by Ally Blake
‘Only what I expect of myself.’
‘I was including you too.’
He shifted on his seat. ‘You think loyalty and good faith are too much to expect, even after how your father treated you and your mother?’
A muscle in her cheek twitched but her steady gaze didn’t falter. ‘For some people they are too much.’
He shook his head hard. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t accept that.’
‘Then that’s a real shame.’
Cameron shot to his feet and ran a hard hand across the back of his neck. This wasn’t how this had been meant to go. He’d hoped that by being forthright and upfront with her he’d feel justified in slowing things down, like he’d done right by her. Instead she was somehow making him feel like he hadn’t done right by himself.
She tugged her poncho over her head, flicking her hair out at the end and running fingers through it until it fell in messy waves over her shoulders.
His response was chemical. His insides tightened and burned with a need to have her lose layers, not put them back on.
The doorbell rang; her taxi. She slipped her feet back into her shoes then looked back at him.
Her eyes said, ask me to stay.
But her tilted chin and tense neck said, let me go.
He went back to her eyes. Those beautiful, sad, grey eyes, so wide open he felt himself falling in, wanting more than he knew he could give. He pulled himself back from the brink just in time to say, ‘I’ll call you.’
She nodded, gave a short smile that held none of the mischief and humour he was so used to seeing therein, and jogged up the stairs without looking back.
CHAPTER TEN
ROSIE was exhausted. Which was naturally manifesting itself in a complete inability to sleep.
The minute the clock beside her bed clicked over to a quarter to three, she dragged herself out of bed.
She wouldn’t be able to see Venus until about an hour before sunrise, but it had to be better outside than staring at the low ceiling of her caravan, wondering how on earth she’d let herself get to the point where she’d decided she might be able to allow Cameron deeper into her life at the precise moment when he had decided he wasn’t sure that he wanted her in his.
She ran her hands over her face, then through her hair, tugging at knots in the messy waves, then trudged into the bathroom to splash water on her face. As she wiped it dry, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Eyes dark. Mouth down turned.
She blinked and for a moment saw herself at fifteen, locked in the bathroom of the tiny flat she’d shared with her mum, and this feeling, the same familiar, cutting pain, crawling beneath the surface of her skin. It wasn’t the pain of a girl pining for a man in her life. It was the pain of a girl who’d never been bright enough, good enough, devoted enough to fill the subsequent hole in her mother’s heart.
How could an invisible girl like that ever hope to be enough to fill anyone else’s heart?
Rosie licked her dry lips, then wiped fingers beneath her moist eyes. Time to go. Focussing on the colossal mystery of the universe would render her woes less important. It had to.
Too cold and too miserable to get completely naked, she pulled her clothes on over the top of her flannelette pyjamas—a fluffy wool knee-length cardigan she’d picked up in a thrift shop years before, a thick grey scarf, a lumpy red beanie with two fat, wobbly pom-poms on top, and the jeans she’d worn the day before. She didn’t bother with her contacts, leaving her glasses on instead.
The hike to the plateau with her massive backpack was not in the last bit invigorating. It was cold, uncomfortable, and when she hit the spot the night sky was covered in patchy cloud.
She popped up the one-man dome tent which was just tall enough for her to stand up in, threw in all her stuff to keep the dew away and laid a canvas-backed picnic blanket upon the already moist grass. She set up her telescope. And turned on the battery-operated light attached to her notebook.
She sat on the ground cross-legged, waiting for the cloud cover to open up, revealing a sprinkle of stars.
Time marched on and the sky gave her nothing.
No mystery, no majesty, nothing to take her mind off the world at her feet and all the heartache that came with it. She slumped back onto the rug and closed her eyes.
She and Adele had both been wrong. Cameron wasn’t really any different from any of the others. They all left her eventually; location had no effect on the matter.
She heard a twig snap, and her eyes flew open.
It could have been a possum. Or there had long since been rumours of a big cat loose in the area. And crazy axe-murderers were a genuine fear for some people for a good reason.
Rosie was on her feet, spare tripod gripped in her hands, eyes narrowed, searching the shadows, when Cameron appeared through the brush, tall, imposing, stunning. It was as though a girl could simply imagine a man like him into existence through sheer wishful thinking.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Rosalind cried, waggling a big black metallic object Cameron’s way.
He snuck both hands out of the warm pockets of his jacket and held them in front of him in surrender. ‘I tried calling your mobile several times but you didn’t answer. So I called Adele.’
‘Adele?’
‘She gave me her home number when I first rang you at the planetarium. I assumed in case of emergencies.’
Rosalind glowered, but at least she was lowering her weapon at the same time. ‘Sounds like her. Though you’ve got her motives dead wrong.’
‘Either way, she told me how to find you in the dead of the night in this crazy middle-of-nowhere place, where anything could happen to you and nobody would ever know.’
He stepped forward, shoes slipping in the soft, muddy earth. By the look in her eyes—behind glasses that made her look smart enough to be an astrophysicist, yet somehow still her usual effortlessly sexy self—she was far from happy to see him.
He didn’t blame her. He’d acted just the way Dylan had when they’d been boys, wiping the chess board clean at the first sign the game wasn’t going the exact way he’d intended it go.
After she’d gone, he’d lasted about three hours before his furniture had begun mocking him. The stool she’d sat upon when he’d kissed her stuck out from under the bench stubbornly. The beige rug on which her pink shoes had been haphazardly dumped, and the cream couch where her bright poncho had been suggestively draped, had seemed drab and bare. Even the fire had hissed at him, and, whereas for her it had been roaring, for him alone it had crumbled into a sorry pile of ash.
He’d told himself he felt like there were ants crawling under his skin because she was out there feeling upset and it had been his fault. But the truth was his home had felt empty because she wasn’t in it. Because he’d expected more of their night together. Before he’d acted like such a lummox, he’d planned on having more time to familiarise himself with her soft skin, to let her sexy hair slide through his fingers. To know those lips as intimately as he could. And the rest.
He needed boundaries, but they also had unfinished business he hoped to take care of—if he could convince her.
‘Can you put down the truncheon?’ he asked. ‘It’s making me nervous.’
Rosalind bent at the knees, set the metal object onto a backpack and stood up, her dark-grey eyes on him the whole time. ‘You’ve told me how you got here, not why. And hurry up. I have to get back to work.’
He picked a reason that she couldn’t say no to. ‘I was watching the sky through my bedroom window when I remembered you telling me that I hadn’t seen stars until I saw them from this spot. I thought, what the hell? I’m awake anyway, let’s see what the fuss is all about.’
She glared up at him over the top of her glasses. ‘So what do you want to see?’
He was looking at it. But he said, ‘Show me something spectacular.’
‘You’ve picked a rubbish night.’ She dragged her eyes away and looked up into the clear heavens. ‘Huh, well,
what do you know? Five minutes ago you were all hiding. But in he waltzes and there you all are, all bright and shining and cheerful. Capricious brutes, the lot of you!’
She glowered back down at him. ‘Well, go on, then. There it all is for your viewing pleasure.’
Cameron looked up into the clear sky, and there it all was, the Milky Way, spread across the sky like someone had scattered a bag of jewels on a swathe of black velvet.
He looked down at her; her nose was tilted skywards, her chin determined, her long, pale neck and wavy hair glowing in the moonlight. He breathed out through his nose. Spectacular.
As though she sensed him watching her, she turned her head just enough to make eye contact. She blinked at him, then leaned down towards the eyepiece and found a bearing using the naked eye. She twirled knobs, gently shifted the lever, changed filters, then with both eyes open pressed one eye to the eyepiece and carefully adjusted the focus.
A minute later she stood back and made an excessive amount of room for him to have a look. He took her place, looked through the lens, and the view therein took his breath away.
She’d given him the bright side of the moon. Craters and plateaus in stark white-and-grey relief faded into the creeping shadow of the dark side. So far away, yet it felt so close.
He pulled away, blinked up at the white crescent high in the sky and said, ‘I also came here because I don’t like leaving a conversation unfinished.’
He felt Rosalind cross her arms beside him. ‘Oh, I think we both had ample opportunity to say what we wanted to say.’
‘Can I ask…if I hadn’t kissed you…?’
She shivered, and this time he knew it wasn’t the cold. He wanted to wrap her up in his jacket, but he knew she wasn’t near ready for that. Not yet.
‘What do you want from me, Cameron?’
‘Truth?’
‘Always.’
‘I didn’t like watching you walk away tonight.’
She said nothing. The conversation it seemed would be all up to him.
‘I’ve been having a great time being with you. I get a kick out of your frankness. You must have noticed that I have huge trouble keeping my hands off you. And none of that has changed. All I’ve ever hoped is that we might continue to enjoy one another’s company for as long as it’s enjoyable. And not a minute longer.’
He felt her breathe in. Breathe out. ‘And who gets to decide when that minute’s up?’
‘You can, if it needs to be that way.’
‘And if I think that minute has already passed?’
‘Do you?’
He looked down to find she was no longer staring at the moon; she was watching him, her eyes wary, calculating, her mind changing back and forth with every passing second.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said.
Her chin lifted. ‘I don’t plan on getting hurt.’
She was talking in the present tense. And, though she wasn’t smiling at him, neither was she scowling. He’d done enough. Relief poured through him, its intensity rather more than he would have expected.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ she asked.
And he realised he was shivering. She might have been rugged up like she was about to spend a week on Everest but he was still in his jeans, T-shirt and track top.
‘I’m absolutely freezing,’ he said. Now he’d noticed it, he really noticed it. He rubbed his hands down his arms and stamped his sneaker-clad feet before they turned to ice.
‘You have to make the most of your body heat.’
He stopped jumping about like a frog and asked, ‘My body heat?’
‘One’s body heat,’ she reworded.
‘I was going to say, that was a line I hadn’t heard before.’
‘Hey, buddy, I have no agenda here. I was out here minding my own business. You came looking for me.’
Still no smile, but the bite was back. Attraction poured through him like it had been simply waiting to split the dam behind which he’d held it in check.
‘I did, didn’t I?’
She stared at him, the wheels behind her eyes whirring madly. Finally she demanded, ‘Get inside the tent, unzip the sleeping bag, and wrap it around you. It’s thermal. You’ll be toasty in a matter of minutes.’
‘Who knew you had such a Florence Nightingale side to you?’
‘You’re too heavy for me to carry you back to your car if you freeze to death,’ she muttered, then gave him a little shove.
From outside the tent Rosie watched as Cameron’s head hit the roof as he snuck inside.
He’d come looking for her. In the middle of the night, along unmarked roads and through wet, thorny bushland, he’d come. That was an entirely new experience. Men had left before but none had ever come back. Not one.
She hadn’t had any past experiences from which to extrapolate the right course to take. All she’d been able to do was follow her instincts. They’d gently urged her to let him back in. To understand that his dad’s betrayal ran deep and that had caused his panic. And that, now that the boat had righted itself, things would be as they were.
She didn’t have time to decide if she’d been cool and sophisticated or simply stupid, as right then his elbow slid along the right wall of the tent, making an unhappy squeaking sound against the synthetic fabric. The next loud ‘Oomph,’ meant she had to go in after him in case he managed to break any equipment worth as much as her caravan.
He turned and saw her there.
Moonlight glowed through the tight mesh, creating glints in his eyes. Though she soon realised the glints would have been there even if they’d been in pitch blackness.
The pom-poms on top of her beanie brushed the ceiling, while he had to bend so as not to stick his head through the top. She glanced up, saw his hair catching and creating static, went to tell him so, but he reached out to her, grabbed a hunk of her cardigan and pulled her to him. Her breath shot from her lungs in a sharp whoosh as her chest thumped against his.
She desperately clambered for her instincts, hoping they might come to her rescue again, but they were as immobilised as she was.
He dropped to his knees and she came with him. They were nose to nose, the intermingling of warm breath making her cheeks hot. Her heart thundered in her ears. She felt lightheaded. Little tornados curled about her insides.
And she knew, as well as she knew her own name, that she’d done the right thing. Their minute wasn’t up.
He snuck a hand along her neck, his thumb stroking the soft spot just behind her ear. Her whole body responded, opening to him like a flower to the sun. She immediately contracted in fear at exposure of how much she wanted this. Wanted him. Was willing to tell herself whatever she needed to hear to have him.
But then he leaned in and kissed her. Gently. Slowly. And all the last bits of her that hadn’t melted finally did so. She sank into him and kissed him back.
Sensation so astronomical overwhelmed her until she could only pick out pieces to focus upon lest she drown in the delectable whole.
The subtle strength of his hand cupped the back of her head. His breath tickled the column of her neck before he rained kisses over every inch of her throat. Her cardigan tie slithered across her back as he undid it.
She came to from far, far away when suddenly it all came to a cruel halt.
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her chest. Her chest wasn’t all that impressive without a lot of help.
‘What on earth are you wearing?’ he asked.
She looked down to find his fingers enclosed over a fat, furry, pig-shaped button on her pink flannelette pyjama-top.
She slapped a hand across her eyes. ‘My pyjamas. Oh God, I was cold, I was lazy. I was feeling sorry for myself.’
‘Rosalind.’ The way he said her name…
She let her hand slip away and looked up into his eyes. His deep, dark, bottomless, persuasive blue eyes.
He slipped the first button from its hole, and her breath caught.
And whe
n he kissed her again she felt so frail she believed she might just shatter into a thousand pieces before the night was through.
Hours later, Rosie stroked slow fingers over Cameron’s naked chest while his fingers played gently with her hair.
The rising sun washed beams of gold through the opening of the tent, leaving his beautiful profile in sharp relief, while she was shielded from the beams’ touch by his large form.
So it had to be. No matter how much they each struggled against their true natures, he would always be a child of the light, she of the dark.
Perhaps the only moments they could simply still be together were the in-between moments, right at dawn or dusk, when everything seemed softer, gentler, quieter. When nothing, past or future, mattered more than the moment itself.
A great sadness overwhelmed her. Why, she didn’t know. After the night she’d had, she should be feeling anything but sad.
She rested her chin on the back of her hands and in the rosy half-light her thoughts spilled unchecked from her lips. ‘I’ve come to the brilliant conclusion that you’re the human equivalent of Alpha Centauri.’
He opened his eyes and her sadness slipped away. He turned his head to watch her, a quizzical smile only adding more character to his beautiful face. ‘Would it be in my best interests to ask why?’
She grinned from the top of her mussed hair to the tips of her bare toes. ‘I’m gonna tell you anyway. Alpha Centauri appears as a single point of light to the naked eye, but is actually a system of three stars.’
‘You think I have a split personality?’
She held up a stilling finger. ‘I think there’s more to you than the face you show the world. You’re also bright, eye-catching and seem much closer than you really are.’
‘Eye-catching, eh?’ He closed one eye. ‘And how long were you lying there coming up with all that?’
She shrugged, her upper body sliding deliciously against his. ‘Not long.’
‘Mmm.’ He lifted a heavy hand and trailed it down her naked back, sending goose bumps popping up all over her skin. ‘So how far away is my heavenly twin right now?’