Mako looked at him soberly, nodded once, sat down again.
Nate tried to focus. “If you don’t know, you don’t know,” he said to Kristen. “But sooner or later, she’ll tell you, won’t she?”
“I think so,” Kristen said slowly. “It’s hard for me to say, because I’ve never seen Ally like this. She’s always so cheerful, so optimistic. She always . . . bounces. But all that was knocked out of her, I think. Just too many things, one after the other.”
“Life can do that,” Mako said. “One blow too many.”
“Yeah,” Kristen sighed. “I think that was it. But she has to get me her new email address eventually, and her physical address too, or I won’t be able to forward anything. Mail, you know. Tax stuff.”
One blow too many. Bloody hell, it hurt to hear that. “When she does,” Nate said, “will you tell me? Please?”
“I don’t want to see her hurt any more,” Kristen said hesitantly.
“I won’t be trying to hurt her. I made a mistake, and I need to tell her that. If I talk to her, and she doesn’t want me anymore,” he said, swallowing against the thought of it, “I’ll leave her alone, I promise. I won’t harass her. But I do need to talk to her. To find out how she feels. To tell her how I feel.”
Kristen hesitated, looked quickly at Mako.
“Your choice,” he said gently. “Toro means it, but you’re the one who knows her best. Your choice.”
Thanks, mate, Nate thought bitterly. No question where Mako’s loyalties lay. Kristen would never be in any doubt of that.
Kristen nodded with decision. “When I hear from her,” she promised Nate, “I’ll let you know. Everyone makes mistakes, I know that. Sometimes you just need a second chance. I’ll help you get yours, if I can.”
On International Boulevard
Nate turned the corner at the prompting of the GPS, muttering, “Right, keep right,” as he had been ever since he’d exited the freeway in Oakland. He could have concentrated better if he hadn’t been distracted by the group of young men loitering outside the corner liquor store, the graffiti marking every available bit of wall. He was glad the fella at the hire car place had insisted on the GPS, when Nate had told him where he was going.
“You don’t want to risk getting lost,” the man had cautioned. “The motels there are cheap, I know,” he said, giving Nate a quick inspection, clearly unimpressed by the rumpled, unshaven bloke standing before him in a T-shirt and jeans. “But you get what you pay for. You really don’t want to be staying on International Boulevard. It’s not, like, International, classy or something, like you might be thinking. Spend a little more, stay someplace else. My advice.”
“I can take care of myself,” Nate said.
“You look like you can,” the man agreed. “But we’re not talkin’ fistfight here. We’re talkin’ guns.”
“I promise not to get shot,” Nate said impatiently. “Or to let the car get shot either. Just give me the bloody thing, would you?”
Now, he saw what the man had meant. And this was where Ally was living? His gut clenched at the thought.
He hoped she was home. It was just after two in the afternoon. Kristen had said that Ally had found a job, so who knew. If Nate had lived in this neighborhood, he wouldn’t have spent a minute more here than he had to. But then again, if Ally was living in this neighborhood, it was because she couldn’t afford anything else, so her entertainment options during her time off might be limited.
“Destination is on the right,” the GPS prompted, and Nate eased to the curb, shifted into Park. A wooden-framed house, its stark lines unadorned by any trim or embellishment, painted white much too long ago and divided into flats. Iron bars on the narrow windows, front garden concreted over like most on the street to allow more parking. None of the trees he’d seen on other streets, some of their leaves changing now. Just a bit of rubbish blowing down the road in the crisp autumn breeze.
Nate shoved the GPS unit into the glove box and got out, taking care to lock the doors behind him. Walked up the uneven pavement, the four cracked concrete steps. Two doors, one to the downstairs flat, the other to the upstairs, he guessed. She was A. Downstairs, then. Worse and worse. He pressed the button. And waited.
Ally heard the doorbell, got up off her narrow bed with a sigh. She’d been doing some online research, dismayed by the cost of every program she’d found. But this was her future, she reminded herself as she walked past the kitchen that her new roommates never seemed to clean, through the depressingly messy living room—the reason she spent most of her free time in her bedroom—toward the insistent bell, ringing again now. She was going to be investing in herself. Anything worth having was worth working for. And, she hoped, worth going into debt for. Because she needed to do this, and she needed to do it herself.
She bent cautiously to the peephole drilled into the cheap, hollow wooden door. She wasn’t expecting anybody, and the last occupants of the flat had apparently not been any too savory. Some of their former associates—or customers—hadn’t got the news that their pals had been evicted, and continued to show up from time to time. She’d started being careful on Day One, and had only grown more so. Man, she hated being poor.
She focused on the peephole, took a look. Stood up fast, then bent to look again. Jumped at the sound of the doorbell as he pressed it yet again. Out there looking impatient, and big, and furious, and like . . . Nate. Her heart was pounding at the sight of him. At how good he looked. At how mad he looked.
She jumped again as his fist hit the door. All right, then. Stop staring at him and open it. See what he wanted. Why he was here. Why he was here.
She twisted the locks, her fingers fumbling a little. Swung the door wide, and there he was. Unshaven, eyes like two chips of ice, square jaw set, mouth hard.
“Nate,” she said, then remembered to take a breath. “What are you doing here?”
He stepped inside, forcing her to take a couple rapid steps back, and slammed the door behind him. “What I want to know,” he said grimly, “is what the bloody hell you’re doing here.”
“What?” she asked in confusion. “I live here.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Why? What do you mean, why?”
“Why here?” he asked, still looking much too big and angry. “Is this the best you could do?”
“On my budget? Well, yes. It is.”
“Kristen said you were working, though,” he pressed.
“And saving,” she agreed. “And this is cheap.”
“I’ll bet,” he muttered. “Where are you working?”
“Emeryville. Next town up,” she elaborated. “The climbing gym there.”
He nodded again, a quick jerk of the head. “Can we sit down?”
“Uh . . .” She looked around. She didn’t want to take him into her bedroom, so it was going to be here. “Sure.” She sat on the couch, its duct-taped upholstery covered by a sheet, and indicated the chair, which was actually a little better. No duct tape, anyway.
He moved the stack of newspapers from the seat to the floor, then sat down, rested his forearms on his knees, hands clasped, and treated her to another hard stare. “Do your parents know you live here?”
“Of course they do,” she said in surprise. “Of course they have my address.”
“No,” he insisted. “Do they know you live here.”
“Oh. Well, not exactly. But it really isn’t that bad.”
“It isn’t, eh. So you feel safe, driving home from work at night.”
“Uh . . . I don’t exactly drive. I don’t have a car.” She gestured to the bike propped against the wall under the front window. “But I ride really fast,” she said, trying a little laugh.
He swiveled to look at it, then stared back at her. “You weren’t living like this in En Zed,” he pointed out. “And that isn’t cheap. So why?”
Because there was no Kristen here, that was why. And because she needed to save. But why was she answering him?
“Loving you,” he said immediately, taking her breath away in a rush. “That’s what gives me the bloody right. Loving you.”
“Oh,” she said weakly. “That isn’t . . . the answer I was expecting.”
“Why d’you think I’m here?” he demanded. “I’ve been trying to find you since I got back from Argentina, and that was four weeks ago. Why didn’t you let Kristen know where you were sooner?”
“Because I wanted to wait till I got a job and a place. I didn’t want to worry her.”
“Where were you staying before, then?”
“Couch-surfing,” she admitted. “Staying with friends, friends of friends. Moving around a little. Don’t want to wear out your welcome, you know.”
He closed his eyes for a moment as if in pain. “People you didn’t even know.”
“Well, yeah. Sometimes. It was fine. I was lucky to find people willing to do it. I was pretty broke when I got back here, after the plane ticket.”
“Your parents, though,” he suggested.
“My parents what?” she challenged, starting to get annoyed now.
“Why didn’t you ask them for help? Why didn’t you ask Kristen? Why didn’t you ask me?”
“That’d be pretty adult of me, wouldn’t it, asking my parents to bail me out? Never mind my ex-boyfriend, who dumped me, whom I’ve just humiliated in front of the whole country. I was supposed to come begging to you? Don’t you think I have any pride at all?”
“I think you have too bloody much pride,” he muttered. “And that—” He waved a hand. “That online thing, those photos. I’ve already checked into that. One reason I wanted to find you. You need to come back so you can file a report.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t pose for those photos,” he said with certainty. “I know you didn’t.”
She hadn’t thought she could be any more mortified, thought she’d been to the bottom and had put the whole painful episode behind her. But looking at Nate, knowing he’d seen those pictures, knowing he’d seen the visual proof that Devon had taken them, that Devon had seen her like that . . . it was the worst.
“No,” she said quietly. “I didn’t. He must have had a camera somewhere.”
Nate nodded. “He probably did it to everybody he slept with, because that’s the kind of scungy bastard he is. And then, when he knew we were involved, he realized he could use them. Waited for his chance until I was down already, until he could sink the boot in, embarrass me as much as possible. Because that’s why he did it. You were just the means. That’s what makes me so bloody furious. He didn’t have the balls to come after me, so he used you.”
“But you need to come back,” he repeated. “Because what he did, it was a violation, and it’s a crime. You need to tell the police that he took those photos without your knowledge, without your consent. You need to file a complaint.”
“I’d rather do him over myself,” he said, and the look on his face gave Ally no doubt at all that he meant it, “but he’s gone to the U.K., is working there. He’d gone by the time I got back from Argentina. That was his last shot, his farewell fuck-you to me. And you got caught in the crossfire.”
“But if he’s in the U.K.,” she said, “they can’t prosecute anyway.”
“You can file a complaint,” he insisted. “At least we’d both have the satisfaction of knowing that if he ever did come back, he wouldn’t just be getting the beating of his life, he’d be facing prosecution as well. I’ve already put the word in to some fellas I know in the U.K., and he’s not going to be getting too far over there either. And once you report it, we can arrange for that to be leaked to the media so they know what he did. Give him a taste of humiliation himself, let him see what it feels like.”
“I don’t know . . .” She hesitated. Revenge sounded so good, but . . . “I’m not sure if I could stand to bring it up all over again. It’s bad enough to know those pictures will never go away. But, Nate.” Hard as it was to do it, she looked him in the eye. She hated talking about this, but she had to. It was there between them, and it always would be. “If I came back to New Zealand, especially if you had anything to do with me, it would all flare back up again and embarrass you even more. And you don’t want that in your life. I know you don’t.”
“D’you think that’s the last thing that’ll come up in our lives to test us?” he demanded. “Because it isn’t. It’s the first thing. We start with this, and we find out we can do it. We find out that what matters is us, the two of us. And then, when the next bad time comes along, we can face it together and know that we’re going to come out on the other side.”
“If this keeps you from coming back to me,” he went on more gently, his eyes intent on hers, “he’s won. I know you don’t want to let him win, and I sure as hell don’t either. I want us to win. And the way we do that is to be together. That’s what I want, and I came here to see if it’s what you want. Or to see if I could talk you into giving it another go,” he said, with a smile that she could tell he was forcing. “Come back with me, Ally. Pack your things right now and come back with me.”
She’d begun shaking her head halfway through his speech. “It wouldn’t work. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” The smile was gone. “Are you telling me you don’t care about me anymore? Because I don’t believe it.”
He was interrupted by the sound of the door opening behind him. And a man’s voice.
“Hi, honey! I’m home!”
She saw Nate whirl, stand up fast as Jim stepped inside, juggling a couple of grocery bags while he shot the deadbolt into place.
“You didn’t lock the door, Ally,” he said. “You need to be more careful.”
He turned and noticed Nate for the first time, faltered to a stop. And Ally could guess, from the look that crossed Jim’s face, what he was reading on Nate’s.
“Hey,” Jim faltered.
Ally was on her feet now too, her hand on Nate’s arm. “This is my friend from New Zealand,” she told Jim. “This is Nate. And this,” she said to Nate, emphasizing every word, “is my roommate. Jim.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “I’ll just dump these,” he said, lifting the bags with a nervous laugh. “In the kitchen.”
“Stop it,” Ally hissed to Nate. “Stop it right now and sit down.”
“What?” he asked. Well, really, it was more of a growl. But he sat, to her relief.
“I’ll be in my room,” Jim said, popping his head back around the corner. “If you, you know. If you need me.” He shot one more look at Nate and was gone.
“Not my boyfriend,” Ally said firmly as she heard Jim’s door closing. “My roommate. And no business of yours if he was. Because you didn’t want me, Nate. I didn’t leave you. You let me go.”
“I know,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I know I did. And I was wrong. I hurt you over and over again. I know I did.”
“And that is my business,” he said fiercely, his eyes meeting hers again. They weren’t ice anymore. They were fire. “Because we belong together. I know we do. I know that now too. And I don’t believe that you don’t care about me anymore. You can’t sit there and tell me you don’t.”
“I care about you.” She wished so much that she could believe him, that she could accept what he was saying, that she didn’t know better. But she’d done too much thinking in the past month for that. She forced herself to keep looking him in the eye, determined to be honest with him, and with herself, if it killed her. Which, right now, it felt like it just might do.
“I care about you too much to come back with you, knowing it wouldn’t work,” she tried to explain. “I went to New Zealand in the first place because I was running away. Trying to escape from my unsatisfactory job, my unsatisfactory relationship. Thinking that if I ran that far, I�
�d be able to hide from the fact that I still hadn’t figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Because women can be Peter Pan too,” she said with a choked laugh. “Hey, I just realized something. I was Peter Pan, and you were Wendy.”
“I was Wendy?” he protested. “Ally . . .”
“No, wait. Let me finish. So I ran away. Into, guess what? Another unsatisfactory job, another unsatisfactory relationship. Because it’s what they say, isn’t it? Wherever you go, there you are.”
“It wasn’t unsatisfactory, though,” he argued. “It was good. It was right. I know that now. Ever since I let you go, I’ve missed you so much, and I need you back. I need to make up for everything I did wrong. Please, Ally. Please give me another chance to get it right.”
“I can’t,” she said sadly. “I can’t fit into the spaces that are left after rugby. Because that’s always going to come first for you. First, last, and always. You belong to rugby body and soul, I’ve realized that. It’s the one best thing in your life. You were my one best thing, and I needed to be yours, and I never will be. And I can’t live with that.”
“I’m not saying that to make you feel bad,” she hurried to explain. “I’m saying, that’s how it is. That’s how it has to be. You can’t get distracted, and I can’t either, not anymore. I need to do something with my life, Nate. I’ve got a goal now. You helped me see that I needed to do that. I’ve got it now, and I need to accomplish it.”
“Look.” She reached for one of her brochures on the end table, handed it across to him. “Graduate school in sports management. That’s me, next fall. I’m saving. I’m working on my applications. I’m checking out student loans. And someday, somehow, I’m opening my own gym. I’m doing it. I’m going for it. And I’m growing up.”
“That’s awesome,” he said slowly, turning the brightly colored brochure in his hand, looking at the image of a smiling young man standing amongst an array of weight machines. “But what about me?”
Just My Luck (Escape to New Zealand #5) Page 35