by Nikki Logan
She lifted her chin. Tired of subterfuge. ‘Are you really that much of a machine, Hayden? You have no other feelings complicating things at all?’
His face became a mask. ‘That’s not what we were about.’
‘And so you won’t miss me? You won’t wonder what might have been?’
He didn’t answer. But he looked like he wanted the answer to be nope.
‘And will you still be doing that in twenty years? Thirty?’ she prodded, desperate to even up the emotional score. ‘Is that how you plan to end your days? Alone?’
His tan turned slightly sallow under the lamplight. ‘If I play my cards right.’
‘You don’t want that.’ Surely?
‘Not everyone wants the picket fence.’
‘Or do you imagine you don’t have to worry about forever?’ she persisted. ‘Do you truly think that you’ll exit this world early in a blaze of glory? Like Leonidas? Or will you just avoid any kind of emotional connection until the end?’
‘That’s the plan.’
She stared at him, utterly lost. Heartsick. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s what I want.’
No one wanted to be alone. Not really. Then a thought popped into her mind. ‘You said you knew why you went underground a few years ago. Is it connected?’
‘I said I knew. I didn’t say I was planning on sharing.’
Her confidence shrivelled. She could have argued that, Lord knew she wanted to. But she was too tired. Tired of thinking about him. Tired of hurting. Her soul ached.
She went back to stuffing her bag.
‘Shirley. We’re adults. I’m sure we can share a bed without mauling each other.’
‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’ She’d take his arm off if he made a move on her. ‘Given how I feel right now, I can’t promise not to suffocate you in my sleep.’
He laughed. He actually laughed.
Maybe he was a machine.
Her badly packed belongings weren’t fitting in as they had on the journey out. She kept shoving them down into unseen air pockets. Jerky and strong.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You stay here and I’ll go sleep in the truck.’
She turned heavy eyes up to him. ‘You think your freezing point is lower than mine?’
‘Oh, there are people who would assure you that I’m already sub-arctic.’
‘Here. You’ll need this,’ she grunted, and tossed a sleeping bag at him. He stumbled backwards half out of the tent to catch it like a marked football and then lifted bemused eyes. Had he not expected her to agree? She lifted her chin. ‘Unless that was just lip service?’
A curious expression crossed his face and he backed fully out into the cold. ‘Thanks.’
‘See you in the morning, then.’ She smiled brightly and then zipped the tent closed in his face.
And then sagged down onto the air mattress.
He was right. They were as damaged as each other.
To please a woman who’s been dead for a decade.
Harsh, ugly words. But were they true? Was that what she was doing? Pleasing her mother? She thought back on how desperate she’d been to cling to something stable in the awful, disruptive weeks right after the funeral. The list had been like an anchor then, giving her something tangible to focus on. As though as long as the list endured so did her mother.
Then, as she’d crossed from child into young woman, as she’d trained for the gruelling marathon, she’d realised that it was more about honouring her—just as Hayden had pledged all those months before. The list wasn’t going to bring her, or Shirley’s old life, back. It was just something she could do. And had continued to do to completion on principle.
At least she’d believed it was principle.
To please a woman …
She’d certainly spent the better part of her childhood pleasing her mother. Studying hard, doing all her chores without reminder, keeping out of the way when she had students around. Making sure her mother never had cause for complaint. Because she held enough things against her daughter as it was: her father’s departure, her failure to find someone else in her life—
Shirley frowned.
—her inability to apply for exciting jobs overseas, her inability to move to a more upmarket district outside Shirley’s school zone. Now that she thought about it. She’d cried-poor Shirley’s whole life, despite having a crowded wardrobe and the best magazine subscriptions. She’d rarely gone out to dinner or the theatre or even a movie with friends. I can’t afford it she would say on a sigh. Not with Shirley’s school fees. Yet they’d been able to afford cable TV and a gardener and cleaner once a week.
She’d been fourteen when her mother had died. She’d only ever seen her through a child’s eyes. And of course she saw an accomplished, popular, beloved teacher and mother. Maybe she would have seen a bad money manager if she’d been old enough to understand what she was seeing? Maybe her mother had actually been lousy at friendships and that was why she’d surrounded herself with a revolving door of students who adored her, but she’d rarely gone out with any of her peers. Maybe she’d been loath to give up the stability of tenure and her home to chase new experiences but hadn’t been able to admit that to her colleagues. Maybe her husband had left because their marriage had failed, not because Shirley had been born.
Shirley stared at the fabric wall of the tent.
Maybe a whole lot of things weren’t as they seemed. How many times had her mother used the single-mother excuse to disguise her own failings? And how many times had she willingly let those excuses settle onto tiny, anxious shoulders?
More important, how much of her mother’s denial had she inherited?
Her stomach churned, just like it had when she was little.
She was still trying to please her mother. Every time she worried about the list, about doing it right, about doing it fast enough or slowly enough, about doing it the way her mother would have wanted, it was as if she were still here, judging Shirley’s performance. Finding her wanting.
And she was still six years old, trying to make up for all the trespasses she sensed but barely understood.
Her mother hadn’t been a saint or a legend or an oracle. She had just been a flawed human being who’d had trouble with friendships and taking risks and who’d used the nearest justification to excuse it. At the expense of her daughter.
Something shifted deep down inside her, clicked into place so perfectly and comfortably it could only be rightness. And, as though in shifting it had uncovered a tiny drain hole in her soul, years of hurt and bewilderment started to drip away, leaving a lightness behind.
Damn Hayden Tennant.
What else was he right about, then?
Did she hide behind Shiloh so that no one could reject her or find her thoughts and opinions wanting? Did she avoid forming relationships? She had a raft of online acquaintances and faces to nod and smile at when she met them at public events. Media she knew. Contacts she cultivated. People she liked to sit with at tables who all knew her as Shiloh. But no real confidantes. No one she’d feel comfortable calling up for a chat. Or drinks. Or a movie.
No one to call to wail that her time with Hayden was over.
No one she’d let see her without make-up.
Her father had left because she cried too much.
Her mother had blamed her for everything wrong with their lives. And then she’d died.
Trouble making friends.
Abandonment and judgement of one sort or another everywhere she looked.
Had she come up with as many clever life strategies as her mother to avoid having to engage with people? To avoid taking personal risks?
Had it made her crawl inside herself and let nothing out?
Shirley forced herself to her feet, turned off the lamp and crawled onto the airbed, still dressed.
But she had let something out. She’d fallen for Hayden, unwound for him, incrementally. Given him a space for his toothbrush in her heart. She’d f
ound, in him, her intellectual match and maybe her spiritual match too. Two damaged people grasping each other in the darkness.
Only she hadn’t realised it was dark.
And he wasn’t so much grasping as holding her at arm’s length. Long, rigid, determined arms.
Deep sorrow congealed in her gut. And now he wanted out. Whatever he needed to make him want to stay, she lacked it. She’d thought this connection they had would be enough to ride out the obvious disconnect between them.
But it wasn’t.
The high-tech properties of the sleeping bag did their job, slowly forming a warm blanket of air around her. Her muscles relaxed. Her goose bumps eased. Her eyes grew heavy.
Yet they didn’t close. Not quite.
She stared into the thick black of the night around her and waited for morning.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ziiiiiip.
The sound morphed, in her dream, into the long, teasing tug of a dress zip lowered by warm, exploring fingers. She wriggled against the pleasant sensation.
But then came a rummaging, a huff, a sigh, and those sounds struggled to find a logical place in her subconscious.
She stirred. Turned.
A dark shadow sat hunched in the camp chair in the corner of the little tent silhouetted by the high moon outside.
‘Hayden?’ It was only as she whispered his name that the memory of their conversation just hours ago returned. She stiffened.
‘I’m sorry, Shirley,’ he whispered. ‘It’s freezing out there. The truck’s door seals are shot. I’m going to wait out morning here.’
In a chair? Wrapped in a sleeping bag? Watching her sleep?
She rolled back over. ‘Suit yourself.’
Silence.
Then a heavy breath.
She rolled back over. ‘Were you hoping I’d relent and let you in?’
His low voice smiled. ‘Kind of, yes.’
If he’d denied it she would have left him there to freeze. But the smile she could hear in his voice said so much about his amazing ability to compartmentalise his emotions. He was who he was. It wasn’t his fault he was built differently inside to everyone else. He hadn’t invited her affections or been dishonest with her. He was just a leopard with very definite spots. Not at all interested in changing them. Not for her.
Plain and simple.
He’d only called things as he’d seen them.
She rolled away from him again but spoke softly. ‘Fine. Get in.’
The bed lurched before she’d even finished the sentence and Hayden tossed the second sleeping bag over them both, taking care not to touch her. But his cold radiated every bit as much as her warmth and she felt it across the gulf of inches between them. She slid her leg across to touch him experimentally with her toe.
‘Oh, my God, Hayden …!’ She lurched up.
He was ice-cold. Hypothermic kind of cold. He flinched as though he’d touched her.
‘I’m sorry …’ he slurred.
She turned. ‘You’re freezing.’
‘This is like some bad porno,’ he said, his laugh constricted by the spasms of his chest. He’d gone past shivering to a place of rhythmic, full-body muscle contractions.
‘You need to get warm.’
His shaking head rustled against the sleeping bag he’d hiked up to his face. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea for either of us.’
She wasn’t in a hurry to have him pressed up against her, either.
‘Take the underneath layer,’ she ordered, ‘and wrap it around you like a cocoon. It’s got my warmth.’
He did it and the shifting and tucking let in a whole lot of cold night air. Her goose bumps returned. But then he was done and he curled onto his side and let her remnant body heat do its job.
‘You’re so warm,’ he murmured as her toasty thirty-seven degrees centigrade soaked into him from the high-tech fabric.
Her lips quirked and she rubbed at the gooseflesh. ‘I was.’
He roused. ‘Now you’re cold.’
She pushed him back down. ‘I’m not hypothermic. I’ll make some more heat. Don’t worry. Go to sleep.’
She turned away from him and scooted as best she could to her side of the double bed. It really wasn’t big enough for much separation, especially with him curled. But she understood why he needed to be. His body was protecting its vital organs.
In the silence, the time between his convulsive muscle clenches slowly lengthened. Then eased altogether. His pained sigh was a kiss of cold air on the back of her neck.
‘Better?’ she whispered back over her shoulder.
‘Getting there.’
It wasn’t tawdry. He was about as protected from any accidental contact as he could be, wrapped in a full-body sheath of goose down. But she wasn’t going back to sleep either. He was way too close for that.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered into the darkness.
‘You’re a jerk, but you don’t deserve to freeze to death.’
‘No …’ His breaths drew out and his words sounded close against her ear. ‘Thank you for finding me. That day.’ He breathed again. ‘Thank you for saving me.’
Every muscle in her body paused to listen.
‘I was on a path nowhere good when you pulled up to my cottage that day. I’d quit drinking but the whole downward spiral hadn’t really changed. You forced me back out into the world and made me engage with it again.’
A deep ache started up in her chest. What could she say to that?
‘I love doing what I do, but I don’t always like what I do,’ he murmured between tremors. ‘I don’t like the expression I imagine on my mother’s face when I think of her looking down at me from above and seeing who I’ve become. I didn’t like the look on your face when you found out. The judgement.’
She opened her mouth to apologise.
‘That’s not a criticism of you,’ he whispered against her back. ‘It’s me. It’s my choices. But you’ve shown me a way forward that I think I can live with. The road ahead is no longer a dark abyss.’
She lay in silence, understanding that he needed to do this. Fearing he’d stop if she spoke. Greedy to understand him better, even if it was their last night together.
‘My parents split when I was sixteen,’ he breathed into her hair.
Just split? That was less dramatic than she’d imagined.
‘My mother finally found the courage to leave. He wouldn’t let her go before that. Or me.’
Her heart squeezed. Domestic violence. Closer to what she’d imagined.
‘My father told her she could only go if I stayed. Knowing she’d never leave me behind. That’s what he traded on. Our love for each other. If she stayed, I was powerless. If I stayed, she was. But with her gone …’ He swallowed. ‘I made her go. I was nearly sixteen, close enough to independent. By then I could play him like a piano, keep myself safe. But I couldn’t keep both of us safe at the same time.’
His cold-slurred speech tapered off and she wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
‘She left you with him?’ she risked, not wanting to break the spell.
‘And set up on her own across town. But she didn’t get all her bone breaks treated professionally. One of them grew an abscess and leached toxins into her system over a couple of years. Irrevocable.’
Shirley swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat.
‘Those years of freedom were the best of her life, even though they were still so imperfect. I avenged her every day, manipulating my father and learning to despise how easy he was to play. I had him in the palm of my hand and absolutely no inclination to take care with what I had. Everything bad I learned about human nature I learned from him, one way or another. As education went, it was powerful.’
So were his words, confessed to the night and suddenly so close to her ear. A tremor skittered down her flesh.
‘She died about the same time you started coming to my house?’
‘Registering for your mother�
�s class was the best thing I ever did. Without her, I would have assumed all people were like my father. But I did it because I thought she was someone else I could play. A great brain I could challenge and best. A whole class full of students to be smarter than. That’s who I was.’
She pressed her lips harder together in the shadows.
‘Except she saw immediately who I was and she never let me best her. She was always a step ahead, in a way that lifted me up to her level. It challenged me to be better, not smarter.’
Would he admire his mentor so much if he knew what she’d done rather than face her own flaws?
‘I’m hurting you, Shirley, and I can’t forgive myself for that.’
‘Because I am her daughter?’ she whispered.
He stroked her hair. ‘Because you are you. But I can’t be who you want me to be, I can’t turn myself into someone who can do forever. Not even for you.’
She wanted to rail, to point out that she hadn’t asked him to. But this was goodbye; fighting it wouldn’t change it.
‘And I would hurt you again, eventually. I would take what I know about you and your feelings for me and use them against you. Because that’s what I do as automatically as breathing. I exploit people’s natures. You are so much better off far away from me.’
She smiled into the tent wall. Hollow and empty.
‘“If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.’” This time it was his turn for silence. ‘Mother Theresa,’ she finished weakly.
‘You don’t love me, Shirley,’ he breathed after a long nothing. Tight. Uncertain.
She forced a smile to her lips, even though he couldn’t see it. ‘Do I get any points for not meaning for it to happen?’
A slight crack on the last word betrayed the tears that had started to roll in the darkness.
‘Shirley …’ He scooted forwards, pressed hard up against her. ‘Please don’t cry. Please.’
‘I’m not crying—’ she laughed ‘—I’m leaking.’
‘I am so not worth your tears.’
‘You have a very low opinion of yourself,’ she whispered when she had control of her voice again. ‘Or a very high one of my tears.’