Harden My Hart

by Clare Connelly

  ‘I want you to stay the night.’

  My heart trips because the way he says that, it’s not just an invitation. It speaks of a visceral need, like I hold the key to his survival in the palm of my hand, as though my answer alone will determine his fate.

  I stare at him, my pulse galloping through me. I wonder if I should fight this harder, control it better, but ultimately, if the last week has taught me anything it’s that I’d be waging a futile battle.

  I want Holden. I need him in the same way he needs me.

  And so I nod slowly, just a small shift of my head but it’s enough. For as long as he’s in Sydney he’s mine and I’m his, and that’s that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Seven nights left in Sydney

  ‘I LIKE THIS ONE.’

  Her fingertips move over my chest, tracing a tattoo I had done a long time ago.

  ‘Yeah?’ A gruff sound. I let my fingertips undertake their own exploration. There are no marks on her skin; it’s flawless. Fresh, beautiful, unmarked, undamaged, except by the ravages of my lovemaking, which was thorough and has wrought changes on her flesh, changes that will fade as the day goes on. To be replaced by me next time?

  I catch the thought, spinning it over in my brain, because it’s unusual and odd. Then again, I’ve accepted that this is unusual. I’ve accepted the ways in which she’s different to my usual lovers.

  ‘It’s...pretty.’

  That almost makes me laugh. I tilt my head to look at her. Her eyes are trained on my chest, beautiful eyes, a shade I’ve never really seen before. Deep and golden, like trapped sunrays and honeycomb.

  ‘You know what I mean. Delicate.’ She flicks those eyes towards me. I look away, towards the tattoo again, my frown instinctive.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A rose.’

  ‘Yes, I should have said, “Why is it?”’

  My gut clenches. ‘No one’s ever asked me that before.’

  She lifts a brow, a small smile curving her seductive lips. ‘I suppose you don’t stick around long enough for them to ask.’

  That’s true. I find myself hesitating when the answer is simple. ‘I got it young. I was stupid and...just a kid. I liked the idea of it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘There might be an answer in there somewhere, but I’m afraid I can’t decode it.’

  When I close my eyes I can see the roses that my mother grew. I can smell their honeyed fragrance, intoxicating. I can hear the bees that flocked to the blooms, filling the garden with a background hum, especially in the sun-filled afternoons.

  ‘How old were you?’ she tries again, still tracing lines over the rose—to the left of my belly—her light touch mesmerising.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Fourteen?’ She pushes up on one elbow, alarm in her eyes. ‘That’s illegal, right?’

  ‘No charges were pressed,’ I drawl, amused at how scandalised she is.

  ‘But you were still a boy.’

  ‘At fourteen, I was definitely not “still a boy”.’

  ‘Okay, but didn’t the tattooist or whatever check your ID?’

  ‘I didn’t have any ID. I was fourteen.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She presses her hand to my arm, a light slap, designed not to hurt so much as to gently chastise. But I catch her hand, lifting her fingers to my lips, sucking one deep into my mouth then releasing it, biting the tip on its way out. Her eyes flare to mine and the familiar sense of desire begins to unfurl.

  She is naked against my side, her legs tangled with mine, her breasts crushed to my chest. I like her like this. I have lost all concept of time but I think it’s past midnight. There is a part of me that seems to be dreading the fact she might go at any point. And that dread forces realisation—I want her to stay. Only so I can enjoy this, her, as much as possible on this night.

  Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow without this insatiable craving for her.

  Maybe I’ll be over her in the morning.

  ‘Is it a secret?’ she prompts, dropping her head and rolling her tongue over my nipple, her smile filled with cheek and query when she flicks her eyes back to mine. My harsh breath is involuntary.

  ‘No.’

  It’s not. But, at the same time, only Jagger and Theo know. My brothers. My heart thumps painfully at the word brothers, and how long I took its usage for granted. How easily I believed what I was told. As a child, that’s our purview, but why didn’t I question it as an adult? Why didn’t I wonder?

  Perhaps I did. I knew I was different. The black sheep of our family, different, wrong somehow.

  Perhaps that was my instincts telling me something was wrong. That I was being lied to by people I had come to trust.

  Acid fills my mouth and I crave Cora, I crave beer, I crave obliteration.

  ‘What’s wrong, Holden?’ Her hand presses to my cheek, the look of amusement gone completely.

  I feel the darkness stirring in my eyes when I look at her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  It’s a lie. We both feel it. She frowns, the flicker across her lips pleasing me. This is what I’m good at. Destruction, misery, grief, ruination. My special gifts, those I hold in abundance.

  Her frown deepens. ‘You’re lying.’ She scrambles up, and my chest cleaves in two because she’s going to get out of bed and leave after all, and I’ll be alone with the thoughts and memories she’s invoked.

  But she doesn’t leave. She straddles me, leaning forward so her generous breasts are crushed to my chest and her mouth just an inch over mine. But it’s her eyes that hold my full attention in that moment, eyes that are beautiful and magical and they completely enthral me.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Her smile is gentle, like she’s trying to coax a child out from under the bed after a nightmare. ‘I was just curious, but it doesn’t really matter.’

  It doesn’t matter. None of this does. The marks of my past, scored across my flesh, are not important. Not to her, and no longer to me. The childish whims that led me to etch my feelings in my skin, almost as though I could ink them rather than experience them.

  And the reasons for my tattoos don’t matter to Cora, because I don’t matter to Cora. We barely know each other. This is sex. Her curiosity in my tattoos is simple—she presumes they’re pretty decorations, each one chosen for its aesthetic appeal. Her question was light because she expected the answer to be.

  ‘I thought about getting a tattoo once,’ she says, her voice casual, but there’s a brittleness beneath it that has me pulling myself out of my own self-obsessed thoughts, wondering if her flawless skin carries invisible marks nonetheless.

  ‘You didn’t?’

  Her smile is a flash, wiping away whatever I imagined I saw or heard in her voice, whatever complexity I intuited. ‘Too painful. I don’t like needles.’

  She kisses me and I let her, surrendering to the sheer physicality of this, letting it push everything else from my mind.

  * * *

  I didn’t mean to fall asleep here in his incredible bedroom in this penthouse above Sydney, but I was exhausted. Now the sun is rising, streaking hesitant colour through a bleak winter’s sky, and instincts I have carried within me from childhood stir. I push the sheets back quietly, sparing a glance for Holden that becomes so much more, because a glance is never enough.

  It’s the first chance I’ve had to observe him properly. He’s asleep, no likelihood that his intelligent gaze will shift and catch me like this, so I linger, my eyes scrutinizing his face first, the tension and hardness in it lessened by sleep. Like this, his features are still chiselled, stone-like, but his expression is relaxed. Vulnerable. Something in my chest shifts.

  Vulnerable? Holden Hart?

  I’m being delusional. Too much sex. I let my eyes drop to his body, circling across the tattoos, landing on the rose and t
hen, last of all, the Greek word beneath that quite frightening-looking picture.

  Reluctantly, I push away from the bed, grabbing a shirt of his rather than my own clothes—which are tangled in the sheets and beneath the bed—sliding it over my head and inhaling unconsciously, breathing him in so my nipples tighten and my insides warm. It’s a freezing cold morning—his shirt won’t be enough. Fortunately, there’s a blanket on the edge of one of the leather sofas. I lift it up as I go, grabbing my camera backpack last of all.

  The photos I took the day before, attempting to grab the shadows of the Opera House to show the juxtaposition of light and dark, manmade structure versus untamed ocean, are insufficient. I can’t say why, but they don’t work.

  I click the doors open softly, moving to the edge of the balcony and opening the collapsible tripod first, extending each leg and snapping them into position before locking my camera in place. Then I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and I wait. It’s still too early. Night is winning the battle, reluctant to surrender supremacy of the sky. I wrap the blanket more tightly around my shoulders, contemplate making a coffee—except the noise might wake him and I don’t want to do that—and I wait some more.

  Curiosity has me looking around this penthouse balcony—every bit as palatial as the inside of this place. It’s enormous, of course, and looks to wrap around the building, which I hadn’t noticed before. There are several areas set up—sitting areas, a barbecue zone, and as I continue to look I notice a hot tub and a pool, so it really does have everything you could ever need. There are even potted plants—lemon trees and some kind of vine that’s growing over a gazebo construction near the pool.

  It’s a shame he doesn’t live here full-time.

  The thought bursts into my brain, surprising me, so I physically freeze, staring towards the harbour again, trying to make sense of that.

  For his sake, I mean, relaxing. It’s so beautiful, surely nowhere on earth could offer what this does? Here, high in the sky, you could forget you were above a casino, forget you were in the middle of a bustling city. It’s a kind of bliss, far removed from that, beautiful and striking and peaceful and pleasurable.

  The sun is getting stronger. Rays of insistent light penetrate the night, and I return to the camera, switching the viewfinder on, looking at the way the lens interprets what I’m seeing. I have to make some adjustments to the settings in order to more closely capture the truth of this day’s break. Changing the ISO and aperture, I set the timer—I left my remote switch at home—and press the button, waiting for the timer to count down and snap the image. I’m impatient—as I always am—to see the result.

  I move back to the tripod, covering my eyes to remove any additional shade and replay the image. My heart thrills because yes, it’s close. Not quite perfect but almost. I try again, going through the same motions, a few additional tweaks, and then snap.

  I don’t know how long I stand here doing this, long enough for the sun to rise higher in the sky, for the light to get brighter, for night to capitulate entirely, leaving only a smudge of grey on the horizon as a reminder that the fight is merely delayed, not lost. And I lose myself in this perfection—rendering the magic of something like a sunrise onto film is one of the reasons I became enamoured of photography, and it’s one of the reasons I’m sure it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’m ready to stop running and start living.

  I lose myself in the act of photo-taking and forget almost everything else.

  * * *

  I reach for her instinctively when I wake. My body thunders with needs and my mind isn’t alert enough to stand in my way, to fight against that dependency and craving.

  But she’s not there.

  Her side of the bed is cold, no hint of her sweet body remains in the sheets so I could almost wonder if I dreamed that night, except no. I feel her jeans tangled at my feet.

  It doesn’t guarantee that she’s still here. In fact, it could simply mean she didn’t want to speak to me before she left.

  Something like panic flashes in my gut because I wonder if I deserve that. Did I say or do anything that could have hurt her? I wasn’t exactly sober when I went to her place. Could I be forgetting something?

  But no, I don’t think that’s it.

  I push out of bed, pausing only to drag on my jeans. I button them up as I stride down the corridor, checking rooms as I go, until I reach the living space. No sign of her. My sense of foreboding increases.

  I look towards the view, uncertainty within me, and then pause.

  Because she’s out there, wrapped in one of the mohair blankets from the lounge. I can see her bare calves and ankles, bare feet, hair loose and tangled, wild in the morning breeze. And there’s something else.

  What’s she doing? I frown, moving closer, and then pause. A camera?

  Curiosity propels me the rest of the distance. When I open the door she turns to face me, her lips lifting in that ready smile of hers, so I try to dredge one up in response.

  ‘Good morning,’ I say instead, moving towards her.

  ‘Hi.’ She looks towards the camera almost apologetically. ‘I hope you don’t mind. The sunrise was just too beautiful to miss.’

  ‘Mind?’ I lift my shoulders, conscious of the way her attention drops to the gesture. ‘It’s a free country.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s your home.’

  ‘Not my home.’ The rejection is swift. I look away from her, acid burning the insides of my mouth. I don’t have a home. Not really. I’m not being melodramatic. A home is a place you feel comfortable, that you want to be. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that, if ever.

  ‘Right. You know what I mean.’ She’s casual, as though the distinction doesn’t matter. And perhaps it doesn’t, to someone who knows their place, who doesn’t question it.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  She turns back to her camera and I breathe in deeply before I realise what I’m doing—inhaling the sweetness of her hair as the wind breathes it my way.

  ‘Australia.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Her accent was one of the first things I noticed about her. ‘Here, in Sydney?’

  ‘I spent some time here.’

  It’s a very vague response, the kind of answer that tells me more than she intends. ‘And before that?’

  I can’t help myself. I move to stand behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and drawing her back to me. She comes willingly, her body moulding perfectly to mine.

  ‘Before that,’ she says consideringly, her voice quiet in a way it hasn’t been before, ‘I lived a few hours north, in a place called Sundown Creek.’

  I drop my head forward, nudging the blanket aside with my chin so my lips can press to the bare flesh of her neck, tasting the curve of skin there, my tongue running over it reverentially.

  ‘Why’d you leave?’

  She stills. I feel it. I feel every part of her grow tense and, out of nowhere, something stirs within me. Anger. A protective instinct. Something foreign and impossible to translate into rational comprehension.

  ‘I wanted to do something else with my life.’

  That’s not it. ‘Something else? As opposed to?’

  She turns in my arms, her face serious, more serious than I’ve ever seen it. I can feel a war being waged within her and I sympathise because I’m almost constantly at loggerheads with myself.

  But I don’t relent because I want to know, and I’m not good at subjugating my wishes.

  ‘Cora?’

  She bites down on her lower lip, the act a little distracting, and shifts so the blanket moves and I see she’s wearing a shirt of mine. She’s mis-buttoned it so her neck is exposed, and I have to concentrate not to groan because if I really look I know I’ll see the generous swell of her breasts and all thought will evaporate from my brain.

  ‘It’s boring.’ She w
aves her hand through the air and flutters her eyes, smiles, but it’s not an open smile, it’s a smile designed to shut this conversation down. ‘Anyway, I lost track of time. I should go.’

  Frustration is unmistakable. ‘Should you?’

  I don’t want her to. That much is obvious, to me, and surely to her. But, more than that, I don’t want her to close me out of this conversation. I’m genuinely curious about her life. It makes very little sense, and yet I feel it.

  ‘Are you keeping secrets from me?’ I aim for teasing but I think the words emerge as a little mocking.

  ‘Never, Mr Rose Tattoo.’

  She has a fair point. I clearly put an end to her questions the night before; she’s returning that, but not in a tit-for-tat way so much as reminding me of the boundaries that we never discussed but are both observing.

  Her finger moves to the tattoo, swirling around it, and I close my eyes for a moment, something unlocking within me. I shift a little, my body moving closer to hers, my free hand lifting to her hair, and then I open my eyes, look right down at her and find myself speaking.

  ‘I got it when my mother died.’

  Her finger stills, as if snagging on my skin, then begins to move again, more gently, kindly.

  ‘Oh.’ A soft exhalation.

  ‘I hadn’t seen her in a long time. Years. She’d been sick and I was very angry with her. I barely knew her in the end.’

  She nods thoughtfully. ‘So the tattoo is a tribute?’

  I frown. ‘That’s one word for it.’

  ‘You have another?’

  ‘Not really.’ I shake my head. ‘Show me your photos.’

  She frowns, looking towards the camera. ‘In a moment.’ She catches my hand, lacing her fingers through it.

  ‘I’m really sorry about your mum.’

  I tilt my head, my expression grim.

  ‘Why the rose?’

  Jesus, she’s really not going to let this go. ‘She had roses in her garden, where I grew up, before she sent me to live with the Harts.’ The words are flattened of emotion, just like Ryan taught me.