So why do I feel so damn nervous?
“If you want to get out, I won’t hold it against you.” Joel raises his voice to be heard over the throbbing engine.
Every cell in my body wants to take this opportunity to back out. To not take this chance. But despite what I want so badly to do, I hear his words in my ear. Life isn’t about playing safe. And so I reach across and buckle my seat belt. I do it because I like this guy. I do it because the odds are in our favour, and really, this is kind of low-risk on the list of risky activities.
But mostly, I do it because I’ve spent the last year looking after my family and taking the easy way out.
And maybe it’s time I started taking chances.
“Fuck yeah!” Joel yells, thrusting his fist in the air. I laugh alongside him, his buzz contagious.
And then?
I scream.
Because we fly.
My breath whiplashes up my throat. My body presses further against the seat, and my heart does this strange painful hiccough, where it stops working and then starts again at double time.
We speed, so fast, so fast that I can’t focus on any one thing out the window. Instead, it turns into a sea of colour that all blends in one giant rainbow of light, flat-lining in shaded bars around me.
“Holy shit!” Joel yells, and when I turn to look at him slowly my head slams to the right. He grins, his cheeks stretched wide, the momentum from the vehicle’s speed propelling his head back, too.
There’s something so freeing about this moment—something so dangerously safe, yet all-consuming. Going fast takes the breath from my chest.
It’s a feeling I’ve run from, but damn—it’s so addictively good.
We come to a stop four laps later, and as the car softens its roar to a throaty hum, my breath finally slows, my chest rising and falling at a speed of normalcy. Joel reefs the helmet from his head and turns to me, his face alive with excitement. “Holy shit, El.”
I laugh, and it’s so freeing. So liberating. I undo my own helmet and rest it in my lap. “That was ... wow.”
“Right?” He laughs again, and then reaches across the console to take my hand with his warm one.
“I liked it way more than I thought I would,” I admit, and this time his fingers squeeze mine.
“What were you so afraid of, Ellie?” Joel asks.
You, I want to say. I’m afraid of you breaking my heart again.
“Come on, Ellie. Tell me.”
I pause, my eyes on the road we’re hurtling down with no brakes. “Life. Death.” Then, after a moment ... “Falling.”
He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
My heart stops.
My breath stills.
“I’ll promise to be here to hold you, Ellie.” His words send a shiver down my spine. “I’ll catch you when you fall.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I float to the car. No—I frolic. It’s the only way to describe these silly almost dancing steps. Joy floods me, and I’m so damn happy—so damn happy—that I can’t contain it. It’s simply too much.
“I can’t feel my knees!” I yell. I yell because Joel walks at the relatively normal pace of one step per second, back near the building entrance. I’ve made it to the car already.
“You know that’s not a good thing, right?” he asks, but there’s a huge smile on his face, and I can’t help but think he has to be somewhere near as giddy as I am.
He eventually catches up and I skip over to him, throwing my arms around his neck. “We raced, Joel. We actually raced!”
He laughs, and it’s all just so easy, so natural, and I’m so full of happiness and excitement and love that I lean in closer and kiss him on the cheek.
Joel stills and pulls back. Regret crashes down on me, drowning all the intense happiness that throbbed through my cells only moments earlier. “I’m sorry.”
A million questions race through my mind, but the one shouting loudest is how did I read this so wrong? Followed closely by what the fuck am I thinking? This is Joel Henley. The boy who broke my heart. I’m an idiot to trust him again.
“No.” He shakes his head and steps back. My arms drop to my sides. “It’s not ...” He seems to search for an answer in the sky, and I wish I could see it written there too, because right now, I’m more than a little confused.
Joel takes a deep breath and places his hands on my upper arms. We’re close, too close for people who are just friends, but he’s the one who’s made the move this time. “Ellie, you are so much more than a rebound girl.” He gives a subtle shake of his head. “I can’t do that to you. Not when I can already see myself falling.”
“So you like me, but you don’t want to use me?” I ask. “How does that make sense?”
“There are a lot of things about my life that are complicated right now.” Joel lets one of his hands drop to his side, and his gaze follows it. “I just need time.”
My brain ticks over this new information, processes it and stores it away. Time. He needs time. Time to heal from his past wound. Time to prove that his feelings for me aren’t just false rebounding emotions. Time to sort this whole thing out.
“What happened with you and Vanessa?”
The question hangs in the silence between us.
Joel leans back against his car. His furtive glance tells me I’m not going to like the answer. “We’re gonna do the whole ex thing, huh?”
I nod, my face a blank slate.
“We dated on and off for just on a year. It was never serious. I met her at uni, but none of my friends liked her much. Said she was too ... prim and proper or something.” Joel runs a hand over his head. “She broke it off with me because we’re heading in different directions.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“She wants to study overseas. I don’t.”
“So she’s leaving you for another location?”
“I know. The irony isn’t lost on me.” Joel pauses and away before looking back to me. “She wasn’t the one, Ellie. I never felt for her like I did for you. I just .... I need time. Is that asking too much? If we just ... hang out until ...?” Joel trails off, and he looks so hopeful.
“Of course.” I smile, and close the gap between us so our bodies are near again. “As long as you let me come and join in some more of your twenty-one challenges. Because that was freaking awesome.”
A grin breaks Joel’s face. “I can sure do that.”
***
The drive back to EC is relaxed, and my high from a few hours earlier has well and truly dissipated, leaving me exhausted. It’s as if the adrenalin has robbed my body of its ability to function.
“What have you got planned for this afternoon?” Joel asks as we pull onto the main street of town near the beach.
“I’m just going to go help Mum pack bags for a client,” I say.
“Fair enough.” He nods. “You never told me why you didn’t ever follow your dream. I remember when you used to hate your mother’s events.”
His words sting me as they did the other day. They were dreams who belonged to someone else. Someone who didn’t have to look after her mother and sister. “Yeah.” I shrug. “I guess ... I guess life just got busy. I help Mum out at work a bit; she says it’s to teach Dani and I the value of hard work, but it’s not easy. Some days I feel as if I’m drowning, and all I can do is come up and hope the air will be fresh.”
“You can swim, Ellie.” Joel pulls the car over into my street when I point it out, and then stops outside our house. “I know you can swim.”
My heart flutters, and for a moment I forget my sister, and my mother, and everything but Joel. For the first time in a long time, I want to take risks.
It’s all because of him.
“Can I borrow your phone?” he asks, and I frown, but hand it over.
“Is this the official ‘you’re asking for my number’ bit?”
His thumb moves rapidly over the face of my phone. He looks up at me,
and there’s something more in his eyes. A promise for the future. “No,” he husks. “It’s also the official ‘I don’t want you to leave’ bit.”
We sit there in silence for a moment. Me, grinning at him, even though his signals are so completely mixed, they hurt my head. Him, looking at me, his expression somewhere between hesitation and lust.
“Well, I gotta get going.” Joel opens his arms and leans over to hug me.
Pine. It’s the scent that hits me first. He smells like pine, even though we’ve spent the morning together, not in a pine forest, and there’s no real reason he should. He always used to smell like pine.
I wrap my arms around his body and revel in how he feels up close. These arms have held me so many times—during the first school dance, as we walked home from school. My idiotic heart beats traitorously fast, despite the warnings from my head.
After what’s definitely longer than appropriate hug time, I pull back.
“No.” Joel’s voice is strangled, and he doesn’t release his grip. “Do we have to stop doing this?”
I giggle. “Hey, you were the one who said no dating ...”
“That was before you felt like this,” Joel says. “Now that I’ve breathed you in again, I don’t know that I ever want to stop.”
CHAPTER NINE
Family dinners are a unique kind of torture my mother particularly seems to enjoy. Thankfully, she only seems to have time to get out her scalpel and handcuffs once a month. Otherwise, who knows how often Dani and I would have to endure it.
At five minutes to six, I rap on my sister’s door, my knuckles smarting against the metal security screen. Seconds later, it swings open, and Zy stretches an arm behind him, welcoming me in.
“Hey Zy,” I greet my sister’s flatmate. “Where’s Dan?”
He frowns, and folds his arms across his chest. “She’s at family dinner ... with you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “She’s here. I’m about to take her there.”
Zy runs a hand through his hair and looks up at the ceiling. “Shit.”
“When did she leave?”
“An hour ago. She walked out and said she was meeting you at the beach.”
She’s just forgotten that she was taking me to dinner. I’m sure she’s perfectly okay. Safe, even.
But the way she’s been acting lately is anything but safe.
What if she’s—
No.
I turn to Zy. “Do you know where her keys are? My car is in the shop, getting fixed.”
He walks over to the side table and takes a set of keys from it, a pink, glittery star charm catching the late afternoon light. “Here.”
“Thanks.” I snatch them out of his hand and walk through the doorway, headed for the stairs. I’m almost at the bottom when I hear my name called, and I turn back around.
“I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“It’s fine.” I wave him off as I unlock the car and sit inside.
And it is.
It’s my job to keep my sister safe.
It’s the one thing I promised I’d do.
***
I crawl through the beach parking lot, the car chugging along at a snail’s pace. Tourists crowd the boardwalk, snapping photos of the turbulent sea in front of them. A group of young kids hang outside the toilet block, girls leaning up against the wooden fence palings, boys clustering around, laughing and yelling with their mates.
“C’mon, Dani,” I mutter, as her phone rings out again.
I glance at the clock radio. Ten past six. Mum will be pissed if we’re not there soon. She likes her dinners to run like her events. Efficiently. On time. With no unexpected delays.
My phone rings, and I flinch as the loud noise fills the small space. I press the accept button and transfer the phone to speaker. “Hello?”
“Where are you?”
Mother.
“I’m just ... just stopping for petrol,” I lie. My fingers tap on the wheel as I scan the park once more. Where the hell could she be? Why on earth would she—
“You’re late. Your sister and I are—“
“Dani?” I frown.
“Unless you’re implying I had another child at some point, I don’t see who else I could be talking about,” Mum says dryly.
My shoulders slump in relief. She’s okay. She’s at dinner already.
Then they tense. Why didn’t she wait for me?
“Anyway, dinner will be served in fifteen minutes, whether you are here or not. Please try to be punctual.”
The call disconnects, and I slump back in the seat. Great.
I drive right on the speed limit the entire trip to Mum’s place, pushing it as much as I can without breaking the law. Thoughts race through my mind, the most prevalent being I am going to kill her. Followed closely by Thank God she’s okay.
Dani’s car rattles along the drive of Mum’s estate, and I slow to a stop in the turning circle. I open the car door and pocket the keys, then race up the stairs and enter the two-storey homestead.
My feet tap over the white tiles as I walk through the foyer and head toward the tinkling laughter I hear from within the bowels of the house. It’s precisely twenty-one minutes since I spoke to Mum on the phone, which means I am officially late.
“Sorry I’m late,” I breathe, as I turn the corner into the room.
The long timber dinner table stretches across the room, the top a natural oak carving. Overhead, the contemporary chandelier twinkles, and Dani’s golden hair shines in the soft light. Mother sits to her left at the head of the table, her hair pulled back into a French knot, and to her left sits Colin.
Despite Mum’s threat, the place settings in front of everyone remain empty, except for silver cutlery and half-empty wine glasses.
“Sit.” Mother nods to the place setting beside Colin, and I obediently scurry over.
“Thanks for waiting.” I scoot my chair in. I flash a look at Dani, one that I hope says where the hell were you? “So I thought I was picking you up, Dani?” I smile sweetly.
“I got a lift in with Colin.” Dani takes a long sip from her wine glass, then presses her lips together. “Sorry.”
“Oh.” I nod. I’m an idiot. Of course she forgot.
And I overreacted.
Just because one person was taken from you doesn’t mean everybody else will be, too.
Clara, Mum’s assistant/maid/chef, walks into the room, three plates balanced in her arms. She places them down in front of Colin, Dani and Mum, then nods at me and rushes back to the kitchen, no doubt having just realised I was actually present.
And then, the torture begins.
“Let’s say our gratitudes,” Mum starts, smiling. Oh God. Not this fresh hell. “I am grateful that one of my daughters arrived for dinner on time.”
I stiffen. Point taken. “I said I’m sorr—“
“You are forgiven,” she says.
I press my eyes shut and think of my father. Of how he’d want me to behave.
And then I open them and paste on a smile, because that was the one thing he wanted. He wanted me to help glue this family together again.
“Well, I’m grateful that I have Ellie here working for me.” Colin nods. At least someone has my back. “She’s the best employee I’ve ever had, and so hard-working.”
“It’s not exactly rocket science,” Dani mutters, then works her jaw.
I open my mouth to reply, but Colin squeezes my knee
A squeeze that goes on for just a second too long.
My skin prickles, and just as I’m about to say something, Colin moves his hand away. I look at him, but his face is just the same as ever. He’s open. Friendly. The same guy who has attended dinner once a week with my family since before Dad was sick. The same guy who rushes home after dinner so he can be there as soon as his wife finishes night shift at the hospital.
He’s not the kind of guy who would cheat, and certainly not the kind of guy who would hit on a young girl.
“Dani?�
�� Mum prompts, bringing me back to the moment.
“I’m grateful that I get to work with you, Mum,” she says, her words tumbling out quickly as if they’re flying down a slippery-dip. I raise my eyebrows. Seriously? “It’s not often your role model in business is your mother. I guess I’m just lucky mine is.”
“Danica.” Mum’s hand rests on her heart, and she presses her eyes closed for a moment. When they open again, a thin veil of tears shields them. “That is so sweet.”
“It’s true.” Dani shrugs three times—up, down, up, down, up, down, all in quick succession.
Clara walks over and places a plate in front of me, and I thank her as she returns to the kitchen, then start to eat the roast dinner she’s no doubt spent hours preparing for us.
“It’s nice that you grace us with your time, dear. I know not all my daughters have such ... academic aspirations,” Mum says.
I bristle. “I’ll go to uni some day ...”
“Of course you will.” Colin nods.
“Either way, I love working for you, Mum, and being at uni. It’s a good mix,” Dani says.
“Well, it’s good you feel that way, as we have the biggest event of the season coming up.” Mum claps her hands together. “It’s a fundraiser for Cancer Australia, and it is going to be massive—absolutely massive.”
“Sounds like a good money-spinner,” Colin says, taking his fork and stabbing an innocent piece of carrot with it.
“It is. But more than that, it’s a cause near and dear to my heart.” Mum’s eyelashes flutter, as if she’s at a press conference selling her story to the local papers instead of selling her story to us. The people just as affected by cancer as she was.
“Do you want some picnic baskets or hot-air balloon rides to give away as door prizes?” Colin asks.
“Please.” Mother nods, sipping on her glass of red. “And girls, I’ll need you both there before, during and after. This is very important to me.” She pauses and turns her fork in my direction. “So make sure you dress nicely.”
The Twenty-One (Emerald Cove #2) Page 7