Page 97 of Toy Boy

I squeeze her fingers and she leans into me and we kiss, quickly, but hopefully Greta was somewhere nearby, close enough to see that. “Come on. Let’s go.”

I want to forget tonight. Forget that my past has come back to haunt me, that the future I’d planned might now be in tatters; forget that no matter how much I try to fight for her, Megan may never be mine again…

Xander

“I don’t know why I didn’t go to Denmark sooner, there was just so much work to get through… I knew she didn’t have long left, I knew that, Megan, and I still delayed flying over there.” Megan reaches for my hand, and I love the feel of her fingers wrapping around mine. It’s comforting. Welcome. Necessary. “But she kept telling me everything was okay, you know? She told me to stay in Queensland, finish the study I was working on, because she knew how much my work meant to me. But nothing –nothingwas more important than her.”

“But, once Scott explained this so-called pioneering surgery to her, she told you all about that, right?”

I nod, dropping my gaze to our joined hands, focusing on her pale-pink painted nails as her thumb strokes my knuckles. “She told me all about this wonderful surgeon, a man who claimed his brand new, cutting edge surgery could save her life. Possibly. At worst, apparently, it could’ve at least given her a little more time, a few more months, a year or two, even. Or it could kill her. And she knew that risk, and she was willing to accept it because she was desperate, Megan. Desperate to live, to see me again because it’d been almost a year since I’d last visited.” I drag a hand through my hair and throw my head back as the guilt once more floods through me. “She was ill, she was dying, she’d even moved to another country because the hospital in Sweden couldn’t do any more for her, and I thought being on the other side of the world was a good idea? That clinic in Denmark had been her final chance. But in the end even they couldn’t fix her. Or they thought they couldn’t, untilhearrived, and fed my mother false hope… If I’d justbeenthere…”

“You aren’t to blame for any of this, Xander.”

I look at her, and I feel a rush of emotion, so sudden it almost floors me. She was the one thing I never expected to find when I came here. A friend. A woman I want to love, because I haven’t been able to let myself do that. Love somebody. I’ve been too scared to go there because people I love, they leave me. They die. They get taken away by others…

“I blamehim, for everything.”

She squeezes my hand, and I smile. Even now, despite all of this, she still makes me want to smile.

“I tried to talk her out of it. I mean, of course I did, I told her it was too risky, but she’d believed everything he’d told her. I begged her to think about it, to wait until I got over there, and she told me she would. She promised me she’d do that, she’d think about it; wait for me, but all she was doing was telling me what she knew I wanted to hear. And I didn’tseethat? How did I not see that?” I shake my head and turn it away, I don’t want Megan to see me like this. I never wanted anyone to see me like this.

“You couldn’t have done any more, Xander. You couldn’t have made that flight go faster, you couldn’t get there any sooner than you did.”

I face her again, and her eyes are kind as they stare into mine, and I feel a pull on my heart that I’m still getting used to. “I could’ve stopped it, if I’d been there. If she’d waited for me, I could’ve made her see sense. Instead, he pushed her into making a decision thatultimately killed her. And I know that the surgery…” I drop my head and run a hand along the back of my neck. “I knowthat, legally, nobody did anything wrong. But he went all out to make sure that surgery happened before my mother’s health deteriorated even more. I’m sure of it.” I look up again, and I try to see something, anything in her expression that tells me she has even the tiniest amount of sympathy towards her ex-husband, but she’s showing nothing. “My mom, she was in a desperate situation. She knew there was little anybody could do to prolong her life for any great amount of time, and then Scott Warren arrived and made her promises he, ultimately, couldn’t keep. And I’ll never forgive him for that.” I feel her fingers squeeze mine again, and I glance down at our hands, and I am so fucking glad I met this woman. I’m glad that fate took me in a different direction, because it has. Coming here, meeting Megan, it’s changed everything. “I’ll never forgive myself for being so far away when my mom was so ill. That was selfish and wrong…”

“No, Xander, please. Stop blaming yourself. Stop doing that.”

“She told me to go, to Australia. She told me to live my life even though hers was ending, but I should’ve ignored her. I should’ve stayed and looked after her…” I let go of her hand and stand up, walking away from the bar, down towards the sea, and she falls into step beside me as we head into the darkness, the noise of The Shack fading as we leave it further behind. And I reach for her hand again as we stop at the edge of the shore, both of us staring out at the black sky and the waves lapping quietly at our feet. “I came here to punish him. And I’m not proud to say that, yes, I was going to use you to do that.”

I feel her grip on my hand loosen slightly, and I quickly tighten mine on hers, I don’t want her to go. I need her to listen to this.

“Because I knew he still wanted you, Megan. I knew he still loved you…”

“You knew who he was all along.”

She isn’t asking a question, she’s stating a fact. And quite honestly, I’m surprised she’s still here, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d walked away, but she didn’t. She stayed, she’s still here.

“Yes. I knew who he was.”

“You knew whoIwas.”

I nod, and again I feel her grip on my hand loosen, but this time I wait to see what she does. Let go, or leave her hand in mine. It’s the latter, and I feel my shoulders sag with relief.

“What I planned to do, in the beginning, it was wrong, Megan.” I look at her. Right at her, our eyes locked together. “It was wrong. But I wanted to hurt him, to make him realise what it felt like to have someone you love taken from you…”

“How can you take someone from somebody when they didn’t have them in the first place?”

She’s right. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“No. I don’t think you were.”

This time her hand falls from mine and she wraps her arms around herself as a cool breeze blows in from the sea. And I can’t even offer her my jacket because I’m not wearing one, but even if I was, and I did, I don’t think she’d accept it.

“What you need to know, Megan, is that everything changed very quickly. Yes, I still had this need to hurt Scott, but involving you…” I break the stare, because trying to explain this is so fucking difficult, and she might not buy any of it, but I have to try. I have to.

“Just tell me the truth, Xander. That’s all I want to hear.”

I turn back to face her, and it breaks my heart that I let this get as far as it did. “I thought that by pretending to get close to you, pretending I had feelings for you, it would get tohim. And it did. It worked, but the thing was, the pretending stopped. Really fucking quickly. It ended, and I hadn’t banked on that, I hadn’t banked onyou…”

---