by Ash Harlow
“Let me go, Rob,” I snarled, “or my next call is to the police.”
“Does everyone in this small town know about the trouble you got into in Australia? You know, in places like this, people like to gossip. What about that rich boyfriend? What’s his name? Oliver Sackville. That’s it. Did you tell him how your house burned to the ground after a meth cook-up went wrong?”
“Don’t even try it.”
“Mud sticks, sweetheart. Believe me, that’s something I do know.”
My thoughts were scrambled. I was trying to gauge whether he was high, whether he was a physical danger to me, or just on a mission to completely wreck my life. “Are you high?”
He laughed. “You never could tell, could you? I’d come home blazing and tell you I was clean, and you never had a clue.”
“I consider it a source of pride that I have no idea when people are high.”
“Smug bitch.”
“Okay, I’ve had enough. Tell me what you want, then get out of here.”
He pulled out one of the chairs around the small kitchen table, and put pressure on my arm until I sat. My laptop was open, and I slapped it closed.
“What do I want? Let’s see. You totally fucked me over in Australia. You could have saved me with your testimony, but, no, loyalty straight out the window in order to save your own ass. You owe me, treasure. I did fourteen months inside, then they kicked me out of the country. So here I am. Nobody will hire me in the banking business so I need money, a bed, somewhere to stay until I get back on my feet. Those are things you can provide. Shitty digs you’ve got here, by the way. I thought that Sackville guy was loaded.”
I studied him, unable to find a single ounce of empathy for the way his life had turned out. “You ruined me, Rob. You lied, you burned our fucking landlord’s house down and left me with nothing. And then you tried to trade me off to the police, to save your ass. Get the facts straight about who the liar is around here. As long as you’re denying what you did, you’ll never get ahead. I want you out of my life, forever.”
“Oh, I bet you do. Nothing like the criminal boyfriend showing up and tainting your pretty life. Tell you what. Ten grand and I’ll fuck off.”
“I don’t have any money, okay?”
“No, but your boyfriend does.”
“What makes you think he’s my boyfriend?”
He went to the fridge and helped himself to a beer, studying the label before pulling a cigarette lighter from his pocket and using it to pop the cap. “Craft beer, Darcy. None of the cheap shit for you, eh? So, back to your boyfriend. You two are everywhere. One little internet search and there you are, arm candy for a glittering occasion, as they say. The power couple, as much as you can be in a shithole like Waitapu. Anyway, it was easy to find you. Always will be. You forget the skills I have.”
“Put them to good use then, and earn yourself an honest living.”
“I am putting them to good use. I tracked you down, didn’t I? So this is how it’s going to go. I’m staying here until you get the money for me. You can tell your boyfriend I’m a cousin from up north who’s fallen on hard times. I’m sure Sackville will give you a loan. I’ll give you a week, and then I’ll start talking around town. People really are assholes. They’re always going to believe Darcy’s a meth cook over Darcy’s sweet and innocent. I’m afraid you really don’t have much of a choice.”
I stood. I had no idea what I was going to do but I certainly wasn’t about to let him intimidate or blackmail me. I headed up the hallway, to the front door.
“Don’t you fucking walk out on me,” he yelled.
That did it. I don’t know why, but suggesting I was walking out on him flipped my switch. I took my phone out of my pocket. He’d followed me down the hall and the first thing I did was take a photo of him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled.
“I need a photo for the police so that they know who to look for.”
He held out his hand. “Give me the phone.”
“Leave. My. House.”
“Don’t do anything you’re going to regret, Darcy. Hand me the phone.” He made a fist and thumped the wall.
I jumped in fright, but shoved the phone in my back pocket. “Leave.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t give me the phone, then I’ll have to.”
“You don’t want to hurt me? Prison really taught you some manners, didn’t it?”
“It taught me how to fight, Darcy. How to take care of myself.” He wiggled his outstretched fingers at me. “Phone, now.”
I kept backing up the hall, sure that if I made it to the front door I could run, and scream. The neighbors were usually sitting on their front deck in the early evening. All I had to do was make it outside.
I reached for the door and pulled it open. “Last chance, Rob. Get out.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you shouldn’t have pushed me,” he said as he lunged, grabbing my arm and jerking me away from the door.
“What the fuck’s going on here? Let her go.”
Rob released me just as Oliver cleared the porch in one leap and grabbed him around the throat.
“Are you okay, Darcy?” he asked, pinning Rob to the wall. Rob might have learned to fight in prison but Oliver had six inches in height over him, more bulk, and just as much to fight for.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I wasn’t. Everything inside me shook with rage.
“Good.”
He turned back to Rob and studied him. I needed to explain, but I was so loaded with adrenaline I couldn’t think clearly.
“You look familiar,” he snarled at Rob. “Yours is a face I’ve never forgotten. I’m glad you’re here because we need to talk.” He pulled Rob off the wall and marched him back to the kitchen, pushing him onto a chair. “You move from there, and I’ll break your head.”
Rob should have looked panicked, if he’d had an ounce of sense, but his mouth twisted with strung-out amusement. “Fuck you, man. I’m about to break your life.”
29 ~ OLIVER
Seeing some stranger with his hands on Darcy unleashed a violent urge I never knew I’d carried inside of me. When I recognized who held her, I wanted to peel the skin off him, then shred every fiber of what lay beneath, with my bare hands.
He had no right to touch Darcy. That was my right. Not because I’m some obsessed prick who thinks he has exclusive rights over the woman he’s committed to. She was mine to touch because she gave me that permission. She certainly didn’t give it to an asshole like him.
I was still so close to blowing I had to step back from him. “Tell me you’re okay, Darcy. Tell me again.” I searched her face to find something that would confirm that.
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. Her voice cracked and her face was the color of pumice.
I focused again on the scum sitting at the table. “Did Annabelle send you?” It was all I could think. Had she somehow found the drug dealer we’d dealt with in Auckland and sent him to add weight to her blackmail threats?
“Don’t know any Annabelle. You need to leave, dude. I’ve got business to sort out with my ex.”
Ex? Fuck. The word struck me like a blow to the chest. He had to be lying. My jaw ached and my teeth were clenched so hard trying not to scream at him, trying not to say the wrong thing, trying not to give anything away. I’d already given him Annabelle’s name. Could he track her from that? Did he want to? Darcy could wait. Darcy I could talk to later when I got her home. I had to ignore the part I wanted to know the most about, find out what this guy wanted, and get him out of Darcy’s life forever.
“You can talk, now, because I’m not going anywhere.” I said.
He rolled his shoulders, shrugging on his newfound confidence like a favorite coat. “Look at you, man.” He sniggered. “You had no idea that hot pussy of yours had a dirty past.”
A muscle in my cheek twitched.
“Stop it, Rob,” Darcy said.
I held my hand up
to silence her.
“Did she tell you she was arrested for drug dealing in Australia? Whoops, no? Don’t worry, she lied to the cops, too, and put me away.”
“Yeah, whatever.” I discovered I could shrug, too. “What is it you want?”
“Money. Her testimony gave me two years of grief. Here’s a bit of advice for you. There’s no loyalty there,” he said, stabbing his finger at Darcy. “I can add a lot of ugliness to this perfect life you have, but twenty grand will make me vanish.”
“No, it won’t, because you’re not getting a cent. You’re getting the fuck out of town. You can either do it on your own, or I can get a couple of very unfriendly cops around here in minutes to help you on your way. And I’m just going to make you one promise. If you come near Darcy again, if you so much as send her a text message, or even fucking think about her, I’ll make your life such hell you’ll wish you were back in prison.”
“Well, aren’t you the big guy.”
“Glad you understand.” I pointed at the door. “Time to fuck off, and to be perfectly clear, that means out of town, off the Coromandel Peninsula, and out of our lives.”
I jerked him from the chair and gave him a push down the hallway. He paused at the door.
“I’m not fucking done, Sackville. You’re going to regret threatening me.”
“No, I won’t.”
He responded with a smirk.
I used the barrier of the door to usher him out and watched through a window as he climbed into his shitty car and drove away.
Somehow I had to make sense of this. Even more, I had to get the image of that guy with Darcy out of my head.
I returned to the kitchen. Darcy hadn’t moved. Her shoulders rose as she drew a deep breath. “I need to tell you a lot of things. First, thank you—”
“We’re not doing this here. Grab whatever you need, we’re going home.”
She took a step back. “I think we should talk here.”
“No.”
“You might not want to be with me once I tell—”
I was like a contained explosion. Outwardly, my body felt like an impenetrable casing keeping my emotions, my rage, my confusion, my gain, my loss from escaping. Inside, though, was chaos. Darcy’s laptop and handbag were on the table. I picked them up. “Anything else?” I asked.
She glanced around, reaching for a sweatshirt from the back of a chair. I took her hand and led her from the house. We never spoke on the short walk, and I didn’t release her hand until we were inside my house, and the door was shut.
I was frustrated, and determined whatever this was about wouldn’t break us. It was in the past. I couldn’t believe Darcy was any different now than the person I’d left in my bed two mornings ago. I pulled two bottles of water from the fridge, unscrewed a cap and handed her one. Under my gaze, she knocked back a good third of the bottle, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the drink back down on the kitchen island that took up too much space between us.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Physically, no. Emotionally? Well, I’m furious he’s tracked me down and thinks he can blackmail me. I’d have to be hiding something for that to be a success, and I want you to believe me, Oliver, I had every intention of telling you about Rob.”
“I believe you.”
“I wanted to tell you the other night.”
“I know you did. Tell me now.”
She gazed out the window, and I waited.
“Rob and I were together three years. We met at university. I was in my last year, and he was doing his Masters. He’s brilliant, and stupid. He does computer stuff, works in the banking industry doing all kinds of complicated things with analysis and encryption. He got an amazing job. They demanded a lot from him, and he kept giving. Eventually, he started using drugs to help him stay awake. Well, that was his excuse. He ended up losing his job after failing a workplace drug test. Of course, I should have left him then, but he promised me he’d learned what he had to lose, and he’d stop using, so we decided to make a clean break and go to Australia. I didn’t know he was dealing, Oliver. I’d have left him right away if I knew that.”
“Annabelle’s video must have been a shock.”
She nodded, took another long swallow from her water bottle.
“Australia started out okay. I got an amazing job, and Rob got work in the banking industry. We kind of drifted apart, though. My work was social, and Rob wasn’t that fond of the people or the scene. He’d become surly, withdrawn. Nothing was good enough for him. He started hanging out with a crowd of guys I didn’t like, and I was sure he was using again. If I asked, he lost it, shouting at me, accusing me of not trusting him. So, I tried harder to make him happy. And the worse he got, the harder I tried to make life better for him so that he might love me again. I bit back the questions to keep the peace. In no time, our relationship was toxic. I came home one day and that sweet, sickly smell was all through the house, and there was a group of strangers in my living room, all high.”
She looked off to one side, then directly at me. “I told them all to get out, and threatened to call the police. I told Rob he had to choose between me and the drugs. High, he told me to fuck off.”
Inside, I was breaking for her. I wanted to hold her. To ease her anguish but when I stepped toward her she held up a hand to stop me. Something passed between us. It was a feeling, an idea that she didn’t want me touching her, she didn’t want my comfort while she was still talking about her relationship with Rob.
“Are you sure?” I asked gently.
“Yes. Thank you.” She coughed. “He was…” Her face screwed up like she was going to cry. “He was so careless with my love. He didn’t want it, and I kept offering it, putting different packaging around it, trying so hard. The thought of it now makes me sick. No matter what I tried, he chose drugs over me. He lost his job again. I had no idea. He just said he got some contract, and was working from home. Then, one day, he told me I had to go away for the weekend. I asked why, and he said he’d got in trouble. He owed money to whoever it was he was getting drugs from, and the only way out was to let these guys come to the house to cook.”
She pressed her lips together, gazing at the ceiling, composing herself. “I told him…” She stopped and rubbed her eyes, then started again. “I told him I’d give him the money, and that’s when I learned our bank account was overdrawn. He’d always taken care of the money. When I’d noticed sums going missing he said he’d shifted money into high-earning investments. You must think I’m an idiot.”
“I don’t,” I told her gently. “I don’t think that at all.”
She took another deep breath. “I flat out refused to have our home used as a drug lab, and he ranted and said how could I possibly say I loved him if I wasn’t prepared to support him when he was in trouble. That was the first and only time he hit me. I just grabbed some stuff and went and stayed with a girlfriend. The cook-up went wrong. That stuff is volatile and there was an explosion. The house was destroyed in the fire, and that’s how I lost everything.”
30 ~ DARCY
I felt like a soda bottle that someone had shaken before popping the cap. Once the pressure was released, the story that had bubbled inside me spewed through the narrowing of my neck and out of my mouth. It left a sticky sordid mess coating everything between us.
Oliver just looked angry, then confused, disgusted, angry again. I couldn’t even look at him, now. The last inch of story sat inside me like flat swill and, without the pressure of the shaken fizzing contents, it lacked the oomph to get it out.
I wasn’t the wholesome person Oliver believed in. The professional. The nice, middle-class girl with second-hand clothes and a strong work ethic.
“Darcy, look at me.”
I glanced, but couldn’t meet his eyes.
“The minute I saw you, I wanted you,” he said.
Ah, God, bless his voice. Bless its balm, the way it soothed my raw nerves. Bless its strength for giving me something
to hold on to. Bless the way it wrapped around me, gathering my frayed edges back together again.
I swallowed, choking back a sound I knew would make no sense.
“I’d never seen anyone so out of place as you were in the sports bar. I thought if I blinked, you’d vanish into the gloom so I had to go to you, immediately. You have no idea the power you have over me, and you can’t tell me anything that will change that. You’ve done nothing wrong, Darcy.”
“I should have gone to the police much earlier. I should have left him before he’d lost every morsel of respect for us. That made it easy for him to hit me.”
Oliver passed around the island to where I stood, took out a stool, sat, and pulled me to stand between his opened thighs. With his hands resting on my hips, our eyes locked. “You can’t change the past. Should have, could have, would have…they’re all wasted thoughts, things you dwell on, loaded with self-blame. That man doesn’t deserve any further consideration from you. Do you want to keep talking? There must have been quite an aftermath.”
I nodded. I wanted it all out. “I spent hours being questioned by police. First as a suspect, then as a witness. I was left with nothing. I lost my career, all of my possessions, the friends I’d made. Rob’s right. Mud sticks. Far more fun to gossip than to trust and support someone. I wanted to return to New Zealand until the trial began, but people would have found out, and that would have blown my chance of getting a decent job here. So I shifted out west in Sydney, and found a job at a crummy diner where they paid me cash. Got skills working the hotplate and the coffee machine. Gave my testimony at the trial and helped put a few people in prison.”
“You should be proud of yourself.”
“I’m horrified I was that stupid to stick around. My parents barely speak to me, and won’t speak of what happened. I want my career back.”
“You have it back. With this fundraiser on your CV, they’ll be lining up at your door. I’m proud of you. You’re brave, Darcy, and you don’t have to keep this locked away. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Do you have any idea of how I panicked when you told me you were raising funds for a drug rehabilitation center? I wanted to run. But, I knew I could do a good job for you if I was given the chance. Only, I didn’t plan on sleeping with the boss.”