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"Run away? I'm not eight. I'mleaving."
It didn't make it any easier to bear to hear it out loud. But even now, Ben’s fingers twitched, lifting themselves without his conscious volition, attempting to pull something from the ether—something that needed to be understood. He turned the twitch into a scratch on his thigh and replied as calmly as he could, "Leaving? You're...leaving. Your life here? Everything? Molly. Me?"
Me
Nikolas merely raised his eyes to the distant horizon with an expression within them that said he’d already moved far beyond this conversation and was contemplating one yet to come. Ben had never seen that look on the face he literally knew better than his own. The remoteness in the gaunt features and the lack of response to his question provoked yet again a fury within Ben that he struggled to contain. He felt resentment for Nikolas simmering just beneath the surface which shocked him with its ferocity.
But Ben had promised himself, and his friends, that he would stay calm, whatever the outcome of theNate Situationproved to be.
He concentrated on the warm, evocative smell of the gorse, the feel of the spiky, short moorland grass beneath him, and the sense of safety and security from the ancient rocks they sheltered beneath and took a few calming breaths.
He tried to frame his words with detachment, as he knew Nikolas could do so easily, even if beneath he was all roil and churn, but all that came out was, "You selfish fuck." But he said it calmly. That was something.
Nikolas's brows rose, but he didn't dignify this with a response.
Ben decided to make his own. "You think you can just walk away from me?"
Nikolas shrugged. Ben held his breath. He knew what was coming. "You did. It's okay for you but not for me? Is that what you're saying?"
"No, no, no. Don't you dare, Nikolas! Don't you dare compare this to that."
"My name isAleksey. I would appreciate you doing me the courtesy of remembering that. And it's exactly—"
"No! It's not. I experienced something I can't explain. When youdied. I touched something, tapped into something bigger than me, than you...fuck, than us. And I'm not going to apologise for that. I don't understand it, but it's real and I felt it. And there are people all over the world who have experienced the same thing as me. People who are dying; people in extreme circumstances. You are not going to compare this to that."
"Oh, grow up, Benjamin. You thought fucking a man made you aqueerand you wanted to think of yourself asnormal. It was nothing more than that. Don’t flatter yourself it had anything spiritual about it.”
Ben rose swiftly, the tea spilling with the passion of his anger. He tried to steady the little tin beaker then dashed it aside. "It was nothingto dowithfuckingyou, Nikolas. How stupid can you be? It was theworshipof you, the putting you up in a place that no human should be. That's what terrified me." Yeah, Squeezy, you fuck, you put your finger right on the most painful part of that wound.
Nikolas clenched his jaw and turned his face from Ben's righteous fury. "Then maybe I should have left you in that squalid dump of a cottage. Better for both of us. I'm the last thing on Earth anyone should admire, let alone venerate. You’ve been worshiping a false idol."
Ben sank back into a squat. He felt a tingle of alarm prick his scalp. It was one of the most uncharacteristic replies he'd ever heard Nikolas make—Nikolas Mikkelsen, who never missed an opportunity to bask in Ben's undying adoration. If you put someone up on a pedestal, that person has to want to be up there, after all.
Tentatively, he asked, "So what is this you think you are doing?"
Nikolas swirled the cooling liquid in his cup thoughtfully. "I need to..." He glanced up at the sky, apparently trying to find inspiration for his explanation. "Unwind some skeins." He glanced back at Ben and asked quickly, "Is that the right word? Yes, skeins—threads in my twisted tapestry. They were badly formed, I think, and what resulted had no beauty. Untangled, I can study them for a while and decide upon a better pattern. Maybe I will merely discover that some things in life are set and cannot be reworked.” He ran one hand thoughtfully over the same rough rock that Ben had drawn on for courage and added, “Maybe the reworking will shatter it beyond repair.”
Nikolas often said things that Ben didn’t understand, but as most of what Nikolas said was utter rubbish anyway, they’d bumped along very happily for over nine years without this being a huge issue between them. This, however, Ben sensed, was not one of those times. So although he had no idea what Nikolas was talking about, he didn’t challenge him on his words but commented in the same thoughtful tone, “You’ve already built something good. Our life here. Our family. ANGEL. All the good you do for people.”
Nikolas’s gaze on the distant tors lowered and Ben could see he was at pains to hide intense feelings. For all the years they’d been together, Nikolas had always had the ability to mask what he was really thinking or feeling. He could veil his thoughts almost before the import of words could possibly have hit him. He was always armoured and merely waiting for the next thing that could hurt him to come his way. That Nikolas was now raw and apparently unable to stop the visible pain of his words cut Ben to the quick. He was about to attempt a hand to the other man’s arm, to see if this would be accepted, when Nikolas replied, “When I was a boy, as I have told you, I used to build complex cities out of sand. I could spend hours doing so. The real world and all its pain and hurt just vanished or were transformed into those beautiful, better ones. I had castles with vast fortifications defending them where my armies lived, and villages for loving families, which I connected with highways and canals. And when I was done, after all my hours of effort, when it was absolutely perfect, I would destroy it all. Maybe I was just in my building phase with all of this, and when you'd bored me sufficiently I'd have brought you all down too. I’d have buried you, Ben, with all the other bodies."
With Nate.
Nikolas didn't say that fearful name, but it stabbed into the meaning of his words, and Ben heard it regardless. It was unmistakable.
Nikolas brushed his fingers through the long strands of hair on his forehead, a gesture so familiar that Ben glanced away on the pain it gave him, but not before he saw that Nikolas also used the gesture to quickly grind the heel of his palm into his eyes. Ben was not sure whether this evidence of Nikolas’s tears was a good or bad thing. This was very unfamiliar territory for them both.
Nikolas sniffed quietly and added, almost as an afterthought, "I have often wondered if you were the very worst person I should have fallen in love with, Benjamin Rider. That pedestal you say you put me on was entirely made of sand, like my magnificent works of art on a long ago Danish beach. Don't you see? If I hadn't knocked them down, the tide would have washed them flat anyway. Everything I did was temporary and merely to assuage the pain I felt of not being loved." As he was speaking, he packed away the little stove and his mug, and then he rose to his full height and shrugged on his bergen. "That's all that's happened here. My high tide has come at last. All is swept away, and I am left with nothing more than hollowness and hunger. Go home, Ben, and let me be."
Ben watched him walk away, then, with a clench of his jaw, he swung his pack up and began to follow. He didn't need to summon the dogs—they were ahead of him, skulking after the tall, blond figure striding rapidly ahead.
Of the four of them, only one seemed entirely lost. The three of them, Ben was sure, were utterly sure of their destination.
* * *
Chapter 51
Nine Years Ago
