Chapter 359

“Hey. You okay? Don’t be scared.”

It’s Alexi. I would know that sexy tone anywhere, and as my eyes adjust, I can see his tattoo peeking up under his jacket collar to confirm I’m not imagining things. Bringing me back to the here and now even though my body is poised and caught in an instinctive ready to run mode. Heart hammering through my chest as I try to work him out, steeped in mistrust. Guarded and nervous.

“So, you’re talking to me now?” It’s a knee-jerk reply, covering my thundering heart rate and shaking limbs, ignoring his question and I pull away from him, so his hand no longer moulds to the base of my spine, aiming to walk away and give him a dose of his own medicine. Put distance between us so he can’t see how rattled I am. How emotionally fragile this is making me.

Two of us can be cold and uncaring. If he can’t touch me, he can’t feel how much of an effect this place and his mood is having on me.

I haven’t felt this alone and afraid in weeks, maybe months. I never thought I would feel it because of him again.

Alexi catches my wrist as I start to move away, to gain some breathing space, and pulls me back to him firmly but gently and gives me no choice but to follow. He slides his arms around me and pulls me up against his body, despite my initial rejections. I have no say. He is strong and swift, and I’m manoeuvred into a hug with very little effort. I don’t even fight him, tiredness sucking all my energy away, and combined with his touch, I just give in.

“I’m sorry. I needed some headspace and time to think. I didn’t mean to upset you. You look like you’re thinking of running straight back out the door. What’s wrong, Cam?” He sounds broken too. Voice raspy, low, unsure. A hint of sadness in there that indicates he isn’t lying.

That ends me and all my combative instincts on the spot. Like being hit with a sudden shot of warm air after being out in the cold. Return of soft and loving and I’m a complete wuss. Crumbling to him like some needy wanton pathetic woman, so desperate for the side of him that only I get to see. I wrap myself up in him and slide my arms around his waist, nestling my face against his chest, inhaling his smell, and close my eyes to breathe him in. Tears brim up instantly and I literally give up all my strength and sag into him, relieved for this contact and a return of the man I love. All the pain from the last couple of hours forgotten in one cuddle. I’m completely hopeless.

“You,” I mumble quietly, everything from my defensive ‘show him you don’t care’ slipping away and I’m once again at his mercy. Close to breaking down and sobbing against him. Relieved to just feel him, for that gentler side to be mine all over again.

“I’m an asshole, we both know that. I was processing, and you didn’t seem to want me anywhere near you.” He kisses me on top of my head, strokes my hair down my back and squeezes me snugly to him with both arms.

I squint at that statement and look up at him questioningly, head racing over the last few hours but he looks back and raises his brows as if to confirm it. A look that says ‘right?’

Thinking back, I guess I really was just as responsible for the icy space between us coming here. He was closed off, and I made no attempt to talk to him either. I didn’t touch him, didn’t walk with him, and anytime I felt his eyes stray to me I held my ground and didn’t acknowledge him. We were both doing it and I spent the entire time acting like it didn’t affect me. Maybe like me, he pondered that I didn’t want him near me and was hurting as much as I was. With more reason. Glancing my way, agonising over my coldness, and being affected and insecure as much as me.

I rejected being married to him then I literally kept my distance all the way here. I can see why he didn’t wake me in the car now. He felt pushed away, and that’s why he seems so sad now. Both of us lost in our own heads to cool off and think while we should have been talking and touching, like this.

Seeing it that way makes me feel shitty, and I push it out and away realising he wasn’t punishing me at all. He was doing what he did when I was in hospital and removing himself because he thought it’s what I wanted.

I’m an idiot sometimes.

“We just haven’t been here since …” The words catch in my throat painfully as I try to change the subject, shamed at being such a fool. Like I just rammed a cactus down my neck, unable to finish the sentence as it bites me.

Alexi sighs heavily, his embrace noticeably firming up to get me as bodily close as possible. That sense of security flanking me as he does. I can almost feel his relief at being able to touch me again and realise it must have been killing him to be so close yet so far apart while torturing himself over this whole mess. His distance was because he knew proximity would make him touch me impulsively.

“I have so many regrets when it comes to you. This house I guess harbours a lot of them. I’m sorry. You know that, right? I would never hurt you that way again, in any way. I swear, Cam. The things that happened between us, none of them are how I would ever treat you again, for anything. No matter how mad I am, or how hurt, I will never cross that line and risk losing you—ever. I need you to trust that, even if you don’t trust me. I’ve changed.” He buries his face in the top of my hair, his voice and breath warming my scalp, sending tingles and goosebumps all over, from my temple down to my feet. I screw my eyes closed harder, and just let myself fall completely under his control. The place I’m always safest. He’s a magician when he wants to be, and I’m so far under his spell. Powers of persuasion run deep with this one, keeping me rooted to the spot. Smoothing it all away as easily as he can inflict it.

“It’s so hard to forget and just let go,” I mumble, finally letting go of my tears as they begin to fall down my face softly. Not wracking, heaving sobs but a broken, warm outpouring of so many harboured scars. It’s hard to stop hurting, overthinking and seeing things in a skewed way, when sometimes, like the last hours, they are not what I see. Once the waterworks start, I can’t seem to stop them. I guess it’s partial relief that all that worry and pain thinking he was going cold on me, was me being a fool and not taking it at face value. Something I do a lot with him because of my own stupid head and its insecurities. So much inside me, a lifetime’s worth of pain and I never ever just let it go. Today just helped it all come to the surface, I guess.

All that fear and seeing him and Rick as one, blurring lines because I feel trapped and can’t get my head around it. I’m turning something that others see as pure and good into something terrifying and twisted. Lost in my own head and not seeing what it might be to him instead.

“I don’t want you to forget … you never will. I just want you to forgive me, more than anything. To stop punishing me for things I will never do again and seeing the worst in me. I’ll do whatever it takes to fix it all. To trust that I won’t do anything that causes you pain in any way, ever. I need you. I don’t think I could go on living if I lost you a second time, it was hell on earth and I never want to feel that way again for as long as I live. You’re my universe, London. I would move mountains for you. You have to believe that I will do anything you need to earn your trust, your faith in me.” He sounds as desperate as I feel. His husky low tone, quiet and soothing. Words only for me, so hushed in the large space around us. Heartfelt. Just the two of us alone in the world in this place as though no one else exists anymore. Moulded as one and it fits so perfectly.

Time stands still.

I stop and just take note. Knowing what he says is true and I do keep running away and punishing him because I’m afraid. I jump into hatred and accusation before logic shakes my arse and wakes me up again. It’s my form of protection, even if it’s dumb. The past is exactly that, over and done with, and Alexi has done so much to try and show me that he won’t ever cause me that feeling of terror and heartbreak ever again. I need to stop dragging him over hot coals and using it as an excuse to run from him.

Everything he has ever done, even before, always had hints of wanting to keep me safe. Even when he was crushing my soul he still jumped to my defence whenever he thought I was vulnerable, and it wasn’t a game. The opera, the attempt at the club, my being sick in the rain, moving me to The Hamptons and then exploding when he thought I had run away. Knowing him the way I do now, I can see the care behind his reactions. The truths through the bullshit. Yelling at me in sheer frustration in the times he thought I was in danger and he was powerless; like after I was robbed, and I went walking in the streets while they found my apartment empty. He yelled because he was afraid and then relieved to see me in one piece. He doesn’t know how to express in a healthy way, so his fear, worry and anxiety comes out as anger and aggression.

He pushes people away, pulls up the aggressive mask and uses his wall of hostility to sway you away from the truth. It’s what he did to me over and over, punishing me for making him love me while he thought I didn’t care. We both did it. In different ways, wearing different masks, so alike. It’s what I keep doing to him now, even if I don’t mean to. Fucking up his head, hating him when he keeps trying to prove his worth. I have been emotionally bruising him for weeks.

Alexi cared, even while he hated how much I was hurting him.

He tried so hard to make me see it when I came back. The club, my job, giving me a gun, keeping his distance, my birthday, Miami … and Feral. He was screaming it at me in his own painful silence all along, and I was too blind to see he was holding out a hand and hoping I would just take hold. He has still been clinging on no matter how hard I fight because he can’t let me go. He looked for me; he went to London and destroyed someone who hurt me and wiped my past from physical history the only way he knew how. That’s how Alexi loves.

I have always read him wrong. I have blamed him, pushed him, hurt him. Accused and misunderstood. Much like I’m probably doing now with this marriage problem.

“Don’t close me out and leave me feeling alone. I hate being alone. I was always alone, until you. Don’t do that to me. Even when I deserve it … I can’t handle it.” I whisper so softly it’s almost inaudible. Knowing I deserve it because I keep trying to make him do it.

I’ve been pushing him, knowing somewhere deep down he would keep chasing me. It was a power that I was aware of even though I questioned it, but somehow it was a way of feeling worthy. Pushing him and making him beg, plead, chase. It’s not healthy and it’s not going to give me his heart forever.

These past few hours of him not chasing me, it’s opened my eyes and slapped me in the face. Showed me the devastation if he just stopped coming for me and caring, and I can’t live with that.

This marriage thing, it’s not a tool or a game for him. It’s not a validation of ownership. If I use it to wound him, he won’t keep coming and I’ll end up losing him with no one to blame but myself. I need to stop using his heart against him, just because I know I can. It’s drawing a line in the sand.

The dam bursts and the sobs follow. Probably relief that he’s right here with me once more and it’s not too late. I can choose to leave loneliness behind me and take a leap of faith, even if it scares the shit out of me. Stop pushing him and hold on tight.

Those three sentences that seem so insignificant to anyone else, they are at the centre of everything that’s wrong with my life, my past and my memories. All that has ever been wrong.

I had no one. No one loved me, no one cared. I was a forgotten little girl whose own mother despised her, and her father never wanted to see her again. I spent my life fighting to look after myself and not let anyone close for fear of being hurt over and over. I have lived through deprivation and horrendous ordeals, just to shake myself down, and struggled to survive just one more day. I trusted no one and knew no other way to be. My life had no meaning.

When you live a life knowing you are eternally alone and no one would notice or care if you ceased to exist, it’s hard to be any other way. No one cares if you starve, or you bleed, or you’re so cold you sleep in an alleyway night after night among the rubbish just to try and retain some heat and shelter from men wishing you harm. To beg for scraps and hide in shadows because safety doesn’t exist anywhere in your life. There’s no home, no person to turn to when you cry in despair night after night. No one to help ease your pain or your burden. No one to comfort you when you’re sick. No one to help you find money to eat or clothe yourself. No one gives a shit if you live or die. That was my existence from the second I was born.

I was invisible all my life. An object for abuse and nothing more. No worth to anyone unless they had the means to use me; I was their possession and nothing else. Even for my mother to sell off. I had nothing really. Always destined to end up back where I started, no matter how hard I ran away from it. Pulled down into the gutter time and again, no matter what. It’s where I belonged.

I never knew care, safety, or love … until Alexi. If he takes it away now, I’ll die. It’s the worst form of cruelty he could ever inflict on me. Having felt its warmth and power, it would be so much worse to end up back in the gutter now. I wouldn’t survive it anymore. He broke the coldness in me, and now I don’t have what it takes to go back to hiding in the shadows.

“I’m sorry, I really am. I won’t, I swear. That’s not what I was doing, I just thought you needed me to leave you be for a little while, even though I hated it. You’ll never be alone because I’m not letting you go for anything in the world. You’re my forever. I waited a lifetime to find you and I’m not about to let anything take that from me. Not even the dissolving of our marriage. I would follow you around the world for the rest of my life, you have to know that. You’re my perfection, the other half of my soul; I would die without you.” The raspy raw tone that matches mine, sodden with emotion and a slight strain, hints he is welling up too. An intense truth behind his words. Probably the most honest, human moment in his life and it is for me. Mirroring how I feel about him in every way.

Words I have longed for my whole life.

Alexi breaks me. Only this time it’s not from cruelty or coldness. He breaks me in a new way entirely.

Really drumming it home that the stupid shit I do needs to stop. I’ll lose him. He deserves a real chance with someone who can forget the past and take him at his word. His actions scream so loudly, and I need to stop jumping to conclusions and tarring him with a brush he no longer deserves. Alexi loves me more than anything in the world and I think I finally, truly understand that now. I can feel it in everything he does … even what happened in Vegas.

He married me on the hope that maybe I would be okay with it once I had time to digest it because he knew I wouldn’t marry him of my own volition or sober. He saw it as a way where I could truly be his, not in the way I’m seeing it. He wanted to make me the centre of his universe. Protect me in ways he felt he couldn’t and show the world he had someone he valued above everything else and he didn’t want to hide it anymore. He put me in the forefront.

I let it all out with gusto. Clinging onto him as though my life depends on it. Wracking sobs, ungraceful heartfelt tears from the soles of my feet into Alexi’s chest, and he just holds me close, strokes my hair and lets me cry. There’s nothing else to say right now. It’s all just pain and blubbering and a huge vessel being emptied with no holding it back until the damn thing is empty. I feel like I have been holding this in my entire life, and somehow this is the key to opening the void and draining it once and for all. He seems to sense it and lets me get it all out.

Accepting it, facing it and choosing to let it go.