by Nicci Harris
She looks down at her feet, contemplating something, and then twists back to me. “I will take Elise in with me.”
I sigh again, exasperated, and work my jaw as I consider her proposal. She is sitting tall, with an edginess to her that looks incredibly hot. She needs to do this—with or without me. This is one of those times when she needs my support and not my protection, even though it scares the shit out of me. Because she is right… she can do this.
Have faith in her, Konnor….
I roll my eyes reluctantly. “Fine, Duchess, but you do not tell him anything, hear me? Nothing! If it means he doesn’t give you any information, then fine, don’t mention your name, your university, anything, understand?”
“He thinks I’m dead,” she says. “Remember?”
“Yeah, so he’s gonna have questions.” The more I talk, the sicker I feel. The more I contemplate the conversation, the more I hesitate.
“Konnor,” she says, perhaps trying to pacify me. “He won’t be able to find me. I live in a different town, I live a different life, with a different name. I will be fine. I’m going to tell him who I am. But give him nothing else."
I massage my temples. “Kiss me,” I order. She leans in and presses her mouth to mine. Her tongue teases my lips, and I fist her hair, pulling her in more deeply, desperately. I love her. God, do I love her. The thought of someone hurting her kills me. I pull away and stare at her. “Be careful.”
A subtle and yet resolute smile crosses her face. “He can’t hurt me in there.”
I press my palm to her heart. “Here... He can hurt you in here.”
Her face softens. “No, he can’t. Not anymore.”
I watch her walk with Elise through both layers of fencing, then enter the sliding doors. Every step seems exaggerated, every little glance over her shoulder seems like a goodbye and every muscle in me wants to run to her even as my every thought goes to the darkest place it can find. I step outside the car and pace. I pace back and forth like an animal, like an animal in a cage. A big, human-holding cage.
Dammit!
My expression is tight, and my molars are clamped together as I make my way towards Jax, slumping down on the grass near his feet. My back hits the ground hard when my legs buckle, and I wince as the wind gets knocked from me.
He drops down beside me on the grass, and we both stare at the sky. I can feel my brows knit together so tightly, that today will probably imprint permanent worry lines on my forehead, each of which is for Blesk. I’ve never been to a prison, never spoken to anyone who has. Will the guards search her or Elise? The thought alone makes my ears radiate with heat. What if her dad tries to touch her? What if he lunges at her? I groan at the thought and rub my face roughly with both hands.
“Say something,” I groan at Jax, wanting him to take my mind off the images in my head. “You clearly have something to say, so just fucking say it.”
He scoffs. “Fine, I will. This isn’t normal. This whole thing, you and her, the intensity of it. You have started doing this awesome new thing where you phase out, and it is just fucking magical. I mean, really, it’s like you aren’t even there anymore. It’s really freaking me out, and yet you won’t tell me what’s going on. It’s fucked up and it’s making you act like a psycho.”
I entwine my fingers and cup the back of my head with my palms. “Maybe I was always a psycho. You just didn’t know it.”
He mimics my position. “I’ve known you for a while now and have never seen you act the way you have over the past month. You’ve known this girl for, like, what? five seconds? And you worship her. Whenever she’s around, you’re in this weird daze, like you’re not even Konnor anymore.”
I grunt and spin my head to flash him a serious look. “You need to stop talking about Duch like that, or we won’t be coming back from this conversation.”
“See, like that! It’s irrational.”
“It isn’t fucking irrational. I just won’t lay here and hear a bad word spoken about her, so cut it out.”
He makes eye contact with me momentarily, and then turns back to the sky. “Listen, Konnor, the past month you have been acting crazy, missing practice, missing games, missing class, missing fucking grad classes. You’re gonna fail.”
“Oh, come on,” I groan. “It has been one fucking month, get over it.”
“It has been a month, one month of you acting like a complete lunatic,” he says gruffly.
I roll my eyes. “I have known her a lot longer than you. I’ve known her for seventeen years.”
“Riiiiiiight." He drawls. "When you were children.”
My jaw suddenly gets tight, and I growl, “Don’t say it like that! You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He releases a sharp, exasperated breath. “Well, then tell me!”
“I can’t,” I snap.
“I like B. You know I do. She’s a cool chick. But you two are crazy together. Way, way too intense. Too, I don’t know . . . Just too much. I keep feeling like I need to watch out for shrapnel cuz you’re gonna explode at any moment.”
He’s so right. “Yeah, I feel like that, too,” I mumble.
“You know that isn’t normal, right?” I notice in my peripheral vision that he has twisted to look at my side profile, attempting to gain more of my attention. Perhaps, even convince me with his severity. “That kind of intensity? You are meant to improve each other’s lives, not derail them.”
I frown at the sky, and then turn to acknowledge him. “No, it isn’t normal. It’s phenomenal! Every goddamn part of it. Her hands, her lips, everything. And I’m totally okay with the intensity. I’ve been in love with her forever, since before I can remember anyone else, and I am not ashamed to say it. I don’t care if I sound like a pussy. I just don’t care. Her face has more familiarity, seems more like family, and has more connections to the word home than any other face on earth. We are working through things at the moment, Jax. Things will get better; it just isn’t a quick fix.”
He sighs sadly, his shoulders deflating with the effort. “I don’t understand, dude.” He shakes his head. “I just don’t get it.”
I clear my throat. “Your mum or dad, your sister, their faces… they are the clearest things from your childhood, right? Your aunties, friends even? You have memories of them and of the things you did. You probably even have photos. All I have is her. Her memory, our memory, memories of the childhood we shared with just the two of us, our life.
“We are one, bound together by circumstance. All I remember from before I was nine is her. There is nothing wrong with us; Konnor and Blesk are great. We always have been, even from the start. This issue is who we were when we were kids and what happened to us. We just need time to figure out how we can put our past and present together.”
Jaxon groans, frustrated. “Please, for fuck’s sake, give me more than that, dude. That makes fuck-all sense. I’m worried about you.”
“Okay, Jax! Okay! But not many people know this. My shrink. My family knows what happened, obviously, because they adopted me, and Elise knows because Blesk wanted her to, but no one else. Not even Drake.”
He scoffs. “Don’t do me any fav—”
“I want to tell you.”
And I do. I tell him everything. I try not to watch his expression as I run through the events of the past seventeen years, but I can tell he is getting choked up.
He never makes a peep.
To my surprise by the end of my story I’m smiling. Because, even though I am on display, all of me, I’m also free. The sun flickers above me, the trees move in the wind and the grass is soft beneath my back. After hearing my story again, in its entirety, I realise it’s almost over. We are so close to truly moving on now. And I have Blesk, my Duchess.
I chew on the inside of my lip in contemplation. “There are a lot of things about me that are a result of that experience,” I admit to Jaxon. “I play them off, of course, as personality idiosyncrasies, but they aren’t… they’re scars. Some of
these I’ll never share with Duch. I don’t need her feeling any more guilt.
“The first year after I got out, I got sick, a lot. I wasn’t used to all the germs people carried, and I was pretty much always on some kind of antihistamines or antibiotics. My system was shot to hell. I never felt… right, ya know? Even though I knew the world was big it still kinda scared me."
We both sigh and continue to blink at the sun overhead. Jax’s expression is stiff and concerned, unwavering in its fight to not offer ubiquitous comfort, and obvious in its overwhelming need to.
“You’ll laugh at this,” I continue with a sheepish chuckle, “but, ah, I was shy once. If it wasn’t for two boisterous sisters, then I might have disappeared altogether. They forced me out of my shell and I mean literally, forced.” I laugh, reminiscing.
“When I had my first drink with Flick, it was like it enlightened me. With that in my system I had courage, I was funny, I was impenetrable, and… I felt closer to the boy in the basement because my experience was similar. I was in a bit of a daze in that cell, mate. The drugs I was given warped the way I saw things.” Hesitation changes my tone, dropping it to barely a choked whisper. “The thing I’ve never told anyone, ever, Cassidy, Flick or my shrink, is… I missed the basement. I missed it because it had become me. And it was where we shared a life. In that room, I got to be with her all the time, every day. And then I was alone, and it was scary. I was scared all the time…
“I slowly moved on. I started to cope without her and without the basement. And yet, the last few weeks, without Blesk… for the first time in several years… I missed the basement all over again.”
Relieved that I finally said it, I lay back against the grass and stare at the clouds, exhausted but happy. Suddenly a silhouette blocks my view. Blesk straddles me, one foot on either side of my waist, and peers down at me. She is lined in silver from the sun’s beams and looks like an angel. Relief floods me.
“Hey there, Mr. Slater, come here often?” she asks, with a cheeky wiggle of her brows. I sit up and grab her knees, buckling them down until she is straddling me. Her incredible arse comes down and meets my thighs. I shuffle her in against me and her breath catches on impact with my body, her warmth seeping into me and calming my nerves.
Christ, I can’t lose her again.
“Miss Bellamy, what’s a girl like you doing outside a place like this?” I ask, purposely displaying both dimples when I grin.
Elise’s chuckles. “Aww, you two are hopeless!”
Jax scoffs and jumps to his feet. “Fuck’s sake, have your menstrual cycles synced or something?” He wipes his eyes and sniffles back the emotions he’s still trying to conceal due to my confessions.
“Jealous,” Blesk says in a singsong voice, beaming sweetly up at him.
“No,” he states. “Because I find my balls and spine both necessary.”
Elise chuckles. “They’re cute.”
“Kill me if I ever act like that,” Jax mutters to Elise.
I completely ignore them and keep my eyes trained on Blesk’s playful grin, which is creasing her cheeks and widening her lips. Her lips are so kissable right now. If Jax and Elise weren’t here, my hands would be roaming her perfect body. I lean in to kiss her, but she pulls away teasingly and giggles. I tut her with my tongue and thread my hands under her backside, forcing her into me harder.
“Do you want that Distinction, Miss Bellamy?”
“I thought all I had to do was show up?” she challenges me, resting her forearms on my shoulders, and running her delicate fingers through the back of my hair.
“That was before I knew your potential.” I lean in again and wrap my mouth around her lower lip, sucking and tugging on it. She goes limp on my lap and moans into my mouth, both of us momentarily losing ourselves in each other, in our kiss, in our moans. I sulk when she reluctantly pulls away from me, flashing a look at our company. I lick the remnants of her taste off my lips, hating how often we have to part.
Damn she tastes good.
“So…” I say apprehensively. “Tell me how it went. Tell me everything.”
She slides off my lap, and I immediately feel her absence all around me. I frown as she positions herself cross-legged beside me. Her face turns serious as she mentally prepares to have what I know will be one of the hardest conversations of our lives.
“Well, firstly, we went through the doors and were greeted by guards. They escorted us to the administration desk so we could sign in and collect our visitor’s badges. I signed in as Blesk Bellamy. The lady was nice. She prepared us for the following few steps and told me prisoner 94018 Donovan Knight, would only be given my first name. Elise and I decided it would be best if only I spoke to him, just in case he baits us and only I realise it. After we waited for a few minutes, we were asked to enter a separate room. In this room, a sniffer dog walked around us. If it had of sat down in front of us, we would have been declined entry.”
“Searching for drugs?” I query.
“Yeah, among other things,” Elise says, and sits beside Blesk. “After we left that room, we were guided into what looked like a school cafeteria. We sat together and waited. There was a guard at every corner of the room. It wasn’t until I was sitting that I started to feel nervous. I sat very still, very stiff, and was definitely on edge.
“When the door to the prison cell block opened, I flinched. The inmates passed the threshold, all in green prison scrubs, and I felt myself stop breathing. I remember consciously telling myself to breathe, over and over. I recognised him immediately. I wasn’t sure I would, because I couldn’t picture him in my head at all. I tried many times, but his face always came up blank. But when I saw his icy blue eyes and the way he holds himself; I knew it was him. I locked my jaw and remained sitting tall. I held my head high. I kept stoic. Elise grabbed my hand under the table and squeezed. I couldn’t have portrayed such artificial strength without her.
“He sat opposite me and smirked, smug and insufferable. I thought maybe I would feel something. Maybe I would remember I loved him once, that he loved me once, but I felt nothing. I thought maybe I would feel a connection, that he did the best he could do, with what little he had to give. That perhaps he loved me as much as a man of his calibre was capable of. But I felt nothing for him other than some fragments of pent-up hate and fear.
“He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at me with formidable arrogance. We sat in silence for at least five minutes, but I refused to be the first to break it. Then he rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘You have your mother’s eyes, Lizzy,’ he said. He knew straight away. He knew it was me. I cringed when he called me that, and unfortunately, it was too noticeable because he then laughed. Elise squeezed my hand again.
“I said, ‘Why did you take him?’ That was all I could get out. That was it.
“He leaned back again and sank into the chair, still smiling smugly. ‘You’re pretty. You’re prettier than your mother,’ he said. I snorted, and he chuckled again at my response. So, I just said, ‘Why?’ again. He scowled at me and signalled the guard. I thought he was going to leave. When the guard approached, he spoke into his ear. He laughed with the guard then said, ‘Yeah boss, she’s a knock out.’ I cringed. Then he stood and walked out, peering over his shoulder to look at me one last time before disappearing around the corner.
“I wasn’t sure if I was mad, or disappointed, or sad. I was sad for you. I felt like I failed you and it was a waste of time. We had to wait for a few minutes to leave. Maybe, five minutes later we were walking from the cafeteria when the guard my father had spoken to stopped us. My heart leaped into my throat. He asked me to hold my arms out and stand still then ran his hands up and down my sides, putting something covertly in my pocket. He tapped the pocket twice, then said, ‘Clear’ and told me to move along. That was it, that was all that happened.” She has a half-smile on her face, but the creases between her brows reveal her true unease. Her hand goes behind
her and she removes something from her back pocket. A piece of paper. It's light, yet it should somehow be weighing down my hand with its significance.
I gesture to the inanimate object in my hand. “This is it. It seems inadequate, almost.”
She shrugs. “I haven’t read it, but please don’t get your hopes up.”
“Yeah, mate, for all you know it says, ‘fuck you, have a nice day’,” Jax says, looking down at us on the grass. Elise and Jax both watch me intently as I take a big breath and then unfold the note.
Lizzy
It is all yours…you’ve earnt it…
Safety deposit box 101, 45 South Side Street Moorup.
2217
Daddy
“He’s such an arsehole.” I scrunch up the piece of paper in my hand, loathing it. “This is a joke.” My knuckles turn white around the note, and it becomes apparent I’m never going to get any answers, and I was pathetic for thinking that maybe I would. I jump up and punch at the air, hating myself for hoping, and trying to release the tension slithering down my limbs. “Fuck!”
“Slater, maybe there is actually something in that box?” Jax states.
“Nah, fuck it!” I shake my head fanatically, scowling at the world in general.
I hear her sweet sigh, and then she mutters, “Baby, we’re going to Moorup to look in the box.”
“You have to. I mean, if you don’t, you’ll always wonder,” Elise says.
I snort. “No, we don’t. That is exactly what he wants, and for all we know someone is going to meet us there and finish what they started in the hospital that day.” As soon as the words pass my lips, I want to rip my own head off. Blesk’s face drops, and I did that, I’m responsible for that sad look.
You’re an arsehole, Konnor.
Elise’s hand goes to her mouth. “Konnor!”
Blesk gasps. “Don’t ever say stuff like that, Konnor! Oh my God.” She bounces to her feet and walks towards the car, sniffling and wiping at her eyes.
“There could be some truth in it, though,” Jax calls out, watching Blesk walk away.
“Shit!” I growl and take my anger out on the grass below my feet, kicking it and stomping. I spin and jog after her, cursing my lack of tact. She leans against the car and folds her arms across her chest, frowning and sulking at me as I approach. Cutest little pout, cutest little sulk. Thank God I’ve never seen this face before, because it renders my own will obsolete. I would do anything for this little sulking face. Placing both palms beside her head on the car, I force a smile and stare directly into her pooled eyes.