Page 19 of Revive
After Xane left, Spook went back inside. “I know you saw that,” he said, moving towards the fireplace. He bent and set to lighting it, as Alle tiptoed out of the gloom. She’d pulled on his jumper, which covered her to mid-thigh, but her feet were bare, and her toes curled against the cold stone floor. He wasn’t dumb, there was no way she hadn’t had her face pressed to the glass of the upstairs window.
“What are you thinking?”
She wrapped her arms around herself and screwed up her mouth. “Honestly, I’m not sure.” She padded over to where he was, and watched as he got a fire going. It only took him a couple of minutes. He made a point of clearing the ashes each morning and setting new logs ready for when it inevitably got cold. A couple of homemade firelighters, and it was burning merrily.
Satisfied with at least one job well done, Spook sat back on his haunches and nodded towards the empty sofa. Alle took a perch, tucking her long legs beneath her, and pushing her feet into the depths of the sofa cushions. Spook swaddled her in the throw he’d offered up earlier. Miraculously, she let him.
“Dealbreaker or not?” he asked. He didn’t know what he’d do if she said yes.
“No,” she said, her hesitation obvious in the way she lengthened the word. “That is, I don’t think so. It’s not like I wasn’t aware, I’ve just never seen the two of you… I’ve never actually seen you kiss him before. I’m a little shocked.” She peeped across at him, before lowering her gaze to her hands again. “Also, weirdly turned on, and a tad horrified. I guess, I assumed it would simmer back down to the two of you just being friends once we were… Once I was here. And now that I’m saying that aloud, it sounds incredibly presumptuous of me.”
“I need him, Alle.” That was the simplest, most straightforward truth.
She reached out and clasped his hand. “I know. Shit!” She scrubbed her free hand through her hair, and grimaced when she realised it was still wet from the aftermath of what they’d been doing before Xane interrupted. She wiped her hand on a corner of the throw, then drew a circle over the back of his hand with her fingertip. “So not only are you kinky as hell, you’re bi, and polyamorous too.”
He’d never been much for labels and the way they tended to box you in. “If that’s how you need to think of it. Is that a problem?”
“You’re so at ease with him.”
It was true that much of the tension had dropped out of his relationship with Xane, now that they weren’t trying to fight what they felt. Not that it was wholly gone. He knew perfectly well how infuriated and frustrated Xane got with him. “It’s not always like that, Alle.”
“No?”
“He gets the worst of me too.”
“Right.”
Spook steepled his hands before him, resting them against his lips, before folding his fingers over the tops of one another. “Look, I’m not sure I’ve anything to say about him that I haven’t said before. Nothing that’s likely to magically put you at ease. I will say that maybe I lied to you a little about him in the past.” He bit his thumbnail. “Not deliberately. I was fooling myself. I told you that my decision to become celibate had nothing to do with him, and it didn’t really, but it also kind of did. We weren’t together back then, but it could have become much more than it was, if I hadn’t deliberately sabotaged it. I couldn’t… I didn’t want to get hurt again. I really couldn’t face that, and Xane…? It would’ve destroyed me. He’s not in the same place he was mentally back then. He’s far more settled.”
“Meaning?”
“I knew dating a sex addict would end in tears, so I took the possibility off the table.”
“But that’s changed now?”
“Alle, I’m not dating him.”
She rubbed her face again, then sagged against the sofa back, so she was looking at the ceiling. After a moment she lolled her head towards him “So what are you calling it? Super good friends with benefits?”
He shuffled so his head lay tilted towards her, and only an inch or so of the sofa back separated them. “We’re not calling it anything. We don’t need to. It’s other people that seem unable to wrap their heads around it.”
“Right. Not much for labels. Got it.” She fell quiet for a moment, leading him to wonder if he’d screwed up. He dragged his nails up the inside of his wrist, making himself wince, before he hurriedly pulled his sleeve down over his hand.
“If I asked you, would you tell me about it?”
“Huh?” His brows furrowed, fearing she wanted him to disgorge everything in excruciating detail that he wasn’t even sure he could recall.
“How your relationship with him has reached the point it’s at?”
“We’ve known each other a very long time, Alle.”
“Yes, but recently… I think you know what I’m asking. Also, going forwards, if you hook up with him, would you tell me?”
“Do you want to be told?”
She considered, then nodded. “I don’t need a blow by blow, but it’d be nice to have an awareness of the situation. I don’t want…” Alle frowned up at the cave ceiling some more. “I don’t want a lack of openness to create doubts or cause distrust or get in the way of us understanding one another. I don’t want people nudging each other when I’m around because they think I’m in the dark. I don’t want to be in the dark.”
“Okay,” he agreed. He’d have to be an idiot to refuse. She could have demanded all sorts of things, or vetoed the whole idea of sharing him in any sense, whereas all she’d asked was for a little openness and honesty.
