Unconditional: A Coming of Age Romance Novel (Always)

by Cherie M Hudson

  Suffice it to say, it made my head spin.

  What also made my head spin—something that took me a whole two weeks to identify—was that I hadn’t talked to my mom every day.

  I didn’t realize how much of who I was hung on how much time I spent looking out for her, making sure she was taking her meds, eating well and staying out of trouble. By trouble I mean not doing things she physically couldn’t—or shouldn’t—do anymore.

  But in the two weeks since arriving in Australia, the only person I’d needed to think about was essentially me.

  Which made the morning of my fifteenth day in the country all the more…irritating.

  I had no one to blame for it but me.

  Thanks to my new life—morning workout with Brendon, breakfast with Heather, morning classes, lunch with Heather, afternoon study, hitting the shops or the beach with Heather, followed by some kind of dinner somewhere that wasn’t necessarily of the healthy variety—and without Mom’s advanced Parkinson’s to remind me of my own condition, I’d grown remiss about my meds.

  Or maybe careless is a better word.

  Negligent is probably an even better one. I missed a day here or there. Nothing too disastrous, but enough to have an impact.

  Whatever the word, I wasn’t prepared for my body and brain’s backlash to the absence of expensive medication in my system.

  So when Raph found me at my room’s door the morning of my fifteenth day, sweaty and drained after my session with Brendon, unable to open the damn thing because my hand and arm were shaking so much I couldn’t insert my key into the lock, I kinda…well…lost it.

  I was banging my forehead against the door, eyes squeezed shut, hand ineffectually gripping the goddamn knob, frustrated whimpers and curses falling from my lips when I heard him.

  “Working out with Osmond exhausting you, American girl?”

  There was no denying the sarcasm in his voice. Nor was there any denying the way my stupid, quaking, messed-up, traitorous body reacted immediately to his presence. Fourteen days—a fortnight—without a single glimpse of him, and of course, here he was now, when I was at my worst. Fate was a bitch sometimes.

  I scrunched up my face, ground my teeth, pressed my forehead harder to the door and poured every ounce of will I possessed into making my hand tighten around the knob.

  It didn’t.

  A choked sob escaped me. Followed by a muttered curse. Yeah, I was in a bad place.

  “I didn’t ask what you were doing,” Raph drawled beside me. There was a part of me that recognized his sarcasm was gone, replaced with something else. That part, unfortunately, was being suffocated by my increasing agitation and self-contempt.

  I tried to twist the doorknob again.

  Again, my hand, my shaking, useless, worthless, weak, good-for-nothing hand, failed me.

  Another sob burst past my lips, louder than the previous.

  “You okay, American girl?” Concern laced his voice this time. No sarcasm, no mysterious emotion that may or may not have been jealousy. Concern. Of course, you know that only made it worse, right?

  I turned my head away from where he stood at his door opposite me, hating everything, everything, unable to even find the strength or balance to straighten from my own door.

  “Maci?” He drew closer. I didn’t just hear that fact, I could feel it. “Is everything okay? Are you and…did Osmond…Jesus, why is your hand shaking so much? Are you okay? Do you need me to do anything?”

  And there you have it. The moment I snapped.

  I’m not proud of what happened next, but I’ll own it.

  I spun around as well as my body would let me, which wasn’t much. My fingers slipped from the doorknob as my stare locked on his. I knew I looked a sight—sweaty from my workout, hair hanging in damp clumps over my eyes, face no doubt red from anger, belly hitching from the furious sobs threatening to overwhelm me. I didn’t care. “I don’t need you or anyone else to do anything for me.”

  The snarled rebuff would have been so much more impressive if my hand wasn’t shaking so much I slapped my own thigh and dropped the key to my room.

  Awesome.

  Raph moved so fast, he’d picked it up before I could finish biting back my curse. He straightened, his gaze on my face.

  I held out my right hand. There wasn’t a hope in hell I was holding out my left. “Key?”

  Raph’s eyes narrowed. He shook his head. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing!” I snapped, thrusting my right hand out farther. “Except some guy who thinks he’s all that won’t give me my key.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’m all that.” He shook his head, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his shoulder against my closed door. “I do think you’re being stubborn though. And keeping something from me.”

  I tried to snatch my key from where it dangled from his index finger against his biceps. Unfortunately, I was so angry with the world, I tried with my left hand.

  Raph caught my wrist in gentle fingers before I could retract my arm. Which only made it worse.

  “Let go,” I growled. There was little point tugging against his grip—I knew I had no strength in me at the moment—but I tugged anyway. Sure enough, the effort was laughable in its woefulness.

  Despite my weak effort at escape, he did let go of my wrist. And then he moved closer to me, gazing down into my face. “I really think you should tell me what’s going on. I want to… If you need help, I don’t mind giving—”

  “I don’t want your help,” I repeated, terse anger cutting my words. Deep in my chest, my heart hammered. “I want my key.”

  Without a word, he gave it to me.

  I snatched it—right hand, of course—and spun back to my door. And then fell against it when my balance deserted me.

  My shoulder struck it first, followed by my left palm and my cheek.

  My key fell to the ground, clattering beside my foot. The fingers of my left hand splayed against the door and, without a pause for common decency, began to tap against it in that familiar, erratic way I despised so much.

  I ground my teeth, balled my hand and slammed it against the wood with a pathetic thud. “Please go away, Jones,” I begged, casting him a sideways glare.

  He shook his head. “Not happening.”

  “You going to shadow me all day?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Going to cramp your romantic style if you do that, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged, the corners of his lips twitching.

  With a contemptuous snort, I bent down and plucked my key from beside my foot. And fucking lost my balance again. Not a lot, but enough that I hit my head on the door.

  There was no stopping the tears. Hot, exasperated, furious tears of self-hate and hate for the world.

  Two warm, firm hands smoothed up my back, over my shoulders and down my arms. Steady fingers found my hands and, before I could stop him, Raph was gently helping me to my feet and—without a word—pulling me against his body. Not an embrace, just a solid wall of support.

  I both hated it and cherished it.

  “Have you had breakfast?” he asked, his chin nudging the top of my head, deep voice vibrating through me.

  I grumbled out a, “No.”

  With a chuckled snort, he pulled away from me a little. “Will you bite my head off if I ask you to have breakfast with me?”

  I wanted to tell him where he could stick his breakfast. I really did. Of course, my stomach chose that moment to growl like a goddamn lion. And the feel of Raph’s fingers threaded with mine, holding them, keeping them steady, really was lovely.

  Oh boy.

  “Just breakfast,” he said. “No public bathroom snogging. Promise. Don’t want The Biceps coming after me.”

  My gut flip-flopped at the implication in his jest. “Brendon and I—” I began.

  “Hey, Jones!” Macca’s shout stopped me dead.

  I flinched. As did Raph.

  “Getting
it on with the Yank, ’eh?” Macca loped up to us, grin wide. “Hey, Maci. Heard you had a thing at the gym the other morning. You okay?”

  “She’s fine,” Raph answered. Impatience scratched at the words. “We’re just about to go for breakfast.”

  “Cool.” Macca ran a quick gaze over me, not so much sexual interest, rather a curious inspection. Irritated tension was doing its best to churn me up again. Talk had made it around to the small population of Mackellar House about my collapse, it seemed. Damn it. I’d really hoped it had been forgotten. I was also longing for the massive, almost impersonal size of collage back home. In a dorm of over two hundred people, my…quirks didn’t really make for much conversation compared to what everyone else was getting up to.

  “Can I come?”

  “Fuck off,” Raph said.

  I flicked him a quick look. He was smiling at his friend, but I couldn’t help notice he drew closer to me.

  My tummy knotted again and, before I could change my mind, I ducked my head, pulled my fingers from Raph’s and slipped my key into my lock. All without dropping anything or stumbling off balance. Thank freaking God.

  “Actually,” I said, cheeks warm, “I think I’m just going to have a shower and get to class early. I have a paper due to Professor Firth tomorrow and I want to ask him a few questions before class starts.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer.

  With far more grace than I’d possessed a few minutes ago, I slipped into my room and closed the door behind me.

  First port of call was my meds bag.

  Breathing fast, hands shaking more than ever, I extracted a small orangey-yellow pill bottle from the bag’s crowded innards, popped the top and shook—ha, ha, get it?—out two tiny white pills.

  For a long moment, long enough for my heart to hammer three times in my ears, long enough for me to hear Macca laughingly tell Raph he’d been, “Burned, mate. Burned,” out in the hallway, I stared at the pills.

  They sat on my palm, both my salvation and my curse.

  Pills to stop my brain from betraying my body.

  With a slow, deep breath, I opened my mouth and smacked my hand to my lips.

  The meds struck my tongue. Instantly, a strong, bitter taste assaulted my taste buds. As it did every time I took my medication, a shudder claimed me, a visceral reaction to the tiny things keeping me normal.

  Normal. What a poor excuse for a word to describe an existence with little hope for normalcy. Parkinson’s disease robs a person of that. Normalcy. And if you let it, it also robs you of hope.

  Hope of being able to tie your own shoelaces.

  Hope of being able to apply eyeliner.

  Hope of being able to reach the golden years of your life without the need for adult diapers.

  Hope of living beyond the use-by-date of your attacked brain.

  Hope.

  I swallowed the pills without the aid of water. A lifetime of watching Mom do the same had taught me the trick, as well as over twelve months of doing it myself—a quick jerk of the head and a grimace was all it took. Like swallowing mouthwash without the minty freshness.

  Ten minutes later, meds slowly dissolving in my gut, towel and fresh clothes slung over my shoulder, I opened my door.

  And found Raph standing there, shoulder leaning on the doorjamb, lips curled in a smile. “Breakfast?”

  “Have you been waiting there the whole time?” I asked, not sure if I was excited or angry.

  “Yep.”

  I scowled. “Then you shouldn’t have bothered. As you can see, I’m going to have a shower and go to class.”

  He laughed. “Shower, yes. Class, no. I know for a fact you don’t have any classes this morning.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged, the motion one part boyishly cute, one part…arrogantly confused. Yes, I know that makes no sense, but it’s the only way I can describe it. Like he was just as confused as I was about our chemistry.

  And man, was I confused. Forcing myself to look calm, I crossed my arms over my breasts. Not because I was miffed—okay, I was a little—but because my nipples were pinching into tight little points of excited delight.

  Holy crap, he’d been keeping tabs on me? What did that mean? Did it mean what I thought it meant? And how the hell did I feel about that if it did?

  He laughed. “Actually, Heather walked past a second ago and mentioned you were having breakfast with her. I told her I was going to take you to breakfast instead.”

  Heat flooded my cheeks. Crap, I’d forgotten all about that. We were going to catch a bus into Paddington—an artsy inner-city suburb—and pretend we were art students at a café called Triptych, where naked figure-drawing models sat around all day, just waiting for people to draw them. Had Heather told him where we were going?

  “But…” His smile turned to that devilish grin I remembered from the airport bathroom two weeks ago, the one that made my sex flutter and my heart race. “If you really want to go to Triptych, I’m happy to drive us.”

  Damn, she had.

  Heat flooded my checks. Again. Goddamn it, I was blushing more on this side of the planet than I ever had back home. WTF? “What about your bodyguard?” I asked, hoping to ruffle his feathers a little. I needed some kind of upper hand here.

  It didn’t work. All he did was grin. “I’ve seen his doodles. Don’t think drawing is his thing.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Raph laughed and held up his hand. “I know. But c’mon, you have to admit, that was funny.”

  I couldn’t stop my lips twitching.

  Raph’s grin stretched wider. “Ah, there it is.”

  “What?”

  His gaze met mine. “Your smile. I haven’t seen it since the airport. So? Breakfast at Triptych? My treat?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to say no even if a warm yumminess was blooming in my belly.

  “Or,” he went on before I could, dark eyes glinting with the same mirth I could see dancing on his lips, “we could just stick with our normal routine and I could follow you to the bathroom and we could make out there?”

  “Are those my only two options?”

  He nodded. “’Fraid so.”

  I let out a sigh. A maelstrom of butterflies whipped up a storm of nerves inside me. “Breakfast it is then. But only if I’m allowed to laugh at your drawings.”

  “Deal. Now hurry the hell up, will you? I’m starving.”

  I rushed through my shower—which, given the strict water usage rules at Mackellar House, was the quickest shower I’d ever taken—and tugged on my clothes after the fastest towel-drying ever. As a consequence, my skin was a little damp when I shoved my legs into my shorts and yanked my tank over my head. That meant I kept squirming in my seat as we drove to Triptych, trying to inconspicuously separate my clinging clothes from my body.

  Raph kept giving me curious sideways glances, but he thankfully didn’t say anything. By this stage, my meds had kicked in and my tremors had subsided. I was grateful for that, at least, even if I did look like I had ants in my pants.

  His car was nothing like I’d expected. For some reason, I’d placed him in a sleek, expensive number, like a Porsche or the kind of car Iron Man drove. Instead, he walked me to a beat-up baby-pickup-looking thing with a row of massive spotlights attached to a thick metal bar in front of the grill.

  Inside, on the passenger seat and floor, there were empty Red Bull cans, empty chip bags and a stack of books with titles like Statistics for Veterinary and Animal Science, Biofilms and Veterinary Medicine, and Pathologic Basis of Veterinary Disease.

  “Just some light reading,” Raph said, expression deadpan as he gathered them all up and shoved them—along with the Red Bull cans and chip bags—in the narrow space behind my seat.

  I thought of my light reading back in my room—the latest Stephen King novel, three Girlfriend magazines I’d brought from home and my copy of The Age of Global Warming. To my
credit, there were also the required text books for my study at University of Sydney, but apart from when I’d been in class and lectures, I hadn’t paid them that much attention.

  Thirty minutes of casual chatting—and squirming—later, we pulled into an empty space near the café. I was enjoying myself already, damn it. Yes, there was a part of me that desperately wanted to discover Raph was a boring slug when we weren’t making out in public bathrooms. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

  He was funny with a dry sense of humor a lot like my dad’s.

  That wasn’t helping my situation any, but I was laughing too much to really care. As we climbed out of his car—he called it a ute, which must be some unique Aussie term for pickup—I was momentarily confused when he reached behind the driver’s seat, withdrew a baseball cap and pulled it low over his eyes. “Aren’t we going inside?” I asked, watching him over the roof of the ute.

  He looked at me from his side, lips curling. I couldn’t see what his eyes were doing; the sunglasses he wore were so damn dark it was like gazing into two fathomless black holes. “Yep.”

  When he didn’t offer any further elaboration on the cap and sunglasses, I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Walking around to where I waited for him on the footpath, he took my hand. My heart leapt into my throat so freaking fast I almost choked. Oh boy, his fingers threaded through mine felt nice. No, more than nice. Wonderful. Incredible. Amazing.

  Perfect.

  Smile stretching wider, he leaned closer to me, his dimple flashing from his right cheek. “I’m sort of famous, remember,” he whispered, as if sharing an important secret. “Don’t want to be swarmed.”

  At first, I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. And then I remembered the paparazzi at the airport the day I met him. “Shall I call you Bruce?” I whispered back, unable to hide my own smirk.