Page 74 of The Price of Love
Cal, with his fear of being rejected again. He’d let down his guard, let me in, showed me who he truly was. He’d told me things, trusted me, and I’d done the metaphorical equivalent of kneeing him in the nuts. He didn’t think Luke was better than nothing, he thought Luke was better thanhim! His worst nightmare had come true, he’d been living in dread of this moment, and I’d done nothing to reassure him. Cal wasn’t like Luke, wasn’t tough, uncompassionate. He was scared, fragile,damaged.
And here was me, bringing my flamethrower approach to relationships.
I got up, dusted down my backside and left the hillside, cantering down the slope and arriving in the yard with a kind of braced-knee sliding stop. I’d been wrong. Cal hadn’t gone into the barn. He was sitting on the edge of an old churn-stand, his weaker leg drawn up under his chin and his hair hiding his face. ‘Cal.’
He jumped. ‘Oh, yeah, you’ll be needing a lift back, won’t you?’
‘Um, no. Actually. I need to explain to you . . . stuff.’
‘There really isn’t any need. You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Willow.’
But now I knew what he was doing. Not pushing me away, not withdrawing, he was performing damage limitation.
‘Cal, listen. I didn’t get the council money, all right?Thatis why I can’t buy the farm. Nothing to do with anyone else.’ The quick hope on his face left me weak. ‘So, now you know. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s because Ican’t.’
‘Oh.’ Cal wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. There was blood on it. It had been quite a goodbye kiss. ‘Oh,fuck. I’m sorry, Willow.’
I did a shrug very similar to his.
‘No, really. Oh, God. What have I done? I only wanted . . . look, I . . . shit.’ He lopsidedly jumped down from the stone platform and ran his hands through his hair. ‘What can I do to make it up to you?’
My smile started slow and I watched the answering fire spark in his eyes. ‘Are youkidding?’ My voice was slow, too. ‘That kiss was the most erotic thing I haveeverhad done to me.’
His mouth twitched. ‘You really had me going there, you cowbag.’
‘Well, you’ve got me going here, bastard.’
‘Then come into my tent and let me attend to you. I have scented unguents and liquors with which to pander to your every whim.’ He led me into the barn, one hand clamped around my wrist as though afraid I’d suddenly change my mind and run.
‘Why the hell would you want to panda to me? Don’t they sort of mate once every twenty years or something?’
‘Ah, but they know the value of foreplay.’
And with that, he proceeded to show me the value of foreplay, until I was drunk and drugged and intoxicated with it, and each time I threatened to crash he’d catch me up and lift me again until he finally whispered me into making love so completely that only the feel of the straw around me kept me earthbound.
We only realised how uninhibited we’d been when a distant and tinny round of applause broke out from the computerspeakers and a voice said breathlessly, ‘Sandman, whatever it is you’re on, get me some.’
‘Shit, Fortune, you could have turned your headphones off,’ Cal said languidly, lying beside me with his fingers tracing my ribs.
‘What, and miss fifty quid’s worth of entertainment? You should webcam, man. You’d make a killing.’
‘Ha fucking ha.’ Leaning across me, Cal flipped the switch that sent the machine into deaf-blindness. ‘Sorry. Forgot to turn the boys off.’
‘I think quite the opposite was true.’
‘Hmm, yes. Look, Will, I’ve been thinking.’
‘What about?’ I pushed his hair off his face.
‘Well, I need a new car, that one’s on its last wheels, whether that new James Bond film is worth seeing, should I try that recipe for lamb tagine when I don’t have any couscous, you know, lots of stuff. Oh, and that I love you. And, instead of giving up on the idea of this place, why don’t webothmove in here.’
‘What?’ I propped myself up on my elbows.
‘Idon’t want to sell, but I can’t keep the place on because of the legwork, ha.Youlove it here. You could turn it into a going concern. I could drop the consultancy work and increase the, ahem, other stuff. What do you think? Between us, it shouldn’t be too much of a job making the place habitable. I’ll get a lift put in so that I can get all the way up to the attics, make some extra space that way.’
I looked at the rough, whitewashed walls of the barn and out of the doorway into the yard. Tiny plants had forced their way up between the cobbles and down between the stones of the walls and were now blooming in random spurts of yellow in unlikely sites all around the enclosed space. It looked like an explosion in a sun factory. I loved every last weed-infested inch of the place.
‘Oh, yes.’
