And yet…
Sucking in a ragged breath, I pulled away.
Brendon gazed down into my face, bewildered surprise in his eyes. “Okay. That was…”
I caught my bottom lip with my teeth and stared at him. “Not what I thought it would be like.”
He laughed, the sound puzzled. “Me either. I’m not going to lie, Plenty. I’ve thought of kissing you a lot since the night we met, even before I discovered you’re just about everything I want in a girl, but…yeah, that felt…”
I let out a wry snort. “Like you were kissing your sister?”
He pulled a face. “That’s just gross. But yeah. Not the hot and horny and bothered event I thought it would be. Maybe we need to try again?”
Breath growing short, I nodded. It would be so much easier if Brendon was the one my stupid body and stupider heart got all hot and horny and bothered over. Brendon, who knew about my condition and didn’t make a big deal about it. Well, except that one time in the gym. Brendon, who was funny and didn’t make me all flustered and confused and tongue-tied and hot and bothered…and…and…
Sigh. Yep. That was the problem right there.
Do you see it? I liked Brendon, a lot, but he didn’t get under my skin. Didn’t make me squirm and make that place between my thighs that never lies grow hot and achy in a very, very intense way.
Like Raph did.
Ninety percent certain I knew the outcome of the second kiss before it even happened, I leaned toward him, offering my lips.
He lowered his head to mine and, hand threaded through my hair at the back of my head again, touched his lips to mine.
Our tongues did that little dance thing that happens in a kiss. Our breath tickled each other’s cheeks. Our lips slanted over each other…
And then Brendon chuckled into my mouth and we pulled apart. “Well, fuck.” He shook his head, his lips twisting into a grin. “That sucks.”
It was my turn to nod. “It does.”
He pulled another face. “Doomed to the friend bench by natural chemistry. Damn it.”
I gave him a wobbly smile. I understood his exasperation.
With a disgruntled snort, he dropped his fingers from the nape of my neck and rose to his feet. “Okay, I’ve got to go. Before I totally blow my cool image and try for third time luck—”
The sound of Eminem singing “Berserk” near his thigh cut him short.
With an easy grin, he shoved his hand into his right pocket and withdrew an iPhone. “It’s Heather,” he said, swiping his thumb over the screen and raising the phone to his ear. “Hey, Heather, what’s up?”
Feeling way too rattled, I watched an exasperated expression cross his face; there and gone just as quick. “Of course you have,” he said with a chuckle to Heather. “That’s an extra fifty burpees added to your program next time you’re in the gym, you know that, right?”
Whatever Heather said in response made him laugh harder. With a shake of his head, he handed the phone to me. “She wants to talk to you.”
“Oh God, Maci.” Heather’s voice slammed into my head when I pressed Brendon’s phone to my ear. “Are you okay? Brendon said you were in some kind of riot and got knocked out by a photographer.”
A self-conscious laugh fell from my lips. “I’m fine, Heather. Honest. And I think riot is exaggerating somewhat.”
“Is he pissed?”
I flicked a look at Brendon, who stood beside the sofa, watching me. “I don’t think so. Should he be?”
“Yeah. He didn’t want you traveling any more today. I was coming to stay with you at his place until you’d recovered a bit and I…” Heather paused a second. “Well, I was a bit stressed and flustered about what happened to you and I…I locked my keys in my car.”
I laughed and then groaned as a dull red pain shot through my head. “Why am I not surprised?” I asked with a wince. Damn, my head really did hurt.
Movement in my peripheral vision told me Brendon had crouched down beside me. I didn’t look at him. I knew what I’d find on his face—worry. I was sick of worry. And pity. Especially when piled atop confusion and disappointment.
“I’m hopeless,” Heather groaned. “Tell The Biceps I’m sorry. If it helps, I’ll be out the front of Mackellar House waiting for you both when you get here. And I’m taking care of you for the rest of the afternoon.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need taking care of. Honestly. I’m fine.”
Heather laughed in my ear. “Too bad. I’m not risking any more extra burpees added to my workout. I’ll see you soon, okay?”
She hung up.
Lowering the phone to my lap, I gave Brendon a small smile, my heart stupidly fast. “Heather. You gotta love her, right?”
He studied me, eyes narrow. “Do I need to point out you do need taking care of?”
I balled my fist. “Do I need to tell you I don’t? Again?”
“Why are you being so stubborn about this?”
I glared at him. If sex and romance with Brendon was out of the question, I was giving myself permission to be churlish. “Why are you?”
It seemed he’d adopted the same attitude. With a growl, he threw up his hands. “This is getting us nowhere.”
“I agree,” I snapped back. And to think only a few moments ago we were on the verge of…of…well, y’know, doing that. “Take me back to Mackellar, please. Where I can be fine in peace.”
Brendon let out a strangled groan, shot an angry glare at me and stomped to the door. Stomped. “Fine. God, I hate that word.”
A part of me wanted to laugh. A part of me wanted to say sorry for being a bitch. A part of me wanted to fly back to Plenty, hug my mom and ask her to make me some of her famous chocolate-chip cookies so I could pretend I was six again and none of this craziness was happening.
The part of me that functioned on a basic level forced me to my feet and made me follow Brendon to the door. He looked at me, frustration on his face, shook his head, let out a choppy sigh, rolled his eyes and—before I could stop him—dropped a kiss on the top of my head, the kind a big brother gives his annoying little sister when she’s got a boo-boo. Yep, that’s the relationship we were in, right there.
“What am I going to do about you?” he muttered.
He didn’t wait for an answer, which was a good thing, because I didn’t have one. Instead, he opened the door and strode through it.
I followed. Again.
Hey, what else was I going to do at this point?
The drive back to Mackellar House was quiet. I sat in the passenger seat, alternating between confusion over the two infuriating guys occupying my mind and festering anger at Brendon’s assertion I needed to be looked after. That anger clung to me like seaweed, familiar and undeniable.
I know what you’re currently thinking. You’re thinking, Geez Maci, what’s your deal? I’d kill for someone to look after me, to want to protect me and care for me, and that’s awesome and wonderful. Truly it is. And to be honest, Brendon knowing I needed help, Parkinson’s-type help, hospital-type help wasn’t really the thing making me grumpy now. It was the very fact I needed any kind of help because of my PD. And yeah, that’s my pride talking, I get that, but sometimes pride is all you’ve got to hold on to.
I’d seen Mom’s pride erode away in the ten years before Dad died. For ten years, I watched him look after her, watched him insist he do things for her when she could still do them, solely out of fear she was going to hurt herself. Watched him take away her independence out of love—the very emotion that’s meant to give strength, not reduce it—watched him inadvertently destroy her pride when he never, ever meant to…
Yeah, that’s a haunting, tormenting situation to live though.
My dad did that to Mom without meaning to. Out of his unconditional, fathomless love for her, out of his desire to care for her, to make her life easier, to take away her frustration and humiliation, he took away her ability to function as a normal person. He took away her pride and dignity.
He didn’t realize he was doing it until Mom couldn’t take any more and they’d argue about it.
I’d hear those arguments, even when they tried to hide them from me, and for a long time I just didn’t get it.
He wouldn’t let Mom retrieve the new bottle of ketchup from the top cupboard shelf because it required her standing on a small two-rung stepladder and he worried she’d lose her balance either climbing up or down those two steps and hurt herself. That kind of thing. He’d insist he get the ketchup for her, but in doing so, he inadvertently told Mom she wasn’t functional anymore. I remember watching her face etch with hurt and anger during those moments and couldn’t understand why she was so upset.
When they fought about it—Mom saying Dad treated her like she was handicapped, Dad saying he loved her and only wanted to help—I used to get angry, really angry, with her for being so stupid and ungrateful. I would be furious with her for throwing Dad’s help and love and care back in his face. Once, when I was sixteen, I even told her she was being a stubborn, selfish bitch.
She yelled at me that I didn’t understand and I had no right talking to her like that before she burst into tears and closed herself in her bedroom.
I remember feeling guilty and at the same time right. Like I’d picked a side in a war, and it was the winning side and the other side was just being obstinate. It wasn’t until years later, with my own muscles and brain attacked by Parkinson’s, with my own pride and sense of being a normal, functioning human equally attacked, that I understood why Mom hated Dad doing things for her when she was still capable of so much. It had nothing to do with being insulted and everything to do with being reduced to your worst fear before your time.
And a Parkinson’s disease sufferer’s worse fear is losing everything that makes you a person. Not just your ability to think and move, but your pride and dignity and independence.
All that and more was running through my head on the drive back to my student accommodation, so yeah, I was being a surly pain in the ass.
Brendon, however, was being Brendon. Relaxed and casually at ease. I think if we’d been driving a longer distance, his affable, unflappable good mood would have eventually worn me down and I would have stopped being a lump of grump. But the trip from his apartment to Mackellar House isn’t that long, so by the time we pulled to a halt outside the building I was currently calling home, I was still silent and churlish.
But not petulant enough to scramble out of Brendon’s car the second he killed the engine.
We sat for a moment, neither of us moving, the tick, tick, tick of the engine cooling the only sound in the car.
“You’re too hard on yourself, Plenty,” he said, finally breaking the silence.
I shot him a sideways glance.
“And too good for Jones,” he finished, studying the view beyond the windshield.
“With what’s in my future,” I said, my chest tight, “I’m not good enough for anyone.”
I turned away from him, opened my door and climbed out.
He met me on the footpath. I knew he would. Expression set somewhere between angry and sympathetic, he stepped up to me and took my hand. My left one. Which was trembling, of course. “That’s bullshit,” he whispered, gazing into my eyes. “And the sooner you realize that, the—”
“Maci!”
We both jumped at the sound of Raph calling my name.
I swung my head toward his shout to find him almost running toward me from Mackellar House’s front door.
“Jesus, Maci,” he said, drawing closer. “I’ve been worried sick. Are you okay? I made Horn go back for you but we couldn’t—”
Brendon’s fist smashing against his jaw shut him up and sent him staggering backward.
“You took off and left her, you fucking prick!” Brendon snarled, bearing down on Raph. “What kind of idiot moron does that?”
“What the hell, Osmond?” Raph gaped at Brendon, hand pressed to the side of his mouth. I was horrified to see a little trickle of blood oozing past his fingers. “You hit me. What’s your—”
“Of course I hit you,” Brendon cut him off, storming straight for him again. “You abandoned her to a pack of frenzied paparazzi. Stress like that is the worst thing someone with Parkinson’s can be exposed to. She spent the afternoon in hospital, you privileged, arrogant fuck—”
Four things happened at once. Four horrible things. All in messed-up, terrible slow motion.
One. Raph swung his stare to me, the stunned confusion on his face giving way to open pity.
Two. Three scruffily dressed men came running at us along the footpath, expensive-looking cameras in their hands, all shouting Raph’s name and asking if he was going to sue.
Three. Heather ran up behind Raph, mouth open, agog with shock.
And four. Mr. Horn, still dressed in his somber blue suit, came out of nowhere and slammed shoulder first into Brendon, driving him across the footpath and to the ground.
I blinked. And then flinched when a warm hand wrapped around my wrist.
“What’s he mean?” Raph stood in front of me, worried concern swimming in his dark eyes as he gazed down at me. “Parkinson’s?”
“Jones!” one of the paparazzi called, shoving the lens of his camera in Raph’s face. “Why’d the big guy punch you? Who is he? Are you sleeping with his girlfriend?”
Raph ignored him, stare fixed on me.
Heart pounding, stomach rolling, I snatched my wrist free of his grip. “I’ve got to go,” I ground out.
Heather bounded up beside me. “Maci, are you okay?”
“Maci?” the second paparazzo shouted, shoving at the crowd amassing around us in an effort to get closer. “Are you cheating on Jones?”
I swung my stupefied stare—yes, I was shocked into inactivity at this point—to where Brendon and Raph’s bodyguard were trying to beat each other to bloody pulps. I don’t know who was winning, but based on the fact Brendon was steady on his feet and Mr. Horn was lurching about somewhat, I was putting my money on Brendon.
“Maci?” Raph grabbed my wrist again, alarm in his voice. “Do you have Parkinson’s disease? Is that why your hand shakes a lot? Are you sick?”
It was that last question that got me moving. Not the paparazzi hurling insulting questions at us as they photographed every damn second passing. Not Heather gasping at my side. Not the people—my fellow Mackellar House occupants and curious passersby—watching the ridiculous spectacle. Not the sight of Brendon and Mr. Horn punching into each other like rabid grizzlies.
The last question Raph had asked. And the last word of the last question.
Sick.
I swung my stare up to his worried eyes and yanked my wrist from his fingers. “Yes,” I said, the word flat. Empty. “I’m sick. But don’t worry. It’s not catching.”
And with that, I turned and ran—not walked, not shuffled, not lurched—straight for the safety of Mackellar House’s open front door.
Thank freaking God, I made it without falling over.
If that had happened, I really do think I would have curled up in a shaking, trembling, vibrating ball of self-contempt and died.
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Shaky
Heather followed me all the way up the stairs and into my room. I ignored her. Mainly because my brain wasn’t functioning properly at that point. It was taking all its neurons and synapses to keep me upright and stable. And tear-free.
I wanted to cry.
I’m not sure if this pressing need to sob was due to my condition or the totally surreal events I’d just been a part of, but whatever the reason, I wasn’t going to give in. There was no damn way in hell I was going to cry. Not only do I look woeful when I cry—what girl doesn’t? Seriously? If a girl doesn’t look like a snotball of misery when she’s crying, she’s not really crying, do you know what I mean?—but it meant what was going on had defeated me.
I wasn’t going to be defeated on the other side of the world by two Au
stralian guys, some photographers and a revelation.
A revelation.
Oh damn, Brendon had told Raph I had…
My knees crumpled beneath me.
Heather caught me before I hit the floor.
“C’mon, Maci,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around my torso as she helped me straighten up. “Let’s get you to the bed.”
She hooked my arm around her shoulder and, with a grunt and a snicker, carried me the rest of the way across my room and deposited me on the bed.
I slumped into a back-aching bow and pressed my forehead to my knees. My eyes prickled. My stomach churned.
“Is it true?” Heather smoothed a hand up my back, the shifting on the mattress telling me she’d sat beside me. “You have Parkinson’s disease?”
There was no pity in her voice. Only curiosity.
I nodded against my knees. “Yes.”
“Did you only just find out?”
“No. I’ve known for over a year.”
The hand on my back grew still. “Is it getting worse while you’re here?”
I shook my head. At some point I was going to need to lift my forehead from my knees but not yet.
Heather was quiet for a moment. “Did you want to keep it a secret?”
My forehead mashed up and down on my knees as I nodded.
“Why?”
Finally, I raised my head and looked at her. “Because it sucks. Because people treat me differently when they know. Because I feel…”
The word to describe how I felt about it all wouldn’t come.
Heather watched me frown and wave my hands about in some ridiculous effort to scoop up the word from the air around me.
“Less?” she offered.
I let out a sigh and dropped back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Hot tears leaked from the corners of my eyes to dribble a path down my temples and into my ears. I sniffed, my nose well on its way to being blocked with the snot of self-disgust and self-pity. “Less is a good way to describe me. Especially when you add it to the word functional. Maci Rowling—less functional. That’s me.”
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