"She's booked a flight back to Canada for the morning," Ivo said as he climbed into bed next to me.

"What happened?"

He sighed.

"Difference of opinion. I told her she could stay but she decided she didn't want to."

I frowned.

"What about Kit?"

Ivo didn't respond. I watched him and became alarmed when he reached up to wipe at his cheek. No doubt wiping away a tear I couldn't see.

"Ivo?"

I slid my arms around his waist, under the arm that was blocking me and kissed his cheek.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"It's not your fault," he replied sadly.

He leaned into me and rubbed his nose against mine gently.

"It's my fault you're fighting in the first place," I muttered.

He huffed.

"Can we not do this now, what's done is done. We need to move on."

We were so close that when he looked at me it felt so intense, as though Ivo were all encompassing and nothing else existed apart from him.

"Yeah, sorry. You're right. I just feel so guilty."

He shook his head gently.

"We all have reason to be guilty but if we let it control us then everything we do from that point is tainted by it."

Ivo placed his hand over mine and kissed me gently.

"I don't know why I do it Ivo. Why I hurt you, I don't want to, really. I'm so screwed up."

"So am I," he replied darkly. "I'd do anything not to lose you Tim. I need to learn that I can't own you just because I love you."

"You do own me," I smiled.

"Don't," he hissed; his mood changing.

"Don't say that. You don't belong to me," he said angrily.

I didn't say anything for a while.

"Can I say I belong with you?"

He softened.

"Of course."

"Good," I said and slid lower in the bed to rest against his chest. It was such a womanly position but I didn't care. He kissed the top of my head and reached up to play with my hair.

"Don't know how you can even look at me sometimes," Ivo said after a while.

"All the things I've done to you."

"I prefer to think of the things you've done for me," I quipped.

"That's not enough," he replied sternly.

"It is for me."

"Tried to strangle you," he said matter of factly.

"I stole your money."

"I tried to drown you once."

"Left you on an Island," I said in a sing song and looked up at him with a smile. "And cheated on you with your sister. I win."

He laughed a little.

"We're insane."

"I'm okay with that."

He ran his thumb over my bottom lip and I kissed it gently.

"Well, we certainly have history together," he said roughly.

"I'll take any class except Paleontology."

He feigned glowering at me.

"She is my sister," he said solemnly. "I can't just abandon what we have," he said. "She doesn't want to just forgive and forget though. She's out for your blood."

"Mmm. My sanity wasn't enough of a trophy prize?"

He hugged me closer.

"I really wish I could hate you."

He said it with such anguish that I believed him.

"I hate myself, does that help?"

"No."

Neither of us said anything for a long while after that. It was becoming gradually lighter outside and I didn't know if Ivo was still awake.

"When I was younger," he said suddenly. "I'd met some man in a club. I was really young. He gave me a blowjob in the alley."

I turned my head slightly towards him.

"When I left, three guys came with a baseball bat and beat the hell out of him. I tried to help him but he died before the ambulance arrived. I was so terrified. He was in so much pain and I just kept thinking that they would come back and I would be next. Part of my mind was justifying it, explaining that it was the natural course. We evolved from cavemen after all."

I looked at him and he seemed to be staring into space.

"Ivo?"

"Ever since that, I guess I just shut off from everything. Everything I was doing just seemed like going through the motions. I didn't even know this person and I was mourning him. I didn't want to date anyone after that. I just figured that if I ever got to love someone and I lost them then I wouldn't be able to cope at all if I couldn't cope with that. I distanced myself from everyone; my friends and family. Even Isabel."

I stared at him but he ignored me.

"I never told her about it until last week. When we were having one of our most touching heart to hearts," he said bitterly.

"You know what she said?"

"What," I asked nervously.

"That's how I feel sometimes with Kit. Like I'm going through the motions," he quoted with a sad smile.

"I always thought that we had this connection, Isabel and me. That we were like a team together against our idiot parents and the rest of the cruel world. Some part of me thought that when I told her it would be like a watershed moment, when we would cry and hug and realise how much we understand each other. I wouldn't even have minded if she'd made a reference to you with it, maybe that it's the reason I want to 'save' you or something like that. Just something."

He stroked his thumb along my hand.

"Ivo, I...I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you."

I could only stare at him and wonder what other secrets he was hiding. I felt ill when the thought occurred to me that even if he had been hiding them, I'd never thought to look.

"What were you like back then?"

"As a teenager? Pretty tame really."

I laughed.

"Can't imagine it for some reason."

"Mmm, you'd be surprised. Did my studies, managed my money, all that adult stuff."

I smiled.

"But in a leather jacket and with a smoke in hand."

He smirked.

"I'm sorry I never asked about all this stuff. Your family and everything. I'm just really selfish."

He quirked an eyebrow at me, confused.

"You always seem to know though. I never understood that. How you do it. Anytime I was thinking about everything you would just appear in my lap and make me laugh."

"Beats me," I shrugged.

"Subconsciously selfless, that's what you are," he said, poking me in the stomach.

"I don't mean to be."

"No, it was a compliment you idiot."

"Oh."

He sat up straighter and I had to move to accommodate him.

"For a while I thought you did know. Because you wrote about it, in your book."

I blinked at him.

"And that's when I saw him for what he was. A lost boy who stumbled into the adult world because he thought it would be safer there; that no one would look for him. He was mistaken. Death can search anywhere," he rhymed off as he looked at me.

"I wrote that about me," I said incredulous that he had memorised it.

"Maybe we understand each other more than we thought."

"I love you. The real you, even when you're scared or angry or sad," I told him.

He broke then and silent tears stream down his cheeks. I used the edge of the pillow case to try and dry them and he gave a sobbing laugh.

He pulled me into a smothering hug.

"Don't ever leave me," he said desperately.

"What if I have to go pee?"

"You're ruining the moment Tim."

"Sorry."

"You're not really sorry."

"Not in the slightest."