Page 44 of Refrain
“Hey, I know you don’t want to think—”
“Xane,” Spook stepped back from him already wary.
“I’m sorry, I just need to ask… I want to clarify.”
Bugger was already looking mutinous.
“Flynn—”
“Xane.”
He raised his hands. “At the hospital you implied…but you don’t actually think she was involved? I mean, you know she wasn’t.”
“It’s irrelevant.”
“She’s still carrying a torch for you.”
“I don’t want to know. Xane, please. It’s too much of a head fuck. I don’t need anyone’s shitty siblings bollocksing up my life. I don’t need her in my brain. It’s too much… I can’t… I can’t think about her… I refuse to think about her…us. No.”
“Yeah, but why?” Xane asked, determinedly keeping his voice soft.
Nevertheless, Spook shot him a watery glare. “You know why.”
He didn’t answer immediately, instead busying himself with coiling a stray lead. “You still want her.”
He didn’t look at Spook, but he could feel his glower. No confirmation necessary.
“I’m going to go get us some more wood.” He picked up the log basket. “Back in a bit.”
Outside, the wind was howling, making the trees bend. The woodshed sat at the side of the house. Xane stared at it without adding anything to the basket. It wasn’t as if he’d had a firm concept of what he’d find when he located Spook. Various possibilities had presented themselves over the months, none of them exactly like reality. What they did have in common was the scratchiness, the slight discordance to them that stopped it all being warm and cosy. Instead, there were burrs in the blankets.
He flopped down on the woodpile and pulled out his phone. Scanned back through scores of old messages, then photographs. Each was a window into a different time. Good days and bad. Memories worn down and smoothed by overfamiliarity. Him, Spook, Ash, Luthor, Paul, Elspeth, Ric… Dani.
A candid shot of Alle wrapped around Spook in Monaco that neither of them realised he’d taken.
Likely he’d been over hard on her these last months, but she’d been on his back constantly, full of fears and expectations, and he hadn’t known what to do, or how to deal with the fragment of knowledge he’d been handed. It wasn’t as if things had been exactly peachy for him either during that time.
Xane sat until his knees ached from the cold, his nose was dripping, and the wind had dried the salt tracks on his face so that when he set to the task he’d come out to do, it felt as if a mask were cracking.
“That which doesn’t kill us,” he muttered as he tossed logs into the basket. “Ouch! Fucking splinter.” He sucked on the wound, loading the rest of the wood one-handed.
The fire had been reduced to ashes by the time he went back indoors. All the lights were out. There was no sign of Spook. Xane cracked the door to the bedroom. Inside was equally dark.
“Spook?”
Nothing stirred, but he could just about make out his shape beneath the duvet. “Want anything?” he asked, but didn’t get a response. “Okay, I’ll check in on you again in a bit.”
“Stay,” came the muffled reply.
“What’s that?”
“I’d like you to stay.”
-18-
Spook
Time was indeterminate in the dark. There was no means of measuring it. Seconds could be hours and vice versa. He’d crept in here not long after Xane had gone out. One moment he’d been functioning, then he was reeling again courtesy of invisible gut punches that came out of nowhere.
