by Leah Ashton
After, he carried her back down to the lake, and they kissed each other with languid kisses as they washed their bodies beneath the beat of the midday sun. Later, dressed again in their dry clothes, Beth slept with her head on Damon’s lap, and then when she woke, Damon was watching her.
Chapter Ten
“Your ex was sick?” Damon asked.
Beth grimaced. “You really want to talk about my ex-husband right now?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. But I’ve been watching you sleep, Beth, and I’ve got to be honest, I’m struggling to work out why you would marry such a moron.”
“Because he left me?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “After he got through your age criteria, obviously – and he clearly had a job that didn’t involve a high likelihood of his wife being the target of dangerous criminals.”
His words were so light, not at all like he’d just reminded them both how temporary this thing they had was.
“That’s flattering,” she said, ignoring a twinge of regret for what would never be. “But he’s not a moron.”
Trent was unquestionably a great guy. Everyone thought so – even Beth.
Damon looked unconvinced. “Then why didn’t you have kids if you want them so much? You must be what … thirty-four? Thirty-five? Or did you only recently get married?”
“I’m thirty-five,” she confirmed, “and we were married a long time. We just both decided to wait until I was in my early-thirties before having a baby. We both wanted to really establish our careers, buy a house – that sort of stuff. But we hadn’t even started trying when Trent was diagnosed with cancer, and it was more than a year before his treatment ended. And then …” Beth decided she couldn’t have this conversation with her head on Damon’s lap, and she rolled off to sit beside him. “And then he told me he’d realised life was too short for a loveless marriage – and that was that.”
“Was it a loveless marriage?”
It felt odd not to be touching Damon any more. Beth reached out to lightly rub his jeans-clad thigh, shaping her fingers over the muscles of his legs, a little shocked by how natural it felt to be touching him so unselfconsciously, and to also know that he wouldn’t mind. That, in fact, he’d welcome her touch.
She looked up, and he was still watching her. “Yes,” she said simply. “I think our relationship was built on mutual respect, mostly. We both genuinely liked each other, and enjoyed each other’s company, so I guess we thought that must be what love was. But, after almost dying, Trent realised he wanted more, and I guess, now … I can see what was lacking in our marriage. I mean, sex was never like what we just did. That was …”
“Magnificent?” Damon prompted with an innocent expression.
Beth laughed out loud. “Yes,” she said, “it definitely was.”
It had been a long time since she’d allowed her thoughts to wallow in the shreds of her marriage, but these last few days with Damon had shone a spotlight on what she’d thought love was. What she’d thought a relationship was.
“I think at some level I knew too,” she said, thinking aloud. “Maybe that’s why I delayed getting my contraceptive implant removed. Maybe I knew subconsciously that he wasn’t the right man for me to be having babies with.”
“But you do want babies,” Damon said, but it was a statement, not a question.
Beth looked at him curiously. “Of course. Like I said yesterday.”
“You were pretty determined to push me away then,” he said. “You also called me a child, remember?”
Beth flushed. After the past few hours, those words were even more ridiculous, even if they did hold a hint of truth. “You are five years younger than me,” she said. “You’re at a totally different life stage to me. It’s not fair, but women don’t get the luxury of time when it comes to making babies, and it’s pretty obvious my time’s running out.”
He laid his hand over hers, stilling the patterns she was making on his thigh.
“You guessed right though, that saying something like that would push me away. I don’t want babies,” he said.
“Never?” Beth asked, unsure why she cared so much about his answer. “Or just not until you’re older?”
“Never,” he said firmly. There was a long pause. “I’d be a shit dad.”
He looked surprised he’d added that bit.
“No you wouldn’t,” she said immediately. “Just look at how well you’ve looked after me.”
He looked away. “You keep doing that,” he said roughly. “Thinking more of me than I deserve. First, you told me I couldn’t have been that bad as a teenager, just because I’m now at Elite SWAT. Then you created noble reasons for me joining the force. And now you’re wearing your rose-coloured glasses again.” He looked back, catching her gaze. “Why do you do that, Beth? Why do you want me to be a better person than I am?”
He stood up, and walked a few steps away, staring at the dead-still surface of the lake.
Beth climbed to her own feet, but didn’t walk to him.
“Why do you think so little of yourself, Damon?” she asked, instead.
Those words hung in the thick, hot, desert air.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he said. “If you did, you’d understand how wrong you are.”
“I doubt it,” Beth said.
He turned to face her. “Do you do this often? Meet someone, then decide you know them better than they know themselves?”
“No,’ she said. “Only as often as I get kidnapped by bikies, then saved by a man who has been nothing but good to me.”
For a long, long minute he just looked at her.
“That’s not true,” he said. “And I can prove it. This sound familiar? If Damon applied himself to his studies, he has unlimited potential.”
“I wrote that on your report?” she said, stunned, although it was clearly not even a question. “You remember that?”
He strode back to her, close enough that she had to tip her chin up to look at him.
“Of course I remember the only person who – until that time in my life – had any faith in me.” His eyes were dark, and turbulent. “I was a piece of shit, Beth. Don’t you get it? I was the child of a drug-fucked dad and a mother I barely remember. No one gave a shit about me, and I gave a shit about nobody. I only went to school because it was fucking miserable at home.”
It was almost impossible for Beth not to reach for him, but she bit her fingernails into her palms rather than move. She knew he needed to say this, and she was too scared if she moved, he’d stop. That he’d go back to vague references to how wrong she was about him – about a man she knew – she knew – was a good man. An exceptional man.
“I was a little shit to all my teachers, right from primary school, because I liked the attention. I knew what I was doing, I knew I was misbehaving so I’d get taken aside. So I’d get little snippets of time where something was actually just about me. Where I was the focus of someone’s attention – not like Dad who focused on the next hit, or the next break and enter so he had cash for more gear.” He swallowed. “I don’t know what my plan was in high school. Sometimes I thought it might be a good idea to finish Year 12, maybe go to TAFE, or Uni – get a job to get my way out of the pile of shit I lived in. Those ideas happened in your classes, Beth. And one or two of the other decent teachers at that hellhole of a school. But most of the time, school was just an excuse to hang out with my mates, and act real tough, and know that my fate was already preordained: I was going to grow up to be a criminal just like my dad.”
She gave up pretending she couldn’t touch him, and reached out to brush her fingers against the back of his hand. Immediately, he slid his hand into hers and gripped tight.
“Even those other good teachers gave up on me, Beth. But you didn’t. You wrote that in my report, as if you saw something in me you believed in.”
“I did,” she said. “Of course I did.”
His look was assessing. “I bet you wrote that
same comment for thousands of kids,” he said. “I wasn’t special.”
“Probably more like dozens,” she conceded gently. “I saw so much potential at that school, despite adversity.”
His lips curved into almost a grin. “It’s okay, I know I wasn’t special to you. I knew that then, too. But I also knew you wouldn’t lie about that shit. That you wouldn’t write that on every fucking kid’s report. That it meant something. And that mattered.”
You’re special to me now, Beth thought, but she swallowed her words.
“But the fact you said that and it meant something to me – it doesn’t change who I was, Beth. You’re looking for something in me like what you saw when I was a kid, but it doesn’t exist. I’m not some noble protector of the innocent, and I don’t have a fatherly bone in my body. After all, I learnt from the best.”
His words were bitter, and he dropped her hand.
“Then who are you, Damon?” Beth asked, grabbing both his hands now and lacing their fingers together. “Who are you if you’re not the good man that I think you are?”
“I’m …”
But he went silent, and looked away.
He doesn’t know.
“Why did you join the police force?” she said. “What took you from your path to jail to the police academy then if you don’t care about protecting the innocent?”
He yanked her roughly towards him, so she slammed into him hard enough to make her gasp. Then gently, he slid his fingers up both her arms, then over her shoulders to skim alongside her neck and cradle her face in his hands. He was breathing deep, harsh breaths, and her own body moved with the rise and fall of his chest.
He looked down at her, and held her gaze. She stared up at him, hating the pain and torment in his eyes.
“I joined the police because I killed somebody,” he said.
She sucked in a breath but didn’t look away.
“Somehow, I finished high school,” he said after a while. “But I didn’t go to TAFE, or Uni, or get a job, or do any of the things I should have done. That I could have done. The stuff Miss Banfield believed I could do. Instead, I took advantage of the fact I grew a few inches over the summer, and that suddenly I was bigger and stronger than my mates. I shoved a few around, made it clear I was the boss, and before I knew it, I had my own little band of shitheads. And we did shithead shit. We broke into houses. We stole cars, drove like idiots, then set fire to them in the state forest.”
Beth didn’t think Damon knew he was doing it, but he was caressing her neck as he spoke, being so gentle with her as he told her of a past she could see overcame him with shame.
“Soon other kids wanted to join in with what we were doing, but I made my little gang exclusive. I had rules, and I didn’t just let anyone in. First, they had to pass a test.”
His voice broke, but still, he didn’t look away.
“They had to steal something for me. Something cool. Booze would do sometimes, a PlayStation once, another time, a sweet laptop. Then this one time, this sixteen-year-old kid stole me a car. He stole me a SV8 Holden Commodore in Sting Red – my dream car at the time. It had side skirts, 17-inch wheels, a rear spoiler – it was amazing.” He swallowed, glanced away, then caught her gaze again. “And all of it, all of it, was obliterated when that kid misjudged the turn on one of those gravel roads out in the hills. Out in that deserted state forest on his way to give the car to me. So he could join my stupid, stupid, gang.”
His eyes gleamed with tears, but none fell.
“I didn’t see the accident, but I heard it. I led the way down the hill with my shitty gang, but when we saw the car, they all disappeared. They left me there to find the kid dead in the driver’s seat. They left me there to run to the nearest house – a house I’d fucking burgled six months earlier – and the people there wouldn’t let me in to use the phone, so I had to scream and beg them to call the police and an ambulance, although I knew it was too late. I knew it was too late, but I waited by the car anyway. I waited until the police arrived.”
Beth didn’t bother telling him that he didn’t kill anybody – because Damon clearly wasn’t talking about legal culpability here. He blamed himself for the young kid’s choices, and honestly … she could see why. He couldn’t have foreseen such a terrible accident, but he’d been part of it. Part of the series of events that led to a death.
And that had changed him.
“I told the police officers to charge me with something. I wanted to go to jail. I wanted to be punished. But they did nothing. I don’t remember much of that night, but the next day, one of the cops who’d responded to the accident visited me at my house. I thought he was going to arrest me, and I met him at the front door, ready to be taken away. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he’d brought me a coffee, and we went for a walk. He talked a bit, then let me talk a lot, about what had happened, about all that dumb shit I’d been doing.” He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “After I’d confessed to literally every crime I’d ever committed, I was certain he’d take me away. But he didn’t. Instead, he told me he was giving me a second chance, because he thought I deserved one. And that if I fucked it up, he had a photographic memory and he was going to charge me for every single thing I’d told him.”
That made Beth smile, and Damon smiled right back.
“So, you joined the police force because of him?”
“No,” he said. “I joined the force because I wanted to pretend I wasn’t that shitty, selfish kid. Because I wanted to pretend I was a good person who had dreams and aspirations and didn’t manipulate others for their own ego. I wanted to pretend I was a noble protector of the innocent, Beth. But the truth is, I’m not. Not even close.”
There was so much that Beth wanted to say. She wanted to refute him, of course. She wanted to shake her head and tell him he was wrong, so wrong – and that people changed. That people grow, and learn, and evolve, and the Damon she knew was not the Damon he thought he was.
But to do so would be to dismiss all the very real emotions that Damon had expressed to her. That he’d expressed to her, out here in the middle of nowhere. Emotions she knew, deep down inside herself, he’d told no one else.
She wasn’t going to minimise that. She wasn’t going to reject what he’d just told her.
You don’t know anything about me he’d said before.
“Now I do know something about you,” she said.
She knew something really, really important.
“Thank you for trusting me,” she said quietly.
But you’re still wrong. You’re still a better man than you know.
But this wasn’t the time to tell him that.
And something in her heart twisted when she realised she may never get the chance to make him believe it.
He bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Do you mind if I have another nap?” he asked.
He wasn’t looking at her, instead he stared out to the lake again, his gaze shuttered, his jaw tense.
And Beth had to, once again, swallow all the words she so desperately wanted to stay.
Damon fell asleep easily, but this time Beth’s fingers skimmed the swirls of the tattoos on his arms as he slumbered beside her.
As she traced the inked designs – the wings of an eagle, the thorns of a vine, and so much more – Beth wondered about them. Had he got them as a rebellious teenager? Or as a second-chance-at-life adult? Or maybe even because of his Notechi assignment?
And whenever he’d got them – what were the reasons why he’d chosen the images he’d permanently marked on his perfect skin? Her fingers slid further down his arm. There she found a blade, then the dark branches of trees …
Was that because of the accident? Had he inked the shadows of that forest on his body as a permanent reminder?
But then her eyes stung, because she wanted to know everything about Damon Nyhuis, and she wanted to tell him everything about herself. And that wasn’t ever going to happen. Because once they
were safe, he’d be gone from her life forever.
He was still all wrong for her, she knew that.
Yet being here with him felt so right.
Chapter Eleven
Damon woke to Beth shaking him awake.
“I can hear motorbikes,” she said urgently. “They sound a lot closer than before.”
It was dusk, and the light around them was all pinks and corals. Beth had tied her hair back again, and her pony tail hung over one shoulder as she leant over him. Her blue eyes held his gaze, her lashes long, her lips a shade of rose that matched the beauty of the sky. Fuck, she was gorgeous.
He reached up, sliding his hand to the back of her neck so he could tug her down for a kiss. All he’d dreamed about was her, and what they’d done here together. It had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
“Damon,” she said sharply, pulling away. “Did you hear what I said? The motorbikes are coming closer.”
He blinked, and finally paid attention to what she was saying, and to their surroundings.
She was right, the buzz of the dirt bikes was definitely getting closer
He jumped to his feet and grabbed their backpack. He surveyed their little campsite of sorts, but they’d been careful, and nothing was lying about on the ground as evidence they were ever here.
“Let’s go,” he said. He would’ve preferred to have waited until it was fully dark because if the plane came over, they were much more likely to be seen in the dusky light, but the nearby motorbikes gave them no choice. They needed to keep moving.
But before they headed off, he grabbed Beth’s hand.
“Wait,” he said. “Can I kiss you?”
He didn’t know what the rules between them were now – after what he’d told her - but he didn’t want to miss any chance to kiss her. Because either they would escape tonight and go their separate ways, or the Notechi would re-capture them.
Either way, their time together was limited.
“Yes,” she said, and on tiptoes pressed her mouth to his.