“Do you know how amazing you were that night? You took care of me after my dad had beaten the shit out of me.” He closed his eyes. “I thought my heart was going to fucking stop when you undressed me and you took your clothes off. And then you touched me and my cock just exploded. I thought you’d laugh at me or something: it was so fucking humiliating.” He paused, remembering that awful and wonderful and dreadful night. “But you didn’t. You made me feel like a man. I remember every word that you said: you told me it was going to be okay, and I didn’t know how it could be, but somehow you made the world go away, like it was just you and me.”
I was silent, remembering how crushed he’d been that night, how broken, and how the act of making love had somehow healed him. I wondered, now, if it had been the same for me. It was certainly the moment when my life took a completely different road from the one I’d been on.
His admission touched me deeply. I’d forgotten how painfully honest he could be. Even though he’d been so young when I’d known him before, or maybe because he’d been so young, he’d never held back with me. I couldn’t help thinking that in some ways I’d had the best of him then, before life had made him bitter. Although his early life had been far from perfect, he’d been the sweetest, kindest person; the gentlest, most thoughtful and selfless lover – and a good friend.
“That’s how you make me feel, Caro, like the world just goes away and it’s just you and me. I… I didn’t think I’d ever feel like that again. All those other women, I know it bothers you, but it was just sex. It wasn’t… this.”
“So, there was never anyone special, where it was more than just sex?”
He looked thoughtful.
“There was one girl, Stacey that I sort of dated for a while. She was… okay, but I wasn’t interested in anything long-term.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged and looked away.
“I heard her telling her girlfriend that she’d got me ‘tamed’.”
I winced inwardly. How dumb had this girl been to even think that she’d ‘tamed’ him, let alone to say it out loud?
“Oh, I can guess how much you enjoyed hearing that. What did you do?”
He twitched his shoulder in an irritated gesture.
“I slept with her best friend.”
I took a sharp intake of breath. “I see.”
He didn’t look guilty or upset, and I felt a brief frisson of sadness for Stacey and the way he’d treated her, especially when I knew he was capable of such gentleness.
“You asked me why Ches’s wife didn’t approve of me, and that’s the reason,” he went on. “Stacey was a friend of hers. And before you ask, no, I didn’t sleep with Amy – it was another girl. I would never do that to Ches.”
I took a deep breath.
“Well, I’m not surprised Amy doesn’t like you after you did that to her friend… and it’s not very reassuring to hear that you’ve shown your dick to half the female population of California – and Paris, or so I’ve heard – but that’s your business. But surely you see that you made things difficult for Ches.”
“How’s that?” he said, rather testily.
“You put him in the middle, making him choose between his best friend and his wife.”
“What?” he said, angrily. “How was I making him ‘choose’?”
“Well, I bet you anything Amy would have said she didn’t want you in the house if you were going to treat her friends like that, and Ches would have had to find some way of defending what was, frankly, indefensible behavior.”
I paused, wondering if Ches would have explained about Sebastian’s history – our history – as a reason for his friend’s actions. I hated the thought that Sebastian had used ‘all those women’ because he’d imagined that I’d left him without a backwards glance. It was such an ugly distortion of the truth.
“You get on your fucking high horse damn quickly, Caro,” he snapped.
I was taken aback at his angry tone. “I’m just saying…”
“What? What the fuck are you ‘just saying’?” he said, his voice growing louder with each syllable. “You were a fucking journalist, Caro! You could have found me any time if you’d wanted to. It would have been so easy for you. So easy! I didn’t even know your fucking last name. I was so desperate to find you that I even tried to see that prick of a husband of yours, but he slammed the door in my face and called my CO. I was on fucking punishment duties for weeks after that. But you didn’t give a shit, did you? It’s just lies. You just tell me what you think I want to hear. How can I ever trust you?”