Yeah, right.
Ignoring the dull, empty ache that had been in his stomach since he’d turned his back on Jenna in his kitchen, he cast his friend in a steady stare. “Whatever you think you know, Ryan,” he said, reaching for the beer the owner of the pub had put in front of him when he’d first sat down, “you’re wrong.”
Ryan snorted again. “Mate, this is what I know. You’ve got a beautiful, successful, intelligent woman who obviously thinks you’re the bee’s bloody knees wanting to have a relationship with you and you’re behaving like she’s some kind of superficial, shallow cow who’s going to run screaming for the hills the second you get your gear off. Ergo, you’re an idiot.”
Evan narrowed his eyes. “Considering we’ve only been talking about the fire since the convo started, I’d like to know where you’re getting your so-called knowledge.”
Ryan threw back his head and laughed, a good-natured, open chortle that made those around their table flick him curious grins.
“Ah, mate,” he said, smirking at Evan. “You really should pull your head out of your arse. Despite the fact you’ve been talking shop for the last hour, you’ve been checking the door every time it opens and shrinking into the seat as you do so.”
“I have not.”
“Bloody oath you have.” Ryan grinned. “About the only time I’ve seen any real emotion in your face since you walked in was when Harry told you that reporter from Chanel Eight News was really pretty and that she seemed to have a thing for you.” He made quotation marks with his fingers either side of his head, his grin stretching to a smirk. “And let’s be serious, the woman has done nothing but ask about you since she got here.”
Slouching low in his seat, Evan tugged his baseball cap’s peak farther down his face. A tight sensation coiled in his stomach. An image of Jenna filled his mind, the smile he so easily remembered from their past relationship taunting him. He used to live for her smile when she’d hung out with him and Tracey. Every time she’d smiled back then, his body would throb with an elemental happiness. He hadn’t seen her smile since she’d arrived in the Ridge. Hadn’t seen her lips curl and her eyes dance with mirth. What he had seen was her shocked, sympathetic, aroused…angry.
“She’s a reporter,” he grumbled, fidgeting with his peak some more. “Of course she’s going to be asking questions. And she’s not here now, so there goes your theory about her wanting a relationship with me.”
“Not these kinds of questions, Ev. She may as well have walked around the place with I like Evan Alexander tattooed on her forehead. No, change that, I love Evan Alexander. I think she spoke to everyone in town about you, not about the fire—the thing she was here to cover, might I point out—but you. Were you seeing anyone? Have you been in a relationship? Where do you live?”
It was Evan’s turn to snort. “Sounds like a stalker.”
“Fuck, you really are an idiot.”
Straightening in his seat, Evan leant across the table and turned his head so Ryan couldn’t help but see the left side of his face. “In case you haven’t noticed, mate, I’m not exactly easy to look at.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “And in case you haven’t noticed, no one who cares about you gives a flying fuck.”
Evan slumped back in his seat and stared at the sweating beer glass in front of him. “You won’t understand, Ryan. You don’t know what it’s like—”
“To be different?”
The calm sarcasm in Ryan’s voice lifted Evan’s gaze to his friend.
“To know every time you step out of the privacy of your home, people are going to be looking at you? Wondering about you? Maybe even cowering away from you—even if it’s only mentally—as you walk near them? To hear people sniggering behind your back? To have your peers constantly mock you?”
Evan’s throat grew thick.
“Do you know how many Brokeback Mountain references I’ve heard since I came out, Ev?” Ryan grinned. “Do you know how many mustering jobs I’ve lost because of my sexual preferences? Station owners who used to book me months and months in advance to herd their stock, who now don’t even take my calls? Or how many times I’ve watched blokes I’ve known forever—guys I used to go skinny dipping with when we were just kids—make sure they never have their back to me? Like I’m going to bend them over the nearest table and fuck them there and then, just ’cause they’ve got a set of balls?”
Evan bunched his fists. Hot anger for his friend rushed through him. “Jesus, Ryan. Who are they? I think a lesson in human decency is in order.”
Ryan laughed. “I’m not asking for a hero, not even one as glorious and sexy as you. I’m pointing out you’re not alone in your fear. The difference between you and me is I don’t really give a fuck about what anyone thinks, and you seem hung up on it. When really, the only opinion of you that should matter is your own. Once you get that sorted out, mate, you’ll see that the pretty reporter from the city is seeing you for what you really are—a decent man with more heart and strength than most of us will ever have in our entire lives.”
Gut clenching, Evan turned his stare back to his beer. He watched a glistening bead trickle down the side of the glass.
Christ, was Ryan right? Was he just wallowing in his own self-pity? Was he cutting off any chance of a future he’d believed beyond him because of something as superficial as his looks? “What happens if she wakes up one day and realizes she can’t stand looking at me?”
“What happens when you wake up one day and realize you never gave her that chance? And it’s too late to do so?”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Evan pictured Jenna in his kitchen. Saw her furious with him when he’d suggested she leave. Heard her accusation again. “Are you really this scared to let anyone in?” Saw the hurt rejection in her eyes when he refused to let her remove his jeans. When he refused to let her see him. All of him.
“And just to add fuel to the complicated fire you’re so stubbornly stoking over there. Yesterday arvo, while you were up in the air doing what you do so well, Jenna slapped the crap out of a reporter from a different news program to hers for suggesting you were too damn ugly to put on television. That’s some serious spirit right there. Her cameraman recorded the whole thing. As far as I know, it’s already got over a thousand hits on You—”
Evan jolted to his feet.
Ryan chuckled, the sound low and warm and slightly mischievous. “Going somewhere?”
Evan scanned the pub. Nothing. There wasn’t a sign of anyone from her network in the damn place.
“Reckon Charlie might be able to tell you where she is,” Ryan offered from his seat, playful laughter in his voice. “That bastard seems to know things not even a cop should—oh, better yet, look what I’ve got.”
Evan swung his stare back to Ryan.
The heli-musterer grinned up at him, a business card pinched loosely between his index and middle finger.
Mouth dry, Evan plucked the card from Ryan’s fingers.
Looked at it.
Read the words printed on its smooth white surface. Jenna McGrath, Reporter, Chanel Eight News.
Read the words handwritten in blue pen beneath them. Sunburnt Country Hotel. Room 4.
Without a word, he spun on his heel and headed for the pub’s main door.
“Oi!”
At Ryan’s laughing exclamation, Evan stumbled to a halt and cast his friend a harried frown over his shoulder. “What?”
Ryan fixed him with a level gaze, his smile still there but growing serious. “I’ve never met a person so into someone like Jenna is into you, Ev. But if you go to her, you can’t hold any of yourself back. Are you truly ready for what she wants from you?”
Another wave of heat prickled over Evan. His gut churned. He thought of the scars covering the left side of his body, his groin, his genitals…
Thought of the way he looked naked…
<
br /> Chest tight, throat the same, he crossed back to where Ryan sat.
“Are you?” Ryan asked again.
Holding Ryan’s gaze, Evan reached up and closed his fingers over the peak of his baseball cap—a cap he never left the confines of his home without wearing—and removed it from his head.
“I am,” he said, tossing the worn cap onto the table in front of his friend.
Ryan grinned. “Damn, Ev, why the hell couldn’t you be gay? I’m so turned on by you right now.”
Evan turned and headed for the pub’s exit again. “In your dreams, mate,” he threw over his shoulder with a smirk. “In your dreams.”
The scorching hot morning sun struck his face the second he stepped from the pub. He raised his arm, shading his eyes with his hand. When was the last time he’d been outside without his cap on?
Five years. The day you were discharged from the hospital. The cap went on that day. And then, when Tracey left, the collar of your jacket went up and you’ve lived that way ever since. Hiding. Cowering from life…
Drawing a deep breath, he lowered his arm and turned his face to the sun. Closed his eyes and just stood there.
The sun bathed his unprotected, scarred face in golden warmth.
Seeped into his body.
Letting out his held breath, he opened his eyes and shucked off his heavy leather bomber jacket. Held the beaten, comfortable item of clothing in his hand, weighing it with wordless contemplation before turning back to the closed Outback Skies’ door.
“I am,” he murmured as he hung his jacket on the old brass doorknob.
Ten minutes later, he knocked on the door of Room 4 of the Sunburnt Country Hotel.
The morning sun seeped into his exposed arms and the back of his neck. A hot breeze blew through his hair, tugging on the strands.
He shifted on his feet, the unfamiliar sensations turning the knot into his stomach. Fuck, he felt exposed.
Vulnerable.
Ha! Vulnerable? Don’t you mean petrified?
He shifted his feet, staring at the closed door.
Why hadn’t she answered yet? Had she peered through the peephole, seen who had knocked and decided not to acknowledge him?
Was it too late already?
Had he already missed the chance of them having a—
The door swung open.
Jenna stood on the other side wearing a loose Chanel Eight News T-shirt that skimmed the tops of her thighs. Her hair was a tangled mess, her face free of makeup, her eyes puffy. From sleep? Or crying?
She stared at him, an unreadable expression on face. “Where’s your cap?”
He drew a slow breath, a small smile curling the corners of his mouth. “Don’t think I need it anymore.”
She studied him. Didn’t move. Her expression didn’t change. Whatever she was thinking, he had no hope of seeing it on her face or in her body language.
“I wish I could believe that.”
The softly spoken statement cut through him. He closed his eyes, nodding at the implication behind her words. Whatever chance he’d had with her, he’d blown it. It was over. His stupid, paranoid, gutless fear had destroyed it.
“I’m sorry, Evan.” Torment filled her husky whisper. “I can’t—”
Opening his eyes, he crossed the threshold, threaded his fingers into her hair and kissed her.
She moaned, a soft sound of haunted supplication and frustration, and parted her lips, accepting his tongue as she slid her palms up his chest.
He could tell she was kissing him goodbye. He could feel her grief, sense it in the way she stoked his tongue with hers. In the way she held back the passion he knew simmered within her. In the way she rested her hands on his chest, keeping their bodies apart.
She was kissing him goodbye, ending them before they’d had a chance to truly begin.
Fuck that.
He raking his hands down her back, he grabbed her arse cheeks and hauled her to his body. Pressed their hips, their bellies together. Held her to him and gave himself to her.
He swept his tongue over hers, pouring every hope and fear into the kiss. Kissed her with unrestrained need and passion and desire.
Kissed her until he felt her body tremble and her bury her hands into his hair. Until a raw whimper sounded in her throat.
Heart wild, he tore his lips from hers and gazed down into her eyes. “Jenna…”
She didn’t say a word. Instead, she slowly slipped her fingers from his hair and trailed them over the uneven surface of his scarred jaw, watching him.
He stiffened.
A ragged sigh fell from her and she closed her eyes. “You need to go,” she said without looking at him. She hugged herself, turning her head to the side. “It’s not going to…you need to go.”
Show her. Show her it’s not just your cap you no longer need. Show her.
Blood roaring in his ears, a crushing vice wrapping his chest, Evan reached for the door behind him and closed it.
“When the chopper crashed…” He stopped. Licked at his dry lips.
The nightmare of the crash lashed at him for a surreal moment. The smell of boiling petrol, burning trees, burning skin singed his sinuses. The screams of his partner drilled into his ears.
“When the helicopter crashed,” he continued, his throat scratchy, like it was lined with sandpaper, “Franco was pinned beneath the crumpled dash while I was trapped in my seat by my seatbelt. Petrol was leaking from the engine into the cabin, spilling over both of us. I’d done my best to bring the chopper down as far from the main fire as I could, but the wind had blown us about and we hit the ground in the middle of it. The chopper was surrounded in flames before we stopped moving. I managed to get out of my seat, breaking my shoulder to do so, but by the time I did, the fire had begun to consume the chopper. I tried to get to Franco, tried to get him out from under the dash. Half of me was on fire by then, but I had to get to him.
“I don’t know how long it took for the second-unit chopper to arrive at the scene. The head of the National Firefighting Centre told me it was only eight minutes. It felt like forever. By that time, Franco was entirely engulfed in flames. The second-unit guys had to drag me away. The chopper ignited just as they were running back to try and save him. I can still hear him screaming. I can still see him reaching for me as they pulled me away. Every fucking night, I relive that crash.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Evan’s chest tightened at the compassion, the sympathy in Jenna’s eyes as she looked up at his face.
“I read the report last night,” she went on, her voice husky.
“How?”
Her answering smile was apologetic and wry. “Being in the media allows me quick access to official government reports that are available to the public.”
His gut churned. “Great. So you already knew everything I just told you?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know how horrific it was. The report didn’t relay that. Nor how you blame yourself. But I do know you were cleared of reckless endangerment, Evan. I read that. In fact, your actions that day, flying into that gulf despite the dangerous conditions, saved an entire ground crew. If you hadn’t done that, those ten men would have also died. You are a hero. I so wish you could see that. I so wish you could see yourself through my eyes. Through the eyes of all those you’ve saved. Instead, you reject yourself. Instead, you hate yourself. It just…it just makes me want to shake you and tell you to stop it.”
A sob cracked her voice. She scrunched up her face and sucked in a slow breath.
“I can’t bear to see you put yourself through this,” she whispered. “I can’t…”
“I’m done with rejecting myself, Jenna,” he murmured, hooking his fingers under the hem of his shirt. “And I’m done with hating myself as well.”
Opening her eye
s, Jenna looked at him. Just as he tugged his shirt free of his body.
He dropped it at his feet, watching her eyes as she lowered her gaze to his torso.
She didn’t say a word.
Nor did he. Instead, heart wild, he moved his hands to his belt. Undid it.
He saw her chest swell, her sharp intake of air the only sound in the hotel room. Saw her lips part slightly.
Swallowing at the lump in his throat, Evan toed off his boots.
Jenna lifted her stare to his face.
A question burned in her eyes, one he desperately hoped he was strong enough to answer.
Jesus, was he?
Without breaking eye contact, he lowered the zipper of his fly, smoothed his fingers beneath the loose waistband of his jeans and then pushed them down over his hips.
The worn denim fell to a crumpled pile at his ankles and he stood before her in nothing but a pair of white cotton boxers.
Almost every inch of scarred flesh on display.
Almost.
There was still more.
For a second, just a second, terror seized his muscles. His brain screamed at him to stop. What was he thinking? The last person to see him naked had called him grotesque, had declared that the sight of him sickened her and that she could no longer be married to him. That he was too broken, too wounded to love.
No one had seen him naked since Tracey had left. No one.
Jenna isn’t Tracey, Evan. You know that. You knew that all those years ago when you first met her, when you spent all those nights thinking of her. When just the sight of her smile could make you smile…
“I suffered third-degree burns to over forty percent of my body,” he said, his mouth drier than the desert beyond the hotel walls. He stared at Jenna’s eyes, his gut churning as he watched her take in what he’d revealed to her. “Most of that, as you can probably tell, is on my lower body. The doctors thought they might have to remove my left leg.”
He stopped. Sucked a ragged breath into lungs that felt like they were being crushed.
“And my scrotum.”
Burn for You: Outback Skies, Book 2 Page 7