I pull up outside her house. It’s near dark on a Sunday so I know exactly where to find her, though as I stare at the light coming from the back door of the shop it occurs to me that she might not be alone. I never thought to ask if she’d needed help baking her pies when her arm ended up in a cast—I think I just took it for granted that she was doing fine. Our argument last night proved that I don’t know shit.
I think back again through the alcohol haze of last night and, to be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing here, other than that I miss her like I’d miss the fucking air to breathe if it was taken from me. I fucked up. Bad. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, doing Nicole. Sometimes you just need to fuck a woman, you know. To forget? To remember? Hell, if I knew, but there’s a base instinct to burrow yourself inside a woman when both your heart and head can’t take any more fucking misery. It’s a stupid as fuck excuse, but there it is.
I walk over to the open door and lean against the jamb. Holly and Ana are inside, some hugely popular R&B band is blasting from the stereo, Mackerel More something or other, and Holly’s talking animatedly about getting lucky on the bar at the Sugartown Hotel after hours. I’m not darkening the door for long before Ana turns and sees me standing there. Her good mood falters, she frowns and she lets out a sigh. I shove down the hurt I feel, and smile, even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing.
Holly stops midsentence and swivels toward me. “The fuck?”
I ignore the tiny, scary redhead and speak only to Ana, “You got a minute?”
“Are you fucking serious?” Holly demands, then stalks toward me and starts ranting and raving about how I should leave Ana alone and how I’m turning into the worst kind of stalker and that, if I’m not careful, I’ll find myself up shit creek without a paddle because there may suddenly be a witness emerge to give their story on the events of that night with my biker brothers. I let her go on, even as my heart hammers in my chest with fear because someone other than Ana and Kick has the ability to put me away for a very long time with a simple phone call. Even as I think about throwing the ranga midget over my shoulder and depositing her on her arse outside, I don’t, because I deserve everything she’s saying and more.
“Holly,” Ana says, “it’s okay.”
“Yeah? For how long, Ana? Til he runs his mouth again and you decide to lash out with your injured arm, forcing me to drive you to the hospital to have your cast refitted again?” I glance at Ana in confusion and see that she’s sporting a brand new fluoro pink cast. I’d known she’d hit me pretty hard last night, I was still wearing the evidence of that, but I hadn’t realised she’d done more damage to her arm. “Or maybe this time you’ll run your mouth and he’ll hit you—”
“Now hold on just a goddamn minute,” I begin.
At the same time Ana says, “Holly!”
“You know what? Fine. Duke it out, scream and yell and blue until you tear one another apart and get this shit out of your system for good. You don’t belong together. And this may be hard to hear, Elijah, but Ana is way too good for you and you’re all kinds of wrong for her. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from one another, because this little thing between you is toxic and it’s going to tear both your lives apart.” Holly unties her apron and throws it down on the counter. She looks only at Ana when she says, “Call me when he’s gone and I’ll come back and help you finish up.”
She doesn’t say a thing as she passes me. She doesn’t have to, because all the hatred she feels for me is as clear as day in her eyes.
The squeaky screen door bangs back on its hinges and then closes with an audible slap. Outside, I hear the roar of an engine and breathe a sigh of relief once I hear it drive away.
“You really hurt your arm?”
“Yep. Another four to six weeks in this crappy cast. At least the last one was white and I didn’t have to worry about what the hell was going to clash with it, but this fluoro pink thing? Yuck!”
“You’re rambling.”
“Yep, I guess I do that when I’m nervous—”
“I know,” I say, both because it’s a trait of hers that I’d always found adorable and because I want her to know that I know all of her idiosyncrasies, even the ones she wasn’t aware of. “I’m sorry I hurt your hand.”
“Well, to be fair, I didn’t have to punch you in the face.”
“Yeah, you did. I was a complete dickhead.”
“Yeah, you were,” she whispers and then swallows hard before glancing out the shopfront window. “You broke my heart, Elijah.”
Tears spill down her cheeks. I move to wipe one away with my thumb and she flinches and moves out of reach. I’ve never had a woman push me away before and I’m certainly-as-fuck not about to let it start now with the only woman who’s ever mattered. So I follow her to the other side of the kitchen and corner her until I’m close enough to be her shadow.
I place my hands on her waist and she lets herself be lifted onto the bench, and then I ease myself between her legs and cradle her face in my hands. She closes her eyes. I don’t know whether she’s savouring the moment or wishing she wasn’t in it, but I hope to fuck it’s not that last one.
“I fucked up, baby girl,” I whisper. She nods and more tears roll down her face. I smooth them from her skin with my thumbs. “Tell me how to fix it.”
Ana gently shakes her head. “I don’t think you can.”
“Yes I can. I can fix this,” I say resolutely. “I’ll put us back together with my bare hands, just don’t walk away. No more secrets, no more mistakes.”
“Elijah.” She grasps my hand and gently pulls it from her cheek. “Holly was right. We can’t go five minutes without fighting or trying to tear one another’s clothes off.”
“That’s normal—”
“That’s not healthy. For either of us.”
“Don’t do this, Ana,” I warn, but my words fall on deaf ears. It’s written all over her face; she has no intention of backing down this time. I shake my head and send her a pleading glance. I’m not above getting on my knees and begging her to give me another chance, but I can see in her eyes that the time for grovelling came and went, and I was buried balls-deep in another woman instead of falling to my knees in worship.
“Ah, fuck!” I rub at my chest to ease the burn in my heart. “This is bullshit, baby girl. The way I feel about you, the way you feel about me, that shit doesn’t just up and go away. I know I’m not worthy of someone as fucking spectacular as you. I know it. This whole fucking town knows it. But I’ll be a better man. I’ll change. I’ll do fucking anything you ask of me, just don’t do this.”
Ana presses her hand to the centre of my chest and I capture it with my own the way I did last night, only now I bring it to my lips and kiss it all over. I feel her defences melt a little so I decide to knock them over completely, until there’s nothing but the dust of her resolve left. I cup her face and force my lips down upon hers. I watch surprise flit across her face and then I close my eyes and throw myself into proving that she’s wrong, that though we’re not fine right now, one day soon, we will be.
She kisses me back, tentatively at first, and then, as I fist my hands in her hair and push myself further into the space between us, her legs wrap around my hips and I pull her off the bench in order to feel her small body wrapped around me. She tastes of salt and need and damn, if I don’t want to fulfil every single one of hers. She lifts her t-shirt over her head and throws it to the floor, and then she claws at mine until I’m no longer wearing one either. I slam her up against the refrigerator and she arches into me, her big beautiful tits at the perfect height for sucking. I claim a nipple with my mouth and gently bite down until it peaks against my teeth and tongue. Ana cries out so I do it again, harder this time. The end result is a thing of beauty; she pushes herself against me and reclaims my mouth with her own. There’s nothing tender or tentative in this kiss; she’s a squirming, clawing wildcat, and I’m revelling in every second of her newfound confidence.<
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“You’re so fucking perfect,” I say as I rock my hips into hers. My cock strains against my jeans as I push into the soft fabric of her yoga pants and I feel her lips part around me.
Fuck me! I almost blow my load right there. She’s soft and soaking wet and so completely fucking all-woman that I feel like I could just melt into her warmth.
I rock into her again, harder this time, until I’m certain she can feel just how fucking hard I am and how much I want her. The fabric barrier between us is driving me insane; I want to tear off her pants and push myself so deep inside that her pussy won’t ever forget how good we are together, even if her heart’s determined to.
Ana moans. Her breath comes out in hot little pants against my cheek and I know that, just like me, she’s close to coming.
“God, you feel so fucking good,” I mutter as I drive myself faster, pushing as deep as our clothes will allow, but she doesn’t react the way I expect her to. Instead, she’s completely frozen. And then tears spill down her cheeks, and I have no choice but to gently set her down on her feet.
I don’t have the foggiest idea of what’s going on but something tells me, without even knowing what went wrong, I’ve fucked this up royally.
“Hey, come here.” I cradle her head to my chest and wince as her tears spill onto my stomach because I don’t know what the hell they mean.
We stand like that, with her head cradled to my chest and her arms flung around my waist for too long, and then, when not a sound can be heard but our breathing and the gentle hum of the fridge, Ana wrenches herself out of my arms, dries her eyes with the back of her hands and says, “Go home, Elijah.”
“You’re my home, baby. Don’t take that away from me. Please?”
“No. I’m not. If I were, you would have told me the truth. And you certainly wouldn’t have fucked another woman right before you told me you loved me.”
“Ana—”
She swipes at her eyes, turns to face the bench and goes back to awkwardly rolling out a lump of pastry with her left hand. “We can’t do this anymore. We need a clean break or we’ll just end up hurting one another.”
Is she fucking kidding me?
When it becomes apparent that she’s not and that she’s done beating a dead horse I press a kiss into her hair, taking one last chance to breathe in her sweet, vanilla scent.
“We’re already hurting, baby girl,” I say and leave the kitchen a fucked up, heartbroken mess.
Chapter Twenty
Ana
An entire month after my break up with Elijah, I’m still just as miserable as I was the minute he walked out of my kitchen for good. After he’d left that day I’d cried until Dad came home from a club meet and found me passed out on the floor. He’d picked me up, carried me to my room and that’s where I’d stayed for two days before Holly came a calling to kick my lazy, heartbroken arse out of bed.
A month on and she’s still dragging me around to places I don’t want to go. Tonight, it’s a harvest hang-out. I don’t know how many of these things Holly and I have attended, but they always begin with a bunch of idiots gathering in a newly harvested cane field on the outskirts of town and end with a bunch of drunk idiots running from the cops before they get arrested for drinking in a dry zone and lighting bonfires during bush fire season.
Tonight the crowd is mostly old enough to know better, and yet here we are: a bunch of high school leavers too afraid to admit we’re not ready for adulthood and more terrified still to leave our safe little town for the big, bad world.
Before Elijah, I would have given anything to get out of this place. Afterwards, I’m thanking my lucky stars for the job security that comes with being the pie shop owner’s daughter, because it means I don’t have to face what all my school colleagues are going through; where they should study, where they should live, and that all-important period of self-discovery you go through after you’re given the weighty title of being an “adult”.
Thanks to my mother and father’s dreaming, my future is securely mapped out for me. I’ll work in the diner until I’m too old to remember the recipes, I’ll more than likely still be cleaning up after my kid brother until he’s forty, and then I’ll die alone with a thousand cats who won’t hesitate to eat me once the kitty chow runs out, and all without ever having left Sugartown.
I should be more upset about my future prospects being so bleak but I just can’t seem to give a crap these days.
Holly groans, “Would you at least try to look like you’re having fun, please?”
“But I’m not having fun, Hols. I’m watching a bunch of bogan dickheads chugging beer-bongs while avoiding watching you be mauled by your boyfriend. No offense, Coop.”
The boyfriend in question is Cooper Ryan, the hot bartender that Holly got lucky with at the Sugartown Hotel a few weeks back—and he’s recently become a permanent fixture in my best friend’s life which is fine by me because he’s sweet, he treats her right and he gives me Holly-free time enough to wallow in my misery. He swings his head out from the hollow of her neck and smiles at me. “None taken. I do maul. I should really cut back but I’m just a stupid, beer-chugging dickhead unable to resist her charms.”
“Well, they say awareness is the first step.” I smile back, but it’s as weak and horribly disingenuous as they always are lately.
“Aww, Cooooop.” Holly reaches up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Do you have any idea how much I want to tie you up and screw your brains out when you say things like that?”
“I have some idea,” he mutters into her ear.
I roll my eyes. “Would you two get a room, already? You’re making the other bogans nauseas.”
“Ha! Now you know what it was like when you and Eli-” Holly begins but her eyes double in size as she realises she almost named ‘he who shall not be named’. “Shit, Ana, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Hols. I’m going to go grab a drink. Why don’t you two go grab a room, or the backseat of Coop’s car, or any other semi secluded place to … um … get busy, and I’ll meet you back here in fifteen?” I tease, but I’m only half joking about the sex. At least if they get it out of their system now, we won’t be run off the road because Holly decides she’d rather jump on Coop’s gearstick than get us home in one piece.
“Ana?” Holly starts.
I shrug her off with a wave. “I’m fine Hols, just thirsty.”
“I love you my little slutsky!” she yells, just loud enough to draw the attention of everyone around us, in true Holly fashion.
I laugh and make my way over to the bonfire, which oddly enough is where the eskies with all the combustible liquor are. Because nothing says inconspicuous like an illegal twenty-foot bonfire that can be seen from space. Idiots.
I pull out a bottle of Stella Artois and think of Elijah. I wonder where he is and if he’s thinking of me, too. Earlier, I saw Nicole and her evil minions, so at least I know he’s not fucking her up against a wall somewhere. My heart thuds against my chest as I think back to that night. A part of me hates him so much for making me witness that because never in a million years would I wish the same fate upon him. I love him too much, which makes me think that, despite his declaration, he didn’t love me at all.
I flip the bottle cap off my beer and take a long hearty swig, which almost comes straight back up when I open my eyes and see Scott standing before me.
“Hey, Blondie. Rough night?”
“And it just got worse.”
“Ouch.” He raises his own beer in a toast and gives me that stupid half-smile that used to turn me to complete mush but now kind of makes me want to punch him in the face. “You really know how to wound a guy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He reaches into the nearest esky and pulls out two more Stellas. “You wanna take a walk with me?”
“Why would I do that, Scott?”
He shrugs. “Payback for drinking all my beer?”
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was yours,” I mutter, as
I avoid meeting his eyes. Though I despise him, his eyes are still kind of pretty to look at. In fact, all of him is pretty to look at. Not as pretty as Elijah, but pretty, none the less.
Annnnnd now I know I’ve had too much to drink.
I run a mental tally in my head—one vodka and cranberry at Holly’s house and one and a half beers since we arrived. It’s not much, but it’s enough for a lightweight like me. Still, I’m in a reckless, poisonous mood, so despite the buzz I have going, I feel like it’s not enough.
Weirdly, Scott must pick up on that because he says, “Come on, I have some hard stuff in the car and you look like you could use a stiff drink.”
“What kind of hard stuff?”
“Tequila.”
“To-kill-ya! Awesome! Lead the way.”
Scott smiles, stuffs two beers in the pocket of his hoody and walks me over to his giant, dual cab, fifty-thousand dollar Toyota HiLux—which is just what every idiotic nineteen-year-old needs to be driving, especially when there’s alcohol involved—and fishes out the bottle of tequila before handing it to me. I’m so relieved I could kiss him, but I’ll settle instead for not punching him in the face.
Scott leads us to a small ravine, far enough away so we can no longer hear the noise of the party. He slides down the small embankment and sits on a patch of soft grass. I follow suit, though my descent is a little more awkward and I end up stumbling a few steps before backing up and plonking myself down next to him. We’re looking at nothing but row upon row of cut cane fields and there’s no other light but the moon—and yes, I am here with the McDoucheNozzle that basically told the whole town I was a giant slut, but it’s peaceful and Scott always was good at distracting me from reality.
I twist the cap off the tequila and take a hearty sip. It burns like nothing else going down but once it’s finally settled the warmth spreads through my tummy and it feels sort of nice, so I take another.
“Easy, tiger.” He takes the bottle from me and swallows back some of the contents. It must go down the wrong way, because he coughs and splutters and beats at his chest like a gorilla. “Holy shit that hurt, I now know why you call it to-kill-ya.”
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