Climbing Fear

by Leisl Leighton

  ‘Nat. Nat. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.’ He drew her into his arms carefully, holding her against his warm strength and it was oddly soothing. It shouldn’t have been, as even in this moment, she was too aware of him, but everything calmed, her racing heart settled, the thumping in her head lessening ever so slightly as he stroked her hair back from her face, the nausea sinking back down, not a swirling curdle anymore, just a bitter burning on her tongue, in her throat. ‘But let me call the local doctor.’

  ‘No. I don’t want Doc Simpson.’ She’d never got along with the elderly doctor and still blamed him for not taking her mother’s complaints seriously.

  ‘No. Not Doc Simpson. He had a heart attack a few months ago. He’s brought in another doctor to take his load while he recovers. Doctor Brennan. You’ll like her. Barb swears by her and is hoping she’ll stay on.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. Good. She can check you over and bandage your head. Although if she says you need to go to the hospital, I’m sending you to the hospital.’

  ‘Tilly. She can’t know.’

  ‘I’ll call Barb and get her to keep Tilly for the night. Some of the kids will be arriving soon anyway, so she can stay with them in the bunkhouse and start the camp early.’

  ‘I don’t want her to be alone. She’s not good alone.’

  ‘She won’t be. There’ll be half a dozen other kids. And Lisa and Barb will stay with them. It’ll be okay. I promise.’ He pulled his phone out of his pocket and made the calls, cradling her against his chest.

  She closed her eyes and let his voice wash over her, not really listening, trusting that he’d do as promised.

  Words floated past her—doctor, break-in, police. She wanted to tell him not to involve the police, but the words just wouldn’t form. She was so sleepy.

  ‘Nat. Don’t go to sleep. Keep your eyes open. If you do have a concussion, you can’t go to sleep.’

  ‘S’okay.’

  ‘It’s not okay.’ He pulled her up into a sitting position. ‘Nat. Please, don’t go to sleep. If you do, I will take you to the hospital. I might even call the air ambulance.’

  ‘No.’ That snapped her out of the sleepiness. ‘I’m fine. My head is just aching. Can you get me some painkillers?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not until the doctor has given the okay. You should know that from the first aid you’ve done.’

  She did, but when her head was splitting open like this, it didn’t seem to matter what the medical experts might say. She just wanted something to stop the pain. ‘Some ice then? My head feels like it’s been hit with a brick.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you alone. Can you move?’

  She started to nod but the pain spiked through her head and for a moment she thought she was going to vomit again. ‘Maybe. Slowly.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s do it a bit at a time. Let me know if it’s too much.’ He helped her to her knees, then after some deep breaths, he pulled her to standing. Her knees wobbled and the world swung around her. She bent over and vomited again, mostly dry heaves, but the motion made the pulse in her head even worse. She was vaguely aware of Reid stroking her back, holding her steady. Finally, the urge to vomit passed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, horrified he was seeing her like this.

  ‘Don’t apologise.’

  ‘That needs to be cleaned up.’

  ‘I’ll do it later. Let’s get you sitting down with some ice on that lump.’

  She tried to straighten and swayed.

  ‘Shit.’ He swung her into his arms.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she muttered against his chest. He shouldn’t carry her. She was heavy.

  ‘You’re as light as a feather.’

  She snorted, but that hurt, so she stopped and when he started moving down the hall, she had to close her eyes and lean her head in the crook of his neck, her nose pressed against the warm chlorine-scented skin there.

  ‘Open your eyes, Nat.’

  ‘World is spinning. I don’t want to throw up on you.’

  ‘I’d prefer that to you slipping into a coma.’

  Her eyes popped open and the pain in her head spiked but not enough to stop her from seeing. ‘Oh god.’ The damage to her house was real. Pillows and cushions all over the floor, broken pottery and bits of glass scattered everywhere, crunching under Reid’s boots. ‘The new photo!’ The photo of him had fallen off the wall, hit the edge of the piano—there was a dent on the corner of the old case that hadn’t been there before—and was now smashed on the floor. ‘I thought it was possums.’

  ‘Possums didn’t do this and they didn’t knock you out.’

  ‘No. It was someone. A man, I think. Maybe it was more than one.’

  ‘You didn’t see them clearly?’

  ‘No. I was going down the hallway to the bedroom because I heard more noise in there and I thought a possum had got in. Then something black came rushing out the door as I was going in and I got shoved against the wall and hit my head.’ She touched the back of her head where the pain was the worst, her fingers coming away sticky.

  ‘How many were there?’

  ‘I don’t know. One, maybe two. It’s all blurry.’

  ‘Could you describe them at all? What were they wearing?’

  ‘Just black. All black. I think they had balaclavas on.’

  He lowered her into a kitchen chair and made sure she was steady before leaving her to get an ice pack out of the freezer. The kitchen had been attacked too. ‘What were they looking for?’

  ‘Money, probably, given the mess all over the house. There’s been drug problems for years in Moe and Traralgon. There are regular break-ins, although it’s never touched CoalCliff before. We’re too far out. But given the damage, it has to be that.’

  ‘Maybe they thought I was an easy target—new person here and all.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He was scowling as he knelt down next to her, pressing the ice pack he’d wrapped in a tea towel against her head, his expression angry yet closed.

  ‘Reid? What is it?’ She couldn’t help it, she touched his face, the deep ridge etched between his eyes.

  He blinked, eyes clearing a little as he focused on her again. ‘Drugs. I hate them. I thought I was escaping from the impact of them on my life, but they’ve followed me here.’

  Her heart throbbed in her chest and the pain in her head lessened as she cupped his face in her hands and made him look at her, even though the world swung around every time she moved. ‘It hasn’t followed you here. You said it yourself—it was already here. And this wasn’t too bad. There’s nothing here that can’t be cleaned up and fixed.’

  ‘You were hurt. I want to kill someone for that.’

  Her fingers burned on his skin and she let go of him with a gasp. ‘No. Don’t say that. Violence never helps. It never helps.’

  His gaze chased over her face and she would have looked away, afraid he could see too much, know too much of her and it was nothing worth knowing, but for some reason, she couldn’t look away from him this time. She didn’t want to.

  ‘What happened, Nat?’

  He wasn’t asking about the incident here. His gaze flickered down to her exposed legs. She put her hand over as much of the scar as she could, but he pulled it away, his fingers grazing over the long, ugly line.

  Tingles darted up and down her leg and she shivered.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No.’ Even so he stood and grabbed the throw rug that was lying on the floor between the kitchen and the hall and draped it around her, then pulled a chair over to sit next to her, one hand holding the ice pack to her head, the other holding her hands clasped in his.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

  Did she want to tell him? She’d run from him at the pool when he’d asked—and into this mess. She’d run for years from facing what Andrew was becoming, the depths of his problems, the impact of it on her and Tilly and also on Andrew. She’d even run here after she couldn’t deal wit
h the life she’d been left with, the intrusive, knowing, pitying looks she met everywhere she went in Perth, the horribleness that was her parents-in-law’s demands for Tilly. She’d run from that to here where things were supposed to be settled and staid and safe only to find Reid here, making her face up to things she didn’t want to face up to. Which brought her to the first time she’d run away ten years ago, unable to face the death of her mother and what she’d allowed to happen with Reid. She’d run back to the safety of Andrew and the steady, certain life he’d represented back then. Ha! Look how that had turned out. Running had never worked well for her. Maybe it was time to stop running, to start facing. It was what she’d told herself she was coming here to do when she’d run away from Perth, so really, it was about time she put intention to practice.

  She took a deep breath. Reid didn’t push, simply waited for her to respond. He would accept her answer either way. He was good that way. Open, generous, kind. He was everything she’d thought Andrew was, although now, she saw that was more her need making her see what she wanted rather than reality. Andrew had always been a bit selfish, everything always about him, about his needs, his goals, his job, his expectations about what life would be. They’d always done exactly what he wanted regardless of how she’d felt. And the one time she’d stood up to him, to come back here to look after her mother before she died, he’d broken their engagement because he hadn’t wanted her to go. He’d wanted her to stay with him and help him deal with his parents because he hadn’t done well on his business exams.

  And yet, she’d gone back to him because he needed her, because she thought she loved him, because he was set on a path that was stable and known. Of course, she’d been wrong about that too. She’d got back, they renewed their engagement and got married within the space of a month, and six months after that, just when she found she was pregnant, he’d joined the army and turned her stable, secure life upside down. She’d moved when he moved, going wherever his job took him regardless of how that impacted her or Tilly. The only place she hadn’t gone had been Afghanistan for his tours there. And when he’d come back, he’d been minus a leg and suffering PTSD which made him depressive, unable to work and brought on explosive and frightening episodes where the nightmare of memories became reality.

  ‘Is that when he cut you?’

  She wasn’t surprised at all she’d been speaking her thoughts out loud. It was something she seemed to do with Reid. ‘He was having a waking nightmare, like a night terror, but tied into his psychosis. I shouldn’t have gone near him. I realised that later. But I thought he was going to hurt himself with the knife he was holding. I wanted to try to wake him up but when I tried to touch him, he slashed my leg. The moment he saw the blood, he came out of it. He was horrified. He bandaged me up, got me to the hospital, held my hand as they wheeled me into surgery.’

  ‘Surgery?’

  ‘He’d cut right to the bone. They needed to repair tendons and clean up damaged nerves. It was pretty bad. I’m lucky I don’t walk with a limp.’

  ‘What happened with Tilly?’

  ‘She was too little to know what was going on at that stage. His sister flew out from London for a while to help out until I was back up and around, but then she had to go back. Her husband didn’t cope well with looking after their kids on his own. They’ve got two sets of twins. It’s full on.’

  ‘She flew all this way to help when his mum and dad were here?’

  She nodded, holding the ice pack to her head, fingers twining with his as they held it there. ‘Yes. They didn’t want to be bothered by what they stated as “Andrew’s mess”. The way they saw it, if he hadn’t abandoned them and his position at the company to join the army in the first place, he wouldn’t have been like he was, so he had to deal with the consequences of his decision, as did I given I didn’t stop him from joining the army. As if I could. Andrew had never wanted anything so badly as he wanted to get away from his parents and do something for his country.’

  ‘Shit, Nat. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you had to go through all that. It must have been hell.’

  ‘It was. And it’s why I’m here, to get away from everything that reminds me of that time and it’s why I don’t want those bastards who call themselves Andrew’s parents to have anything to do with Tilly.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  ‘Is it?’ Her gaze met his—so much understanding, so much empathy, it made her ache inside. ‘There’s a part of me that blames them for what happened to Andrew.’

  ‘Didn’t he have PTSD?’

  ‘Yes. But if they’d been the kind of parents they should have been, interested in him as a person rather than as the heir to the throne of the Garonne Industries and their link to the future, I know he wouldn’t have been so keen on handling everything himself, on refusing the help he was offered, of accepting that he wasn’t perfect and didn’t need to be. He wouldn’t have been so intent on control in the first place that he became controlling just like his dad. That was their fault. I don’t want them in Tilly’s life doing the same to her.’

  He let go of the ice pack, pulled another chair around and sat in it. ‘Playing devil’s advocate here, but couldn’t they have changed since Andrew’s death? Maybe they see their mistakes and want to make up for them.’

  She snorted then winced as her head throbbed. ‘I wish that was true, but it isn’t. If it was, they wouldn’t be threatening me and wouldn’t have sent people around to my place to try to bully me into letting them be involved in Tilly’s life. They even stopped me from getting a job in Perth and took me to court over Andrew’s will, saying I wasn’t entitled to his money given I was trying to get a divorce when it all happened and, of course, Andrew had never made a will which made it all messy. Not that it surprised me. They’d tried the same bullying and threatening tactics with Andrew before they gave up and cut him off, writing him out of their wills.’

  ‘Right, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to punch Andrew anymore, I want to punch his parents.’

  She pulled the ice pack from her head, held it in her lap picking at the edges. ‘They gave interviews claiming I drove Andrew to it and it was my fault Phillip was killed.’

  His fingers tightened over hers. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You know that, don’t you?’

  She should nod, because he was right, but there was a part of her that could never feel the truth in what he said, a part of her that would always be buried in the guilt, that a bullet meant for her had taken an innocent man’s life. It didn’t matter that she was also innocent, that she hadn’t deserved to get shot by her husband in the first place. She’d brought a stranger into the middle of the mess that was her life, and because of that, he was now dead.

  ‘Nat. Please tell me you don’t believe your in-law’s bullshit? That you deserved to be shot by your husband? That it should be you who is dead rather than your lawyer?’

  Her eyes burned and she blinked the threat of tears away. ‘Survivor’s guilt. That’s what it’s called. You should know. You can’t tell me you don’t feel the same way in regards to what happened to Luke.’

  He jerked as if she’d punched him in the chest. ‘That’s different.’

  ‘No, it’s not. We both feel guilty, and it doesn’t matter that we know it’s stupid, that we know we’re not being fair to ourselves, that guilt remains and it’s not going to go away just because someone else tells us we shouldn’t feel it.’

  He stared at her for a long time then sucked in a breath. ‘You’re right. I do feel guilty and people telling me not to doesn’t help. I’m sorry I tried to do the same to you.’

  She put her hand over his. ‘It’s okay. I get it. I want to tell you the same thing because it’s what people do. It hurts to see someone else bash themselves up that way, doesn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. It does.’

  Their eyes met, held. There was such empathy in the deep green of his, such pain, the kind of pain that helped him to understand hers.
<
br />   His phone rang, the noise breaking the moment. He glanced down. ‘The doctor’s here and the constable from Rawson. Barb is sending them down with Mac and Ben. They’ll help clean up the mess after the constable is finished. Are you okay? I’ll just meet them at the door and have a chat to the constable before he comes in to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He touched her face. ‘Sharing pain with someone else, maybe that’s what makes the difference.’ Then he was gone.

  She stared after him, his words ringing in her aching head. Yes. He was right. Maybe that’s why she felt this need for him, this connection that just seemed to be getting stronger the more they saw of each other, the more time they spent together, the more time they talked. That connection was dangerous. It terrified her in a way that all of Andrew’s moods and violence never had because it could destroy her. It could take everything she was fighting to gain for herself and Tilly and turn it upside down. If she was to give into it, give over to it, she would never recover, never escape the consequences of it.

  She’d seen the seeds of it years before, because they had more than this most recent violence and grief in common. They’d both had difficult parents and had lost parents in less than common circumstances. It was part of what had made him so wild when he was young and she’d recognised his wildness because it had been in her. It had been part of what had drawn them together, part of the reason she’d given in to him back then, given in to the madness of an attraction that just shouldn’t have been, even though in giving in she was violating everything she’d told herself for years she wanted. He was too wild, too emotion-driven, didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life but knew it was more than what he had, and when she was with him, god help her, she was wild and emotion-driven too and so uncertain of everything she’d ever thought she wanted.

  And look what he’d done, where those wild instincts had led him. He’d travelled all over the world, done all those remarkable, mad, insane things, had made a career out of it. Andrew had been different. He was supposed to have been different. She snorted and wiped her hand over her eyes. Andrew hadn’t been different at all. She just hadn’t seen below the shell he’d built around himself to fool his parents and everyone else, but ultimately, he had the same longing for something more that Reid had, to do something that made a difference. She hadn’t known, never realised, that he was lying to her when he’d said otherwise. He’d never even been truthful enough with her to tell her he wasn’t stationed safely at base ops, but was out in the field, in the thick of things, in danger. Perhaps, despite everything she’d told herself she wanted, she was really attracted to the bad boy.