Unconditional: A Coming of Age Romance Novel (Always)

by Cherie M Hudson

  Horn stiffened.

  Yeah. Be afraid, I thought. Be very afraid.

  I spun on my heel and stepped from my room.

  Straight into Raph.

  He stumbled back. I did the same.

  “Whoa, American girl.” He caught my upper arms in a gentle grip. “You shouldn’t be moving so—”

  With a grunt, I shrugged out of his hands. “I gotta go,” I muttered.

  I didn’t look up at him. Didn’t make any eye contact at all. Hitching my bag up my shoulder, I sidestepped him with all the grace of a shambling bear and hurried down the hall.

  It didn’t surprise me at all that he came after me.

  “What’s going on, Maci?” He caught my hand with his as I was about to descend the stairs, tugging me to a halt. “Why was Horn in your room?”

  Around me, I heard the normal rumbles of my fellow Mackellar House inmates die off. The heavy heat crawling all over me told me we were being watched. “Nothing’s going on,” I said, loudly. “Your walking gorilla just wanted to apologize for abandoning me. I forgave him and told him to say hi to the royal family for me.”

  Raph blinked. “You what?” He frowned over my shoulder, no doubt at his bodyguard who naturally would have followed us. At this point, I really didn’t give a flying fart what Horn expression Horn was wearing. “What the hell is—”

  I let out a ragged sigh. “You know what? I’m done. Too much drama. I have to get to class. Believe it or not, I’m actually here in Australia to learn stuff, important stuff, not be a part of some weird…messed-up…media circus royal family…stuff.”

  As snappy, snarky comebacks go, it was pretty lame.

  Raph must have thought so as well, if his chuckled snort was anything to go by. “Okay, now why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

  I shook my head and lifted my glare to his face. “Class. Really. And after that lunch with Brendon.”

  It was a low blow.

  I regretted it the second it passed my lips. Regretted it and hated myself for doing it.

  But I had to do something. And letting myself believe there was some kind of deluded fantasy happy-ever-after in my future with Raphael Jones was not it. That was only asking for heartache. My future wasn’t going to be fun and easy and stable. It was going to be…bleak. And no one deserved to be a part of that.

  Brendon’s name had the desired effect on Raph.

  A cold tension fell over him straight away. His nostrils flared. His jaw bunched. “Osmond?”

  Christ, I wanted to take it all back. Wanted to say I was sorry and kiss him. Instead, I nodded. “Osmond. He’s a great guy. Doesn’t care at all if I have Parkinson’s. Definitely doesn’t try to help me with his buttons.”

  Yeah, I went there. Could I get any more horrid? Could I go any lower?

  Disbelief etched Raph’s face. Pain flared in his eyes.

  With a sigh I hoped to God sounded bored, I shook my head and pushed past him. “I’ve got to get to class,” I threw over my shoulder as I hurried down the stairs. “See you around, Jones.”

  This time, he didn’t follow.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  Cold? Empty?

  Numb.

  Yeah, I felt numb.

  And broken.

  I hurried from Mackellar House. More than one person photographed me with their smartphones as I did so. I was kind of expecting that. What I wasn’t expecting was the madness that occurred when I crossed the threshold to the outside.

  A swarm of people ran at me. Some of them had cameras. Some of them held microphones. All of them yelled questions. A lot of them shouted my name.

  Great. They knew who I was.

  Seemed I was no longer just the nameless American student anymore.

  I shoved through them, head down, hand up, doing a pathetic job at shielding my face.

  The sound of cameras clicking peppered the air like gunshots. The questions lashed at me like whips.

  “Are you sleeping with Raphael Jones?”

  “How long are you in Australia?”

  “Are you cheating on Jones with Osmond?”

  “Have you met the royal family?”

  “Who has the bigger dick?”

  Hot tears stung the backs of my eyes. My head swam. I gripped the strap of my bag like a lifeline. My forehead throbbed, the injury from yesterday’s encounter with the paparazzi mocking me in today’s effort. But it wasn’t just paparazzi this time. The microphones were proof I’d been elevated to a mainstream-media level of interest.

  Dodging the horde, I stared at my feet, praying I’d get to class before I made a fool of myself by falling on my face in a stumbling failure of muscles and stress.

  It wasn’t until I heard a siren off in the distance followed by the muttered curses of some of those people around me that I raised my head. I saw a car with red and blue flashing lights screech to a halt at the curb, got a glimpse of the words Campus Security on its side…

  And then a firm hand grabbed my wrist, followed by a firm arm wrapping around my shoulders, hauling me to a hard body, burying my face to a chest I knew, filling my breath with a scent I’d grown addicted to.

  “Fuck off,” Raph snarled above my head. “The lot of you. Just fuck off and leave her alone.”

  The photographers and reporters went crazy. Questions and camera flashes assaulted him. Raph ignored them all.

  At least I think he did. I couldn’t tell. He was cupping the back of my head, holding my face to his chest, his other arm holding me tight as he walked us slowly along the footpath.

  There was a shuffling of feet. I heard someone yell, “You’re on Sydney University property. You will be charged with trespassing if you don’t leave now.”

  Someone shoved at my back. Raph growled. He drew me closer to his body. “Back the fuck off or I’ll break your fucking—”

  “Raph!” Heather’s voice rose above the melee.

  “Jones!” Brendon’s voice followed.

  The crowd surrounding Raph and I grew frenzied. The questions began again.

  “So who stole who, Jones?”

  “You ever considered a threesome, Jones?”

  “How much can you lift, Osmond? Reckon you could hit Jones again for us?”

  “Osmond,” Raph called, his chest vibrating against my face. “Get her out of here. Now.”

  And then I was being torn from Raph’s arms. Yanked from him and hauled fast to another harder body. Scooped up in strong arms, arms I’d admired every morning even as I sweated and groaned and complained about being exhausted, and then we were moving. Brendon was moving, carrying me through the chaos in a powerful run.

  “You lot are sick,” I heard Heather shout at our side.

  “Fuck, the bitch hit me!” an unfamiliar voice cried.

  More sirens sounded above the madness. Growing louder by the second. Closer.

  Cameras continued to flash. Questions continued to be shouted. I heard Raph’s voice snarling warnings behind me. Heard Heather telling someone they were scum. And then I was suddenly shoved into a car—Brendon’s car—the door was slammed shut and all I could do was stare out the passenger window, dumbstruck at the feverish reporters mashing against the car, staring in at me, shouting questions I could barely discern.

  Questions about my sex life, about Raph, about Brendon.

  I sat there, head reeling. Stunned.

  The sound of the driver’s door opening jerked me around. A rush of adrenaline flooded through me as I prepared to shove out whoever had found their way in.

  “It’s me,” Heather gushed, eyes wild as she pulled the door closed behind her. “We gotta get out of here.”

  Without waiting for my answer, she shoved the key into the ignition and twisted her hand. Brendon’s car roared to life.

  She shot me a crazy grin. “Man, being your friend sure isn’t boring,” she laughed before flooring the accelerator.

  The media and paparazzi scattered away from the car.
I twisted in my seat, looking out the passenger window.

  Looking for…

  Brendon and Raph stood surrounded by people. Glaring at them. Flinching at camera flashes and swiping away microphones thrust in their faces.

  I don’t know if it really happened or not, but I swear Raph’s gaze connected with mine for a split second and then Heather turned a corner and I couldn’t see him or Brendon anymore.

  But not before I saw Horn barreling down Mackellar House’s front stairs, suit jacket open, holstered gun clear for everyone to see.

  “Oh my giddy aunt!” Heather gasped beside me as we sped down the street. “That was…that was…”

  Letting out a wobbly breath, I turned back to the front of the car and stared through the windshield. “Insane.”

  “Insane. That’s an apt word. You okay?”

  I nodded. Surprisingly, given what had just happened, I was. Sure, my heart was beating a mile a minute. Sure, my hands were shaking like crazy and I could feel the stress-induced tics beginning to take hold of my limbs. But I was okay.

  Which didn’t really make sense, did it? I mean, I should be an emotional mess. I’d just been offered money to stay away from Raph. I’d refused that money—money that would have made my life and Mom’s life easier. I’d hurt Raph in such a mean, nasty way I still couldn’t believe I’d actually done it, and then I’d become the focus of a media frenzy determined to make me the filling in a Raphael Jones-Brendon Osmond manwich.

  I should be a blubbering, snotty, shaking mess.

  But I wasn’t. I was…something. What that something was, I’m not sure. In denial, most likely.

  “I’m okay,” I said when Heather shot me a worried sideways frown. “But I really do think I need to decompress somewhere away from people.”

  She let out a wry snort. “Hell yeah. I got the perfect place.”

  A few moments later, after we’d sped down various quiet streets and turned too many corners for me to keep track, she parked Brendon’s car outside a tiny café situated between an empty barbershop and a pet-grooming parlor on a street that looked like it was trapped in the nineteen-fifties.

  Heather is a maniacal driver. If I hadn’t already been shaking and trembling and twitching thanks to the media circus we’d so recently fled, I would have been by the time we pulled to a stop. Damn. Seriously scary stuff.

  “My uncle owns it,” she said as we climbed out of Brendon’s car, indicating the café with a nod of her head. “To be honest, I think it’s just a front for some nefarious money-laundering scheme he somehow got caught up in. Probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing. I think no one is meant to actually come here but bikies, but it means there’s no chance of the media finding. And—” she grinned wider as she took my hand and walked me to the front door of the dimly lit café, “—the coffee is incredible.”

  We went inside.

  I blinked a few times as my eyesight adjusted to the shadowy interior. Heather hurried over to the man behind the counter who looked as if he could bend a steel girder with his bare hands. He had tattoos of naked women, skulls and dragons covering his massively meaty arms and the smiliest eyes I’ve ever seen. I watched them hug over the glass, wondered what she was saying when they both cast a look my way and then let out a ragged snort when I realized I was too over the whole situation to care.

  Feet shuffling a little, I wandered over to the table farthest from the door and dropped into one of its wicker chairs.

  Oh boy, what a morning.

  I gave my watch a quick glance. “So much for Environmental Sciences with Professor Grant,” I muttered.

  “Pfft.” Heather plonked into the seat opposite me. “Professor Grant is a moron. You already know more than he does.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re a mechanical engineering student, Heather. How do you know Professor Grant?”

  “I dated his son for a week back in first year.” She dug about in her bag and withdrew her iPhone. I couldn’t help but snicker at its cover—a zombiefied Hello Kitty. God, I really did like her. “Both are morons,” she went on, swiping her thumb across her phone’s screen, focused on what she was doing. “But at least his son had a great arse. No conversational skills, but a great arse. But then I wasn’t dating him for his conversational skills. Ahh, there we go.”

  She raised her head and grinned at me. “You’re trending on Twitter right now.”

  My mouth fell open. “I’m what?”

  With a laugh, she held her phone out to me. “Number three trending topic. Maci Rowling.”

  I gaped at the screen, heat prickling my face. There it was. On the Twitter app’s trends list. #MaciRowling.

  “Wow,” I whispered.

  “And look at Number one.”

  My stare slid up the screen at Heather’s prompt.

  #RaphaelJones.

  “Wow,” I whispered again. What else could I say?

  Heather turned the phone back to her and tapped her finger on the screen. “Let’s see what they’re saying, shall we?”

  I swallowed. Did I really want to know?

  I watched her studying the small screen and chewed on my bottom. Beneath the table, my left leg insisted on jerking up and down, filling the café’s silence with a dull thud, thud, thud, thud. I grabbed at the small glass saltshaker, needing something in my left hand. It wasn’t much, but at least it stopped my hand whacking about on the table like a damn jackhammer. The sound of my heel constantly banging on the floor was enough, thank you very much.

  “Hey, cool,” Heather burst out, making me jump. “I’m in this photo.”

  She twisted the phone toward me again. I got a quick glimpse of the image—Brendon carrying me through a horde of photographers, Heather beside us, obviously yelling at someone—and then she was studying her phone again. “I look pretty, don’t I?”

  I stared at her, lost for words.

  “Okay,” she said, dragging her thumb down the screen, stare fixed. “It’s mainly jealous women and teenage girls saying you’re not good enough for him, that he should get an Australian girlfriend. There’re a few saying they’d swap places with you, quite a few suggesting what I’ve already suggested—you should have a three-way with Raph and The Biceps. More than one commenting on The Biceps’s biceps.” She laughed. “And oh, here’s one from a guy with the username BiggusDickus asking you to…err, actually, let’s not worry about that one.”

  I laughed, partly from shock, partly from nervous tension.

  “Let’s see what they’re saying about Raph.” She wriggled about in her seat, red curls bouncing about her head as if sharing her thrill at the whole thing. “Oh yeah, of course Shelly White has to chime in. God, she’s a cow. ‘I happen to know Raph is an amazing kisser’. As if Raph has ever kissed her. Cow. Oh goodie, Macca put her in her place. ‘Shut up, Shelly. Go strut a catwalk’. Man, I like Macca.”

  Heather’s uncle arrived with two squat, round mugs of what looked like cappuccinos saving me from responding.

  Heather bestowed the man with a warm smile. “Thanks, Uncle Brock.”

  Uncle Brock nodded before giving me a level look. “If you need a bodyguard, I know a few guys.”

  Heather smacked his sizeable gut with the back of her hand. “Oh God, Uncle Brock. She’s got paparazzi after her, not the mafia.” She turned her smirk on me. “Besides, with both The Biceps and Raph lusting after her body, I think it’s pretty well guarded.”

  I kicked her under the table.

  She winced and then grinned. “True though.”

  Uncle Brock let out a grunt. “You’re incorrigible, Sparrow.”

  “Yeah, Sparrow,” I teased Heather.

  “I’ll own that,” she said before picking up her coffee, taking a sip and letting out a dramatic ahh.

  Uncle Brock grunted again, shook his head and ambled back to the counter.

  Heather smiled, returned her coffee cup to its plate and then waved her phone about. “The good news,” she said, “is tomorrow
something else will be trending and this will be forgotten.”

  “And the bad news?” I asked.

  “I probably should have told you before now you’ve got mascara smudged all around your eyes from falling asleep last night without washing it off.”

  I burst out laughing.

  She slid her phone across the table to me. “Go on, see what they’re saying on the interwebs about you.”

  A tight knot formed in my belly at her suggestion. I looked at her phone, its Twitter app still open, #RaphaelJones obvious on every tweet displayed.

  I could see images of us taken outside Mackellar House that morning, tiny squares of color permanently capturing the madness and shared with the world by people I didn’t even know. People who thought it was completely and totally okay to share my life, to judge me, speculate about me. Strangers who were now condemning me, congratulating me, propositioning me.

  It was, in a word, unnerving.

  With a shake of my head, I pushed Heather’s phone back to her. I didn’t need that kind of emotional stimulus. I had enough to deal with.

  Heather’s lips curled in a slow, warm smile. “Yeah, I figured you’d feel that way.” She swept her phone from the table and shoved it into the deep recesses of her bag. “So? What’s next? You going to tell The Biceps Raph’s beaten him to your heart or what?”

  Before I could answer her—before I could tell her Brendon already knew, even if Raph didn’t and could never know—the Beatles started singing “I Am the Walrus” in my bag.

  Pulse kicking up a notch, I scrambled to retrieve my phone.

  Mom was calling me.

  Hands shaking from nerves and happiness and excitement, I pulled my phone free, connected the call and rammed it to my ear. “Mom!”

  You know what’s the weirdest thing about being an adult under stress and confused pressure? The second you hear your mom’s voice, no matter how independent and grown-up and self-sufficient you are, you instantly become the little kid who needs your mommy’s hugs to make everything better.