backside and pull, and he throws his head back gasping frantically for breath. The last thread of his control breaks then and he fucks me hard with long, distinct thrusts, twisting his hips on the last inch so that he hits a spot inside me which makes my eyes roll backwards. The rain pours down on us and in the background the sea crashes, but it’s like we’re in the eye of the storm and all I can see and all I can feel is him.
My legs are constricted by my leggings and as I can’t open them as wide as normal he has to work hard to get into me. It’s possibly this that makes the feelings so intense, but before I know it I’m out of control, scratching down his back as an almost agonising pleasure rips through me, and I throw my head back letting out a scream.
“Fucking hell,” he shouts, his hips pistoning wildly and then his body arches as he pours himself into me, his face a contorted grimace of pleasure, before collapsing onto me like he’s been poleaxed.
For a second we lie there gulping in air and occasionally letting out soft groans as his cock flexes and twitches inside me. Then all of a sudden he stiffens and pulls himself out of me abruptly. He sits up hitching his jeans up awkwardly, and bends over running his hands repeatedly through his hair. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters over and over. Finally he turns to me examining my face with a frantic concern. “Are you alright?” Trepidation is written all over his face and I freeze for a second because he’s obviously regretting this. Like a flash I remember the pictures of him and Leah, and then that girl in Copenhagen, and I feel sick to my stomach. I scramble up, pulling up my leggings and rearranging my bra.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say stiltedly. “No harm done.”
“What?” he replies in evident disbelief. “How can you say that? I just took you like a sailor on shore leave.”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter,” I repeat woodenly. “It doesn’t have to affect anything with Leah.”
“Leah?”
“Yes your girlfriend in all but name. The one that you always run back to. You remember her Sid?”
He gets to his feet fastening his jeans, and I blush at the sight of his bare cock which is still wet from me and half hard. “Yes I remember her. It’s just that now I’m concerned that I might have some form of amnesia, because she hasn’t been my girlfriend for a long while Nell,” he says with evident sarcasm and I break.
“That’s not what those photos said Sid.”
“What fucking photos? Do you mean those from People?” I pull a face at him and he groans. “Is that what this is about?” and then he grabs my hands suddenly pulling me back round to face him, his face stern. “You listen to me now Nell, and listen to me good. That was just me
meeting her to find out how she was getting on and to recommend some sponsors to her. She wanted me to do it but I refused because it wouldn’t have been right considering how I feel about you. I’m not seeing Leah. I’m not seeing anyone. I haven’t looked at another woman since I met you.”
My mind is so stuck on his words considering how I feel about you that it takes a second for the final sentence to break through and then my temper ignites. “Really? That’s not how I remember things Sid. You do remember the last time that we saw each other on tour don’t you? Because I do, although if we’re being pedantic I suppose you weren’t really looking at that girl so much as swallowing her tongue whole.”
He groans and paces away, and for a second I’m struck by how beautiful he is, silhouetted against the wild sea, the wind blowing and the rain having eased off. Then he turns back looking the most solemn that I’ve ever seen, yet curiously resolved as if he’s been dreading something and is almost relieved now that it’s happening, and immediately I brace.
“I have to tell you something Nell and I want you to listen and please, please believe me because this is the absolute truth that I’m telling you. I did not sleep with that girl.” I open my mouth to protest and he shakes his head vehemently. “I did not fucking sleep with her Nell, I swear on everything that I hold sacred. All I did was kiss her. I hated every fucking second of it because she wasn’t you, she didn’t taste like you and she didn’t feel anything like you do.”
“And how do I feel?” I scoff.
“Fucking perfect,” he says simply, bringing me to a stop.
“Liar. So if I’m so perfect why do that? Why be so fucking cruel Sid?”
He groans and comes to me, grabbing my cheeks and raising my face to his. “I had to do it Nell, I swear. Bill told me about Sam and I couldn’t bear the idea that you might have to go through that again with me if I relapsed. You deserve so much more than some ropy drug addict that could fall any day. I know that you’re too strong to be another Leah, but there are many other ways to break you, and in my darkest times I’ve done all of them. I am not a good bet for a brilliant, talented, funny girl like you and I never will be.”
“So you decided to do that?” I’m outraged despite having semi guessed that this was what it was all about. “Why not just talk to me and tell me the truth?”
“Because you’re so loyal,” he says simply. “You’re a good girl Nell, and you’d have fought to stick by me.”
I’m struck dumb for a second and then. “Fuck you Sid,” I say quietly but he jerks like I’ve shouted it. “Fuck you for making your own mind up about things.” He stands dumb in front of me and it winds me up so much that I push him. He staggers back, more out of surprise I think, because I haven’t got the strength to really move a man of his size. “No wonder you see my loyalty and capacity for fighting as a failing. It’s because it’s a quality that you really don’t possess.”
He jerks as if I’ve struck him. “What?”
“If you had come to me and told me this I would have stuck around, not because I’m stupid, but because I saw something in you that made it worth it. Do you know what that was?” He shakes his head. “I thought you were a fighter Sid. What you see as a life of weakness, I’ve always seen as a life of strength, of daily battles that you fight on your own without whining or crying. I saw you as strong and loyal Sid and a fighter, but you’re not are you, because when it came down to it you never fought for us did you? I guess in the end I just wasn’t worth it, but you know what, Leah’s always around. She’s the person that you always fight for, that you seem to always think is worth it”
He’s standing pale as a ghost, a nerve going in his cheek and I stare at him for probably the last time, and then I turn and walk away, and this time he doesn’t stop me.
When I get back to the house I’m shivering with cold and probably from what’s just happened, so I root through my bags and pull out a pair of jeans, a white vest and my loose, hooded, navy jumper with some underwear, and then head to the shower. I stand in there for a while letting the warm water beat down on me, washing what feels like half the beach off me. Sex on the beach might make a good cocktail name but it’s hell on a girl’s nooks and crevices.
When I’m out and have blown dried my hair I dress and after consulting the internet I call for a cab to take me to the airport. For a second I wonder about calling Cameron but I think that would be a very bad idea, and besides which I don’t want to see anyone at the moment. I just want to go home which makes tears come to my eyes because for the life of me the only place that I’ve ever honestly been able to call home is with Sid, and it’s been that way all over Europe, in hotel rooms, airport lounges and tour buses. Wherever he was, felt safe and happy and warm, the way that I always imagined a home should be.
I hesitate about venturing downstairs but when I go down there’s no one about and I wonder where he is. I hope that he doesn’t come back before I leave because I don’t think that I’ve got much more strength left in me for this. I feel so angry with him yet at the same time I want to hug him because everything that he did was for me, and who can truly hate someone who discards their own chance of happiness to make someone else’s life better?
I walk wearily into the mudroom and drag both my suitcases into the hallway. I’m just zipping them back up and getting my passport from my bag when I hear a low voice behind me.
“Don’t go.” Gasping I spin around and there he is. He’s soaked to the skin and sheet white and he looks like he’s aged ten years, but the wildness has gone, leaving behind what looks like bone deep despair. I shake my head and he steps forward. “Please don’t go Nelly. Stay. Stay with me.” He swallows and to my horror I see what looks like tears in his eyes. “Please don’t leave me on my own.”
“You’ll be fine,” I say hoarsely. “You’ll go back to your old life. Leah’s clean now. That’s what you’ve always been waiting for. You’ve always just been jogging on the spot waiting for the starting gun.”
He shakes his head furiously. “I won’t go to her Nell. I can’t because I don’t want her, and I haven’t for a long time. I belong to you and the only woman that I see is you, and that’s never going to change. I want you for everything that makes you mine. I want what we were building on tour but I want it for always – us together laughing, talking and making love. We were a team and we looked out for each other. At the end of the day you’ve changed me in so many ways there is no way that I can go back to the old me.” He pauses and then straightens and his voice firms. “I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward, but only with you.”
“How can we?” I’m really hoping that he has an answer, because I would rather cut my arm off than leave him and never see him again. “How can I trust you when you could do that again?”
“I promise you Nell, on everything I am that I will never do drugs again, because if I did that I’d lose you, and that’s just not an option.”
“Not the drugs,” I say impatiently. “I know you won’t go back on them, and if you ever did then we’d just have to deal with it - together.” His eyes flash electric blue at that and he makes a move towards me, but I hold up my hand and stop him. “I mean how can I trust that the next time we’re threatened by anything that you won’t default to leaving me? You were so cruel Sid. I can’t go through that again, even knowing that there was a reason for it.”
“It won’t happen again.” I shake my head and he holds his hand up which I notice is shaking. “You were right. I gave up and I didn’t fight, but Nell, life is full of lessons and I’ve learnt a valuable one these last few weeks. I’ve never really had anything worth fighting for, and I have never, ever had a woman that considered me worthy enough to fight for me.” He pauses and then adds quietly, “Until you Nell.” I swallow hard. “I never thought that I was worth anything but you’ve shown me that you see something different. I want time with you.” He gasps out a laugh. “Fuck, I want a lifetime with you, enough time to prove to you that I can
be that man. That I’m worthy of you.” Tears run down my cheeks and he makes another aborted gesture as if he’s coming to me. “Don’t cry,” he says with the tenderest voice that I’ve ever heard. “Please don’t cry Nell, not over me. I don’t want to ever make you unhappy.”
I look at him for a second and I feel the happiness rush through me, like feeling coming back into a dead limb. “Then make me happy Sid.”
“What?” he whispers.
“Make me happy. I fucking dare you.”
He smiles at me almost shyly. “Really Nell? You’ll take a chance?”
“Always.” I smile and then he’s on me in two strides, his face a mask of utter joy. He reaches me and throws his arms around me and for a second we sway together, and then his mouth falls on mine and we kiss for what feels like hours. When he lifts his head his lips are swollen.
“I love you.” He says it clearly and simply, like it’s an immutable fact, like the sun will rise and the moon comes out at night. “You’re the best person that I’ve ever met. You’re funny and clever and kind, and when I’m with you everything seems just right. I will never let you down again because all I want to do is look after you.”
“I love you too, so much, so much.” He gasps and for a second he looks almost shy, overcome with happiness, and I smile tenderly because I don’t think that he will ever really believe that he’s good enough for anyone, so my job in life will be to convince him, starting now. “I’m so sorry that I doubted you earlier. I just felt so inferior to her. You and she have so much history together and she’s so beautiful. How could you not want her once she was clean?”
He looks at me disbelievingly. “How can you think that Nell? How can you even consider that I could see anyone but you, ever? You’re the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen. I’m no prize but I can promise you that I won’t ever hurt you like that, because I won’t ever feel like this about anyone else. I wish that I could convince you. I wish that you could see inside me.”
I put my fingers over his mouth. “I do see you now and I know that you won’t hurt me. Do you want to know how?” He nods sheepishly. “Because I see you Sid. You’re loyal and kind and strong and you have always seen more in me than anyone else ever has, including me.”