He didn’t want to scan the hills because he knew he’d be trying to spot the gully they’d camped out in that night. When Becca had danced around the flames of that bonfire, yearning for the kind of adventures she’d thought only boys were entitled to.
Yes. She would understand him all right.
The memories would be waiting for him even if the property was no longer owned by the Harding family. Or was it? Jet knew that Becca’s parents had died a few years ago. It had hit the news when they’d been amongst the unfortunate tourists that had been killed by that tsunami in Thailand.
Had Becca kept her inheritance? Funny that he’d never thought to ask, or even offer sympathy for the loss of her remaining family. The loss they’d really needed to talk about had taken precedence and even that had been engulfed by the tension of their situation and the form of release they’d indulged in.
He had to stop. He needed a break or he’d be putting himself, and possibly others on the road, in danger. Not just from his physical weariness but from the sabotage of thinking processes that any thoughts of Becca were capable of. Especially any that involved what had happened between them physically.
The old stone church up ahead on this road was an entirely logical place to pull over. Totally deserted on a weekday and heavily somnolent on a late, sunny afternoon. Ancient trees offered enticing shade and the scent of old roses hung heavy on the air. When Jet parked his bike round the back of the church and pulled off his helmet, the only sounds were the buzzing of bees and the clear notes of native bellbirds.
His whole body felt stiff after so many hours hunched over his bike. Hanging his helmet over the handlebars, he set off to walk a little and stretch. It was only when he turned the corner and saw the heavy wooden door set into the stone arch beneath the steeple that he realised exactly where it was he’d chosen to stop.
Custard was far too soft a word for what had happened to his plans. This was more like some kind of implosion. How could he not have recognised this place? OK, it had been ten years since he’d been here and the visit had been brief and awful, but this had to be the only church within a huge radius of the Harding property.
At some level, he’d known, of course. He’d simply ignored it and allowed himself to be drawn in. He must have wanted this.
Why?
A form of protest, maybe? Claiming the right he’d been denied all those years ago?
None of them had been welcome at the funeral as far as Matt’s immediate family was concerned and everybody else there had been embarrassed by their exclusion. They all knew that these three young doctors should have been amongst the pallbearers. To be allowed to be with one of their own at the very end. To honour and respect a friend who was as close as any brother could have been.
Neither had they been allowed to be with him when they’d turned off the life support and let Matt die. They’d been out on the road together. Three ‘bad boys’ exceeding a speed limit on a back road not a million miles from here. They reckoned Matt had been riding pillion with them that day—the exit his spirit would have wanted.
But the funeral? They’d come late and stood in a silent row beside the door, holding their helmets. Jet had been holding two. His own, and Matt’s. They’d left before the graveside ceremony. Before Becca could publicly shame them for not having done what they should have done, and saved her brother.
He’d never come back.
There would be a memorial to Matt somewhere in this churchyard and he’d never even seen it.
That was why he was here.
Maybe he’d known all along when he’d taken off on this lonely journey that this was where he’d end up. His life was in chaos. He would pick up the pieces and move on but a whole chapter of it was closing and he had to accept that first. Total closure couldn’t happen until he completed what he should have done a long, long time ago.
It wasn’t hard to find the headstone in the small country graveyard. A simple memorial that had only the name Matthew Samuel Harding and two dates, the year of his birth and that of his death. Jet didn’t have to do any kind of calculation to know the difference was only twenty six.
The last of the day’s sun pressed down on him as he stood, staring down at the headstone. It made him far too hot in his leathers but he didn’t want to leave just yet.
‘I’m here, mate,’ he muttered aloud, ‘but it’s flippin’ hot, isn’t it? I’m going to go and sit under that tree for a bit.’
The oak tree was well over a hundred years old and the branches so heavy with acorns they drooped almost to ground level. Jet sat down, propping his back against the gnarled trunk. He was here, and it felt right. He would stay and soak in the peace and somehow something would fall into place and he’d be able to move on.
A tension he hadn’t realised had been such a huge knot inside him began to ease.
Jet closed his eyes and simply let it happen.
Going home wasn’t an option.
No way could Becca be in her apartment by herself the way she was feeling by the end of her shift. The tragedy of the young doctor’s wife had been the only topic of conversation as she’d flown her crew back to base.
‘Poor guy,’ Tom had said, not for the first time. ‘He’s going to blame himself for the rest of his life.’
‘As if there was anything he could have done, anyway. Man, they’re scary things, aneurysms. Who’s to know we don’t have a time bomb like that ticking away in our own heads?’
‘Some people survive, don’t they?’ What was she trying to do? Becca asked herself. Find some kind of exoneration for blaming Jet? A plausible reason to have never totally forgiven him?
‘Depends on the size of the bleed,’ Tom told her. ‘If it’s small enough and you’re close enough to a first-class neurosurgical unit, you’ve got a reasonable chance. A big bleed, especially if the brain stem’s affected, the best you could hope for is to get someone on life support for long enough to make organs available for donation.’
‘She would have had to have been in hospital already for that,’ Ben observed. ‘Respiratory and cardiac function got knocked out almost immediately, by the sound of it.’
‘Poor guy.’ It was Becca saying it now. ‘I hope he’ll be OK.’
She’d told him it wasn’t his fault and she’d been a hundred per cent sincere.
She could have been saying it to Jet with just as much sincerity and maybe, in her heart, that was exactly what she was doing.
Would she ever be able to tell him that face to face? It wasn’t a question of forgiving him at all because there was nothing to forgive.
No. That wasn’t true.
There was plenty that needed forgiveness but not from her. She was the one who needed to be forgiven.
The misery that had been circling for days was drawing closer and threatening to pull her under but Becca knew just how to deal with that. As soon as she got home, she stripped off her red flight suit and donned a very different set of clothes. An old, soft T-shirt. Tight black leather pants. Heavy boots that were very like her workboots apart from the silver studs that decorated them. A leather jacket with well-padded elbows went on last and she zipped it up and then fastened the studs on the flap that covered the zipper.
She collected her helmet from the table near the door and went out to her garage.
Her latest motorbike was only a couple of months old. She’d waited for its delivery with bated breath since she’d seen the advertisement and knew she had to upgrade.
‘Light enough for a woman,’ it had read, ‘with power made for a man.’
She’d been riding bikes for years but this was, indeed, something special. The speed and adrenaline rush of a good blast would be even better than the turbulence she’d unsuccessfully wished for on the way back from the Coromandel peninsula that afternoon.
Becca didn’t give any particular destination any head room. She simply got out of the city and went for it. Only logical, really, that she found she’d taken a route so embedded
in her memory it was automatic. Not that there was any point going near her property. She’d had it land banked and leased out ever since inheriting the acreage. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to set foot on it again.
There was somewhere else out here she hadn’t been in a while, though.
The only place she could still feel close to her brother and talk to him without feeling like a complete head case. She sure needed someone to talk to today and Matt would have understood. Sorting her thoughts into words and just imagining what he might have said would help.
It had helped on more than one occasion in the past.
It was the throaty roar of a Ducati engine that woke Jet from a deep slumber in the long grass under the oak tree.
Someone was stealing his bike, dammit!
Leaping to his feet, he raced past the gravestones and around the back of the church. He could just see the sleek lines of his beloved black bike heading out of the churchyard. It took off with a burst of speed that sprayed gravel and raised a cloud of dust.
He skidded to a halt then, utterly confused.
His bike was exactly where he’d left it.
But it had definitely been a similar engine he’d heard and the bike had been black.
Who else would be riding a classy sports bike like that out here? Who would have wanted to come into an isolated place like this on a sleepy afternoon?
The answer came as he recaptured the image of the departing bike. He could only just hear it way up the road now but even from this distance he could detect something about the sound that wasn’t quite what he would have expected. Less.grunty. He’d thought it was his bike, but what if it just looked that big because the figure on it was small?
Who else would come here?
He didn’t need three guesses. How many women were gutsy enough to be riding a superbike, come to that?
But where the hell was she going now? She’d taken off in the opposite direction from getting back to town.
Kicking his bike into life, Jet took off.
He had no idea where this gravel road was heading. Fortunately it had straight stretches so he could catch frequent glimpses of the dust cloud ahead but it was proving hard to catch up.
Riding this fast on an unsealed road was crazy. Jet could feel his face settle into lines that got progressively grimmer as each minute passed. Not only was the surface of this road unstable, they were getting into hilly country and there were tight bends. He felt his own back wheel slip and he started muttering oaths that matched his expression.
This kind of behaviour was so reckless it was downright stupid. He could use his bike like it was an extension of his own body but he was struggling to stay in control here. He would have slowed down. Turned around and gone home, in fact, if it had been anybody else in the world ahead of him. Instead, his fury mounted and his speed increased.
Until he was right behind her. And still she didn’t see him, so intent was she on pushing herself and her bike to the absolute limit. A dramatic spurt of speed on a straight stretch that actually lifted the front wheel of her bike into the air like some trick rider at a bike show. A sideways skid that had him catching his breath in horror but somehow she threw her weight and righted the bike from its dangerous slant. A bend that was so tight he could see her boot making a furrow in the chips of stone. A bend that went on and on.
And right at the end of that bend she lost it. The bike tipped just that fraction farther and then shot sideways with sparks coming from its metal. It seemed to increase speed as it hit the side of the road and became airborne. The rider came off at that point and, as Jet came to a slewing halt on the road, he could see the small, leather-clad body curl itself into a ball as it hit the ground and roll away downhill until it got caught in clumps of dense tussock.
The bike hit an outcrop of rocks much farther downhill. The petrol tank must have been punctured because there was a flash of flames, an explosion and then a thick cloud of black smoke spiralling into the sky.
The body of the rider was absolutely still.
Jet reached it in about three strides and didn’t even feel his boots hitting the ground. He wasn’t breathing as he dropped to his knees and rolled the body gently towards him. He had never been this afraid.
Ever.
Becca’s eyes were open. Staring at him with disbelief.
‘Am I dead?’
‘Not for lack of trying.’ Jet made no effort to hide his fury. ‘You idiot. What the hell did you think you were doing?’
Where had he come from?
And why was he so angry?
Had she bumped her head with that spill? Nothing hurt. So she’d been going a bit fast, so what? Winning the battle of control over an adversary like an unsealed road was the kind of rush that made life worth living. As if Jet didn’t know that as well as she did.
Carefully, Becca sat up. She eased her helmet off and tilted her neck to one side and then the other. Nothing hurt so that was good. She took a deep breath. Her ribs felt OK, too.
Jet was still crouched right beside her. Waiting for an answer.
Glaring at her.
‘You know perfectly well what I was doing. You’ve done it often enough yourself.’
‘I do not.’
‘How fast were you going on your bike, Jet? To catch up with me? I know this road—the camber of every twist. I’ve done it a hundred times.’
‘Hey … I wasn’t doing it for fun.’
‘Neither was I, dammit.’ Becca glared back at him.
The frown lines on Jet’s forehead seemed to move. To become puzzled instead of angry. Some of the tension left his body and he sank lower until he was sitting beside her with the tussock making a surprisingly comfortable cushion. He fiddled with the catch on his helmet to take it off. It was still hot, even though the sun was well into its descent now. They had an hour or two of dusk and then it would start getting dark. It was very, very quiet. Apart from the occasional bird call, there was obviously no one else for miles around.
It was Jet who broke the silence.
‘Then … why, Becca?’
She couldn’t look directly at him. She needed to try and find the words. She also needed to find the courage to utter them.
‘You know,’ she said finally. ‘When you cheat death and you’re safe again, you can feel alive. Really alive. Like you’re making the most of every second and … and you have to do that because.’
‘Because you don’t know how many seconds you might have,’ Jet finished for her.
Becca nodded. Whatever rush her ride had given her was wearing off. Things did hurt. Her shoulder was aching and there was an odd pain in her chest that made it hard to take a deep breath.
‘And it’s the same when you challenge yourself at work,’ Jet continued. ‘The bigger and scarier the challenge the better, because you feel safe when it’s over and you feel like you’ve done something worthwhile.’ His voice was so soft it was virtually a whisper. ‘Like you are worthwhile.’
Becca rolled her shoulder with caution. It still worked. ‘Doesn’t last, though, does it?’ she asked sadly. ‘The thrill. That safe feeling.’
‘No.’ Jet’s breath escaped in a weary sigh. ‘I guess that’s why people like us go hunting for it all over again. Why we keep doing dangerous, stupid things.’
‘Like crashing helicopters.’
‘And bikes.’
They both looked farther downhill at the smouldering remains of her motorbike. Becca shivered.
‘I could have killed myself,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re right. I am an idiot.’
Jet put his arm around her. ‘Yeah … don’t do it again, OK?’
Becca said nothing. She snuggled closer to the warmth of Jet’s body, loving the feeling of his arm holding her so securely.
It took her back to those precious minutes of lying in his arms, in his bed, on the ship. Feeling like there was nowhere else in the world she ever wanted to be. Nowhere that could feel that safe.
And, suddenly, she could see the truth and it was so simple.
The rush you got by putting your body in danger and surviving was purely a physical thing. If you were brave enough to put your heart and soul into danger, the rush of surviving would be a safety that would never have to fade. You’d never have to keep hunting because if you found it and looked after it, it would just get stronger and stronger.
But you couldn’t do it on your own. For the first time in her adult life Becca had to admit she couldn’t rely only on herself. She needed someone else. Jet.
‘You know why we keep doing it?’ she ventured. ‘And why that thrill gets harder to find so you have to keep doing bigger and more dangerous stuff?’
‘Because we get good at it.’
‘No. It’s because we know what we’re really scared of. We’re happy to risk our bodies but we’re too afraid to risk our hearts.’
The deep rumble of his voice could be felt as easily as heard. ‘I’m not afraid.’
The way his arm tightened around her gave Becca a rather different answer, however. One that gave her the courage she really needed.
‘I love you, Jet,’ she said.
He made another rumbling sound. A kind of growl that was totally incomprehensible but it made Becca’s heart skip and then soar as it chased away the last of that fear.
‘You love me,’ she said softly. ‘That’s why you came after me, wasn’t it? Why you’re so mad at me.’
‘I’m mad because you’ve ruined a perfectly good bike.’
Becca said nothing. She just smiled.
After a long, long silence Jet bent his head to look down at her. ‘Of course I love you,’ he growled. ‘You’re—’
A final flash of fear came. Surely he wasn’t going to say she was Matt’s little sister?
‘You’re … you.’ Jet’s voice sounded curiously thick. ‘I think I always loved you. But.’
‘But you think there’s no way we can ever be together.’
The silence was alive now. Tense. Terribly important.
‘You think that loving someone and letting them love you is stupid because it’s so dangerous. And that if you don’t, you can protect yourself from ever getting really hurt.’
The Tortured Rebel Page 14