Always and Only You

Chapter Sixty-Eight

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Present Day

After Simon leaves, I feel heavy and listless. I try to finish my painting of Lower Hadwell, but in my efforts at perfection, I add too many things and end up ruining it.

I steadfastly ignore my easel, but when Gil has to go into Exeter for a meeting on Tuesday, I get so bored I pull it out again. I stretch the paper ready for painting and draw a quick outline of the village with a pencil, intending to have another go at the scene I destroyed a few days earlier by too much tinkering. But when it’s time to add paint, I think of all the careful strokes I’m going to have to make for the painting to work and I just can’t bring myself to start. Instead, I dip my brush in a blob of bright crimson paint and swipe it across the canvas. And then I add emerald green, then fuchsia.

I’m not thinking about what I want to create; I’m thinking about how Simon’s visit gave me a strange vibe, as if he was here in my arms and in my bed, but not really here. He seemed distracted, eager to get back home. But is that just my paranoia talking?

I’ve been much more anxious since my accident, much more prone to getting an idea in my head and running with it, no matter how ridiculous it might be. Trying to work out what’s real and what isn’t is making my brain spin in three different directions at once.

I add this into my painting, picking up a narrow brush and loading it with an egg-yolk yellow. It feels good to stab my brush onto the paper, adding sharp lines and dots to the swirls of deep colour. But then I stop thinking about Simon and think about myself, how I feel so different from the person I was before the accident, but also feel essentially ‘me’ at the same time. It’s so confusing. I pick a deep, sad midnight blue and a wide brush and I cover huge swathes of the bright colour with its heaviness, hardly paying any attention to shape or design, just to the motion of the brush, what feels right in that moment.

I stop not when I feel I’m finished, but when I’m too mentally exhausted to go on. When I stand back and survey my work, I don’t see beauty. I don’t see skill. I just see a mess. I see myself.

I turn away, unable to look at it, and retreat from the living room to my bedroom, where I bury myself under the covers, then fall into a restless sleep.

* * *

I dream of white sandy beaches and brilliant blue skies, of palm trees and seashells, and a white-painted cottage with a veranda that leads out onto a deserted beach. The morning sun is golden, peeking through the slats in the shutters, highlighting the creases on the rumpled snowy-white sheets.

I feel the warmth of a body spooned tightly around me, and my mind doesn’t just wake from its dozy state but my body does too. His breathing is even, his muscles lax, and I enjoy the feel of him wrapped possessively around me, but after a few minutes I’m hungry for a different kind of touch.

I wriggle out from under his arm and push myself up onto one elbow so I can see him properly. He’s so beautiful asleep. I reach out and trace the curve of his cheekbones, then draw the tip of my finger over each eyebrow in turn. I lean closer and press a kiss to the tip of his nose.

He’s all I ever wanted. My Gil.

My hair tickles his face and he brushes it away. I’m about to lie back down, leave him to sleep, when he reaches out, pulls me down on top of him. We’re pressed together now, torso to torso, and his other hand comes up behind my neck and draws me down towards his lips.

The first kiss is so soft, so deliciously slow and gentle, that I forget to breathe. He might have been dozing just a few seconds ago, but from the way his lips brush and tease mine, I know he is now fully in control of all his faculties. And maybe some of mine. When his tongue explores my parted lips, I let out a deep sigh and slide my hand up his bare back. I’m fascinated by the planes and dips of the muscles and I map out each and every one.

Gil makes a noise deep in his throat and flips me so I’m lying beneath him. His lips never leave mine for a millisecond, but his hands begin to move over me, touching me with both confidence and familiarity – he knows my body so well – but also with tenderness and awe. I feel … treasured.

And then his hands move lower, skimming my knees, drawing a lazy path up my inner thigh, one finger hooked around the hem of my nightdress. The slip of the silk over my skin only adds to the torrent of sensations. My breathing becomes ragged and uneven.

I bring my hands around to his chest and give him a shove so he falls onto his back and we reverse our positions. A low chuckle rumbles through his chest and he lets his arms fall flat out on the crumpled sheet, spreadeagled in surrender. I push myself up, swing one leg over him and come to sit low on his belly and then, as his eyes grow dark, I cross my arms, reach for my nightdress and pull it slowly up over my head.

For a few seconds he lies there, then he blinks softly and reaches up for me, his fingertips making contact with my ribcage, where they drift and tease. ‘I can’t believe you’re all mine,’ he says. There’s desire in his tone, but wonder too.

We make love, slowly, tenderly at first, but then any gentleness is swept away by a building need to consume and be consumed. But even amid the building pleasure I never lose sight of him, and he never loses sight of me. We lock eyes. I don’t need him to tell me he loves me. It’s there in every touch, every look.

Just as everything is rising to a crescendo, I hear a noise off in the background. I try to ignore it, concentrate on letting the waves of sensation take me to their peak, when it happens again, louder this time. It sounds like … it sounds like someone knocking on the door.

‘Erin?’

In a whoosh of sensation, suddenly I’m ripped from one world into another. The air is chilly around me, the light beyond my eyelids dimmer. I snap them open as the bedroom door brushes against the carpet.

And there is Gil, fully clothed, looking concerned. It takes a moment to make sense of how he managed to teleport from one place to the other, but then reality crashes through my brain. I roll over and bury my face in the pillow, cheeks flaming.

Oh, God …

It was like I was revisiting that dream. Writing the ending that surely would have happened if I hadn’t woken sooner.

‘Are you okay?’ His voice is soft with concern, which only makes other parts of me burn along with my face.

I nod, still hiding in the pillow, and let out a muffled ‘uh-huh’.

‘When I came back and it seemed as if the house was empty, I got worried.’

I lift my head but avoid making eye contact. ‘I, um … just needed a nap.’

‘Okay.’ He hovers at the door, not indecisively, but as if he knows exactly what he wants to do, where he wants to be. I sense he’d stand there like a sentry if he could, only leaving his post if he was convinced I was all right.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, flicking a glance towards him and adding a weak smile.

‘Do you need anything?’

My body is screaming an answer I don’t want to hear.

‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ I say, checking the clock and realizing it’s almost evening. ‘I should probably get up if I don’t want to be awake all night. I’ll be … I’ll be out in just a second.’

I can tell I’m not giving the most convincing performance of my life but he reluctantly nods, then the door closes softly behind him. I lift my head and stay frozen in that position until I hear his footsteps retreating towards the main part of the house, and then I collapse back down onto the mattress and let out a silent scream.

* * *

Gil is silhouetted against the windows when I eventually pluck up the courage to enter the living room. He’s staring at the easel. I want to rush over, to pull my painting from it and turn it face down on the table, but it’s already too late. Embarrassment is a corkscrew within my gut, its sharp tip tearing through me, turning, churning everything as it goes.

‘E … This is …’

‘A mess?’ I ask with a laugh, feigning nonchalance.

‘It’s …’ He turns and looks at me, his brows pinched as he searches for a reply. ‘It’s beautiful.’

No need to fake the next laugh. ‘If you say so.’

He turns and walks over to me, takes me by the hand and leads me back towards the easel. Electricity jolts through me at his touch, and I get a full and X-rated flashback to the dream I’ve been valiantly trying to shove into one of my memory’s many trapdoors.

‘I do say so,’ he responds, staring at the painting. ‘It’s not pretty, but look at all that colour, all that life. It’s … honest.’

He turns to me to see how I’m weighing up what he just said. I want to look away, but I can’t. Even if he’s unable to fully put it into words, just as I couldn’t when I was creating it, he sees everything that’s there, everything I spilled onto the canvas. And I can tell he really believes it’s beautiful.

‘You said I should decorate the house more, introduce some texture and colour … Wouldn’t this be perfect? Would you … would you let me have it?’

I break eye contact and look beyond him to the river, where the sky is a warm heather-grey streaked with yellow. I don’t want the picture, but I’m not sure I want Gil to have it either. It’s too raw. Too personal.

‘Let me think about it,’ I say as I head to the kitchen to collect the cup of tea waiting for me on the counter.