by Ash Harlow
“I need a photo for the police so that they know who to look for.”
He held out his hand. “Give me the phone.”
“Leave. My. House.”
“Don’t do anything you’re going to regret, Darcy. Hand me the phone.” He made a fist and thumped the wall.
I jumped in fright, but shoved the phone in my back pocket. “Leave.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t give me the phone, then I’ll have to.”
“You don’t want to hurt me? Prison really taught you some manners, didn’t it?”
“It taught me how to fight, Darcy. How to take care of myself.” He wiggled his outstretched fingers at me. “Phone, now.”
I kept backing up the hall, sure that if I made it to the front door I could run, and scream. The neighbors were usually sitting on their front deck in the early evening. All I had to do was make it outside.
I reached for the door and pulled it open. “Last chance, Rob. Get out.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you shouldn’t have pushed me,” he said as he lunged, grabbing my arm and jerking me away from the door.
“What the fuck’s going on here? Let her go.”
Rob released me just as Oliver cleared the porch in one leap and grabbed him around the throat.
“Are you okay, Darcy?” he asked, pinning Rob to the wall. Rob might have learned to fight in prison but Oliver had six inches in height over him, more bulk, and just as much to fight for.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I wasn’t. Everything inside me shook with rage.
“Good.”
He turned back to Rob and studied him. I needed to explain, but I was so loaded with adrenaline I couldn’t think clearly.
“You look familiar,” he snarled at Rob. “Yours is a face I’ve never forgotten. I’m glad you’re here because we need to talk.” He pulled Rob off the wall and marched him back to the kitchen, pushing him onto a chair. “You move from there, and I’ll break your head.”
Rob should have looked panicked, if he’d had an ounce of sense, but his mouth twisted with strung-out amusement. “Fuck you, man. I’m about to break your life.”
29 ~ OLIVER
Seeing some stranger with his hands on Darcy unleashed a violent urge I never knew I’d carried inside of me. When I recognized who held her, I wanted to peel the skin off him, then shred every fiber of what lay beneath, with my bare hands.
He had no right to touch Darcy. That was my right. Not because I’m some obsessed prick who thinks he has exclusive rights over the woman he’s committed to. She was mine to touch because she gave me that permission. She certainly didn’t give it to an asshole like him.
I was still so close to blowing I had to step back from him. “Tell me you’re okay, Darcy. Tell me again.” I searched her face to find something that would confirm that.
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. Her voice cracked and her face was the color of pumice.
I focused again on the scum sitting at the table. “Did Annabelle send you?” It was all I could think. Had she somehow found the drug dealer we’d dealt with in Auckland and sent him to add weight to her blackmail threats?
“Don’t know any Annabelle. You need to leave, dude. I’ve got business to sort out with my ex.”
Ex? Fuck. The word struck me like a blow to the chest. He had to be lying. My jaw ached and my teeth were clenched so hard trying not to scream at him, trying not to say the wrong thing, trying not to give anything away. I’d already given him Annabelle’s name. Could he track her from that? Did he want to? Darcy could wait. Darcy I could talk to later when I got her home. I had to ignore the part I wanted to know the most about, find out what this guy wanted, and get him out of Darcy’s life forever.
“You can talk, now, because I’m not going anywhere.” I said.
He rolled his shoulders, shrugging on his newfound confidence like a favorite coat. “Look at you, man.” He sniggered. “You had no idea that hot pussy of yours had a dirty past.”
A muscle in my cheek twitched.
“Stop it, Rob,” Darcy said.
I held my hand up to silence her.
“Did she tell you she was arrested for drug dealing in Australia? Whoops, no? Don’t worry, she lied to the cops, too, and put me away.”
“Yeah, whatever.” I discovered I could shrug, too. “What is it you want?”
“Money. Her testimony gave me two years of grief. Here’s a bit of advice for you. There’s no loyalty there,” he said, stabbing his finger at Darcy. “I can add a lot of ugliness to this perfect life you have, but twenty grand will make me vanish.”
“No, it won’t, because you’re not getting a cent. You’re getting the fuck out of town. You can either do it on your own, or I can get a couple of very unfriendly cops around here in minutes to help you on your way. And I’m just going to make you one promise. If you come near Darcy again, if you so much as send her a text message, or even fucking think about her, I’ll make your life such hell you’ll wish you were back in prison.”
“Well, aren’t you the big guy.”
“Glad you understand.” I pointed at the door. “Time to fuck off, and to be perfectly clear, that means out of town, off the Coromandel Peninsula, and out of our lives.”
I jerked him from the chair and gave him a push down the hallway. He paused at the door.
“I’m not fucking done, Sackville. You’re going to regret threatening me.”
“No, I won’t.”
He responded with a smirk.
I used the barrier of the door to usher him out and watched through a window as he climbed into his shitty car and drove away.
Somehow I had to make sense of this. Even more, I had to get the image of that guy with Darcy out of my head.
I returned to the kitchen. Darcy hadn’t moved. Her shoulders rose as she drew a deep breath. “I need to tell you a lot of things. First, thank you—”
“We’re not doing this here. Grab whatever you need, we’re going home.”
She took a step back. “I think we should talk here.”
“No.”
“You might not want to be with me once I tell—”
I was like a contained explosion. Outwardly, my body felt like an impenetrable casing keeping my emotions, my rage, my confusion, my gain, my loss from escaping. Inside, though, was chaos. Darcy’s laptop and handbag were on the table. I picked them up. “Anything else?” I asked.
She glanced around, reaching for a sweatshirt from the back of a chair. I took her hand and led her from the house. We never spoke on the short walk, and I didn’t release her hand until we were inside my house, and the door was shut.
I was frustrated, and determined whatever this was about wouldn’t break us. It was in the past. I couldn’t believe Darcy was any different now than the person I’d left in my bed two mornings ago. I pulled two bottles of water from the fridge, unscrewed a cap and handed her one. Under my gaze, she knocked back a good third of the bottle, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the drink back down on the kitchen island that took up too much space between us.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Physically, no. Emotionally? Well, I’m furious he’s tracked me down and thinks he can blackmail me. I’d have to be hiding something for that to be a success, and I want you to believe me, Oliver, I had every intention of telling you about Rob.”
“I believe you.”
“I wanted to tell you the other night.”
“I know you did. Tell me now.”
She gazed out the window, and I waited.
“Rob and I were together three years. We met at university. I was in my last year, and he was doing his Masters. He’s brilliant, and stupid. He does computer stuff, works in the banking industry doing all kinds of complicated things with analysis and encryption. He got an amazing job. They demanded a lot from him, and he kept giving. Eventually, he started using drugs to help him stay awake. Well, that was his excuse. He ended up losing his
job after failing a workplace drug test. Of course, I should have left him then, but he promised me he’d learned what he had to lose, and he’d stop using, so we decided to make a clean break and go to Australia. I didn’t know he was dealing, Oliver. I’d have left him right away if I knew that.”
“Annabelle’s video must have been a shock.”
She nodded, took another long swallow from her water bottle.
“Australia started out okay. I got an amazing job, and Rob got work in the banking industry. We kind of drifted apart, though. My work was social, and Rob wasn’t that fond of the people or the scene. He’d become surly, withdrawn. Nothing was good enough for him. He started hanging out with a crowd of guys I didn’t like, and I was sure he was using again. If I asked, he lost it, shouting at me, accusing me of not trusting him. So, I tried harder to make him happy. And the worse he got, the harder I tried to make life better for him so that he might love me again. I bit back the questions to keep the peace. In no time, our relationship was toxic. I came home one day and that sweet, sickly smell was all through the house, and there was a group of strangers in my living room, all high.”
She looked off to one side, then directly at me. “I told them all to get out, and threatened to call the police. I told Rob he had to choose between me and the drugs. High, he told me to fuck off.”
Inside, I was breaking for her. I wanted to hold her. To ease her anguish but when I stepped toward her she held up a hand to stop me. Something passed between us. It was a feeling, an idea that she didn’t want me touching her, she didn’t want my comfort while she was still talking about her relationship with Rob.
“Are you sure?” I asked gently.
“Yes. Thank you.” She coughed. “He was…” Her face screwed up like she was going to cry. “He was so careless with my love. He didn’t want it, and I kept offering it, putting different packaging around it, trying so hard. The thought of it now makes me sick. No matter what I tried, he chose drugs over me. He lost his job again. I had no idea. He just said he got some contract, and was working from home. Then, one day, he told me I had to go away for the weekend. I asked why, and he said he’d got in trouble. He owed money to whoever it was he was getting drugs from, and the only way out was to let these guys come to the house to cook.”
She pressed her lips together, gazing at the ceiling, composing herself. “I told him…” She stopped and rubbed her eyes, then started again. “I told him I’d give him the money, and that’s when I learned our bank account was overdrawn. He’d always taken care of the money. When I’d noticed sums going missing he said he’d shifted money into high-earning investments. You must think I’m an idiot.”
“I don’t,” I told her gently. “I don’t think that at all.”
She took another deep breath. “I flat out refused to have our home used as a drug lab, and he ranted and said how could I possibly say I loved him if I wasn’t prepared to support him when he was in trouble. That was the first and only time he hit me. I just grabbed some stuff and went and stayed with a girlfriend. The cook-up went wrong. That stuff is volatile and there was an explosion. The house was destroyed in the fire, and that’s how I lost everything.”
30 ~ DARCY
I felt like a soda bottle that someone had shaken before popping the cap. Once the pressure was released, the story that had bubbled inside me spewed through the narrowing of my neck and out of my mouth. It left a sticky sordid mess coating everything between us.
Oliver just looked angry, then confused, disgusted, angry again. I couldn’t even look at him, now. The last inch of story sat inside me like flat swill and, without the pressure of the shaken fizzing contents, it lacked the oomph to get it out.
I wasn’t the wholesome person Oliver believed in. The professional. The nice, middle-class girl with second-hand clothes and a strong work ethic.
“Darcy, look at me.”
I glanced, but couldn’t meet his eyes.
“The minute I saw you, I wanted you,” he said.
Ah, God, bless his voice. Bless its balm, the way it soothed my raw nerves. Bless its strength for giving me something to hold on to. Bless the way it wrapped around me, gathering my frayed edges back together again.
I swallowed, choking back a sound I knew would make no sense.
“I’d never seen anyone so out of place as you were in the sports bar. I thought if I blinked, you’d vanish into the gloom so I had to go to you, immediately. You have no idea the power you have over me, and you can’t tell me anything that will change that. You’ve done nothing wrong, Darcy.”
“I should have gone to the police much earlier. I should have left him before he’d lost every morsel of respect for us. That made it easy for him to hit me.”
Oliver passed around the island to where I stood, took out a stool, sat, and pulled me to stand between his opened thighs. With his hands resting on my hips, our eyes locked. “You can’t change the past. Should have, could have, would have…they’re all wasted thoughts, things you dwell on, loaded with self-blame. That man doesn’t deserve any further consideration from you. Do you want to keep talking? There must have been quite an aftermath.”
I nodded. I wanted it all out. “I spent hours being questioned by police. First as a suspect, then as a witness. I was left with nothing. I lost my career, all of my possessions, the friends I’d made. Rob’s right. Mud sticks. Far more fun to gossip than to trust and support someone. I wanted to return to New Zealand until the trial began, but people would have found out, and that would have blown my chance of getting a decent job here. So I shifted out west in Sydney, and found a job at a crummy diner where they paid me cash. Got skills working the hotplate and the coffee machine. Gave my testimony at the trial and helped put a few people in prison.”
“You should be proud of yourself.”
“I’m horrified I was that stupid to stick around. My parents barely speak to me, and won’t speak of what happened. I want my career back.”
“You have it back. With this fundraiser on your CV, they’ll be lining up at your door. I’m proud of you. You’re brave, Darcy, and you don’t have to keep this locked away. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Do you have any idea of how I panicked when you told me you were raising funds for a drug rehabilitation center? I wanted to run. But, I knew I could do a good job for you if I was given the chance. Only, I didn’t plan on sleeping with the boss.”
Oliver smiled. “I did. From that first time I kissed you on the cottage porch, I was hooked. Been craving you ever since.”
“What about now?”
“Still craving you, Miss Darcy. I don’t care what you tell me, the craving will never stop.”
That weight of the secret I’d carried with me had shifted with my confession to be replaced with something new. A different weight that involved trusting myself to love again.
“I’d prefer we kept this between ourselves, Oliver. In my experience, most people aren’t generous enough to listen the way you have. I’m not going to rescue my career if this sordid little story accompanies me to every interview.”
He kissed me. Quickly, firmly, telling me he’d keep me safe. “I know. Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.”
“Thank you. You came back early from Auckland.”
“I missed you. There was a dinner tonight, but I got out of it. Thank god I did.” He laughed. “Hell, Darcy, it’s impossible to say which of us has the worst ex.”
Suddenly, I laughed. It bubbled out of my chest unleashed and uncontrolled. Oliver joined me, and I ended up doubled over, my face buried in his chest. I finished, inhaling him in long gasps, his shirt sucking into my mouth, the scent of his skin, the trace of his cologne that reminded me of fjords and ocean and flowering manuka after summer rain.
His safe arms engulfed me and he rocked us as I gasped for breath.
“He’s not part of us. Neither is Annabelle. We’re fresh, and new, and we’re doing something good. We’re moving forward, Darcy, and
the past can fuck off back to where it belongs. History.”
He claimed my mouth with his, and kissed away my past until I was liquid. His hand sneaked behind the waistband of my shorts, stroking my stomach, going lower until I quivered, and parted my legs for him. His mouth never left mine as he tugged down my zipper, and jerked my shorts and panties off. He stood, one hand on the back of my head holding our lips together as he got out of his slacks and underwear.
Joined together, we crab-walked across the kitchen to the seat built into the bay window. Oliver sat, and finally, he broke our kiss. I straddled his lap. His hand on my hip kept me up on my knees, hovering over his magnificent cock. He pressed it against my entrance, and took hold of my chin. Our eyes locked.
“You are not defined by something an asshole did in your past. Tell me you understand?”
“I do.”
“Promise me you believe it.”
“I promise.”
“Say it for me.”
The head of his cock was wedged right at my entrance, but his fingers dug into my skin, preventing me from sliding him inside. He wanted my pledge. It was silly, really, bribing it out of me with the promise of a hot fuck. That’s one way you could look at it.
The other way? That was the way I chose. It wasn’t just another fuck, it was more. A joining of our bodies and our hearts, respect and trust and all the pretty words that layered upon each other until you were left with the big, all encompassing word that I wasn’t ready to think about. Love.
But I could make the first step and go live with the words he wanted to hear before he fucked me. “I, Darcy Austen Kennedy, am not defined by something an asshole did in my past.”
Oliver slid inside me with a long sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath while I made sense of the circus in my head.
“I’m going to remind you of that, every day. Open your eyes, I want you looking at me when you come.”
“It’s impossible, you know. Eyes close for sneezing and orgasms.”
“So much knowledge in this clever brain of yours, Darcy.”