New Leaves, No Strings (30 page)

I heard him groan and he buried his
face in my neck as he came. As he fell backwards against the slope of the bath,
he took me with him in his arms. He held me tightly to his chest, one hand firmly
clasping the nape of my neck, cradling my face into his shoulder as I sobbed
and sobbed with relief. As my body slowly relaxed and I took some deep breaths I
realised that he hadn’t said a word throughout, not called my name, my pet name
or even uttered any obscenities. I automatically tensed up, something was off, something
was wrong. I tried to pull back to look at him but his arms tightened around me
and he firmly pushed my head back into his neck.

‘No don’t,’ he whispered.

‘Gabe what is it? What’s wrong? Did
I hurt you?’ I asked as I stroked the back of his neck. He’d started to tremble
and I could hear him breathing quickly, he sounded like he was having a panic
attack. I struggled again to sit up, but he squeezed me even tighter. ‘Gabe
you’re shaking. Please you’re scaring me, what’s wrong?’

He took a long deep sigh as I
struggled to pull out of his arms. ‘I’m sorry I can’t do this’ he whispered.

 I gasped as every muscle in my body
went rigid with shock. It was like a double fisted blow to my stomach. “
I
can’t do this.’
He’d just said that, just said those words to me after the
last few days? After what he’d said this morning?
Suddenly I felt like
I
was having a panic attack. I started writhing in his arms again, but he held on
so tightly I couldn’t get out, so I started hammering my fists on his shoulders.

‘Gabe let me go. I can’t believe you’re
ending this and while you’re still inside me? Let. me. fucking. GO,’ I yelled.

I heard him gasp and he released me
immediately and I sat upright trying to fight back the tears that were blurring
my vision. I couldn’t even see his face properly to try and read on it what the
hell had gone wrong. How could I’ve let this happen to me again? The first guy
I’d really liked, let get close to me and he’d just dumped me?

‘O god no, I’m sorry that’s not
what I meant, o shit Mia. Baby I’m so sorry that’s not what I meant,’ he said.

I could hear his voice breaking as
he tried to pull me back to him. I pushed him away with my palms, even though
he was still buried deep inside me I didn’t want his arms around me. I wiped my
tears away confused and tried to scan his face for answers and I saw that he had
some tears on his cheeks. He quickly tried to wipe his arm across his face but
I grabbed it, stopping him as I drew in deep breaths. What the hell was going
on? My head was spinning.

‘You’re
not
ending things
with me?’

‘No, christ no Mia,’ he reached up
and tried to wipe my tears away but I pushed his hand away.

‘You just said it to me Gabe. You just
said the words “I can’t do this” I heard you.’

‘Mia I’m not breaking up with you …
I ….’ he shook his head and looked down.

‘So what is it? It’s the sex isn’t
it? Was it me? Wasn’t it good for you?’

‘No, it was amazing,’ he said with
a heavy sigh.

‘Then I don’t understand. What’s
going on Gabe? Talk to me, this isn’t fair.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘You made it clear I couldn’t talk
to you about this.’

‘About what? Gabe my imaginations
going crazy here, you can’t talk to me about what?’

‘This,’ he sighed as he grabbed my
hand and placed it over his heart. It was pounding even faster than mine. I snatched
my hand away and sat up straight.

‘This is about what you said to me
this morning, about your feelings for me?’ He nodded, he couldn’t even look me
in the eyes. ‘Why are you suddenly upset now? I thought we were ok? Gabe you
look so broken. Talk to me.’

‘You’ll panic if I do, you’ll feel
pressured,’ he whispered looking distraught.

‘Gabe I think I’ve shown you
tonight that no one makes me do anything I don’t want to, so I’m telling you
that no matter how I badly I may have reacted this morning I’m still here and I
want you to talk to me and tell me what is going on. You promised not to lie to
me and leaving things like this is as good as lying to me.’

‘I love you Mia, so much,’ he said in
a rush and exhaled sharply. ‘I know it’s too soon, it’s way too soon. I also know
that you don’t want to hear it, but I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t
know how to deal with these feelings that I have for you. I’ve tried saying
nothing all day and it’s not working for me, it’s eating me up inside. I need
to be able to tell you, to show you.’

He glanced up at me quickly and I
could see he was terrified of me bolting, part of me wanted to, he was so full
on, but part of me thought about how I’d just felt when I thought he was ending
our arrangement, it had hurt,
really
hurt. I didn’t want this to end.
Could I just learn to deal with him sharing his feelings like this?

‘There I’ve said it now Mia, so if
you‘re going to run, you’d better do it and do it fast. You’d better end it
with me right now, before you hurt me anymore, because I can’t keep it in.’

‘I don’t want to end it Gabe, but
you scare me. It’s too much. Why can’t you just feel what you want to feel and
keep it to yourself?’

He shook his head and bit his lip. ‘No.
I can’t, I won’t. What if I lost you and you’d never known how I felt? I
couldn’t live with myself, not again.’

‘Not again? You didn’t lose me this
morning Gabe, you told me how you felt and I had a bad reaction to it, which is
my issue, but I’m still here aren’t I?’ I scanned his face confused. ‘
Not
again?
You weren’t talking about me were you? Then who?’ He put his hand
over his eyes and inhaled deeply and it hit me. ‘
Your mum
?’ I asked
softly and I detected a slight nod from him. ‘O Gabe what happened, please talk
to me,’ I grabbed both of his hands and held them tightly.

‘I can’t, I’ve never … ’

‘Gabe please,’ I watched him bit his
lips.

‘Mia please don’t, just leave it.’

I took a deep breath and made an
instant decision that I was going to set aside my issues and help him, this was
about him, not me and for some inexplicable reason I wanted to help him, I
wanted him to smile again.

‘Gabe,’ I said softly and ran my
hands through his hair, stroking his forehead with my thumbs. ‘You just told me
that you love me, if you can’t talk to me, who else can you talk to?’

‘It’s hard for me. I’ve never told
anyone, not even my dad,’ he whispered as he took his hand away and quickly
looked up at me, his face full of pain.

‘So share it. I always feel better
when I’ve shared with Lexi. If you’re scared of it going any further, I promise
you it won’t. I also promise that I’m not going to run ok? So talk to me.’

He sighed and I could feel his body
trembling under me. I looked down at his face, but he looked down and remained
silent for what seemed at eternity as I just stroked his hair. I didn’t know
what else to do and it always soothed me. This was horrible, Gabe was so
confident and in control, I hated seeing him broken like this. He suddenly
spoke, slowly and quietly as he looked down at his chest. I had to strain to hear
him.

‘It was Christmas eve. I was only 8
… I wanted to open one of my presents early and she … she said no. So I had a
tantrum and told her … I told her I hated her. I didn’t, of course I didn’t. God
I can still see her face, she was so hurt Mia …’

‘It’s ok, go on,’ I whispered as he
stalled and I squeezed his fingers. He took another few deep breaths and stayed
silent for a while, so did I, waiting.

‘I stormed up to my room and … and
she came running up the stairs after me and … fell. She was … o god she was … 7
months pregnant and she suffered massive internal bleeding and …’ he couldn’t
continue and he started to sob and shake.

‘She died?’ I gasped in horror. He
couldn’t even look at me, I released his hand and he covered his eyes again. ‘And
the baby too?’ I whispered. He nodded and I felt tears streaming down my face
as well and wiped them on my one arm as I ran my hand through his hair again.

‘It was my fault Mia and my last
words to her were I hate you.
I hate you.
’

‘
O Gabe, come here.’
I gently
pulled him up towards me and wrapped my arms around him and kissed his hairline
again and again and stroked his neck as my heart broke into a thousand tiny pieces
in sympathy with his. He wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my
chest. ‘What can I do?’ I whispered. ‘Let me help.’

‘Just hold me, please just hold me,’
he sobbed and I tightened my grip on him and lay my cheek on top of his head. ‘I
can’t not tell you how I feel Mia, not after that, not again, please don’t ask
me to do that.’

I got it, his possessiveness, his
need to define our relationship. “
I don’t like people leaving me”
he’d
said to me in the club. He was as scared of losing me, as I was of letting him
in. I wondered if this was why he’d usually stuck to one night stands, was he
as scared of getting attached to someone as I was? It made me question exactly
what he’d seen in me then, to make him change his mind so quickly.

‘That must have been so traumatic
for you Gabe, I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through, but you
were a child, it wasn’t your fault,’ I whispered. ‘You have the biggest heart
Gabe Austin, even I can see that after only a week. Your mum will have seen it
too. She’ll have known unequivocally that you loved her, just as she’ll have
loved you, her own son, with all of her heart.’ I kissed the top of his head
and his breathing began to slow as I continued to stroke his hair and the back
of his neck, as I gently rocked him. ‘Sssshhhh I’m right here Gabe, I’m not
going anywhere. We can sit here as long as you need to ok?’ I whispered and
kissed his hair again and felt him nod.

The foam bubbles had all popped
away and my legs started to seize up, there was a clock right opposite me, but
I never once looked at it. I imagined losing my mum or Lexi and the thought of
it was awful. He needed someone now and that happened to be me, so I wasn’t
moving a muscle until he was ready to. As the water finally turned from
lukewarm to cold he raised his head off my chest and stared into my eyes with a
look of tenderness and awe.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

‘Thank you for trusting me to tell
me,’ I whispered back as I took his face in my hands and softly kissed his
lips, he responded so gently I no longer felt the coldness of the water, or the
aching of my legs.

He hung onto me tightly and lost
himself in our kissing for a few minutes and I felt him harden again inside me,
but sex was the last thing on my mind. I was still worried about him, to have
gone through that and never have spoken to anyone about it was awful. When he
came up for air, I carefully lifted myself up and off him and stepped out of
the bath, holding out my hand for him to follow. I pulled the plug out of the
bath as he removed the condom that was still attached to him and I undid the catch
on the remaining handcuff and let it clatter to the bathroom floor as he
reached around my back and removed my cold wet bra and squatted down to peel my
sodden stockings from my thighs, kissing each in turn.

‘God you’re freezing Mia,’ he whispered.
He grabbed my dressing gown off the back of my door and wrapped it around me
tightly and kissed my forehead. I handed him a towel which he secured around
his waist. As he brushed his teeth, I threw my clothes in the laundry and
refilled our water glasses and put them in the bedroom. He was crouched down
putting his folded jeans and clean underwear into the bottom drawer and smiled
up at me.

I went to brush my teeth and as I
finished and turned around he was standing behind me, naked, with a condom on
his fresh erection. He didn’t say a word, he just lifted me straight up so that
my eyes were level with his, my feet dangling and carried me back to the
bedroom switching off the bathroom and main bedroom lights as he went through.
He’d just left the one bedside table on, which gave a warm soft pink glow to
the room. He stood me up at the side of the bed and slowly untied my dressing
gown letting it drop to the floor then he scooped me back up into his arms and
carefully laid me down in the bed, climbed over me and very gently entered me
as I gasped.

He remained silent and never even
kissed me as he gazed down at me. I just followed his lead, he obviously needed
this. He just held me by the gently by shoulders and I gripped his biceps and
our eyes never lost contact he slowly made love to me and I rose and fell to
meet him. All I could hear was the sound of our breathing. This wasn’t fucking,
it wasn’t raw sex for sex’s sake. I just felt a need in him to connect with me
in the most tender, gentle and intimate way he knew how. Even without any
frantic pumping, stroking, licking, kissing, sucking or words, I felt a deep
connection to him this time, so as we came together our eyes still locked, it felt
even more intense than ever and I cried.

This time when he whispered the
words ‘
I love you,’
as he searched my eyes, I took a deep breath so as
not to panic. He kissed me and I kissed him back and held him tight. He pulled
the duvet back over us and we fell asleep entwined in each other’s arms.