A Fire That Burns (11 page)

Chapter Nineteen

WE
shouldn’t be doing
this,” Dean doubted as they stood around Tom’s kitchen. The Pearson siblings
had remained close to Austin, but since her breakdown she was completely
emotionless. She was lost and just trying to find a way to make it through the
day. Now as they took matters into their own hands, Dean suddenly realized how
far they were stepping out of the norm for dealing with such sensitive matters.

Tom huffed a laugh, his throat closing with the impending nerves, “I’m
the one that shouldn’t be doing this.” he said as he flicked through the
medical file before him. “I’m the one that will get into trouble for pulling
these files from the hospital database. I could
lose
my job.”

“If I were you, I’d just say thank fuck for shredders and lighters,”
Daniel joked to his brothers looking up from the yearbook he had before him. As
much as he knew they were breaking laws, he also knew his sister’s innocence
meant more to him. “Just think about if there weren’t computers nowadays, bro,”
he continued and saw his brother flinch at the idea. “Just think if they hadn’t
imputed all this data, you’d be carrying around a real hospital file on you and
illegally.”

“This
is
illegal,” Tom muttered under his breath now rethinking
his decision to print both Austin’s and Natasha’s files. He had done it during
a dead moment at work during his last shift and couldn’t believe he was lucky
to not even get caught by one of the nurses on shift with him.

“They still have them, we only have copies,” Dean spoke up as he crossed
his arms over his chest, a mirthful tone filling his voice. “That could have
made this more thrilling had it been a steal it job and sneak it back in
after.”

“Dean, this isn’t funny,” Tom scorned as he couldn’t feel comfortable
about this. “We’re delving where Aus asked us not to so let’s not make this
worse.”

“Well,” Sienna started as she sat up and crossed her arms over her
chest, “Sometimes you need to take over with some people, and seeing as
Aussie’s not around, she really doesn’t get a choice anymore.”

“Where is she right now anyway?” Daniel asked as he looked up from the
year book he had found. He found a photo of Austin and Tyler together after he
had scored the winning touchdown at a football game and he loved to be able to
see his sister all smiles.

Tom sighed, “She’s at the house with Tyler.” He watched his brothers
wince a little, “They need to get over this one way or another and I think
Tyler’s confusion is going to break soon. She texted to tell me he was ignoring
her so I think she’s going to snap before he does. That or she’s going to come
home away from it all.”

“You don’t think he believes all this right?” Daniel asked dubiously. He
had seen how Tyler had ignored near enough everyone since the news Natasha had
delivered and he wondered if leaving the lost lovers alone was a wise idea.

Especially now as their existence to one another was becoming more
apocalyptic with each other and not blossoming like it should have been.

Tom shrugged, “He lost Aus and put all his trust into Natasha. I think
she could twist anything and he’d believe it just because he defied everyone
and still went there with her. He doesn’t want to look the fool and now he’s
too late for backing out.”

“Man’s never been more lost in the last six years as he has been the
last couple of weeks,” Sienna sympathized for a moment. “I get why he’s like
it, because I definitely would be.”

“I guess we have one more thing left to do,” Dean responded with a bit
too much glee in his tone.

“There really is,” Tom said as he looked to his three brothers, “Let’s
crack this open and bring that bitch down.” He then passed Dean Natasha’s file
to prove that there were no reported cases of a pregnancy and consequent
miscarriage on her file however, Austin’s were clearly there back in 2006.
Watching his brother and sister get up and rush to Dean’s side, Tom didn’t
realize he was holding his breath. “As you can see Natasha hasn’t even been listed
as pregnant. You and I
were
there, Daniel, she said
the doctor had confirmed it. Well where it is?”

“Okay no shredders or lighters just yet,” Daniel stated pointed at the
file. “We need to keep this. This is the proof to clear Austin’s name. With her
file and Natasha’s we can get mom to come around to the idea.”

“We can’t,” Tom killed the process of that plan that was being
concocted. As much as he wanted

“What do you mean we can’t?” Sienna asked, her brow furrowing with
confusion.

“We can’t tell anyone about Austin,” Tom reacted to the question and
shook his head, hating
himself
for halting their
progress, but his inner voice sung to him and made him see sense. “She told me
a few days ago that this secret would go to the grave with her, but I know she
can’t bare this secret for years. It’ll kill her,” Tom fretted and raised his
hands to press his hands through his hair. “I feel like I’m partly to blame in
all this.”

“Don’t you dare,” Dean spoke up, stepping in as the big brother. “Don’t
you dare do that,
Tom.
I know you were there with her
and you were the one that looked after her and ultimately, you gave
her a
doorway to coming home, but you didn’t cause the
miscarriage. Natasha did and this time we all know and we aren’t losing her
again.”

“Chances are we could lose her,” Tom looked at his eldest brother and
tried to stop his own break down from erupting. “Austin needs to face up to her
own past before she can fight this. We can’t force her into the truth if she
isn’t ready. That isn’t fair for her and we don’t know what type of
repercussion that will have on her.”

And that was the worst part – this was always going to be Austin’s
secret to tell. If she didn’t want out of the darkness she had lived with then
they couldn’t do it for her.

“We wait for her to be ready,” Tom sighed, regretting
every word he had just spoken.

Chapter Twenty

AUSTIN
threw down the
curtains and headed to the kitchen. Both she and Tyler had been in the house
for hours and in that time he had laid the carpet on the stairs and landing and
was now fixing the kitchen from the burst piping. She had called out an awkward
hello when she arrived and she wondered if she hadn’t been heard because he was
upstairs attaching tiles to the wall in the bathroom, but now she was convinced
it was all done purposely.

She had texts upon texts from Sienna and the boys and she was happy to
know they supported her when the rest of the town had turned their backs on
her, but she couldn’t tell them she was okay and mean it. The man she loved
proved he no longer loved her. He had kissed her, flirted with her and made
love to her all in the course of a few weeks and now she was left standing here
in the battlefield of their love. She was the only prisoner now. Tyler had made
his choice and bailed on the fight for their love.

He had walked passed her twice and didn’t acknowledge her once. She knew
if the other night at the diner was anything to go by then she wasn’t going to
get a response any time soon. It might have only been two nights, but the cold
shoulder treatment didn’t get any more familiar.

They had found things in the house weren’t coming together as well as
they should be and both had thought it reflected the strife that was in the
air. Now, however, they would come in at separate times and things would be
wrong or broken and she knew they had to get everything sorted to be able to
sell the house.

Now with him in the room that joined onto hers, he still hadn’t even
acknowledged her for one second. He had walked straight passed, and she wasn’t
kidding herself here, but he had looked straight through her several times. His
eyes laced with something that hit her core so hard she felt its impact through
her entire body, and if she had to admit it, it scared her. All the love, the
adoration was gone and was replaced by a colder, emptier Tyler.

She wanted to clear the air and clear her name. She was going to fight
back at long last and fight back to the person that mattered most in all of
this.

“So this is it, is it?” Austin asked as she stepped towards Tyler as he
stood sorting out the cabinets ready for the kitchen. “We’re going to remodel
this house, but we’re not going to speak to one another?”

“What do you want me to say, Austin?” Tyler quizzed her without looking
up from screwing the hinges into place. “My fiancée lost my baby so excuse me
for not being in the talkative mood. Especially when it comes to talking to the
person apparently behind it,” his tone turned colder if that was possible, like
the only emotion he had for her was hate.

She stood shocked that Tyler was the fool now. He had fallen for the
gossiping lies and he had believed that she was capable of a callous,
vindictive move. Austin didn’t have the heart to do that to anyone however
angry she was. She wasn’t the type to be able to inflict pain for her own
personal gain. It wasn’t in her nature and years of a disappearance didn’t
change that about her.

“The only reason I am here is because we both invested a lot of money and
time into his house and we might as well get the reward from it,” Tyler
commented and glanced at her. “Don’t think this is time for friendly banter
because we’re passed that. Well passed that.”

Austin huffed out a disbelieving laugh, “You obviously agree with the
current population of this town and think I’m a monster then do you?” Austin
asked Tyler and crossed her arms over her chest. “If you do then you are just
as small-minded as the rest of them and you just proved that you really don’t
know me. That you never knew me.”

“Small-minded?”
Tyler asked as he finally looked at her, he had a jovial tone in his
voice, the mirth tantalizing the note of sarcasm.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “Petty, bigoted, mean, biased – just to name a few
others.” Austin counted on her fingers and shrugged trying to remain calm and
collected. “We practically lived together through school and as soon as we were
free, got ourselves a place of our own. You should know me the best! You lived
with me, Tyler! You used to love me the most. You, of all people, should know
who I am!”

“Oh yeah, I know you so well that you were still the one that ran away.
I knew you so well that you still ran off,” Tyler argued back and his eyes
burnt right into her.

“There were other reasons for that!” Austin shouted at him, the anger
clawing in her voice. She hated the look Tyler was giving her, the one that
belittled her and made her feel so inferior to him. They had never acted like
that –
ever
. “We were made to have it all, Tyler. We were perfect. We
had it all,” she told him as she softened at the thought.

“Yeah well you definitely showed how perfect we were six years ago,”
Tyler snapped at her vindictively. He knew they were made to have it all, he
had dreamt every night of marrying her and finally getting the good life, but
everyday he woke up disappointed. Even when Natasha took Austin’s place in his
bed, it didn’t matter.

“I wasn't the only one at fault here, Tyler!” Austin screamed back him.
The softness now gone as she decided it was time to topple over the edge and
finally let rip everything she had been bottling up. Six years of sheer agony
was burning under the surface of the skin, scarring her more than ever. In the
moment with the words bubbling in her throat with readiness, Austin was on the verge
of just allowing herself to cave to everything she had lived with. "You
and your damn career aspirations were one of the reasons I left! I understood
you wanted to go places in that job and I supported that, but practically every
night you went out drinking with your team and every time I had to listen to
how Natasha got to spend evenings with you.”

“Oh, so you were jealous. I should have pinpointed that,” Tyler said in
a sanctimonious tone.

“Of course I was!” she shouted at him, admitting it freely. Why should
she hide one of the truest facts from him? She could feel the back lash of six
years of pent up emotions coming back up from the darkest pit of her. This
would either make or break her and she feared the latter would finally consume
her entirely. "My
fiancé
was hanging out with the one girl that
wanted him while I sat at home with dinner prepared and waiting." She
rubbed the tears away quickly cursing them for breaking loose. "That's why
I stopped cooking for you because most nights it ended up in the bottom of the
trash."

“Aus-" Tyler tried to
interject,
suddenly
he was swept away with the guilt of the past.

“It all got to be too much. You didn't love me enough and in the end,
when everything came to head, all I knew to do was run." Austin spoke solemnly,
the heat burnt out of her tone and replaced with the depression and shame she
had survived with, “What did I do that made her more interesting?”

“There wasn’t anything,” Tyler told her and looked at her. “I loved you,
still love you, Austin, but life sucked us in and we didn’t survive and now I
don’t know you. If I did I would have waited for you to come back. I wouldn’t
look at you like you were a stranger. If I knew you I wouldn’t believe
Natasha.”

That hit her hard because she was still the nineteen-year-old girl that
had run. She was still trapped six years in the past, unable to move forward
and adapt to life. She was still that same lost and scared girl that fled Point
Arena and she was still very much alone. “You always said we would survive, Tyler.
You promised me that whenever I told you I thought Natasha was trying to win
you over. You promised it was always going to me. Your promises ended up lies
to me. You told me we could survive any storm, that-”

“No bad day could come between us,” Tyler finished her sentence and he
watched a tear fall as she gasped an affirmative. It was their saying, his
promise – No bad day would ever come between them because their love was their
foundation.

“Six years of bad days ended up coming between us,” Austin told him in
an admonished tone. She was defeated now, completely void of a fight. She was
the beaten one, her heart tortured and left on the ground now barely beating,
her soul crushed.

Tyler put his hands on his head in an exasperated way. He was so mixed
up over everything and standing there reliving the past wasn’t helping him in
the slightest. What was worse was that he let his anger get the better of him
though. He changed before her eyes, becoming the evil one that put the distance
between them, “Yeah, and then you come back and look what happens.”

When Austin’s eyes met with Tyler’s she felt like she was thrown into
the depths of hell. She was cast into flames and pain, and she was met with the
devil in his newest form. This was no longer the man she loved, knew, had lived
with. This was the man she had created when she ran like a ghost into the night
and she couldn’t handle it.

“Yeah, because I’m the bad guy,” Austin said and looked at Tyler with
wild bewilderment as she tried to make sense of all of this too. She hated how
they had become, how he couldn’t look at her properly, or how he had to
physically make himself stay in the room with her. She could see the tension
and irritation literally radiate off him.

“Well you've been nothing but problems since you got back in town, so
yeah, I guess you are the bad guy! You come back and tear your family apart,
you alienate your mother from her children, you’ve nearly cost me my
relationship and credibility with Natasha’s father and you killed my baby by attacking
my fiancée! That makes you bitch, a liar, a coward and a murderer," Tyler
yelled at her as his grief came on show, his eyes might as well be illuminated
with redness as he stared at her with anger. That last comment mingled with
Austin’s self-pity snapped his reserve. "I was living a perfectly good
life before you got back! I finally got over you and you come back and rip
everything out from under me! You come back and become my friend, distract me.
God, I slept with you, Austin! That was a mistake beyond all others I have made
in my life!”

“I didn’t know this was going to happen! I didn’t know you’d be like
that and I am no murderer so quit accusing me like everyone else. You know
nothing!” Austin shouted back, her tone dangerously playing with erupting into
full blown anger. “I didn’t keep an eye on you every day I was away or my
family. I tried to forget about you, about everyone.” Austin admitted
ashamedly, “That was what I have tried to do, but something always drew me back
in. The computer systems, your birthday, our anniversary, even the day I left.
I just couldn’t leave this place alone because I love you and I love my family
and
I
only ever wanted that back! I just wanted to
come home and be loved. That’s all,” her tone was drowning in her tears, her
defeat wrapping around her entirely, readying to consume her whole and never
let her go.

“I do still love you, Austin,” Tyler told her and he saw hope ignite in
her eyes. “I waited for you every day for almost three years, but you never
came back. I had to move on. You have to realize that I had to move on because
I couldn’t have survived that fucking limbo any longer. It hurt me too much, it
killed me. I had to move on.”

Austin snorted at that comment – she had heard otherwise, town gossip
never stopped to sleep. She knew Natasha spent every day with him, she knew the
pair
were
inseparable from the day after she left
until today. “Yeah you loved me so much you allowed Natasha straight into your
bed! Like she always wanted, like she always promised me would happen!” Austin
shouted and pushed him over the edge with the town’s gossip that she had heard.
“And you fell for her hook, line and sinker!”

“I’m out,” Tyler finalized and shook his head and threw his hands up in
the air. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” He told her and grabbed his
phone and keys from the kitchen worktop and went to leave. He needed air, he
needed to breathe clearly and that house was overheated and claustrophobic. He
couldn’t stand it now. Not with the walls now stained with their loss, with
their anger. He began to walk passed her, ready to just leave this house as it
were. He was through with it and the powerful memories it held. He was
completely done with Austin and he needed to get out.

“I lost your baby,” Austin admitted and just watched his anger freeze
with shock just as he went for the handle of the front door. Immediately her
tears and remembrance strangled her, beginning to attack her and steal her
voice, "Back then I found out I was pregnant. I was going to surprise you,
but Natasha and I argued and she shoved me and I hit my stomach. I lost our
baby before I could tell you, Tyler so I never did. I ran from you, from our
life. I ran because where my head was back then, it was better to run and
forget than tell you and have to fight off Natasha from getting you while I was
breaking down. I was too weak to find the fight in me so I never tried. I felt
I was losing you already and then that happened," her voice quivered as
the droplets of salty tears ran their course down her face before they met at
her chin willing to slip down her neck or drop to the floor. “I never could
tell you what happened so I ran away to stop myself having to.”