Inconsolable (14 page)

He nodded, because if he spoke she'd hear all the hope and confusion in his heart. He'd never wanted two diametrically opposed things so badly. He wanted her to stay away and he wanted her to be with him. It made about as much sense as needing to live in a cave, but tonight he wasn't questioning it.

He got busy with the salad, dishing it up onto plastic plates.

“You really want me to eat with you?”

“Yes, I want you to eat so it'll slow down the rate at which you fling questions at me.”

She walked across to the couch and sat, crossed her leg and swung it. “Don't bet on it.” And goddamn, she made him smile again.

He served her chicken salad and poured her mineral water, then he sat beside her, but at the distant end of the couch where there was no chance of an accidental touch because while watching her, smiling at her, making her laugh was acceptable, touching her was too intense, too wrong.

She forked a piece of chicken into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Hmm. Good. All right so, question, where did you go?”

“You can ask them. I didn't say I'd answer them.”

She stopped, fork halfway to her mouth. “That's not much fun.”

“You're not coming here for fun. I'm your job. I'm your bad boss on your back.”

She tilted her head and closed one eye. “When did I tell you I had a bad boss?”

“The first day.”

“I have no discretion.” She took a mouthful of salad and didn't seem bothered by her lack of diplomacy.

“You told me what your mother thinks too. Twice.”

She put her fork back on the plate. “Do you have a special memory super power or something?”

“Yes.”

“What?” She pointed the fork at him. “You're making fun of me. For that I get a question answered.”

He looked at his plate. “You can try.”

“Hmm.” She took another mouthful. “Then I need to make it count. I know you really moved out because I checked.”

She checked. She'd come here again. “Alone?”

“No, with my private army and a marching band. Yes, alone. What do you care, you weren't here? I just wanted to see what you'd say when I asked and hey, that's not my question. Don't answer that. Yum, this is good.”

“Fat Barney's. Dessert comes from Tony's Fruitopia.”

She speared a piece of chicken. “You're volunteering information. Are you drunk? Don't answer that either, because I don't think you drink and I'm not wasting a question.”

“I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I'm in a rare mood to volunteer.” And apparently to smile, joke and retain a reasonable amount of eye contact. He had to be high on varnish fumes, or just so damn happy to be home. He couldn't afford to think it was any other reason.

“Must be the full moon.”

He started on his food. “It's a three-quarter, but I take your point.” Now he was the one gesticulating with a fork.

She looked at the rock ceiling of the cave, her plate on her lap. “You won't tell me where you went because it's important to you that it's private. And though you said it's safe, you prefer to be here.”

He ate and waited, then when she remained silent said, “Is there an actual question coming?”

She rolled her lips inside her mouth, trying not to laugh. “I'm working up to it.”

He responded with, “The night is young,” and the words came with an out of body experience. Did he really say that? He wanted to see her do that thing with her lips again, try to swallow her amusement. He wanted the night to get stuck on repeat and never end.

She turned her head and hit him with her laser beam eyes. “Well, listen to you. All it takes to loosen you up is a bit of chicken salad, some fizzy water and a three-quarter moon.”

No, that's not what it was at all. It was sea spray and varnish, and God, she was so lovely to look at, and tonight for some reason he wasn't afraid to see her. Tonight for some reason he was happy. It was an unwelcome thought, a storm cloud on a clear horizon and he pushed it away like Jupiter controlling the weather, and found his voice. He didn't say I missed you, though those were the words sitting pretty in his mouth.

“And the question is?”

“The question is, if you can be like this, why did you lose it with me?”

She didn't say I missed you either. What was wrong with him? He stood. He thought she'd ask about where he'd been, about why he'd come back. He needed the movement to gather his thoughts, then when she tensed, uncrossing her legs, folding her arms around herself, making herself small again, he sat back down. The words were in his mouth before he was ready for them to be said, but they came flooding out anyway.

“This was not supposed to happen.” He looked across at her. She watched him with none of her earlier amusement, with something of the fear he'd taught her. “You. You're not supposed to happen. Coming here. Caring about me. It's not allowed.”

He stood again, because he couldn't be still. “I don't deserve it. You, your attention. I'm not a good person and you are, so being here with me is bad for you.” He pressed his hand to his chest, where his heart was running laps around his ribcage. “I'm bad for you and I proved it by shouting at you. I wanted to scare you. I wanted to scare you so badly you stayed away from me.” He took a few steps away from the couch, away from her. “I knew you were stubborn, but I didn't expect you to be so strong, so—”

She cut him off. “I cowered on the ground. I wouldn't call that strong.”

He turned back to her. “You did everything you could to combat me. You made yourself small in the hope I'd stop feeling threatened. It worked. I came back to my head when I realised that. But I wanted to tear my own skin off for how I'd behaved. I forgot you wouldn't know about the edge.”

He pointed at it, but kept his eyes locked on hers, alert for any sense that he was scaring her again. “I stand on that edge every day. I do it to remind myself to live. I needed that reminder, but I forgot how it might look to you. What I did that day was unforgiveable.” He dropped his arm to his side. He had to stop himself from dropping to his knees, “But you've forgiven me anyway.”

“I have.” Her eyes went to her lap and she relaxed against the couch back. “My mother would have something to say about that.”

He wanted to smile. “She wouldn't approve?” He wanted her eyes back on his.

“You're not exactly what she'd hope for me.” He got them and they were full of panic. She sat upright. “I mean. Shit. Shit, I don't know what I mean.” She picked up their plates and put them in the plastic bag they'd come out of. Making herself busy, like she'd made herself small to get away from him. “It's not like I've told her about you.”

She shook the bag at him. There was just enough of the daylight to see her face, flushed with embarrassment. “Why are we talking about my mother? I should go.”

He'd lost her and this time it wasn't something he'd done. All he could do was watch as she slung the strap of her bag across her body. She faced him, ready to leave.

“You know there's still too much heat on you for this place to be safe; duelling petitions, the damn resident action group still wants you gone. Can I talk you out of staying?”

“No.”

She snorted with annoyance. “Why is this place so special to you?”

“If you stay for some grapes I'll tell you.”

“I don't want grapes. I don't want your bribery any more than you want mine. I've spent enough time on you,” she flung her hand out to encompass the cave, “on this.”

If he'd ever had a chance to make things right with her, it was gone.

He looked away from her anger. “I need to be here because it's clean. There are no distractions, no illusions, no luxuries. I can stay focused, not get lost in all the noise. Not make bad decisions. It's peaceful. It's right.”

Another snort of frustration. “What happened to you?”

“What happens to anyone—life. Good and not so good. Easy and hard.”

“But not just anyone wants to live in a cave.”

“You're asking the wrong question.”

“And if I ask the right one will you answer it?”

Could he? Could he make her understand the scope, the breadth of what he'd done? The number of people he'd hurt. The A to Z of it. Those words were dammed up inside his head, a frozen wave of pride and error, of arrogance and greed that would hold him down and drown him. He took a step towards the cliff edge. He'd prompted this and he didn't understand why, only that it was too much.

“I didn't think so.”

She stepped onto the first ledge, but she'd left already and he'd lost something he could only define as an ache in his limbs that he had no right to feel.

13: Meditation

Foley stood on the shore and twisted her hair into a knot. She would run Drum out. It was easy. Harden up and do what needed to be done. It wasn't good for either of them, this odd dancing around each other they were doing, as if they were more than a pain in each other's butts. So run him out of her head she would.

It was screwy he'd thought it was appropriate to organise dinner for her as though they were long lost friends. And she was so seriously stupidly starry-eyed about him, she'd convinced herself it was reasonable to stay, eat, get some answers and encourage him to move out again. She had some kind of saviour's reverse Stockholm stupid syndrome. Had to be it. Otherwise, where was this idiocy coming from?

Like that crack about him not being what her mother would have chosen for her.
Holy fuck.
Of the two of them it was hard to tell who had the more serious mental problem. Drum who needed to live on a cliff face, or Foley whose subconscious thought the hermit squatter was a serious contender.

God that was embarrassing.
Bad enough the thought was rattling around inside her head, but she's said it out loud and he'd looked at her as if she was central heating set to steamy on a freezing night. And about that. He looked at her now. He turned those eerie pale eyes on her and they didn't hive off as soon as she met them, they didn't flicker all over her body measuring her for fit, they were steady and open and told her things she was afraid to know.

It wasn't appropriate, it wasn't reasonable and whatever it really was—was absolutely done with.

If she still needed her conscience soothed, one of the rangers would check in on Drum and give her a report. And she was going to recommend to Hugh they boarded up the cave so Drum had to find somewhere else where the air was clean enough for him, or whatever his reason for needing to live in a cave was.

The guy was obviously disturbed and she should've paid more attention to that. She'd been too busy imagining he was some kind of charming, gorgeous, intelligent eccentric.

Just thinking about him she was prickling heat all over without a warm-up; flushed from fingernails to hair follicles. She bent her knee, took her foot in hand and stretched her quad. She would run Drum out of her system if she had to lap the beach a dozen times. She swapped legs. She would run till her head cleared, till thoughts of him were exchanged for puppies, unicorns, world peace.

It didn't matter what else was in her head: a naked Hugh, a well-dressed Nat, Gabriella on an unemployment line, so long as Drum's shy smile wasn't.

She did a few lunges. It'd been a month at least since she'd last run, so this was going to hurt. This was going to put her to sleep without the need to entertain herself before drifting off by wondering what it would be like to touch Drum's chest without wanting to beat him senseless. It was going to give her another physical sensation to worry about other than the way her traitor body got all squirmy and needy when she was near him.

She glanced over her shoulder at the cliff. Tonight, he'd be eating for one; he'd be keeping company with the wind and debating with seagulls, because she was not setting foot on that dumb ledge, in that stupid cave, ever again. This run was her cliff edge, her drop-off point, where she'd leave Drum and his weirdness behind and start fresh and clean with no regrets.

It was a beautiful evening, almost the last of daylight savings, the surf was a gentle swell making the beach more like a giant swimming pool. All the surfers had decamped for somewhere with a break and there wasn't a single fisherman. With no crashing waves there was a gentle peace about the place. She took a deep breath and tried to fill her lungs with it, absorb it through her skin.

There would be a few more nights like this and then autumn would turn to winter and she'd switch to running in the mornings before work, which was so much harder to do, to drag yourself out of bed when it was cold and dark, and winter clothes hid your excess padding.

She started out with a brisk walk on the hard packed sand at the shoreline, then kicked it into a jog. When her muscles stopped complaining, she upped her pace so she'd become that rhythmic placement of foot after foot with no space to think about anything except the next breath. That got her as far as the opposite end of the beach with a shocker stitch in her side. She kept moving at a brisk walk pace, taking shallower breaths, knowing the spasm would ease off.

The last two weeks had been anything but easy, long days at work and lots of tension. Sculptures by the Coast was a huge success, and despite threatening weather it'd received a record number of visitors, from pop stars to princesses. Geraldo proved to be worth the money he'd been paid to curate, and Roger was in his element, especially the day the state premier and the Danish Royal Family did the walk and news coverage spread around the country, even showing up on international websites.

Hugh managed not to deck Walter Lam while not giving in to any of the demands on his ten point plan for council action. Foley managed not to overly antagonise Gabriella. Gabriella managed to take credit for anything good that was happening.