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“I’ve told you this. Because it’s right for me, because I feel clean there, because no one gets hurt.”
She poked his chest. “Who did you hurt?” It was hard to imagine him hurting anyone; despite his size, he was infinitely patient, infinitely gentle with her, but he’d insisted that was part of his reason for needing the cave, the vague suggestion that he hurt people.
He looked away, breaking eye contact for the first time. Something he rarely did anymore. “I’m not a common murderer, rapist or thief. I’m no longer scared about hurting you. I would never.”
“You don’t answer the question.” She’d lived with Nat long enough to know when an answer was a manipulation and when to keep asking.
“I can’t.”
Which is what he always said. He was stubbornly consistent and so was she in accepting that, till now. “Then I can’t trust you anymore.”
He frowned, confused by the change of heart when everything they’d just said had been said a dozen times before.
“I want to help you.”
He reached for her and she stepped back, when she wanted nothing more than to be in his grasp.
“You help me every day,” he said.
“By amusing you,” she scoffed, because they laughed as much as they talked, as much as they were comfortably quiet with each other. She turned her head; she didn’t want to see the appeal in his eyes.
“I don’t stand on the edge.”
Her head snapped around, their eyes locked. “What?”
“I haven’t done it since we started seeing each other. I don’t need to anymore.”
She grabbed the lapels of his coat. “Drum, what does that mean?” It had to mean whatever compelled him to live in a cave was over with. It had to mean he was on the way to normal again.
He folded his hand over hers. “I don’t know.”
“I do.” She smiled. He was going to be fine. “It’s time to leave the cave. It’s time to pick up your life again. I can help you.”
He squeezed her hand. “No.”
“Drum, babe. It’s the middle of winter, it’s cold. You don’t need to be there anymore, you said that yourself.”
He let her hand go. “No. That’s not what I said. The only thing that’s changed is I feel less like killing myself.”
She gasped. She’d known that’s what his game of chicken with the edge was about. But he’d never expressed it like that. Always painted it as the opposite, as life affirming.
“I can’t ever leave there.”
And this was the fact of his mental illness; not the tragic clothing, or the unorthodox living he’d carved out for himself, they were simply symptoms of a bigger issue she was desperate to ignore.
“But you do leave, you have.”
“I come back. I always come back. It’s my home. I thought you understood that.”
Foley closed her eyes. It was easier to stop them burning if her lids where down. Easier to avoid looking at her hermit squatter, and shun the knowledge she was falling in love with a man who was damaged, who might never be well.
He caressed her cheek. “I don’t need your help.”
She opened her eyes. He’d bent his neck so his face was close. “What do you need from me?” she whispered.
His hand stole up her back and under her hair and over her collar, warming her nape, holding her close. Another man would kiss her. Drum’s cheek grazed hers. His face was cold. Another man would know how to answer that question so all her fears were neutralised.
She clutched at his coat, willing him to respond in a way she could move forward with. He murmured her name, something she couldn’t do for him, and she knew with a sickening realisation that the only thing she could do was leave him to get him help, leave him to move on with her own life.
