Somewhere New (Isle of Doughnut #1)

Chapter Seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ASTER

I groaned into my hands.

Callum’s words caused two vastly contradictory reactions in my startled brain. One side descended into party mode, confused as to why I hadn’t thrown myself on top of the hottest man alive and smushed my face into his impossibly gorgeous face yet. While the other side spun out of control with fear. I’d been so sure Callum didn’t like me. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do if he did.

Apparently I’d want to simultaneously engage in mountain sex while crying and demanding promises he wouldn’t ever hurt me.

So sexy. So very smooth.

‘I’m going to go.’

I emerged from the cosy cave I’d made with my hands and was greeted by Callum’s thighs. They were nice thighs, but they weren’t what I’d expected to see. In fact, I’d argue they were the nicest thighs known to humankind. Thick and muscled, they filled the tight jeans Callum must wriggle into each morning. A tear above his knee revealed a patch of golden-brown skin covered in sparse black hair.

Before I met Callum, I wouldn’t have said hairy knees were attractive. But he could have hairy knuckles and I’d be salivating.

I craned my neck to look up at his face. ‘Why are you standing right now?’

He’d been smiling when I’d hidden away in my impromptu cave of self-loathing. Now his face was a closed book. Which meant he was hurting. Callum didn’t hide away unless he was trying to keep the softest parts of himself safe.

‘I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Aster.’ Callum shuffled, clearly torn between talking this out and fleeing across the mountains. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘You haven’t made me uncomfortable.’ I hooked my finger into the tear at his knee and tugged. ‘Sit down and let me explain.’

A moment of dithery indecision, during which I wondered if I lost sight of Callum now whether he would disappear into the wilderness forever, before he sank onto the blanket.

‘Sorry for blurting that out,’ I began. ‘It was tactless.’

‘It’s my fault.’ Callum face remained a blank slate. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

He hunched around himself, like his broad back would act as protective armour against any other stupid and thoughtless thing I might say.

‘Cal, I’m glad you like me.’ I hoped the lovesickness I’d been struck with since the moment I’d met him—or at least the moment he’d stopped avoiding me and started acting like a normal human being—didn’t bleed too heavily into my voice. ‘I’m glad you told me. ’

Callum’s expression grew slightly less guarded. ‘Why did you say it caused a problem?’

I scrunched my face. ‘Because of me. Not you, me. There’s something wrong with me when it comes to romantic-type stuff.’

Callum straightened, frowning. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’

I loved that this big, strong guy was on my side, ready to defend me against anything. Even myself. But that only made revealing my defectitude much harder.

‘Maybe don’t pass judgement until I tell you my sad story.’ I cringed. ‘Not actually sad. Or not the boohoo kind. More like, Aster-is-a-loser type of sad.’

More impressive frowning. ‘You’re not a loser, Aster.’

‘Again, reserve judgement until the end please.’

I took a breath before I carried on. I could provide abundant reasoning to stop now. Callum said he liked me. If I didn’t lay out my pathetic dating history, then he might indulge in a few sexy times with me before I left Doughnut.

But I didn’t want to withhold this. A month ago, I’d sprinted at full speed away from my normal life so that I didn’t have to face the pity-filled glances from everyone who knew I’d been dumped yet again. Callum had helped me heal, to feel like less of a tragic mess, but that didn’t mean my history had disappeared. It didn’t mean my track record with affairs of the heart was any less torn and stained.

And Callum had been honest with me. I’d witnessed up close how god-awful it was for him to talk about his family, but he’d done it. He deserved the truth, even if it changed his opinion about me and made catching a glimpse of any more of his toned skin much less likely.

‘Okay. So. Let’s do this.’ I nodded, bobbing my whole upper body as I prepared to bare my most tragic and embarrassing experiences. ‘It all started on the first day of sixth form college when I fell in love with Kimberley.’

Ah, Kimberley. Wavy brown hair, impeccable dress sense apparent even though she wore the same terrible uniform we were all forced to don, an attitude that made the cockiest of guys shrivel in her presence. I wanted to bask in her glory, to absorb the radiant light sparking around her. Oh, and bone her. I definitely wanted to bone her.

‘A classic love story, if the eighties romcoms you’ve probably not watched are to be believed.’ Perhaps I could tell my whole sad history like it happened to someone else, and so avoid submerging myself in the emotional wreckage of my horrendous break-ups. ‘Geek falls in love with beautiful, popular girl. Popular girl spends a year not noticing him until one day, she does. She invites him to a party after they finish their exams, and all of the boy’s dreams come true. They kiss. They more than kiss. And he thought they would live happily ever after.’

‘But you didn’t?’ Callum prompted, when I fell into a melancholic reverie for a little too long.

‘Nope.’ I darted a glance at him. He didn’t look too pitying yet. Give it time. ‘The next day I found out her friends had taken loads of pictures of us together. Not during the de-clothed section of our evening, but still. It was all a stunt to make her ex jealous.’

‘That’s horrible.’ Callum’s voice thrummed with righteous indignation on my behalf. I could have used more of that back then. Lukey had been all for beating Kimberley to a metaphorical pulp, but he’d had to settle for hugging me while I sobbed broken-heartedly into his Sonic pyjama-clad chest .

‘In her defence, she didn’t know I was a virgin who’d been madly in love with her for a year.’ I shrugged. ‘Kimberley apologised when Lucas shouted at her.’ I only wished he’d chosen a moment when fewer people were around to hear what an epic loser I was. ‘And so there ended my first tragic romantic endeavour.’

‘She didn’t deserve you,’ Callum growled. ‘She never should have done that, regardless of whether or not she knew about your feelings.’

‘Kids are cruel.’ I’d consoled myself with that mantra while I spent a year alone. As more time passed, I winced less every time I thought of my one and only sexual experience. I just wished Kimberley’s youthful cruelty hadn’t been designed to so carelessly crush me.

‘Anyway. A year later, I met Mark.’

Ah, Mark. Awakener of my bisexuality, owner of the sharpest wit, the guy I thought was a safe bet.

‘My first day at university, I spotted him across the room. Classically handsome, but I didn’t fall for him until he tore it out of our blatantly sexist lecturer. And this time it was different. He didn’t ignore me. The first party I went to, he walked straight over and asked me to dance. We immediately started dating.’

It was a whirlwind. Sex on tap, which was freaking amazing. Closeness and affection, which admittedly mainly came from me but was still a step up from being alone. A partner in crime, someone I thought would be on my side always.

‘We didn’t have a proper discussion about what being together meant.’ I rolled my shoulders, wishing my chest didn’t ache when I thought about Mark. ‘To me, it meant all the classic stuff. You’re there for each other through the good and bad times. You make an effort to keep in touch when you’re apart. You don’t bump uglies with anyone else.’ I swallowed. ‘Mark was down with some of that.’

He’d suggested I visit him during the long summer holiday between first and second year. After weeks of slow replies to my messages and phone calls cut short, I was elated. I jumped on the next train over to his neck of the woods.

‘I visited him at his parents, and walked in on him fucking someone else.’

‘Aster.’ Callum’s face crumpled with sadness. ‘I’m sorry.’

I shook my head. ‘It was a long time ago. And maybe it was on me, at least in part. We never talked about what being in a relationship meant. I shouldn’t have assumed he was only sleeping with me.’

‘No, Aster.’ Callum took my hand, his thumb strong against the pulse point at my wrist. ‘He should have spoken to you if he was seeing other people. You’re not to blame for wanting to be exclusive.’

‘Mark didn’t make me feel that way.’ I dislodged Callum’s hand and pulled mine away. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him touching me—my skin protested the loss of his fingers as I drew my sleeves over my knuckles—but talking about this made me feel pathetic and sad. I didn’t want Callum touching me in pity, and that was the only way he could right now.

‘Anyway, I spent another two years alone.’ Let it not be said that I was incapable of wallowing. ‘Then one of my school friends, Jamie, came to my university to study for his master’s.’

Ah, Jamie. Impossibly cool, wildly intelligent but not a dick about it, a body he honed to perfection. I didn’t expect him to look at me, let alone show any interest in getting all up on this.

‘One night, he was at the same party as me and Lucas. We chatted and, after Lucas left, I told him all about my breakup with Mark.’

Jamie had been kind. Maybe not self-sacrificingly kind like Callum, but Jamie at least put his hand on my shoulder when I got teary.

‘He suggested we have casual sex to get me over Mark, and at the time it seemed like a good idea.’ It never stopped seeming like a good idea, to be honest. Here was someone who I knew was a nice guy, who was model-level stunning, offering to have regular sexual congress with me. What twenty-two-year-old would say no to that?

‘We were at it for months. I didn’t make the same mistake I had with Mark, I made no assumptions, but Jamie was pretty open about only sleeping with me.’ I knotted my hands together to stop them skipping across my knees. ‘Anyway, we had sex one afternoon and as we were cleaning up, he said he was done with it all.’

Jamie was that casual. He’d stepped out of the shower after unloading in the soapy space between my thighs, and while he dried his hair he said he wasn’t interested in having sex with me any more. I’d turned towards the wall, embarrassed by my nudity as I absorbed the blow of his rejection.

‘I wasn’t heartbroken,’ I mused. ‘More pride-broken. Jamie had suggested this thing to help me out, and I hadn’t realised it could be so suddenly taken away. It made me feel like it meant nothing to him. And I didn’t want it to mean everything, you know? But I couldn’t have sex without having some kind of affection and friendly feeling. ’

I sniffed, staring at my lap. Callum knew it all now. I’d been trampled again and again in the romantic sphere. It was unrealistic for me to expect anything else.

‘You’re scared you’ll get hurt again if we act on liking one another?’ Callum checked.

I huffed out a humourless laugh. ‘Duh. That’s what happens to me. I get close to people, at least romantically, and they stamp all over my heart.’

Not dramatic at all. But that didn’t stop it from being true.

‘Aster, will you look at me?’

I pouted down at my lap. I didn’t want to look at Callum. He knew all my embarrassing secrets now. No way the next words out of his mouth weren’t going to be some kind of take-backsies.

Reluctantly, I raised my head. I didn’t expect him to be smiling. It knocked the petulant scowl right off my face.

‘It’s alright to be afraid.’ Callum’s crinkled eyes didn’t leave mine. ‘I am too. But please don’t judge me by what other people have done. I would never use you for personal gain or play with your feelings. If we were together, even briefly for the rest of your time on the island, then you would be it. There would be no one else. And I don’t think I could casually call this off.’ He swallowed, his smile fading as his eyes darted nervously between mine. ‘I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you, and I’ll want you until the last.’

‘Fucking hell, Cal,’ I breathed, reeling from perhaps the longest speech he’d ever given. ‘Way to make a declaration.’

He was right; I shouldn’t judge him by what others had done. I shouldn’t assume that getting closer to Callum would hurt me, because he’d proven he would only treat me with the utmost care .

‘We know this thing has a time limit.’ As the words skipped merrily from my mouth, I had to wonder if I was making a huge mistake. But even if I was setting myself up for my biggest heartbreak yet, I didn’t think I could be around Callum any longer without boning him. Especially now I knew he was up for it. He’d been up for it since I’d arrived.

So. Many. Missed. Opportunities.

‘It does,’ Callum agreed. ‘I can’t leave the island, and you need to go back to London in a couple of months’ time.’

‘Exactly.’ I nodded eagerly. ‘We’re not wandering into this blindly. We have ground rules. We’re not going to get hurt.’

That last one felt like a lie even though nothing had started with Callum yet, but I didn’t want to stop what we were pushing into motion. Our time together might be limited, but I wanted to wring every morsel of closeness out of it that I could.

‘You want to do this?’ Callum reached his hand slowly across the space between our crossed legs.

I lifted my arm and manoeuvred him into a handshake. ‘We’re totally doing this.’

If the smile on Callum’s face was anything to go by, then I’d found a frivolous thing he wanted to. He used his grip on my hand to pull me to standing, then into the tightest hug.

‘I’ve missed this,’ I murmured into the side of his neck.

He hummed in agreement, his chest vibrating against mine. I knew it would wreck me to say goodbye to this beautiful man in two months’ time, but I didn’t pull back. I snuggled closer to his steady warmth.

I wouldn’t think about it. Or how my plan was royally wrecked. Wouldn’t think about how leaving Callum meant a fourth painful romantic car crash.

Future Aster could deal with all of that. Present Aster just wanted more of this closeness, no matter the cost.