“I’m not sure, that’s why I’m asking.If you tell me it has nothing to do with your mood and current events, then fine, but I think it does.I think there are a lot of things about you, stuff that’s happened to you in the past that you don’t share.And, I don’t only mean with me.I mean with anyone.Your bandmates don’t actually know you that well either, do they?”
“Xane—” he began.
“Except Xane.”
“Hm.”
“So, tell me.What made a nineteen…twenty-year-old Spook Mortensen decide to give up sex?Not any of the usual reasons, like religion, I think.What happened, Spook?Something did.”She reached out and brushed the tail end of the scar upon his inner wrist.“Something bad.”
Spook folded his hands into his lap.Did they really have to do this now?
He ran his tongue back and forth over the razor edge of his incisors.Back and forth, back and forth until his tongue tingled at the end and he’d worn a groove into its surface.
“Spook?”She reached out to him again, but he flinched away, not wanting to be touched.In fact, he could no longer stand to be so still.He grabbed his jacket and headed for the exit.Outside the air had grown a bite.He shoved his arms through the leather jacket sleeves as he walked.Behind him, he was conscious of Alle scrambling down the bus steps to catch up.Not waiting for her, Spook strode the length of the tour bus, around the back, and down the other side until he’d done a whole circuit.Fear sparked along the pathways of his nerves.It made the little finger of his right hand twitch.Alle paused and waited for him to catch up as he made a second lap, then she fell into step with him.They made another two circuits while she awkwardly tried to find the right prompt to make him open up.
He received a text, which disrupted one such attempt.“We need to head down to the pick-up point on foot.On-site traffic’s a bitch.It’s chocka with people arriving fresh from work eager to pitch their tents and get settled in.”
She didn’t make another attempt at prompting him until they’d made it as far as the gravelled drop off point at the edge of the VIP area.
Probably, he did need to say something to her.Most likely ought to have done so before now, but this relationship thing was new to him.The world of dating had moved on a fair bit in the last decade, or at least, it had changed because he’d turned from being a teenager into a man.Adults were supposed to communicate.
“I couldn’t stand being the monster it had made me into anymore,” he said, standing with his back to her looking along the gravel road for their ride.
“Monster?”she echoed back at him as if it were an incomprehensible notion.“What sort of monster have you ever been?”She clasped his arm, and tugged a little, turning him to the side to face her.“You’re not that, Spook.Not in any way.There are plenty of genuinely horrible people in the world, but you’re not one of them.Who said that about you?What made you listen?Come to think of it, who are they anyway to make such a judgement?You were still a kid.”
Somehow his fingernails wound up in his mouth, which made a mess of the black nail polish.Alle tugged on his arm, freeing up his lips to speak.
“Spook.Please.I want to understand.I want to help.”
“I left marks behind,” he said.
Her frown dug deep grooves around her mouth.“That doesn’t make you a monster.They knew it was consensual, right?It was consensual?”
There it was, that smidgen, that heartbeat of doubt.Everyone always doubted.In some that doubt rooted more deeply than in others.Spook shrugged.
“Who were these bastards?”
He didn’t exactly have a straightforward answer to that.“Family.Friends.People who I thought knew me.People who didn’t but had heard and had an opinion.”There’d been lots of gossip.Lots of opinions.“I come from a small place.”
“Still, to just stop… I mean, stop having sex over some gossipy busybodies.It seems a bit drastic.If you said you’d decided to never engage in any sort of BDSM practices again, then I might just about get it.Cause and effect, you know, but… the no sex part?If it was the discipline aspects that they were critical of, then why is it penetration that gets you worked into excessive knots, but you’re okay with warming my rear?”
“Who said I’m okay with it?”he mumbled under his breath.He wasn’t certain that she heard.
“That is, unless you’re saying that you can’t conceive of one without the other.Is that how it is for you?Do you need the discipline stuff to get excited enough to go all the way?”
“Alle.No.”The car pulled up alongside them.Spook opened the rear door, and ushered Alle inside.He got into the front passenger seat so that he didn’t have to elaborate on his answer.This…all, any of it, wasn’t what he wanted to be dwelling on.Yes, he knew—per Xane’s advice—that he should spit it all out.Tell her the whole sorry, sordid tale, but it wasn’t an easy thing to revisit.Talking about it inevitably led to a certain amount of reliving events that had left him in some dark and very ugly places.He already felt raw.Exposed.God!His heart started skipping, an effect that had him clutching his chest.If he was going to tell her everything, then he needed to put up some walls first.There needed to be a barrier between now and the realities of the past that would allow him to relate facts and events without rupturing the wounds he’d spent years healing.
“Save it until we get to the hotel,” he said when Alle leaned forward between the seats to speak.If he was going to be forced to explain—and he had agreed with Xane that it was the most reasoned, sensible option, given the inevitability of things—then he definitely wasn’t doing so with a third party present.He didn’t know the driver, and the driver didn’t know him.Not that it would have made a difference.He’d have felt the same even if it had been Cave Troll behind the wheel.He’d explain to Alle.She had a right to know who the man she professed to love really was.He’d do that, but it had to be on his terms.
They were about three streets away from the hotel—he’d stayed there a couple of times before when they’d played here in Gothenburg—when Alle yelled at the driver to pull over.
The usual collection of people were strolling the streets.The Friday after work crowds mingling with the binge drinkers and early bird weekend partiers.He followed the line of her trajectory to the front of one of bars with outdoor seating, and spotted her brothers.Marshall—the git with the widow’s peak— and Flynn—don’t mind me laughing in your face at the notion of you banging my sister—and a third, younger version of them.Theo, he believed from what he recalled of his and Alle’s many late night phone conversations.It seemed the Hutton’s were enjoying a family reunion between the rows of strung fairy lights.
“Are we waiting?”the driver asked.
“Just give us a moment.”
Spook got out.He stood in the open doorway, peering over the top of the vehicle.What the heck was she doing?
