by Ally Blake
Until the moment she’d come right out and told him how tough she was. Then her bravado had turned to glass and he’d seen right through her. Right to her big, soft, beating heart. Full of hope and trust. Ready to forgive even the worst transgressions. Ready to forgive him before she even knew what he could possibly have done.
He didn’t want to see her hurt. That much was true. But he feared it was already too late.
Only this time it wasn’t his father he was worried might hurt her. It was him.
“April?” He skimmed her hair from her face. “April?”
She stirred, her arms stretching over her head, the sheet dragging down over her breasts.
He bent down and kissed the side of her breast. “Wake up.”
He lapped at her nipple with his tongue. “Wake up, April.”
He grazed her nipple with his teeth. “Wake up, sleepy head.”
“I’m awake.”
He lifted his head. Her eyes were open, though only half mast. The quixotic grey lost within her dilated pupils.
“You’re dressed,” she said, her voice croaky. “What’s the time?”
Finn glanced at the clock beside his bed. “Not quite two.”
“Is there a fire? An earthquake? An alien invasion?”
Finn shook his head.
“Then what’s with the waking up?”
Finn brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “I have a confession.”
“Right now?
“Right now.”
“Does this have anything to do with why you were hunched over that empty glass of scotch the day we met?”
He nodded.
“Okay.” April dragged herself to sitting.
Rubbed fists into her eyes. Swallowed a yawn. Fluffed her hands through her hair as if waking her scalp might wake her brain. Then realised she was stark naked.
“Shoot. I need to be dressed for this.”
Leaning half out of the bed, the sheet falling away from her gorgeous backside, she grabbed one of his t-shirts from a chair by the bed and slid it over her head. “Okay. Hit me with it. Every dirty little nuance. I can take it. I promise.”
She crossed her lean legs and bunched the sheet into her lap. His shirt was so big the neckline fell off one shoulder. And she looked at him with that deeply earnest attention only she could pull off.
What was he thinking? He should never have opened his mouth. There was still time to come up with an easy lie.
But in the quiet of night, her moonlit shadow cast across his crumpled sheets, her whole being wide open, waiting, trusting, he heard himself say, “Once upon a time I did have a tattoo.”
She blinked. Hard. He could see the questions piling up behind her eyes. Saw her fight to hold them back. To simply let him talk.
“My father made me get it on my eighth birthday.” Finn shifted a knee onto the bed, rolled up the cuff of his track pants, and showed April the scar hidden beneath the grown-in hair. “I had it removed. Laser. Years back.”
April edged closer; ran her fingers through the hair; gently, soothing. “What was it?”
“The family crest.” It had been a Joker holding a gun to his own head.
“Eight?” She gulped. “That can’t be legal.”
He shot her a look. Getting a mate to tattoo his eight-year-old was a regular Tuesday evening for dear old Dad. What he said was, “My father is a bad man.”
She breathed out hard through her nose, her eyes narrowing, as if she was measuring if she had what it took to take him the guy on. “How bad?”
Finn laughed. Then shook his head. He needed it to be clear. So that he could be clear.
“He’s currently serving twenty years for some of the bad things he did. Drugs. Aggravated assault, Armed robbery. And those are the ones for which he was caught.”
“What about the rest of your family?”
Her hand curled around his ankle. Such a little thing, she was, with the protective instincts of a lioness.
Already smarting at having picked at the edges of the bandage he’d worn for so long, he tore it off in one fell swoop. “My mother died when my little brother, Bradan, was born. Bradan died on the same job that put my father away.”
“Oh, God. Oh, Finn. I couldn’t possibly... I had no idea.” April shuffled closer still, till her knees pressed against his.
That was all he’d planned to say. Spilling those words was like slicing himself open and showing off the wound. But as she sat there, her big soulful eyes trying to draw away his pain, to help share the load no one had ever tried to carry for him before, the rest just tumbled out.
“It was summer. I’d hit the state library – partly for the air-conditioning, partly because I knew he’d never look for me there. Turned out he had eyes all around. He found me, pulled me into the stacks, and told me to be at a certain spot at a certain time; he needed me and my car for his getaway. Biggest job of his life. If he pulled this off, he’d never have to score again.”
Finn didn’t need to close his eyes to see it like it was happening right in front of him. To smell the stench of sweat on his father’s clothes. To feel the pummelling of his own heart.
“I told him I’d heard it all before. I told him where he could stick his job. I told him I was leaving. I had a scholarship to Melbourne Uni. I was going to be something. He’d never see me again. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t tell him I was taking Bradan with me. That I’d already enrolled him in a new school the next year.”
Finn swallowed, his throat parched.
“I should have known better. My father smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days. His pupils were like pinpricks. His grip wasn’t human. And he had a pistol poking out the back of his jeans. By then he was shouting. Who did I think I was? I was a Ward. Scamming was all I was built for. Only way I got into uni – feeding admissions a whole lotta horse shit. And he was right. My application was so full of lies and holes it was the greatest scam a Ward had ever pulled.”
Finn stretched out his fingers. He was clenching them so tight they had started to cramp.
“He tried to muscle me out of there. I managed to get a punch in. Right in the eye. Should have known he’d have a knife. He lodged it so hard in my shoulder the blade broke. Cue ambulance ride—some stranger at the library called it—public hospital, dodgy surgery.”
April sat silent, still in a way he’d never seen her. And she soaked in his sorry tale like a sponge. That was the last thing he wanted. But, now that he’d started, he had to get to the other end.
“Later on I found out Dad had walked into Bradan’s science class and dragged him out. Dad’s crew were high as kites when it all went down. Bradan had so much ice in his blood stream it was a miracle he’d been able to drive. The coroner said he was already on the ground, likely passed out, when he was caught in crossfire. He was fourteen-years-old.”
Finn ran a hand over his face. It felt tired. Like silly putty left out in the sun too long.
“I don’t have a family, April. At least I’ve lived that way for fifteen years. Until a few weeks ago, just on New Year, when I was contracted by my father’s lawyers. They want me to come in. Make a statement on his behalf to the parole board. They want me to help set him free.”
April’s voice was slick and sharp as steel. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask.” A beat, then, “What are you going to do?”
He wanted to say nothing.
He wanted to say run.
But looking at April – this resplendent siren propped up on his bed, all fierce and gorgeous and ready to take on the world – he knew it was no longer that simple.
She was a living, breathing example of how life wasn’t static. It didn’t warn. It didn’t wait.
His life was coming at him. Full bore. Unless he came at it first.
“What are you going to do?” she asked again, her voice soft, husky, as familiar to him now as his own.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“Finn?”
He shook
his head. He was done. He had nothing left.
April leaned forward and pressed her hands to his knees. The oversized shirt she wore tipped and he could see all the way to her belly button. She saw the direction of his gaze. Tipped a tad more. “Hey,” she chastised, though there was a husky not to her voice. “This is serious.”
“So’s that view.”
With a laugh she climbed into his lap. Then grabbed a hand and slid it up her top till it cradled a breast. “Better?”
“More than I can possibly say.”
More laughter. Raw and sensual and free. She knew exactly what she was doing. Distracting him. Giving him the chance to regroup... after hounding him into tearing himself apart.
He could hold that against her – the way she’d made him face things he’d had no intention of facing. Yet, in his hardest hours, she’d also given him laughter. She’d given him light. She’d given him sanctuary.
She placed her hand over his – the hand still over her breast. “I’m so sorry, Finn. Sorry for what you’ve been through. And sorry that you don’t know how you are supposed to feel about what happens next. But I’m not sorry it sent you to the bar that night. Thank you for telling me.”
She leaned in and kissed him. First on the tip of his nose. Then at the edge of his mouth. Then on the lips. A gentle touch. A sweet touch. A silent confession. A promise he’d never let her keep.
“Now you know why you need to go,” he said, sliding his thumb over the tip of her breast. “Leave. Don’t look back.”
She shuddered. Pure response. “Why’s that again?”
He swirled his thumb over the tightened peak until she gasped in a breath.
“I’m not a good man. I’ve done bad things in my life. I’ve hurt people who relied on me. And hard as it is to admit it, if it meant survival, I’d do it again.”
Her eyes flickered between his, slowly, drugged with desire. “Did it ever occur to you that I’m not as good as I seem?”
“A blue tattoo doesn’t cut it.”
She shifted on his lap, making contact where it counted. The breath shot from his lungs. Her smile was triumphant.
“I flashed a teacher to distract him from checking my friend’s homework when she forgot to do it.”
She rocked against him. His hands moved to cup her bare, naked backside.
“Um, I sold Mum’s favourite designer heels on eBay so I could buy a concert ticket.”
Her hands slid over his chest, curling against his skin, dragging at a hair or two until he winced. Then she lifted, shifted, rocked again. He swore beneath his breath as stars burst behind his closed lids.
“I wore leather boots to work once, and told everyone they were vinyl.”
Finding a sweet spot, she sank her knees into the bed, her backside splaying in his hands, her breasts pressing against his chest. Then she sank her teeth into that sweet spot between shoulder and neck till he cried out in the most perfect pain.
She licked the tender spot, then breathed her way up his neck.
With her lips touching the edge of his ear she whispered, “I know you like to think I’m all sugar and spice, that it appeals to you in some primal way. But this assertion that you’re not good enough for me?”
He groaned as her hand slid between them, down his chest, and into his pants.
Holding him hostage, she leant back and looked him in the eye. “You are not merely the result of your crappy childhood. You are the result of everything you have done to overcome it. That makes you one of the good ones.”
With that, she pressed him back on the bed, freed him from the limiting constraints of his track pants and sank down over him until he was buried inside of her. Bare to the hilt.
Hair tumbling over her shoulders, liquid smoky eyes caught on his, she rode him. Her face turning flushed, her eyes drunk with desire, biting her lip to stop from crying out. Every hitch of her breath sent shards of pleasure right through him until he lifted bodily off the bed, wrapped his arms around her and came inside her. The release plundered him, reaching deeper than anything he’d ever felt before tearing free like a cataclysm.
Then she gripped him, inside and out, her thighs clutching, her head rolling back as she fell apart, quaking and shuddering for an eternity. The entire planet seemed to hang on a breath. Her hair spread over his back. Her mouth dragged across his shoulder.
When her head lifted, her eyes catching on his, her wild beauty washed over him like a balm.
Through the haze came a singular thought. Trust. That had been the ultimate act of trust. And right in the moment where he felt like he could reach out and touch her soul...
She lifted herself away from him and crawled off the bed.
The loss of her touch felt akin to losing a limb. He could still feel her in his arms and the knowledge it was an illusion was the worst kind of psychic pain.
“Don’t,” he said, his protective instincts too strong to let him finish the thought. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Stay.
Such a small word; it still had a hell of a kick back, ricocheting through him like a stray bullet, punching holes in his defences along the way until he felt bruised, shaken, like his essence was bleeding out of him a gallon at a time.
She turned, pausing with the button on her fire-engine red jeans not yet snapped.
Her hair was wild, her eyes smoky. Emotion poured out of her as surely as if she was bleeding them too.
Then she shook her head. “I may act like it sometimes, but I’m not a total masochist. You were right in the first place, I should go. Your security guy let me park in your spare spot in the car park below so you stay here.”
“Of course he did. He’s smitten.”
Her smile was fast and bright. Unprepared, it hit him in the chest; straight through one of the bullet holes, a flaming arrow, dead centre.
She tucked it away, then looked around for her Wonder Woman shirt. No luck she rolled the corner of his t-shirt into a knot, and grab her shoes.
Then she leant a knee on the bed and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Her lips warm and light. And the flaming arrow burned brighter, raining hot sparks all over his body.
Then with a quick backward glance, and a sigh, she was gone.
He heard his front door click.
Then he lay back on the bed. Arms out. Sacrificed.
As the flaming arrow burned itself out, Finn was left feeling hollowed out. But not hollow. Like he’d gouged the story of that day from the deepest, darkest recesses of his being, and now he was empty. Now he was clean.
He’d only felt that way once in his life. The day his father had been found guilty and put away for more years than teenaged Finn had then been able to fathom.
He’d been nothing but shell that day. So light he felt he’d float right out of his body.
Instead he’d walked out of the courtroom with nothing but the rucksack he’d taken with him that day, paid cash for a bus ticket to Sydney, and started a new life. Free for the first time.
Finn closed his eyes and remembered; letting the soporific effect of the memory slide through him like barbiturate. Dulling everything in its path. Taking every other feeling – good and bad – right along with it until he was blissfully numb.
Numb but for the echoing truth that all it had taken to feel that good was simply walking away.
As April rode the lift from Finn’s high apartment to the ground floor, she fell against the corner; all her earlier chutzpah flying out of her in a rush as her knees completely gave way.
Had that all really just happened? Had she just broken through the impossible Finn wall and then pushed him to the bed and had her way with him and then left?
Yes. Yes she had.
Who was she?
Not the good girl she’d always tried to be, that was for damn sure. She’d ridden him bareback for heaven’s sake! What had she been thinking? Nothing. Not a damn thing. She’d been existing on pure instinct.
But then again, she didn’t feel bad either. Not a single bi
t.
Finn had told her his truth. Not his whole truth, of course; she was smart enough to know that people rarely revealed that even to themselves. But a hard truth.
And she’d done that. She’d brought him there. The spirit of Florence Nightingale flowed through her veins. And they’d ridden the high of the catharsis that came of his confession.
With a deep breath, she looked up, caught her wavering reflection in the brushed metal of the ceiling. Her hair was a mess. Her feet were naked. Her t-shirt was his.
And from nowhere felt like she might be about to cry.
For the life of her, she couldn’t get any kind of picture in her head as to what might happen now.
Finn’s life was more than complicated; it was spectacularly dangerous. And it was solitary. He’d had to be. To protect himself. To protect those around him. He’d not said anything to make her believe different.
For the first time she truly believed that if she refused to heed his warnings and clung to what they had, one day she would wake up and he would be gone. And she’d be devastated.
The lift binged and she flinched.
April walked out into the dark car park feeling edgy. Like her blood was rushing too close to the surface of her skin. Because she felt like she was in the most serious kind of trouble.
Problem was, it also felt like she was really living for the first time in her life.
Chapter Twelve
The roads were unusually clear the next morning, the bitumen sleek and wet after a summer shower as Finn drove the handful of blocks to work.
His mind, on the other hand, felt less than clear.
After April left, sleep had been elusive. The effects of the night had not dissipated with her absence. If anything the lack of her only grew.
So he’d moved to the lounge, setting up his laptop on the coffee table.
And once there discovered that having set the words free, he was finally able to look at his situation from another point of view. As if it was happening to a client of Frank’s, as it were.
Which was how he’d come to spend the next several hours researching the minutiae of his father’s incarceration.