Honest. More than he’d expected. “It feels good. The stress release of it feels good, or the itch of it healing feels good?”
“All of them. I’m not sure there’s a difference.”
“Spook.” Xane stopped him with a hand upon his elbow. “You need to stop hiding, and you need to stop pretending she’s not what you want.”
“She’s not—”
“She’s everything you want.”
“Not everything. I’m more than my sex drive.”
“Practically everything. And definitely everything you deserve, because you sure as hell don’t deserve me as your primary love interest. It’s not like I can fill the hole in your chest anyway. Also, can we not equate sex with love? This isn’t just about shagging her.”
Spook shot more glowers in his direction. “I’m not in love with her.”
“The fuck you aren’t.”
“I’m not in love with you, either, so don’t get any fucking ideas.”
“Well thank God for that,” he agreed amiably.
“So, if those things are true, what’s the issue with seeing her?”
Expectations, that’s what. At least for starters, but mostly fear. They’d been over this ground enough times that Xane knew the script.
Spook shook free of his hold and started heading inland, taking the path that would lead them past the fort and spit them out west of the recording studio. Pissing hell! From there, it’d be easy for him to turn south-east again and avoid the northwest tip of the island. Take himself off to the hermitage he was holed up in, because he couldn’t handle being around the band for more than a few hours at a time.
A few long-legged strides caught Xane up.
“You know she’s not going to stick around if you don’t acknowledge her.” It might not be what Spook wanted to hear, but he needed to hear it. “Do you really want her to leave and for that to be it?”
“Xane,” Spook snapped, about turning abruptly. “Shut the fuck up. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve told you that.”
“Oh, I know. You’d much rather hash it out on a nice bit of staff paper.”
“Fuck you.”
“We’ve tried that.”
That earned him a grunt, and the thump of Spook’s footfalls as he pounded along the shingle pathway. “I’m sick of going over it. Can you not just—”
“It’s not me that’s keeping us fixated on this point. You’re the only one that can change it. Stop being a dick and go and fucking talk to her. She needs to see you, Spook. You owe her that. You’ve put her through the wringer. If you don’t want to see her again, then you need to tell her that to her face. Not that it is what you want. I know it, you know it, the only person who doesn’t is the one person who bloody well should. You know what else, if you don’t go over there? You’re going to totally lose your shit later when she leaves before you got to see her.”
“Shit! Stop it. Fucking just shut it.” His friend swung at the rock face bordering the path, splitting the skin of his knuckles, and giving Xane another wound to add to the tally of things he’d need to check up on. For the moment, he ignored the blood and Spook’s attempts to stem the flow of it with his shirt cuff.
“Don’t say another fucking thing, okay. I know, all right. I get it.” Spook spat at him when he endeavoured to get close. Then he blinked, and the sting fell from his voice. “Please… I just… I know I’ve made things worse, and I’m making them worse, but I’ve put things off, and put them off, and now…” He shook his head, making his long hair whip about his shoulders. It was too big, too emotional for his tangled nerves to handle. “We’ve talked, but we haven’t talked. And now the expectation’s too much. I don’t want to rehash it or see the disappointment in her eyes when she realises, she’s been holding out for this. I’m a fucking mess, Xane. There’s not a goddamned thing I have to offer her. All I’m going to do by seeing her is hurt her. Haven’t I already hurt her enough?”
As usual, Spook’s words were a string of contradictions, wants and fears, admissions and dismissals.
Xane moved in with a hug, only to be rebuffed, and then yanked into a stranglehold. Spook bowed his head against Xane’s chest and clung to him. “I can’t… I don’t want to do this.”
He got that. He truly did. “You might not want to, but you really are going to have to. She’s here to produce the album.”
“You should not have arranged that.”
Guilty, and he didn’t regret it. He had to get the two of them in the same place somehow.
“There’s no going forward without talking to her.” Xane placed a kiss on the top of Spook’s head. His friend smelled of sand and salt. His limbs were trembling. And those knuckles were still leaking red between his fingers.
