‘He was old … it was his time. He died knowing you cared, Cam.’ he hushes me against my temple, enveloping me in his solid embrace, and I can do nothing but cling to him hopelessly—burying my face against his chest as I cry my heart out—completely broken over such a stupid thing. My arms lacing around his wide torso and I screw my eyes shut to stop the tears flowing free. I can’t do anything except sob like a broken child while my body is wracked with a pain bigger than me.
Alexi holds me tight and says nothing more, just lets me crumble for the first few minutes before the calm of shock grips me and I start to softly whimper instead; Still held against him, trembling and inhaling his smell, his aftershave, as it gives me a sense of calm. The feel of his clothes and muscles tight against me as he grips onto me in a non-sexual embrace that holds me up. He’s being my support, even if minutes ago we were yelling at one another. It all adds to that sense that it’s going to be okay. It hurts but it’s bearable when I’m held safe like this.
We are so screwed up.
‘I’ll have Jackson and Mico come out and take him to be cremated. You can have his ashes if you want them.’ Alexi sounds like he always does, unemotional and just cold, but his suggestion isn’t so. He’s offering me some sort of console in a way he knows how. Maybe he doesn’t feel anything about Feral dying, or even know how to sound like he has any empathy, but I do, and he’s trying to be what I need him to be right now. He’s acting as if I matter. He’s trying to show he can care, in his own way.
It’s not the man I know … It’s the man who took care of me when I was in shock that night Santagato’s man tried to take me—the man who took care of sick Camilla when she spiked a fever. It’s the man who climbed into my heart, despite myself, showed me hints of someone else and enabled the sadistic in him to ruin me.
I tip my chin up, feeling him move back, so I can look at him and try to dry my tears as I swallow down the mess going off inside of me.
‘He was just a stupid cat … it doesn’t matter.’ I have to force the words out, through garbled sniffs as I try to push him away, ashamed at my heart-wrenching reaction to losing something that wasn’t even mine. He just catches my hands and pulls me into his arm once more as he slides it about my shoulders, turns us, and starts guiding me to the building carefully. Treating me like fragile china as he makes sure I’m steady on my feet and leads me to the door without letting me go.
I give in and let him, needing his strength right now as my heart bleeds out of my body, and I cannot bear to look back and see Feral lying there alone.
‘Don’t leave him like that!!’ I jerk my face up in alarm, voice crushed with the depth of pain I am in, panic slicing through me at that thought, and he turns to me swiftly. Complete exhaustion swimming over me with the torrent of feelings I cannot control.
‘I won’t … Soon as you are inside and settled I’ll get them out here. I won’t leave him here. I promise.’ Softly spoken, Alexi traces a tear from my cheek and wipes it away before it drips from my chin to meet the dampness on my bodice from the rest. Just adding to how broken and vulnerable I feel. I can’t bear to look back and see Feral once more … left curled up in the sunshine as though he’s merely asleep. Another slicing stab to my heart bites me and I clutch onto Alexi with my arms as though he holds the key to making it stop consuming me darkly.
It’s easy to forget who he is when he’s being like this and I lean in against him and bury my face in his chest once more, pulling his arm around me to blot out how much this hurts. I’m not akin to this kind of grief, not even when my mother died, and I don’t know how to handle it. It’s thrown my whole mind and soul into chaos.
Alexi gets me inside, the sun changing to dark gloom and I have to blink to adjust to the change. Still attached to him and needy, even though my self-preservation is kicking in and telling me to let him go. I shouldn’t be wrapped in his hold like this. It only confuses things, and I was the one who told him to never touch me. Even though, here I am, holding on for dear life like he is an anchor to the shore and all because of a bloody cat.
The visual of that little stupid furball in my head sets me off again and he just pulls my face against him once more, cradling me from sight as he takes me to the lift, past milling security, and finally deposits me inside. He stands me in the corner, so I can prop up against the wall, and gently strokes back my hair away from my soaked cheeks and uses the hem of his t-shirt to dry my face. Exposing muscled abdomen as he does so and it stops me crying for a moment to make me giggle absurdly—such a weird thing to do or use as a hanky and definitely not an Alexi thing. He strokes a thumb across my cheek tenderly and tilts my face to look at him. There isn’t much in that face, but a softness in his eyes and a slight hint of gentle in his manner.
The loss of him around me is sobering and I blink around at my surroundings as it comes into view; tiredness rising up with the overwhelming emotions that hit me all at once. I feel like I have been body-slammed by a brick wall.
‘I’ll just be a minute.’ He lets me go, turns around and pushes the door button so it opens again and disappears for a moment, leaving me here alone. I lean back against the internal wall and try to bring some calm back to my frazzled heart. Wiping my still damp face and sniffing back the dumb tears that just keep falling.
I push Feral’s little one-eyed face out of my brain as another buckling pain hits me in the chest and shove it down with all that has ever hurt me in life. Bringing back a little composure and wrapping my own arms snuggly around me to give myself the comfort he has removed. I feel cold and start shivering, unsure how to combat all these crazy bodily reactions I am having. I just feel so disconnected.
Alexi reappears as the doors start to slide shut, catching it with his palm, seconds before closing, and pushes it back to come inside. He looks me over for a second before hitting the fourth-floor button and hesitates about coming close again. Seems he is coming upstairs with me anyway and I’m not sure if I want him to come back and cuddle me. I shouldn’t be letting him console me this way.
He doesn’t attempt to touch me this time, standing facing me, maybe second-guessing the likelihood I need another hug and leans against the wall, mirroring my pose. I just stare at the ground between us and take long heaving breaths to silence my own sobbing. Calming even while my soul fills up with icy emptiness and my head moves into the surreal state of dreamlike quiet that follows shock. I have suffered it many times, so I know the expected aftereffects like the back of my hand.
‘You must think I’m really dumb … crying over a stray animal I barely knew,’ I utter at him, unable to look up and a little ashamed that I showed this side of me to anyone, let alone him. This is not how I react to things in life. I never cried over my own mother so why would I cry over a back-alley moggy that was about as pleasant to me as toothache? There is something wrong with me. The only time I ever had this type of extreme over reaction and heartbreak was the night Alexi broke me.
I am starting to feel detached as the numbness overtakes me and instead a sweeping sense of complete tiredness moves in. It douses all else out and makes me so heavy I just want to lie down. I know this is normal after something shocking you, and maybe I need to take a nap and let the surreal exhausted phase pass. Fighting the fatigue as it weightily falls over me like a fog.