Wildflowers (8 page)

“Alex was a mistake,” I say into his hair. I can hardly make the words come.

He pulls away suddenly.
I was a mistake too, though, wasn’t I?

I can’t let him look so deep into me and lie to him. After all my conviction of communicating with him without words, there’s something liberating in talking to him like this, finally.

“That first time with you in the barn was a mistake—I mean, I never meant for it to happen like that.
You
weren’t a mistake, though. Joe and I had an open relationship, but I just felt like I was being unfaithful. I didn’t know why at first, but it was my feelings for you that made me unfaithful whether we had sex or not. And as we got closer, I started to feel like every time I was with Joe, I was being unfaithful to
you
. But at the same time, that terrified me.” I was so hung up on the idea of being in love with Joe that I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t.

I don’t understand
, Sam signs, and when I try to reach for him, he pulls away so forcefully he almost falls off the bed.

“I’m trying to show you.” I hold my hand out, dropping it to the bed when he doesn’t take it.

You left me at the commune!
He sobs.
When I came to find you at the library, it was to say good-bye. A
better
good-bye. I just wanted to see you one last time. I didn’t think you’d really offer to stay with me, but when you did, I started to hope you still cared a little. And it was stupid to hope, but I did, and then you….

“Please,” I say, holding out my hands, but with impeccable timing the pretty nurse draws back the curtain.

I slip off the bed. I can’t do this with an audience. I can’t bear watching Sam cry.

“Everything okay?” the nurse asks, even though he can see everything obviously isn’t.

I nod and slowly back up toward the door.

Sam curls on his side and buries his face in the pillow.

“Oh,” the nurse says, looking between us. “I thought you might want to help Sam with a shower before you go.”

“Not today,” I say as I step past him out of the room.

“Xavi.”

I hear Sam even though his voice is barely existent, and I stop and turn. This is killing me.

Take me to the shower
, he signs.

Not today
, I sign back. I feel wiped out, exhausted, numb.

I want to talk.

How can I refuse him that?

THE SHOWERS
that Sam used yesterday stink. I tell reception that there is some sort of plumbing problem, and they let me wheel Sam out of the ward to use the showers on the floor below. We don’t communicate the entire way, but every time I glance at his red-rimmed eyes, it hurts a little more.

The shower cubicles are big enough to wheel Sam into and crouch down in front of him if I get in the shower, but that is all.

I don’t know what to say now, so I pull out the brown paper parcel from the pocket of my trousers and hand it to him. “It didn’t seem right to open it.”

Because I’m not dead?
he signs, raising an eyebrow.

That’s the first time I’ve detected bitterness from him. I sit down on the wet shower floor and lean my head back against the tiles.

“I fucked up, Sam.” I’ve no problem admitting it. “I fucked up with you. I fucked up with Joe. I fucked up with my parents.” I tell myself I’m not drowning in self-pity, but I am, a bit. “I just want to try and undo some of the mess, okay? That’s all. I want to be as honest with you as I’m being with myself, but if you don’t think you can trust me again, tell me, all right?”

I hate this thing
, Sam signs as he climbs out of the wheelchair and sits on the wet tiles next to me.

He holds out the parcel.
Open it
, he signs.

So I do.

To be honest, I knew what it was all along. I trace the faded gold on the ripped red cover, trail my finger down the skinny, warped binding. I open the back page and see his shakily written name.

Read inside the front cover
, he signs.

He watches my face as I read, brushes away my tears with his thumbs, and then presses in close to me.

The day I showed you this was the day I gave my heart to you. For me there was only ever you.

The words are written in Sam’s spiky mismatched lettering. I stifle a sob.

It was the only thing I had that was mine that I could give to you… that I knew you’d understand meant something, anyway. Please keep it
, he signs.

“How did you end up on that commune?” The words just come out. I’ve never asked him this and I don’t expect him to answer, but Sam looks at me as if he’s weighing his words before he opens his mouth.

In Iran we lived in this little stone house near a river.
One day I was playing outside and saw some people from our village kneeling along the riverbank. A soldier walked behind them and shot them one by one. My father had been taken away by soldiers. My mother was scared and we ran away in the night. We spent a few weeks traveling in the backs of lorries and came to England.

I want to know more, but I’m not going to interrupt. This is the most he’s ever told me.

She asked for work at farms, but no one wanted us. Then we found the commune. She got sick soon after we arrived and died in the caravan.

“The caravan you lived in?”

He nods, his eyes glassy, staring at the tiles behind me.

Afterwards Travis helped me bury her. He felt guilty. He never asked me to leave. We buried her in a field. I planted flowers all around her.

“How long was she sick for?”

Sam shrugs.
I don’t know. Not long.
When I got sick, it was the same. I knew I was going to die like she had.

“Did Travis help you take her to a hospital?”

Sam shook his head.
We couldn’t go to a hospital. We weren’t supposed to be in this country. She wasn’t supposed to be working for Travis. It would get him into trouble and we’d be sent back to Iran. She said if we were sent back we’d be killed. We could never go back. She said I had to stay in England when she was gone.

I bow my head. “I’m sorry. Is that why you didn’t want to go to a hospital? Because you were afraid they’d sent you back to Iran?”

No.
When Sam looks at me his intensity no longer terrifies me as it once did.
I was so tired of everything. So tired of being alone. It’s easy to let go when there’s no point in holding on. Whether I’m here or not, you’ll still be gone.

“But I’m not gone, though!” I don’t know how to show him how much I mean this. “I’m here. And you’re not alone. You don’t have to be alone. Whatever happens, I’m with you. I want to stay with you.” I glance down at my hands. “Do you believe me?”

His gaze searches mine. “I want to,” he mouths.

“But you’re scared to, right?”

He nods.

“I will show you. I will prove it to you, I swear.” I take his hand. “Tell me what the consultant said.”

For a minute, Sam frowns and bites his lip, unable to hide the war going on in the amber depths of his eyes. Eventually he signs,
I have to have dialysis for the rest of my life. I need a transplant. I need looking after…. You should have let me go.

“Not an option. I want to look after you,” I say, swallowing every selfish emotion that threatens to make this more about me—my shock, my grief—than about him.

Right now we are here. We are alive. We can deal with this—we can deal with anything, however complicated it gets. I will not hold back anymore. Our time together is too important, too precious.

There is a high shelf on the wall by the door. I stand up briefly and place my book on top of it. Then I turn the shower on warm and sit back down beneath it, linking fingers with Sam as the water soaks through our clothes like summer rain.

“Kiss me,” I say softly as I lean forward and brush my lips against his. I pull Sam close to me and move us out of the heaviest spray.

“Don’t do this lightly,” he mouths, his gaze pleading. “Only if you mean it.”

I kiss his still-open mouth and hear his gasp as our tongues touch. The back of his gown is open and I press my fingertips lightly against his skin. The water drowns out the small sounds we make.

All we do is kiss and kiss. All I do is fall a little more in love with him with every second that passes. It’s impossible to feel this much. I don’t understand it.

I want to be the water that rains down on us, the air we breathe, the blood rushing through our veins—except I am so wet and heavy I feel chained up in my clothes. Without breaking away from him, I pull at the buttons on my shirt and wriggle out of it. Sam moves to straddle my lap, his eyes squeezed shut as he deepens the kiss, causing me to groan and push my hips up against his. His fingers stroke my face, my hair, as gentle as feathers.

I pull away briefly to catch my breath. “You sure you want to do this?” I whisper breathlessly.

“I always want to do this,” he mouths, and for the first time in so long, he smiles.

It hits me like a sweet shot of electricity zipping up my spine, and I bite my lip as I gaze up at him. “Take your gown off,” I say softly.

Without taking my eyes off him, I reach up above my head and turn the shower to a slightly warmer setting.

We get stuck in the gown’s ties behind his back, and in the end he impatiently shoves the thing over his head.

It’s not as if I haven’t seen him like this before, but I want to savor this moment, this moment when he is mine and I am his. His soaking hair has fallen in his eyes. He is skinny and bruised, and low down on his back, where I can’t see right now but only feel beneath my fingertips, there are two heavy dressings where tubes have been stuck into him. I have never seen anyone so beautiful, anyone so absolutely perfectly made for me, anyone I would lay down my life for without question.

The water runs off him in hundreds of rivers and I want to chase each one with my tongue. There’s a delicate flush on his chest and neck. I trace the outline of it with my fingers, and I watch his eyes close and his hard cock lift at the sensation. He is so easy.

I move my legs from between his and open them wide.
I really should have taken my shoes off earlier
, I think distantly as I kick them off against the door, but Sam leans in to kiss me and I stop thinking entirely for a while.

I used to worry that Sam only had a crush on me because no one else gave him a chance. I used to think the intensity with which I would sometimes catch him staring at me was just him channeling all the emotion he couldn’t show anyone else. I don’t think that anymore.

I stay still as his fingers dance across my chest. The shower is barely trickling through now, but the room is warm. He’s studying me, and I’m letting him. I don’t want to hide anything. I’ve never enjoyed being studied before but I want him to know me, to touch me like no one else.

“Lie down with me,” he mouths, his fingers fumbling with the buttons on my jeans. “Be with me.”

“You want to make me come?”

A fiery blush stains his cheeks and he glances away, thick lashes dark against his skin.
So beautiful.

I reach across him so I can make a pillow of my shirt for his head, and we lie on our sides next to each other, awkward and uncomfortable, and yet somehow even this is perfect too.

After bringing his hand to my mouth, I kiss his fingers before letting go and shifting so that I can push my trousers roughly down my thighs.

The way he strokes himself and stares at my cock makes me hard as fuck. Smiling, I bat his hand away and trace swirls across his ribs, circling his nipples—teasing him. He watches my every movement through half-lidded eyes and arches into my touch as though all he needs is more, more, more.

“Tell me… what you want,” I whisper, pausing between my words to lick along his jaw.

But instead of telling me, Sam murmurs incoherently, touching me, pulling me close.

I lap at his pulse point, drop lower to drag my teeth over his nipple. I bury my face in his armpit and feel his body quake and squirm. This is what I want. I want all of him.

Squeezing my thumbs slowly back and forth along the ridges of his erection, I watch for clues of how close he is. But his mouth is open, his head back, his eyes squeezed shut tight, so I keep working him with both hands, meeting the tiny thrusts of his hips, and letting him fuck into my fists, the pressure so tight it must be a little painful. Sam gasps in breath after breath and then stops breathing entirely for a few seconds as warmth squirts into my hands over and over.

He opens his eyes and smiles dopily at me, his hips still moving. My fingers are slick with his come. I want to rub it all over him—I want to rub it all over me.

Keeping his gaze on mine, he takes hold of one of my sticky hands.

“You,” I say, and he just smiles as he slides our fingers together, too relaxed to be embarrassed now. I bring our joined hands to my cock, loving the slipperiness, loving the feel of him sleepily jerking me off. I don’t try and make it last. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I don’t even watch our hands; holding eye contact with Sam is kind of doing me in. Fuck, this is intimate. I dip my head, not breaking his gaze for a second. I open my mouth against his, breathing his air, feeling connected to something basic and necessary and blindingly bright.
Oh
, I think.
Oh fuck.

After, we curl up together in the shower. Sam traces patterns through the mess on my stomach and I run my fingers up and down his spine. The shower drips raindrops on his hip in a hypnotic rhythm.

“That has got to be the best sex in the worst place I’ve ever had,” I say eventually, and Sam snorts softly, his breath warm against my stomach.

As soon I see him shiver just slightly, I suggest we clean ourselves up. I wrap him in the thin hospital towel the pretty nurse gave him and pull on my soaking clothes. I realize my excuse of somehow falling in the shower is not going to fool anyone, but I’m past giving a fuck. So, so past it.