There were tears in her eyes, and as he watched, two of them spilled over. He knew that didn’t happen, not ever, but it was happening now. He knew now why her guard was always up so high, too. Because she couldn’t bear to try again, and to lose. Because she felt so brittle and so breakable, and she had no idea how strong she really was. He brushed a thumb over a silver tear, wiping it away, and the ache settled in hard.
She said, her voice barely a whisper, “You are a wonderful man. And I love you.”
It punched him in the gut, low and merciless. He said, “Oh, baby.”
Helpless. That was what he was. One extreme to the other, and he was helpless against all of it.
She laughed, though it was shaky, said, “You’re late. We have to go,” kissed Zavy, and turned to put him in his seat. He said, “Don’t want to go in,” and she said, “Mummy’s going to sit with you, love, while Kevin drives us. And—oh, look. Look who’s in your seat, waiting for you.” She picked it up and handed it to him. A blue pony. “Rainbow Dash.”
Zavy reached for the silly plush figure and hugged it close, and something was happening in Kevin’s chest, in his throat. But that arsehole was still looking at him, so he shut the door on Chloe, gave Rich one more hard stare, climbed into the car, turned it around, and headed for his overdue appointment.
An appointment with that sport that was nothing but a game for everybody else, and nothing but his job. A job where the only thing that really mattered was what you turned up and did in eighty minutes on the park. Eighty minutes that would be happening in a few hours, so he needed to get right for them, and he needed to start now.
Chloe wasn’t going to the match after all. Not possible.
Kevin didn’t ask her to. He did the opposite. When he’d pulled up to an inconspicuous side entrance at Eden Park and pulled his bag out of the back, he didn’t sprint for the door, even though she had a pretty good idea how big a deal it was for him to be late. Instead, he took her in his arms, smoothed a hand over her hair, and said, “Go home and relax now. Look after Zavy.”
She rested her head against his chest and said, “I wanted to come tonight.”
“I know.” He kissed the top of her head, and she wondered how it could feel so good to be held in the right man’s arms. How it could feel so safe, even if you knew there was no such thing as rescue, and no such thing as safe, either.
She sighed against him and said, “I wish you’d stop being so perfect.”
His soft laugh rumbled deep in his chest. “Nah. Having one of my finer moments, that’s all. No worries, soon be over. And don’t think I’m going to let you take that back. I’ll just go on and say it now, shall I? Love you too, baby.”
He let go of her while she was still absorbing that, leaned into the back seat, gave Zavy a gentle tousle of the hair, and said, “Bye, mate. Look after Rainbow Dash. I’ll see you tomorrow, eh.” Then he went inside, and she missed him.
When she got home, she met Holly sitting outside on the veranda with her laptop.
“Hi, Zavy,” the girl said. “Did you have a good time with your dad?”
Zavy’s thumb strayed toward his mouth, and he didn’t answer. Chloe wasn’t carrying him, but it had been an effort not to do it. She wanted to hold him, to rock him in her arms and keep doing it. There might be no such thing as safe, but her body didn’t know that. Her body wanted to make him safe.
Reframe it. Make it easier. She told Holly, “Zavy had an accident out with his dad, got left in the car for a bit.” She didn’t want to dwell on it, but surely it was better if she didn’t brush it off as nothing. Zavy was three, but he could still feel, couldn’t he? Her dad was wrong. Just because a person didn’t remember things that happened early in life—that didn’t mean those things hadn’t affected them. Surely something this traumatic could stick, and if it did, wouldn’t it be better for Zavy to remember Kevin getting him out, and not just those terrified minutes when he’d been getting ever hotter and more scared, when he’d wanted his mummy and she hadn’t come? A thought that wasn’t helping her at all, but she had to face it, because it was there in Zavy’s mind, in his memory, and it was her job to help him cope with it.
“Oh, no,” Holly said. “Really?”
“Yes,” Chloe said. “His dad locked him in by accident, but Kevin got him out, and now he’s all good.” That was the right thing to say, too, surely. That it had been scary, and now it was over. “But we won’t be needing you to babysit tonight, love. I’m not going to Kevin’s match after all.”
“Oh,” Holly said. She opened her mouth, then shut it again.
“I know,” Chloe said. “I wanted to go.” She felt the ache of it, in fact. Kevin had been there for her. She wanted to be there for him, too, cheering him on, even if that was only as one of tens of thousands of people in the stands and he wouldn’t even know it. “Your mum and dad will be there, I guess.”
“Holly and me are going to watch Thomas,” Zavy said. “She’s going to read me stories and stories.”
“No, darling,” Chloe said. “I’m not going to Kevin’s game after all. I’ll stay home with you tonight instead.”
“But I want Holly,” Zavy said. “She’s going to read me a train book. And it’s a special book and it has pictures and locomotives, like in the vee-cle museum!” His voice was rising, passionate as only a three-year-old’s could be.
“I got it at the library, that’s all,” Holly said, sounding a little embarrassed about that. “Maybe I can still come up and read, Zavy.”
“And she has cocoa,” Zavy said, all but digging his heels in. “And the train book. And it’s special.”
Noelle came out on the veranda and asked, “What’s happening? Hi, Zavy.”
Holly said, “I was going to babysit Zavy tonight, but now I’m not. So I’m going to take the car.”
“Mum and Dad are coming for breakfast in the morning,” Noelle said.
“So?” Holly flared straight up. “I know that.”
“So don’t be hung over, that’s all,” Noelle said. “You know Mum can tell.”
Chloe thought, No. Just no, and said to Zavy, “Come on, love. Let’s go get you in the bath.”
“But Mummy,” Zavy said, “I want Holly to read me the train book tonight. I just want her.”
What was she supposed to do? She was hesitating, and Noelle said, “Aren’t you going to Kevin’s match? But it’s—”
“Noelle,” Holly said sharply.
“Zavy had a bad experience today,” Chloe tried to explain. “He’s ... it’s ... he may not be comfortable.”
“But he wants to stay with me,” Holly said. “Don’t you, Zavy?”
“Yes,” he said. “I want to stay with Holly. She’s my friend, and she has the train book.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Noelle said. “If you don’t want to be gone for a long time—because it takes ages to park and all that—I could give you a lift. That way, we wouldn’t have to leave until quarter to seven or so. And then I could come back and help Holly, if she needs any help. Even though Zavy will probably be asleep already. But just in case. I could come collect you afterwards as well, if you could walk a bit, maybe with Mum and Dad and Connor. They’re all going, and they’ll be walking, because they’re mad that way.”
“That’s very ... very kind of you,” Chloe said. “But ...” She had to say this. It mattered. “Zavy did have a hard day. I’m worried about the way you girls snipe and pick at each other. Especially you, Holly, because it starts with you.”
Holly looked thunderstruck. “I don’t do that.”
“Yes,” Chloe said. “You do.” She was so tired that she was about to drop, and she needed to get Zavy upstairs. But this was important too. “I don’t care what your problem is with Noelle. If you can’t talk reasonably to her, if you can’t get along, I can’t risk that. I don’t know what would happen if you really fought, if you both got angry enough. It really has been a bad day, or I wouldn’t say this, but I have to.”
“I won’t ...” Holly cleared her throat. “I won’t do that.”
Chloe looked at Noelle, who said, “I won’t either. Of course not.”
What was she thinking? No eighteen-year-old girl thought babysitting was such a prize that she’d jump through hoops to do it. Except that these girls, somehow, did. It was so touching, and the tears were coming to her eyes again. This time, she was the one who had to clear her throat, and the hand she put up to her face shook. “Thank you. I mean it. I ...” She broke off. “Sorry.”
Noelle said, “What’s wrong?”
Holly said, “I’ll tell you later. Would you like a cup of tea, Chloe?”
“Oh,” Chloe said, trying to laugh, “I’d murder a cup of tea. And now I really am going to take Zavy up for his bath. But ... both of you. Thank you. You’re very kind.” And when Holly came upstairs five minutes later like a ministering angel with that cup of tea, a digestive biscuit perched on the saucer beside it, it was all she could do not to cry again.
She liked this family.
Meeting Kevin’s parents and brother was daunting all the same. Just finding herself seated in the midst of all the players’ families was pretty overwhelming, in fact. At least Josie was there.
There, and surprised. Chloe hadn’t seen her best mate since Kevin’s move-in day. Josie had been filming on location for her new show in the wilds of the East Cape, and explaining the whole situation with Kevin had been a bit ... complicated for a text. Too precious, and too new. So Chloe hadn’t.
When Josie and Hugh’s brother Charlie came down the steps at Eden Park and saw Chloe, though, Josie’s beautiful face lit up. She bounded over like the Labrador retriever she actually was under the glam exterior, wrapped Chloe up in a purely Maori cuddlefest, and said, “You should’ve told me you were coming! Charlie and I would’ve come to get you.”
“Oh,” Chloe said. “I ... uh ... I had a lift. Hi, Charlie.” She indicated Kevin’s parents and brother, sitting to her right, and then, to her horror, couldn’t remember their names. She barely remembered Josie’s name. It had been too long a day, and she might be a bit stressed at this moment. She might.
“Hi,” Josie said without missing a beat. “Katherine and Declan, right?”
“Yes,” Kevin’s mum said. “Lovely to see you, Josie. And this is Connor, Kevin’s brother.”
Connor, another big redhead, stood up and extended a hand. He looked fairly stunned at meeting Josie, but then, most men did. “Pleasure,” he said, and shook hands with Charlie, too.
“Sorry, love,” Josie said to Chloe. “You’re already having your chat, and I’ve barged in. If you scoot down a couple,” she suggested to Kevin’s family, “Charlie and I will just sit on the end here, and you can get to know Chloe.” Seeing too much, as always, and then moving in to take care of it.
“I didn’t realize you knew Josie,” Katherine McNicholl said. She’d turned out to be nothing like the cuddly mum-figure Chloe had expected, and was instead a tall, fit woman whose red-blonde hair was cut in a fashion fairly short and spiky for a mother of six. The reason Kevin could be so surprising, maybe, and so much more than he seemed.
“Oh. Well ...” Chloe tried to think again. “I ... uh...”
“Oh, I want to hear this,” Josie said. “I’m guessing Kevin didn’t tell you anything, Katherine, just like Chloe didn’t tell me. Did he say his tenant was coming to the match tonight? Or are you meant to be the girls’ friend, Chloe? I thought there was something there. I told Hugh so, and of course he didn’t care, but I thought so. This is brilliant, though. Kevin’s such a sweetheart.”
Katherine laughed, and Declan, a rawboned man whose dark red hair was graying at the temples, shook his head and said, “Charlie, come over and sit by Connor and me. You don’t want to be in the middle of that. We’re just here to watch the rugby, eh.”
Chloe said, after they’d all stood and let a relieved Charlie squeeze by, then moved a seat in the opposite direction, “You wouldn’t have thought Kevin was a sweetheart today. I mean,” she added hastily to his mother, “of course he is. Just not always. Just not ...” She broke off, because Josie was laughing. “Well, he wasn’t. And actually, it wasn’t so funny.” She explained what had happened to Zavy, then, and by the end of her description, though she’d made it as bare-bones as she could manage, both Josie and Katherine looked horrified.
“Oh, darling,” Katherine said. “Oh, no. How upsetting for you, and for him. How terrible.”
“And you’re thinking,” Chloe said, gathering her courage to say this, “how could I come tonight? How could I leave Zavy? But he wanted to stay with Holly, and she’s so good with him, and Noelle said ...”
She broke off, because she was going nowhere good with this. What was Katherine going to think? The problem was, she’d had nobody to talk about it with. After she’d left Kevin and gone home, she’d wished so much that he’d been there to have that cup of tea with her. She wasn’t a huge talker, but he knew that. He’d have let her say whatever she needed to, but mostly, he’d have held her until the tension had leached away. Instead, it was all still there, still bottled up.
Yes, she’d called her mum, but how could she really have shared? How, when her mum hadn’t even rung the police? She knew nobody was perfect. She knew it. She got it. But Zavy had been in that hot car. He’d been ...
She was starting all over again. Beginning to shake, having to tuck her hands between her thighs. She shouldn’t have come tonight. She wasn’t in any shape for it, and Zavy wasn’t in any shape to have her gone.
“Oh, no,” Katherine said. “Oh, my darling, no,” and just like that, she was holding her. Giving her a cuddle in the stands at a rugby match. A total stranger, and she was rubbing her hand over Chloe’s back, the same way Chloe had done to Zavy earlier.
It was exactly what she needed, and it was much too vulnerable, because her throat was closing up.
“Don’t you worry,” Katherine said firmly, and this was what the take-charge hairstyle was all about. “Holly’s sensible, and Noelle’s more so. They’ll look after him. And if he does need you? You know that all of us here would help you get to him. Exactly the way Kevin did today.”
Chloe sat back, tried to laugh, wiped at her eyes, and hoped she wasn’t smearing her makeup. “Goodness. What an impression I’m making. You’re so ...” There went her throat again. “So kind. Thank you.”
“Nah,” Katherine said. “A mum, that’s all, and any mum could imagine how that would feel. And you know, wee Zavy will get over it before you will. It stays with you, because you can’t help seeing the worst. But what he knows is—he was in trouble, and you came.”
“And Kevin,” Josie said with wonder. “Kevin McNicholl, stomping a windscreen in. I wish I had a photo of that. Good on him.”
“Ah, well,” Katherine said comfortably, “he’s a ginger, isn’t he, like the rest of us. Sometimes, the ginger just has to come out, eh.”
“Yes,” Chloe said, “and I was glad to see it.”
“Those rugby boys,” Josie said. “They do have a way about them, especially when it matters. They come through like billy-o when the game’s on the line.”
The public address system had been playing bad pop all this time. Now, though, the over-the-top announcer’s voice swelled, and there was no more talking possible. And despite what had happened today, despite everything ... Chloe’s skin prickled with anticipation.
“Your Auckland Blues!” the announcer shouted, and Chloe sat up straighter. “And leading them out tonight, earning his hundredth cap, Number Eleven, playing at left wing, Kevin ... Mc ... Nicholl!”
The players were running onto the field. And at the front of the pack? There was a redhead holding the ball, and Chloe was sitting there, her palms on her cheeks. She didn’t follow rugby, but you didn’t have to do that to know that a player’s hundredth cap for a team was a major event, and a rare one.
“Why ...” she managed to say over the noise of the introd
uctions. “Why didn’t he tell me it was happening? The girls must have known.”
“Hmm,” Josie said, sounding absolutely satisfied. “I’d say because he didn’t want to pressure you to come. What would you say?”
That he knew Rich was taking Zavy, Chloe thought. That he knew how hard that was going to be for me. And this was what first Holly and then Noelle hadn’t said, out there on the veranda. Because Kevin had told them not to.
She stopped thinking about it, because the players were jogging into place to prepare for the kickoff, and Kevin was there. On the wing, closest to her, his entire body poised, intent. Exactly the way you felt just before the curtain went up. Exactly.
She looked at him, and she felt him. And when the ball spiraled through the air and he started running ... she was there, too. With him whether he was marking his man and sprinting with him, or making a flying, impossible tackle, dragging somebody to the turf and coming down so hard himself, she winced, then jumping up again so quickly.
She was with him while he ran in support of his teammate, eyes wide open for his opportunity. And surely, surely she was with him when the ball was going from hand to hand, in movements so quick they looked accidental, and finally landing in Kevin’s. With him as he stepped down the tramlines, the stripes of white at the edge of the field, somehow keeping his feet just this side of the chalk. As he made one defender miss, shoved another off with a hard palm to the chest, and, finally, as those driving, churning legs took him over the tryline, dragging a man with him.
Oh, yes, she was with him then. Hitting the turf in that moment of pure joy, dotting the ball down in that precious spot just this side of the line, then jumping to his feet, accepting the slaps on the back, but intent on making his way back to the fifty-meter line. To his spot just below where she sat.
Just Say Yes (Escape to New Zealand Book 10) Page 21