Page 76 of Revive
“Everything okay?”
“No. It’s not,” he spat. “It’s fucked up. I’ve fucked up. Alle’s gone. I can’t find her. She’s gone, Xane. I can’t fucking find her.”
“Whoa! Slow down. Tell me what’s happened. Have you had a row? Spook, what do you mean she’s gone? She’s still on the island, right? Right, Spook?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He hadn’t thought to check. Had been too wound up in trying to find her. But what if she’d finally come to her senses, and simply realised she was better off without him, and gone straight to her car and left?
His guts said otherwise. Still, it was an easy enough theory to test. He finished crossing the swinging bridge and slid down the cliffside pathway to where he could look out over the bay in which Blackwater’s and the car park sat. The tide was out, but Alle’s car was still sat where it’d been for a month now.
“Spook?” Xane’s bellow prompted him to put the phone to his ear again. “Talk to me. We’re getting in the car now. We’ll be there in four minutes.” He heard the sound of doors slamming, followed by the rev of an engine. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Somehow, it spilled out, not every detail, but that they’d had sex outdoors and then gone separate ways. He knew without saying more that Xane understood.
Headlights illuminated the causeway, and Spook tumbled down to the car park. He hit the concrete right as Xane and Luthor pulled up.
“I know, I’m a fucking idiot,” he yelled, pulling at his hair.
Xane swaddled him in a masculine-scented embrace. “No, you’re not. She’s here somewhere, Spook. This island isn’t that big. Let’s find her, eh? Where were you? Where have you checked?”
“Everywhere. All right, not quite everywhere. I’ve not been to the cottages or the studio, but there’s no reason.” There wasn’t a single blessed reason why she’d go there. They were meeting back at the cave.
“Want me to go?” Luthor asked. Xane nodded, and his boyfriend set off without another word.
“He’s not going to find her there,” Spook insisted. He knew that in the depths of his guts.
Xane grasped his hands, peeling his fingers off the insides of his arms, which were now scratched raw. “Maybe, but it doesn’t hurt to check. Where were you supposed to meet?”
“Home,” he replied, whereupon Xane tugged him in that direction. The Pepperpot stood just as cold and empty as it had the last time he’d checked there. Spook slumped onto the sofa, head in his hands as Xane updated Luthor on where they were. As he’d predicted, there was no sign of Alle around the cottages. Cue another round of abduction horror scenarios bleeding through his brain, alongside an unhealthy dose of self-recrimination, and anticipatory horrors.
He genuinely thought he’d cried himself dry, but apparently not, for Xane knelt before him and wiped fresh tear tracks from his cheeks with his thumbs, before kissing his brow. “We’ll find her. She’s on this island somewhere, and probably no more than a few metres from where you last saw her. This place is dangerous at night. I thought you knew that?”
“She’s not there, Xane. I checked. I fucking checked, and there’s no way she could have walked past me without me seeing her. And I know it’s wild, and I know it’s rugged, and you don’t need to fucking judge me.”
“I’m not judging you,” Xane said, voice calm, though his eyes told a different story. “I’ve done plenty of wild and dumb things in my time. But humour me, please. Where were you? Is there a reason she might have got turned about?”
It didn’t matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t look Xane in the eyes. This was precisely the conversation he hadn’t wanted to have. It was the reason they’d waited until everyone had left.
“Xane…” He grit his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
“I don’t need to know the minutiae. Whatever kinky shit you were doing is between you and her.” His friend raised his hands. “I promise, no judgement. I know how you flow, and I know you wouldn’t have left her if you thought she was in any danger. You’re a sadist, not a psychopath, Spook Mortensen. All I’m asking is where were you?”
This was where the judgement would arrive. It would hit and then keep hitting until all the life was knocked out of him, and his mind shut down because he couldn’t take it anymore.Xane’s promises were irrelevant. He knew what was coming.
Turned out his reluctance to say was more than enough for Xane to draw conclusions. His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “Oh, you fucking idiot,” he groaned. “Tell me you didn’t. Why Spook? Why the fuck would you do that? Do anything there? Didn’t I fucking tell you?”
“You promised not to judge.” He rose waggling a finger.
Xane flipped onto his feet equally fast. “I will never judge you over your kinks, but that doesn’t mean I won’t call you a moron when it’s deserved. I told you to stay away from that bloody place. Did you listen to a flippin’ word? Like hell you did.”
“Xane, I get why you’ve bad associations with the place—”
“No, you don’t. You’ve no fucking idea. Shit!” Xane shoved him away and wore a groove in the rug, pacing with the back of his hand pressed fast to his mouth.
“It’s…” Spook began his defence, but never finished it. No explanation he could give would convince Xane he wasn’t an idiot, and the fact Alle was missing was confirmation. That was what they needed to focus on, not a dumb argument. Finding her was the priority, everything else could wait, even if that did leave him feeling like a pressure cooker.
When Luthor blew through the door like a Storm Rider, hair tangled and boots solid, the pair of them leapt towards him like he was their only salvation.
“Did something happen?” he asked, before doing a double take over Xane’s expression. He was ashen, his silvery eyes glassy and half mad. “Have you had some news or something?”
