After Felix - Lily Morton Page 0,56
men are with him. They get to fuck him and laugh with him, and all I have are the memories and the zing I still get from being near him in a group. It’s made more painful by the knowledge that I could have had all of Felix and more, if I’d only opened my eyes in time.
My phone rings and I try to shake off the horrible memories. I groan when I see the name on display. He has impeccable timing.
Clicking to connect, I say, “Zeb?”
“Max,” he says, concern deep in his voice. “Are you okay? Felix said he’d run you over.”
“Did you think he’d finally snapped?”
“I wouldn’t have put it past him, but then I really thought about it.”
“And you realised he’d be much more vicious in the way he ended me,” I say.
He gives a startled bark of laughter. He pauses and then says, “So, he told me he’s staying with you because you have a concussion. Are you okay? Do you want me to come down? I can stay with you and—”
“No,” I interrupt. “No, Felix is going to stay with me.”
There’s an even longer pause. “Max.” It's his long-suffering voice. The one he used when he was landed with a young boy as a stepbrother who was going to look up to him for the rest of his life. And I feel a sudden deep love for the man who has always been my role model for how to behave honourably in life. Maybe if I’d paid closer attention to what Zeb would have done, I’d never have lost Felix. There’s a painful melancholic truth in that. “Max, you can’t do this,” Zeb says. “Don’t make it worse for yourself. It’s—”
“This is my chance,” I interrupt, my voice too loud in the quiet room. “This is my chance to get him back, and if he had to run me over to get that chance, then I’m happy.”
He sighs heavily. “I live for the day you get back together, and you become his problem again, do you know that?”
“Thank you.” I sniff. “How brotherly.”
“Okay, if you’re still set on this crazy idea, what do you want me to do?”
Ten minutes later, I set my phone back on the table and lie back to finish plotting. My arm hurts, but I’ve planned and plotted through worse injuries than this.
I have a sudden memory of me and Ivo trapped in a cell, words being spat at us as we huddled together for warmth. Sweat breaks out over my body, but then I hear a distant clatter of dishes from downstairs in the kitchen. Felix. He’s here in my house with me. I’m not alone. Taking several deep breaths, I’m able to push the awful memory away,
I don’t know when I slip into sleep, but I fall deeply, waking only to memories of Felix’s hand in my hair in the night and his soft questions.
When I wake up next, it’s to a knock on the door and Felix’s messy head appearing.
“Breakfast is almost ready,” he says. “Want a hand with anything?”
I sit up with a groan, feeling every inch of my years and probably someone else’s too. “Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’d love it if you could go out and purchase me a new body.”
He laughs. “Please can I buy Matthew McConaughey’s?”
“What has he got that I haven’t?” I ask, pulling myself up.
“Well, at the moment a fully functioning body,” he says, eyeing me.
“I’d like to be Matthew. He looks like his exes never run him over with their cars.”
He snorts. For a second, his eyes light up and fully focus on me. I never get to see him like this anymore, and I look at him greedily. He reads something in my expression, because the light in his eyes fades away like the last spangles of colour from a firework. And then we’re back to being awkward again.
I give an unobtrusive sigh and get ponderously to my feet. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I say. When he makes as if to come and help me, I give him a horrified stare. “Please do not help me,” I say faintly. “I’m more than capable of taking a piss by myself.”
“Your loss,” he says, turning to leave. He pauses by the door. “Oh, your housekeeper said breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes. I sort of got the impression that you wouldn’t be ignoring her?”
I shudder. “Never,” I say fervently. “It was less trouble to ignore Hitler. That