by Ros Baxter
‘I wish I knew what happened.’ As Gage said the words a sunbeam hit his face and he squinted, flicking the sun visor down. He turned back to Lou, and that little-boy-lost look was back. ‘Why’d he fall off the wagon? After all these years.’
Lou shrugged. ‘You still mad?’
Gage stared at his hands, which were now on his thighs, watching as they balled into fists. ‘I’m somethin’,’ he said.
‘But you don’t really think it was Clean Gas, do you? I mean, Gage, they’d be mad –’
‘Jesus, gas.’ Gage slammed the heel of his hand down hard on the steering wheel. His voice was so cold it took Lou’s breath away. ‘Do you have any idea how sick I am of hearing about gas?’
Lou said nothing and watched her own hands for a couple of moments, waiting for him to elaborate. ‘I guess I’d better go,’ she said finally.
‘No,’ Gage said, his voice a little strangled. ‘Shit, Lou.’ He turned back towards her, reaching across to pick up one of her hands. ‘Don’t run away. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to explode. I just –’
‘Just what?’ Lou squeezed Gage’s big hand in hers, feeling a childish thrill of excitement that she was (kind of) holding hands with him in a ute on Main Street. Pathetic.
‘I just hate the thought of it.’ He squeezed her hand back, so hard Lou almost squeaked. ‘Them, on my land. It’s …’ He paused a heartbeat. ‘It’s mine. And my responsibility.’
Lou waited, trying to imagine what was going on with him. So she did what she always did, when she was trying to get to the bottom of a new merger partner, and wanted to get into their heads. She jettisoned the moment that lay heady and loaded between them, and focused on what she knew about him.
This was Gage, who featured in some of her earliest memories. Sunset Downs had been in his father’s family for five generations, and Bo had almost lost it. It had taken all the tenacity and smarts of a little boy-cum-grown man to not only keep it, but help it thrive. He’d done it, and he’d done it alone.
She thought back over all the time she’d known him, all her memories of him. Gage, fighting. Usually solo. Gage, working like a man possessed. Gage with that angry, fuck-youworld look on his face. What might it feel like for someone like that, to consider making a deal, ceding control over the thing he loved most in the world? Well, apart from Piper, of course, and Lou was pretty sure that as far as Gage was concerned, Piper and Sunset Downs were inseparable. He loved his daughter, so he knew exactly how she felt about that piece of land. Piper’s love for the property was more intense than Gage’s, if that was possible. How would that feel? Pretty damn scary, Lou imagined. What could she say to make it better?
‘Maybe you could just talk to the company,’ she suggested, rubbing his hand lightly with one of her fingers. ‘See what the offer is.’ She wondered whether she should push further. ‘Sometimes it’s possible to carve out certain rights in these deals.’ She paused, watching his beautiful face outlined by gold in the morning sun. ‘I could help.’
At the last suggestion, his face slammed shut, like one of those old steel gates clanging closed on Sunset Downs. ‘No, thanks,’ he said sharply. ‘I appreciate it, but I can handle it myself.’
‘Sure,’ she said, frustrated and exhausted by the effort of trying to understand him and the emotional energy involved in being so close to him and not crawling into his lap and tearing the clothes from his body so she could feel her skin against his. She reached down for her bag. ‘Like I said, I’d better go.’
He nodded dumbly, like he had more to say but couldn’t find the words. Something about the whole stupid situation made Lou want to scream. She wanted to reach out and lash him, scratch him with her nails, maybe to hurt him or maybe just to mark him as hers, she wasn’t quite sure. Instead, she did what women do when it’s not nice to play rough. She used her words.
‘Oh, and Gage, hopefully I’ll only be another couple of days here. I’m hoping I can finish up helping Dad out with this stuff by the end of today or maybe tomorrow, and looks like the insurance stuff might wrap soon, so …’ She made her voice pleasant and neutral, but he wasn’t buying any of it. There had never been any front between the two of them, even as kids. They’d grown up facing the same shit. When they’d looked at each other, they’d seen themselves. Kids who were different.
Gage reached across and wrapped his hands around each of her wrists then dragged her close to him. ‘Not yet,’ he said, his voice thick and low. ‘Don’t go yet.’
Lou couldn’t speak. She was sitting so close to him she was almost in his lap. Her senses filled up with his nearness. The smell of fresh-cut hay and the outdoors perfumed the space between them, combined with the last traces of that spicy cologne she had smelled on him the other night, before his date. Heat radiated from his body, wrapping her in its drowsy invitation. His fingers at her wrists bit into the skin there, and the pain set off an ache deep in her belly that travelled lower still as he pulled her even closer, so she was half twisted and pressed against the soft material of his shirt. Every particle of her was on high alert for him. This was dangerous as hell, and she should get away. Right now.
But then he spoke. ‘I know it’s not true, Lou,’ he said, turning her hands over and kissing the inside of one of her wrists. ‘I know you’re not in love with some guy in Sydney. I didn’t think it was true when you told me, not really. And now I know.’
‘How?’ She hadn’t expected this.
‘The look on your face Friday night,’ he said, very still and serious. ‘When I left with Beatrice.’
Oh God, that’s right. Beatrice.
Like he could read her mind, he smiled. ‘And you have as much to worry about with Beatrice as I have to worry about with some imaginary guy in Sydney. She’s nice. End of story.’
Cool relief washed over her, sweet and life-giving. End of story.
‘Research?’ Her voice sounded annoyingly breathy.
‘Gas,’ he said shortly, grimacing. ‘And no, I don’t want to talk. Not about that.’
She pulled at her hands to free them, but when he released them, instead of exploiting the opportunity to escape, she placed a hand at that deep V of tanned skin that had so taunted her since she’d noticed it, and brought her other hand up to frame the side of his face. A moment slipped into place between them, catching them in some kind of bubble. Gage’s eyes held hers, pregnant with a question, and her own eyes knew that they should know better, that they should pull away, but she was too busy trying to read what she saw there.
She wanted this. She wanted to keep looking at him.
She wanted more.
His hands freed, Gage wound an arm around Lou’s back, and placed another on her shoulder, twisting her gently so she was positioned to look out her passenger-side window, right out at the old jacaranda tree he had carried her to the other night. He pressed up against her, behind her on the bench seat, and brought his mouth very close to her ear from behind.
‘Do you remember what happened here last week?’ His voice was a ragged whisper in her hair, and it serrated not only the insides of her ear, but the delicate skin at the back of her neck. It travelled all the way into her brain and her nervous system, pimpling her skin and wreaking havoc with her breath. A warm flush spread up Lou’s neck and face as she looked at the tree, innocuous in the sun.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, thinking: I’m sure there aren’t many women who forget it when you kiss them like that.
Gage pressed his mouth closer this time, his lips on the skin beside her ear as he spoke. It was not quite a kiss, yet somehow more intimate and terrifying. ‘You tasted so good,’ he said, reaching his hand into her hair to pull it aside and grant him unfettered access to her ear. ‘And the other day on the mountain too. Do you know how you tasted?’
Lou couldn’t speak. Her legs were so weak she wondered if she would ever stand again, and her mouth seemed welded shut, her eyes glued to the tree.
He continued his trance-inducing whispering in h
er ear. ‘You tasted just like you did then,’ he said, a note of wonder entering his voice. ‘Twenty years ago.’ Again, he made to move Lou’s long hair out of the way, but as he did, he stroked the delicate skin where her neck met her shoulder. ‘Now how is that possible?’ But he didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘All this time, all that must have happened to you in between, how is it possible that you came back here, just rolled back in like you had never left, and that you tasted just the same.’
Something in his voice pulled Lou up. He was back there; she could hear it. He was back in that night, twenty years ago. But she couldn’t go there. If they were going to play let’s remember, he couldn’t take her back that far. He had to know that. Lou’s muscles tensed, ready for flight.
But he had other ideas. He wrapped his arms all the way around her, comforting and insistent all at once. ‘Do you remember?’
Lou made a small noise in the back of her throat. ‘I don’t want to,’ she whispered.
‘Was it so terrible?’ Now his voice took on a harder edge, but still he didn’t let go of her. She knew she could have pulled away; he would never have pinned her there against her will, but his voice, his nearness and the hard comfort of his big body held her in place.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘You know it wasn’t.’
‘You were seventeen,’ he whispered against her hair. ‘And I was the first boy you ever kissed.’ He nudged her. ‘Wasn’t I?’
She nodded mutely, still staring at the big old tree. ‘It won’t work,’ she said finally. ‘I can’t remember it without remembering the rest.’ Her voice cracked as she said the words, and it hurt to say them, because she wished it wasn’t true. It was the reason she had run, the reason she hadn’t even said goodbye, because she knew she would never be able to think about what had happened between them without thinking about what had come next.
‘That’s bullshit,’ Gage said, his voice suddenly clear with defiance and fury. He spun her on the seat, bringing her around to look at him. ‘Enough, Lou. It’s done. You’ve done your penance. We all have.’ His eyes blazed at her. ‘I damn well know you can remember it, remember us, without it breaking you.’ He narrowed his eyes at her, and pulled her closer. ‘I know you can because I felt it the other day. You melted in my arms, just like you did twenty years ago.’
She shook her head, but she didn’t pull away. She wanted to believe him. So much.
‘And you will remember.’ His voice was a brutal command.
He drew closer to her, his face hard and beautiful as it came nearer. He reached for her chin, and held it firmly. ‘Before I kiss you, I’ll make you remember.’
Again, Lou shook her head, but didn’t pull away.
Gage stroked the side of her face, close to where he held it. ‘I’ll tell you how it was,’ he said, his voice like dark chocolate, sweet with a trace of bitterness. He inclined his head towards the tree that now stood behind her. She shook her head again, but when he touched her bottom lip with his thumb, she relished the warm pressure. When he spoke, his voice was thick and sweet.
‘It was summer, end of school. Graduation. A hot night.’
She nodded, and his thumb brushed across both her lips. His eyes followed its progress, seemingly hypnotised.
‘You wanted to come out for air, but we both knew why.’
She closed her eyes and remembered.
‘It had been a long time coming.’ His voice trailed off, as the thumb stopped, but he released her chin and stroked an index finger down the side of her face. ‘I had watched you for so long.’
She nodded. Me too.
‘And when I kissed you, by that tree, I’d never wanted anything so much.’ He paused, like he was weighing something up. ‘I’d had other girls.’
No shit.
‘But not that year, our senior year. I was too full of you. I couldn’t sleep, or think.’
She remembered it: the growing delirium, the prickly buzz on her skin that told her when he entered a room. She remembered watching for him, the way her tummy settled when she saw him, the way their eyes would look for each other, lock, then skitter away like their gazes might set off some kind of charge they could never undo. People thought twenty years was such a long time. Lou thought about the span of time it would have seemed to her when she was seventeen. A whole lifetime. And yet, as it happened, that isn’t how it works. The years slide along, one into the other, time stretching and contorting in unpredictable ways. Sometimes a decade seemed to pass in a blink. Sometimes a year clung on with lazy tenacity, destroying you, cut by merciless cut. And sometimes a single night managed both, managed to contain a whole lifetime, while passing by in a cruel blink.
But maybe Gage was right about being able to make her forget the rest, because as he spoke about that night, all the horrors that sat hungry and malevolent around the loveliness seemed to slide into a murky backdrop, and all she really remembered was how it had felt to have him take her by the hand and lead her over to the tree.
When he spoke, the years fell away. ‘But it wasn’t enough, for either of us.’ He grasped her chin again, and she knew he was going to kiss her, here on Main Street. ‘We had to go somewhere else; we had to be alone.’
His words sent an electric flash straight to her sex as she thought about that night, directly about it, for the first time in a long, long time. As she did, the other thing started to chase her, its ragged spikes flashing as it circled her. Maybe the kiss could drive it away; maybe she really could remember one without the other. He leaned in to her, and she lost all sense of time, space or decency, waiting for the kiss she knew was coming.
Until a loud rap on the window broke the spell.
Lou wanted to take a brick and throw it through the window, visualising it landing square centre of Matt Finlay’s smiling blondness, and undoing all the good work of the best cosmetic surgeons in Sydney.
Gage was more direct. He gently touched the button to lower the electric window between him and Matt, latent rage coiled visibly in his muscles. ‘Fuck off,’ he barked, his face a hard mask, before he raised the window again and turned back to Lou.
But Lou could see from where she was sitting that Matt wasn’t going anywhere. He rapped on the window once again.
This time, Gage ground his jaw, and didn’t mess around with the window. He wrenched the door open, unfurled himself to stand inches from Matt, towering above him despite the fact that Matt was no midget himself, and grabbed a handful of his mint green business shirt. ‘I said fuck off. And I meant: Fuck. Off.’ Each word was deadly precise, slow and sharp as a razor point.
There was something so hot about watching Gage frustrated and enraged that the bottom dropped out of Lou’s tummy. That would have been the case even if the victim hadn’t been Matt fucking Finlay.
But Matt just shook himself free and smiled broadly at Gage. ‘I just need a word with Lou,’ he said.
Gage folded his arms across his chest and took his time considering Matt. Lou squirmed in her seat, watching him assess her nemesis. But he was like a cat – immune to the concerns of lesser creatures. He just leaned against the car, like he and Gage were casually shooting the breeze.
Finally, Gage, his face hard, asked her, ‘Do you want to talk to this arsehole?’
‘Nope.’ Nuh-uh. Not ever.
Gage grinned at Lou before squaring back up to Matt. ‘Computer says no.’ He wiggled his fingers at him. ‘Bye bye, pretty boy.’
Matt leaned down, apparently completely oblivious to the murderous lust etched in every line of Gage’s body. ‘Lou, I just need five minutes. It’s about your dad’s … problem.’
A knife slid between Lou’s ribs. How the hell did Matt Finlay know about the town’s financial problems? This could not be good. Matt was not a man you ever wanted to know something about you. Especially something secret, and important.
The friendly gleam in his eye looked sick and scary.
Gage peered in and clocked Lou’s face. ‘Okay, arsehole,’ he said
, pushing Matt against the car. ‘I’ve had enough of your shit. I know about that scene at the cafe.’ He paused, moving his forearm up to pinion Matt in place by the neck. ‘They didn’t say much.’ He gestured towards Lou in the car. ‘But my daughter doesn’t seem to like you at all and you know what?’ He grinned wickedly. ‘I really trust her judgement. You mighta picked on her mate, but I reckon you offended her somehow too.’ He licked his lips and pushed harder against Matt’s neck. ‘And that makes me …’ He paused. ‘Very cross.’
Matt opened his mouth to speak but Gage held up one finger of the hand that wasn’t busy bruising Matt’s throat. ‘Shh. Given what I think you might have done in that cafe –’ He made a low noise in his throat, something like a growl. ‘And what I know you did to Sharni over the years. And the fact that you just put a look I didn’t much like on Lou’s face. I don’t need very much excuse to beat the shit out of you, right here on Main Street.’
At the invocation of her name, Lou realised she needed to stop cowering inside, enjoying the show, and grow up, get up, and start acting like a sane adult. She reluctantly dragged herself out of the car and came around to where Gage had Matt pinned, much to the amusement of several passers-by. Stone Mountain was the kind of place people didn’t much care to get involved in breaking up brawls; they were more likely to take a seat and enjoy the show, especially if the brawl in question happened to involve two of the town’s favourite sons. May the best man win, and all that.
‘Stop, Gage,’ she said, pulling on his arm. ‘It’s fine. I’m okay to talk to him.’
‘What if I’m not okay with it?’ Gage’s tone was pure cave man, and Lou searched diligently for her feminist principles so she could get cross with him, but they seemed to have fled about the time Gage pressed Matt against the car.
‘Gage.’ Lou put her hand on her hip and tapped her foot. ‘Come on. Put the bad man down.’
Her words seemed to break the murderous spell that had come over Gage. He laughed and lowered the arm that had been pinning Matt to the car. ‘Whatever you say, darlin’.’