The Son & His Hope
Page 41
I couldn’t follow their fight, but finally, the girl sniffed. “Hair dark in photo. But guess is Sunyi.”
Her older brother smirked, his chin shot in the air with victory. Looking at me, he said, “Sunyi. White hair now.”
My knees weakened. My body tingled. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or jump for joy. “So…you’re saying the man in this picture is here?”
The boy shook his head, a big grin on his face. “No.”
“No?” My eager nervousness bounced around in my blood with nowhere to go. I felt sick. I wanted to grab the boy and shake him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he not here.”
“Where is he?”
“In water.”
Was that code? A sentence that didn’t do well with translation?
I cocked my head. “In the water?”
The boy rolled his eyes at my slowness. “Yes. Water.”
“No.” His sister grabbed his bicep, pointing at the horizon. “Here.”
Spinning around, I stood too fast.
My head swam, my fingers dropped my phone, and the heavens opened their torrent.
A sheet of water fell from above, a heavy wet curtain doing its best to block the truth.
But it was too late.
I’d seen.
A fishing boat haphazardly made its way to shore. A basic craft with nets bunched at the end and a balancing pole keeping the long boat upright, slapping against the chop. The captain stood at the back with his hand on a long mechanism leading to an engine beneath the surface, while two men sat in the middle, dripping with rain, not caring they were as wet out of the water as they would’ve been in it.
Three men in total.
Two of them had black hair.
And one had a shock of sun-bleached white-blond hair.
A man I would’ve recognised anywhere.
After four long years, Jacob Wild, I’ve found you.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Jacob
* * * * * *
GODDAMN THIS STORM.
I was exhausted. I needed to rest. But with this monsoon, my hut would leak, my roof would pound, and the much-needed sleep I dreamed of would be non-existent.
Not for the first time, I thought about leaving.
I should’ve left months ago when the wet season started and the temple in the bay cried with raindrops more often than gleamed with sunshine.
But I had nowhere else to go.
Nowhere else I could be left alone, anyway.
The men here had grown used to my presence as I’d camped on their beach. I’d hitchhiked through Bali, seeking the quietest spots, and found this place purely by luck.
The fact that it had a temple dedicated to the dead seemed too much of a coincidence to leave.
For a week, I’d watched the locals depart at dawn and return at dusk with stingrays and crab and fish.
They worked just as hard as I did. The only difference was they worked the sea while I worked the land.
I’d aimed to stay a couple of weeks, pay my respects, and carry on wandering, but they had other plans. I couldn’t remember exactly how I’d begun working with them, only that I did. One afternoon, I’d ambled over to inspect their haul, and the leader shoved a basket of dead fish in my arms.
I hadn’t shoved it back.
Instead, I’d followed the procession into their village and gave the basket to a teenage girl who proceeded to gut, scale, and dry them on a string.
That night, I’d been invited to dinner, tucking into banana leaf-wrapped rice with a chargrilled fish from their fire. Afterward, they’d shared their pipe with me, and the heaviness of silence that filled my bloodstream as the marijuana smoke filled my lungs gave me peace for the first time since my mother died.
I’d slept without nightmares that night, beneath the stars outside my tent.
The next day, a man nudged me awake with his foot, and I’d found myself on a boat, bobbing on the unforgiving sea, my skin burning from sunshine and my hair steadily turning white.
No one had mentioned I didn’t belong.
No one asked me to leave.
And so, I stayed.
I stayed one month, then two, then three.
I was now as much a fisherman as I was a farmer, and I didn’t struggle against the new career fate had given me. I embraced it because it gave me purpose again.
And each night, the pipe was passed around, and the smoke helped soothe my damaged soul.
The drug kept memories away and banished the girl who haunted me—quietening my guilt, my pain, and the knowledge I’d done something unforgivable.
When I’d written to Aunt Cassie last month, heading into town for supplies and having a drink at a local hotel, I’d almost included a letter to Hope.
But I had nothing to say.
No apology to utter or news to deliver.
Our friendship was over.
Four years was a long time, and I hoped it’d distanced her from my mother’s death and the awful ending between us. For me, it felt as if it happened yesterday, but that was why I’d made my home on the beach belonging to the temple of the dead.
Every day, I served my penance beneath the hot sun.
Every night, I found short-lived salvation within a pipe.
And the work I toiled with hopefully appeased the two ghosts who lived in the breeze and sky, watching me live, hopefully happy that I’d found a place of sanctuary.
“Sunyi. Your turn.”
Gede’s voice interrupted my mindless musings, dragging me back to a soaking boat and thundering rainstorm. The wind howled, picking up ferocity as if determined to drown us before we pulled ashore.
Pushing the fishnets away from my feet in the bottom of the boat, I stood. Kadek passed me the rope to secure the craft, and I dived into the ocean.
An embrace of salt and sea welcomed me back to a world I’d grown familiar with in the ten months I’d lived here, and I stayed under for a second or two.
It was quiet beneath the surface.
Heavy.
Oppressive.
Safe.
Kicking, I breached the chop and sucked in a breath. The ocean was warmer than the air with the storm rapidly cooling the constant humidity.
“Sunyi, tie up. We get off this boat.”
Sunyi…
Just as I didn’t understand how I’d become employed as a Balinese fisherman, I didn’t know how I’d earned that name.
I’d asked one of the village girls a few months ago what it meant and ended up smoking double the usual amount that night.
The Indonesian word meant desolate, dead, lonely.
I thought I’d hidden who I was at heart.
But these people recognised me instantly.
“Sunyi. Go.” Gede pointed at the horizon where lightning forked, dousing the evening with white electricity.
Shit.
Pushing off in a powerful stroke, I swam to the plastic bottle bobbing a metre or so away. The mooring was tethered to the reef below, ready to hold the boat as the swell grew bigger. With storms like this, it was safer to keep the boats offshore rather than hauling them up the sand.
The second I’d secured the small vessel, Gede threw the net overboard with the small catch from today and jumped in after me. Kadek turned off the engine, glanced at his most prized possession, then dived in and struck off for the beach, leaving Gede and me to haul the net and its bounty through choppy current.
What I loved about working with these guys was their quietness. Conversation was not needed amongst the serenity of fishing. And I didn’t speak their language, so when they did talk, I had no pressure to participate.
However, in the middle of an angry ocean, Gede cocked his chin, and grunted, “Orang kulit putih.”
My eyes shot to the shore.
I didn’t know their language, but I knew a few words. Just enough to get by, including the name they’d given me and orang kulit putih.
White person.
A woman with white skin.
Chocolate hair.
Bravery and pushiness and home.
I let go of the net.
She’d found me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Hope
* * * * * *
I COULDN’T MOVE as Jacob stepped from the ocean, dragging a net with a Balinese man, rain mixing with the saltwater already on his skin.
His shirtless chest was leaner than at Cherry River, but the muscles and strength I was accustomed to rippled with every stride. The blue swimming shorts he wore had a tear on one thigh and a hole by his hipbone, revealing a story of someone who’d spent more time in the ocean than on it.
Our eyes locked. My heart galloped. Jacob didn’t look away as he muttered something to the man and gave him the net.
Striding toward me, he raked both hands through drenched hair—white hair that set off his rich tan and highlighted dark eyes. With the lightning framing him from behind and the droplets splashing on his perfect skin, he looked as if he was the missing son of Poseidon.
My knees shook as bare feet brought him closer. Four years had been cruel and kind to him. Cruel because they’d stolen any remainders of childhood and kind because, in the wake of a boy, the man who stood before me was utterly breath-taking.
Wild as his surname baptised him.
Savage as the loneliness in his heart.
Every inch of me trembled to touch him. To lick at the rivulets of liquid as they waterfalled down his flat stomach. To kiss the tight lips as he studied me. To hug the hardness he’d wrapped himself in.
I’d come here to give him more news of death.
To tell him his grandfather was dying, and that he had such a small window to say goodbye.
Yet in that rainy, stormy moment, my mouth forgot words and my heart forgot Michael.
I was just Hope.
The embodiment of faith, belief, wishes, and daydreams.
I hoped with every fibre of my soul that Jacob would be kind, that he’d healed, that he’d let me love him.
Because I couldn’t lie anymore.
I’d loved him when I was a child, and I loved him as a woman.
But I wasn’t free to love him.
I was with another who was gentle and sweet and did not deserve a harlot who stood on a tropical beach, her white sundress plastered to a body begging another man to take it.
I hated myself as lightning forked, lashing like a whip, punishing me for my sinful thoughts. I cursed myself as thunder cracked right above our heads, making us flinch.
I’d never stood a chance against Jacob. Even when I was a silly ten-year-old, the power he had over me was absolute.
“Jacob.” I stumbled forward, summoned to him and unable to fight it.
He didn’t move, but his hand came up. A hand that used to drive a tractor and ride a horse and clutched my locket deep in a forest.
For the longest second, he didn’t speak. His dark eyes gleamed, looking part storm, part mystery, endless in their torment. Then he sighed, and his heady voice barely carried over the slap and hiss of rain. “What are you doing here, Hope?”
No hello.
No embrace.
No hint of our past or friendship.
It was the reality check I needed.
My foot returned to its original position, removing me from his closeness, putting distance between us that reeked of strangers and strangeness.
How could I tell him that I’d come on Cassie’s request? How could I tear out the heart he probably hadn’t mended?
I gulped as the Balinese man dragged the fishing net along the beach, eyeing me up before glancing at Jacob.
Jacob didn’t acknowledge him, his stare cold and full of warning, branding me with ice. His rejection made tears burn hotter than any lightning.
But then, I grew angry.
Angry with him and me and Cassie and John and even Della.
I’d been given a task. I’d walked away from my old life to find a man who didn’t want to be found and tell him things he didn’t want to hear.
The least he could do was say hello.
But then again, my feelings had nothing to do with this.
Jacob had been abundantly clear on where I stood with him.
I couldn’t be angry that he hadn’t changed those rules.
I could only be angry with myself.
I’d cheated on Michael just by getting on that plane.
I didn’t deserve any other form of welcome because I wasn’t welcome and that had never been more obvious. “Ca-can we go somewhere to talk?”
He squinted at the sky as another sheet of rain fell harder. “How did you get here?”
“Driver.” I turned to point up the dense jungle-covered hill. “Up there.”
“How long ago?”
“Four hours or so.”
“Shit.” He shook his head. “You stayed too long. He’ll have left you. No one lingers here. Not with the superstition of this temple’s bay.”
I nodded. “I feared as much. I guess…I’ll have to wait for the storm to pass and then call a taxi.”
“Taxis don’t come out this far, Hope.” He sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose before glaring at me. “Why did you come?”
My skin prickled. “Can we talk somewhere drier?”
“How did you find me?”
“A roof, Jacob. Give me a roof, and I’ll answer any question you want.”
“Any question?” His eyes narrowed.
I flinched. “What question do you have in mind?”
Another lightning bolt blinded us, followed by its friend the eardrum-smashing thunder. Rain turned into buckets, gods tossing litres of liquid from the clouds.
My dress hugged every curve, the lacy bra I wore underneath revealing pebbled nipples and quaking stomach. I was exposed and vulnerable yet Jacob didn’t study my body.
His eyes stayed resolutely on mine, angry and black and unreadable. “I know all the answers I need.”
I couldn’t hold eye contact anymore. Instead, I looked at the sand and numerous tracks and river bends caused by the rain. I should just spit out about John. I should walk back to the hotel even if it would take all night.
I should never have come.
Familiar sadness and worry when it came to Jacob engulfed me. “I-I—”
What, Hope?
Say something!
Walk away.
Turn around.
Forget him.
My shoulders slouched, and the girl who’d befriended a rabid dog disappeared.
I’d made a mistake.
Twisting in the sand, I shrugged. “I’ll go. I’ll—”
“Aw, shit.” In a burst of kindness, Jacob closed the distance between us and hesitantly placed a large, strong hand on my shoulder. “God, forgive me. I don’t know why I’m such an asshole to you.”
I blinked, trapped in his hold. “We haven’t seen each other in a long time. It’s understandable to be—”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make up excuses for my shitty behaviour.” He squeezed me gently before letting me go. “I’m sorry. Truly.”
Rain blurred his handsomeness, hushing his apology so it didn’t seem real.
Perhaps travelling had healed him? Maybe he wasn’t the same farmer who’d broken my heart, after all.
“Look, it’s not safe here. The storm is directly overhead. You’ll, um, have to stay the night. I’ll drive you back tomorrow.”
“You’ll…let me stay?”
His throat worked as he swallowed. The rage in his gaze faded into worried resignation. “We were friends once. What sort of friend would I be if I made you sleep in this?”
I bit back all the questions I wanted to ask.
Where would I stay?
>
Would he stay with me or expect me to hide away?
What would he do when he knew why I’d come?
I wanted to accept this truce, but my heart still carried too much pain. My chin rose. I willingly stepped into battle. “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want my friendship the day you threw me out of Cherry River.”
He froze.
Part of me wanted to scramble for cover, to take it back. But the other part wanted to hurt him as successfully as he hurt me.
He hurt me just by breathing.
That couldn’t be normal.
It couldn’t be healthy.
We weren’t good for each other.
We never had been.
His voice was low and untamed as thunder. “You really want to go there? Right now? Standing in this downpour?”
Yes.
No.
I don’t know.
I hugged my sodden dress. “Not one word, Jacob. You just kicked me from your life as if I meant nothing.”
“You made a promise. You didn’t keep it.”
“I promised I’d leave if I didn’t do the work you requested.”
“No, you promised you’d leave if it became too much for me.” He stalked toward me, his height pressing against me like another storm cloud. “It became too much. I asked you to go. You didn’t. What else was I supposed to do?”
I hid my shiver; buried my shakes. “Oh, I don’t know. How about let me be your friend? How about letting me love you at your mother’s funeral?”
His entire body locked down. “Don’t talk about that day.”
“Why? Because it’s too painful? Do you know what else is painful? Not knowing if you’re alive. Not hearing from you in four long years.”
“Whether I was alive or not was none of your concern.”
I wanted to punch him. “Really? You really have the nerve to say that to me? Don’t you remember what I said to you that day? I told you I was in love with you, and you broke my heart.”
“What do you want? An apology? Is that why you came here?”
“I came here to tell you—” I slammed my lips together. No way would I blurt out John’s ill health while we fought. I wouldn’t do that to him.
God, why are we fighting?
This was my fault. I’d thought I could see him again and not bring up the past. It shouldn’t matter that I had unresolved issues. He’d obviously moved on, and it was time to be professional.