Page 22 of More Than A Feeling

Ah, love, the poets knew, could be painful. A Dryden poem came to mind:

Pains of love be sweeter far;

Than all other pleasures are.

It was sad but true that it was indeed better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. That was from another amazing poet. Alfred Lord Tennyson!

"I'm not getting along well with my parents," I explained honestly to James.

"But how will you get along if you don't see them?" James pointed out.

He wasn't being mean. He was just baffled that I didn't want to work on a relationship with my parents.

I rose then. There was no point. For a minute there, when they had exuberantly hugged me, I'd thought that they liked me. Well, obviously, I'd thought wrong.

"Stop it, James. I'm sure Fleur has her reasons," Rose murmured, seeing my plastic smile.

Callum didn’t say a word, just looked away like I didn’t matter. It shouldn’t have hurt—he couldn’t have known that I didn’t matter to fucking anyone, not really—but it did.

"Fleur, Jemele is on in five; you better come in," one of the café employees stuck their head out of the café to let me know.

"I'll be right in," I said with false cheer. I excelled atfaking it until you made it.

"Fleur, you should come home for Christmas," Sabine said as I bid everyone a joint goodbye. "Don't be selfish."

"I won't be coming over for Christmas or ever to our parents' or your home, Sabine, and you know why. And since you do, you shouldn't pretend we're one big happy family because we're not." I smiled again at Rose and James. "So, nice to see you both. I hope y'all have a great rest of your stay."

"God, she can be such a bitch," I heard Sabine mutter as I walked to the door of the café.

"Stop it, Sabine. She's right. You don’t get along, and I understand why she doesn’t want to spend the holidays with any of you," Callum said sharply, his tone clipped and firm, shocking me.

Chapter 10

Callum

Sabine wanted to have sex.

I couldn't do it.

I had tried to work myself up at her place. But every time I closed my eyes, I thought about Fleur. That woman had changed my fucking brain patterns. I wanted more of her breathy moans, her screams when she came—her curiosity about how to please me, how I liked to be sucked off.

Yeah, I needed to stop thinking about Fleur in case Sabine got the wrong impression that my dick was responding to her wearing a lacy number that she looked amazing in.

"I don't get it," Sabine asked tearfully as she sat on the edge of her bed when I told her that this wasn't going to work.

"I think of you as a friend, Sabine. I've been trying to tell you that." I stood away from the bed, her, not wanting to cloud the issue with physical proximity.

"We're dating," she protested.

I didn’t want to be cruel now by reminding her that we’d already had words about her announcing to everyone that we were a couple—despite me clearly telling her I still needed time to think about it. Once she told the world, I felt obligated, and I told her that as well. I could be the worst kind of asshole imaginable, but I tried to be honest in all my relationships, one-night stands or otherwise.

"Sweetheart, I told you I needed time to think about this and—"

"What's there to think about, Call? You love me. I know that. You come to me every time I call. You left Fleur sitting alone on her birthday to comfort me."

Fuck! Yeah, I'd done that shitty thing, and then she'd heard me tell Sabine how she was temporary, just sex. It was all bullshit. This whole thing was a clusterfuck of my creation. I shouldn't have been running around holding Sabine's hand every time she had a crying jag—it obviously gaveherthe wrong idea about us. And I definitely shouldn't have abandoned my girlfriend, who I'd asked to move in with me—the first woman who I'd ever asked—to indulge Sabine.

Mom had noted that Sabine seemed to beextraamorous when Fleur was around, like she wanted to show her that we were together, make her feel bad. Mom liked Fleur. Dad wasn't so sure about her. He felt that maybe her parents and sister were right about her not caring about her family, being immature and spoiled.

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