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“Two fractured metacarpals.” I went toward him, or rather, my feet did. He closed his laptop and turned his body toward me as I took a seat at the nook. “You won’t be able to play piano with that,”
I shouldn’t want him anywhere near me, not again. But I was Jude. And Jude loved Cas.
“Thank you,” he said, smiling that soft bloody smile again.
I hadn’t a clue what he had even thanked me for.
“I’m sorry.” He looked at me, a slight frown on his face. “Why? You didn’t do it. It’s my own fault.” I didn’t think falling over was anyone’s fault.
Cas was always distractingly lovely to look at, but especially so in the summer. It was how he’d been when I’d first seen him, first loved him, and in my memories, he was always this way: sun-kissed and glowing with the heat of the warmest season.
“Is there anything you can’t do one-handed?” “Play piano.”
I hated the sound of that. Of the idea of him cooking for Blackwell after a hard day of being a despicable prick.
The intensity of my feelings for him in that moment, so acute and unyielding, transcended everything that had come before. He was still the boy I’d loved three, four summers ago, but that love had matured inside me like wine in a barrel, and it was more robust and vinous than it had ever been.
Nothing existed when Caspien was next to me; it had always been that way. I needed nothing else, wanted nothing else, and I never felt as whole or as completely alive in the world as I did when he was with me.
I was sure – I’d always suspected – that he’d been created and put solely on this earth to torture me with what I could never have.
“No one’s perfect.” “You are.”
SCREAMINGCRYINGTHROWINGUP
I had to shake him gently awake, which caused him to startle so violently it was as though I’d given him an electric shock.
Oh I don't like that
“I miss you,” he whispered, so softly it felt like an exhale.
I needed him to be happy. Because part of my grieving Cas, instrumental, in fact, to my grieving him, was knowing that he was happy with the choice he’d made.
I didn’t want to hear that it had been a mistake, because then it would mean we’d both been miserable for no fucking reason.
I just...” wanted you so much. Hated you so much. Loved you so much.
“You don’t look at me the way you used to.” Because I’m afraid to, I wanted to say.
I dropped my fork onto my plate and scrubbed a hand over my mouth. Beside me, Cas flinched.
Someone is hurting my baby
“You’re in love with him.” I stared at him, speechless. Then, I began to laugh. Near hysterical laughter that sounded insane in the echo of the kitchen. “Oh, I fucking wish,” I said when it had died in my throat. “I fucking wish.”
I slid my hands into his hair and tasted his mouth for the first time in a lifetime. It was an antidote. Except he was my poison, too.
I tried to consider what this would mean, how much it was going to hurt when he left me again – because he would, it was what he did, and decided I didn’t care.
What was one more battle scar on my heart when the war was this glorious?
I wouldn’t say it out loud again; I wasn’t strong enough not to hear it returned, but I tried to say it with my eyes, with my hands, with my mouth.
“You’re...so...big,” he gasped. “I love it so much. I love how you feel inside me. Christ...Jude...” “I know.” I kissed him. “Fuck, you were made for me, Cas, I swear you were. You feel so good. So perfect.”
“I honestly don’t know if I have the energy,” he said. I let him drop from my mouth. “You don’t have to do anything, just lie there and look pretty.”
“Fuck, I love how you taste,” I said as I kissed him, pushing his own come into his mouth with my tongue. He whined a protest against my lips but opened his mouth and swallowed what I gave him hungrily.
I was always rewarded with an enthusiastic and deliciously submissive Cas. He knelt and bent and spread himself for me willingly.
“Does he fuck you as good as this?” His eyes had blazed with arousal as he shook his head. “I want to hear you say it.” “No. He doesn’t...fuck me like this. Oh, shit, Jude.”
I’d never been more in love with him in my life. I’d never been more happy in my life.
“I’m yours, Cas,” I told him. “You’re mine, and I’m yours. Always. Tell me you know that, tell me.” “I know, Jude,” he replied, soothingly. “I know.”
“I don’t have much of a social life, so I watch a lot of cooking videos.” I was about to ask him why he didn’t have much of a social life
??
Blackwell came down the stairs behind Gideon and took in the sight of us both sitting there together. A cloud rolled over his face to rival the one outside. Dark and violently thunderous. Beside me, I felt Cas stiffen,
Oh hell no
I still had him on me, he was still covered in me, and a delicious sense of satisfaction spread over me despite how awful this was.
I thought about telling him that Isabel wasn’t as good since Jean-Georges had poached their chef,
“He isn’t going to leave him; surely you know that.”
“Caspien is a realist, Jude. He’s always been the same. He’s also extremely stubborn, and will never ever admit to having made a mistake. Even if that means a life of unhappiness.”
“So he is unhappy? With Xavier?” “Of course he is, but it hardly matters. He’s made his bed, and he’s far too prideful to consider getting up from it. He’s also far too smart to leave Xavier Blackwell on the promise of something as fleeting and pointless as happiness and childish notions of love.”
“And when were you last happy, young Jude?” Gideon cast a sad smile over me. I stood. “This morning,” I said and left him sitting there.
The Cas I’d known these last few weeks had been some version of this one here: dulled, careful, almost hesitant. A far less dangerous version of the boy I’d known at Deveraux. Like a knife that had gone blunt.
“You stupid, fucking idiot,” he growled at Cas. Cas, before my eyes, shrank back, face paling with fright. I shot to my feet. “What did you just fucking call him?!”
“Oh, for the love of god, sit down, little boy,” Blackwell said, dabbing at his crotch with a napkin. “Little boy?” I laughed, coldly. “Oh, well, then I should be careful you don’t try and fuck me, I suppose.”
MIC. FUCKING. DROP.
I’d kill him for this. I was going to kill Xavier Blackwell. He’d put his hands on Cas, my Cas, and I was going to murder him for it.
“After how deeply he hurt you, you cannot possibly tell me that you’re not somewhat satisfied that this is the bed he now lies in?”
I thought you’d be perfect for Cas to learn his lesson on.
Caspien is almost impossible to resist, but you did, Jude, for far longer than most. For far longer than Xavier did.”
You see, studying the minds of men is something of a hobby for me. Xavier’s wasn’t too difficult to figure out. Besides, Caspien was very much his type. I simply put Caspien in his orbit and the inevitable happened, just as I knew it would.”
It was an act, all of it. He was septic; a pernicious, vindictive danger who should never have been allowed to look after a child.
I’d never hit anyone before – or since – but when my fist collided with his face, I worried that I’d never be able to stop.
I was going to kill this man. I’d go to prison for this, happily. How fucking dare he reduce Cas to this. How fucking dare he?
