When Adam Met Evie

by Giulia Skye

  He had flash reminded her of the new world in which she now lived, a world of carefree sex, holiday romances and relationships that didn’t have to last fifteen years.

  She should be grateful it had lasted more than fifteen days.

  Adam set up their bed away from the trees so they could see the stars. He placed his toothbrush on the dashboard, then lay down next to Evie in what she called their million-star accommodation.

  They listened to the call of creatures in the distance. Fruit bats squabbling in the trees and soft chirpings by the pool.

  “It feels like we’re the only two people on Earth doesn’t it?” Evie whispered.

  “In our own private Garden of Eden.”

  “Just like the gray nomads said it would be.” She sighed happily. “What shall we do tomorrow?”

  “Laze by the pool.”

  “Sounds good. I can make stir-fry for dinner.”

  “Great. I’ll eat it.”

  “You eat anything.” Evie giggled, then propped herself up on her forearms and looked down at him, as if she’d just remembered something. “You never talk about your mum. What does she have to say about your father’s women and all this gym business?”

  “Not much.” Adam stared at the stars. “My mom’s dead.”

  He heard Evie’s soft gasp. He never had the stomach for people’s pity, but just when he thought she’d be one of those people to gush about how awful it was—like he didn’t know—she wrapped her arms around him and planted a kiss on his chest.

  “When did she die?”

  “When I was eight.” He told her about the car crash she’d been involved in during torrential rain. How his aunt Flo had come to fetch him from school that day. “I went to live with my father in Vancouver shortly afterward. He was getting himself quite settled by then. A good job, nice apartment. My aunt Florence came too, but after about five years, she moved back. City life wasn’t for her.”

  Adam told her about spending his teenage summers in Edmonton. Days spent hanging about in Aunt Flo’s small farm, picking vegetables and chasing chickens.

  “Is that where you learned to drive off-road?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t as smart as you at school, Miss Accountant. I just about made the grades in the end but left as soon as I could. I trained a lot back then and used to go visit her whenever I had a big enough gap in my work schedule.”

  “Is that after you became a personal trainer?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was on the verge of telling her about his swimming career, but it was late and they were both tired, and he didn’t want to open the sluice gate to that part of his life. Especially when he’d already divulged so much.

  CHAPTER 22

  By the end of the following week, Adam and Evie had crossed the border into the Northern Territory. Their route zigging-zagging to the places on Evie’s list—Lake Argyle and the stunning Katherine Gorge, and the giant beehive-like mounds of Purnululu, otherwise known as the Bungle Bungle. The distances were vast and substantial, but now they were rapidly getting closer to Darwin. Storm clouds were gathering. The nights were increasingly humid, the days scorching and intense.

  Adam had lost track of days, but now he’d worked out that it was the first week of November and they were in the thick of the build-up, the weeks before the wet season began. Nature counting down the days until the rain.

  They were bush camping just south of Litchfield National Park, about a thirty-minute drive off the Daly River Road. It was a free council-run place that Evie had been told about by a local woman she’d chatted with at the service station while Adam had filled up the tank. It was the kind of basic site that was beginning to feel like home. A creek ran nearby and led to a small secluded pool in which they washed and cooled off. Adam and Evie passed a sultry night under the stars, listening to the trickle of water and the rumble of thunder in the distance as they watched an impressive electrical storm. It illuminated the tumble of clouds on the darkened horizon.

  Before daybreak the next morning, they jumped over the creek and walked the short distance to the top of a rocky hill to catch the sunrise.

  “Do you remember our first morning together, out on the highway?” Evie said, negotiating her way over the rocks in the half-light. “This reminds me of that outcrop. Doesn’t it feel like it happened three months ago instead of three weeks?”

  “It sure does.” Time passed differently in the Kimberleys. It burned slow and intense. It was nearly a month since he’d left Vancouver. Was he still making headlines? Under normal circumstances, his disappearance would be ancient news by now, but he had no doubt that Saskia would keep up the hype until he was found.

  “I was so sad about Zac. So hurt he didn’t tell me about Teagan and the baby. It doesn’t seem to matter now. I don’t really think about it.”

  And neither did he think much about Saskia’s bounty, or anything else from that part of his life. It was almost like it no longer existed.

  He helped Evie up over a fallen-down tree, then followed her to the edge where they took in the view. They weren’t as high up here as on that outcrop, but the expanse dwarfed him just the same. Two grains of sand on a rock. He felt small yet somehow invigorated, the landscape reminding him of the simplicity of being human—and they were the only humans around. Adam had once thought that one gorge looked pretty much like another, that all the outback looked the same. He was wrong. He was falling in love with its beauty. Falling in love with this extreme isolation.

  “I’m not sure what it would be like seeing him again,” Evie said.

  He turned to her, remembering she’d been talking. “See who?”

  “Zac. When I go back home. I’ll have to see him to sort out the mortgage on our flat. I told you I’m buying him out of his share.”

  “Right.” He wasn’t sure why Evie seeing Zac sat so uncomfortably with him. Evie had told him she had another three months left on her tourist visa, and in three months he himself would most likely be back in Canada, hopefully living a life less frantic. Since last night, he’d been toying with the idea of moving back to the outskirts of Edmonton, somewhere in the country near his aunt Flo’s place. If he’d begun to make loose plans after Australia, it stood to reason that Evie would do the same. “Do you live near each other?”

  “Fairly near. If he’s still in the same place he moved to, he’s only forty minutes away from my mum’s.”

  And Adam would be much, much farther away than that by then. He tried to imagine Evie back in her normal world. How her life used to be. “I know I’m breaking rule number three here but fifteen years? You said you wanted to start a family, but you and this Zac weren’t married.”

  “Aw, bless.” She patted his arm. “Has no one told you yet you don’t need to be married to have babies?”

  “Huh. Cute.” He playfully tugged the bun on top of her head. “Let me rephrase that. Why didn’t you marry?”

  “There was no point. We were committed and monogamous and never felt the need.”

  “Sounds like you’ve had to say that line several times before.”

  “Like you would not believe.” She shook her head. “We were always the couple at weddings people cooed over saying, ‘You’ll be next.’ But we just used to roll our eyes at each other and mumble ‘as if.’”

  “You don’t believe in marriage?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t knock it, but for me it’s just a piece of paper.”

  That was exactly what he thought about it, too, and he couldn’t wait to tear up the piece that bound him and Saskia together.

  “But I believe in love and commitment. I believe in fidelity.” Evie pulled her water bottle out of her day bag. “Friends of ours were paying over twenty thousand pounds for their weddings. How can anyone justify that kind of expense on just one day?”

  “Spoken like a true accountant,” Adam
teased, wondering what she’d say to the obscene amount of money spent on the Adams-Williams extravaganza. He seemed to recall the champagne alone came to twenty thousand. Or was that the flowers? He hadn’t paid much attention. “I thought all women dreamed of walking down the aisle in a big fluffy white dress.”

  “As if.”

  He laughed, loving the way Evie didn’t fit into a mold. He sat against the rocks and she leaned back against him, cradled between his thighs. Together they watched the sun rise. Evie chatted. Ideas for evening meals, the next places they were due to visit. Easy plans for easy days, and he thought, I could stay here forever.

  Three days later, holding Evie as she came down from her most recent orgasm, Adam sensed a change.

  They were still camping off the Daly River Road and were making good use of the shallow watering hole, hidden among rocks and trees. Adam stood behind Evie in the water, still deliciously wedged between her buttocks, still breathless from his own release. They’d done it like this before but, unlike the first time, she hadn’t turned around to give him one of those satisfied sighs that made him feel like a superhero. Even yesterday she’d been quiet, more pensive than usual.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She leaned into him. “I love it here, but I think it’s time we got to Adelaide River.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I have to call my mum or she’ll worry.”

  Adam sat in the water and pulled her down onto his lap. He’d hoped they could stay here until the rains came. He didn’t want to go back to civilization. The door to his old life would fly open the second he stepped into a signal zone.

  “Okay.” He kissed the top of her head. Then, the melancholic look in her eyes pierced his bubble of oblivion, and he heard the whistle of questions whizzing through her mind. Questions about them. The million questions he didn’t have answers to and didn’t want to address now. Or ever.

  They walked back to their camp, barefoot and naked, agreeing to leave after they’d had lunch.

  “At least Adelaide River will have more condoms,” Evie said brightly.

  He mimicked one of her theatrical gasps. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you, Evelyn.”

  “Should I wine and dine you first?”

  He took her hand. “The sex will do just fine.”

  It was everything else he was having trouble dealing with.

  Adelaide River was a tiny township approximately a hundred kilometers south of Darwin near the crossing of the Stuart Highway. The next stop on Evie’s to-see list was the northern side of Litchfield National Park, but she’d been talking about heading east to Kakadu. She’d told Adam that she’d anticipated seeing Kakadu National Park on the next leg of her journey, after spending a few days in Darwin, but she was now contemplating whether or not to add it to their tour.

  “Let’s sleep on it,” she said, but he got the impression she wanted him to make the decision. Heading to Kakadu would exceed the original four-week period, and he’d been avoiding any subject that led to the question What happens next?

  They shopped and fueled up, located an internet café and logged on to a couple of PCs across from each other. Evie had already keyed in the Wi-Fi password into her mobile phone and sent her mother a voice message. “Mum, call me on WhatsApp when you wake up. I’m back in a town now and I’ve got reception again.” Then, like a starving woman tucking into a feast, she pounced on the keyboard to check her emails and catch up with friends.

  Adam reluctantly checked the latest on the Michael Adams social media manhunt, keen to learn if Skinny Pete had submitted his photo—he sure did—and whether or not he’d managed to snap the plates of the truck—yep, clear as day.

  Feeling exposed, he rubbed his chin and realized he’d been shaving more frequently on this tour than he’d at first planned. The stubble currently on his face was not the full-grown beard he’d envisaged so close to entering Darwin—and he’d left his cap and sunglasses in the truck. He was forgetting himself, getting careless. All because of Evie. He’d shaved whenever he could because he hadn’t wanted to give her beard rash every time they made love. But this wasn’t Evie’s fault.

  Adam stared at his screen, chewing his thumbnail.

  His nerves fed visions of roadblocks and sniffer dogs on his entrance to Darwin, but the part of him that had spent the past three weeks having sex in the wilderness told him to chill and deploy some common sense. This was vast, vast territory, and no one expected to find him here. There was no need to panic. Even if Saskia—or Howie for that matter—had hired someone to trace him, Adam was a moving target. He and Evie were … What?

  Lovers on the run?

  He rubbed his temples. He could handle the lovers part, but the running? That caused some issues. He couldn’t run with Evie—not when she didn’t know why. He couldn’t pack up and move on whenever he felt like it, not when she didn’t have a clue to what was going on, and he had to think up a different reason each time. A different lie.

  “It’s currently minus one where I’m from in Kent,” Evie told him without looking up from her PC. “There’s a threat of icy roads. I can’t imagine it.”

  Adam doubted she could imagine what he was looking at on his screen either. He was suddenly swamped with guilt. This wasn’t right, sitting here reading about his life—a life she knew nothing about.

  Evie’s phone rang and she took the call to the corner of the café, mouthing unnecessarily that it was her mother. The guilt increased but he ignored it and turned back to his screen.

  Michael Adams is reportedly safe and sound in an exclusive Australian clinic. The former Olympian is undergoing treatment for his addiction to pain medication following the shoulder injury which forced his retirement …

  He pushed his chair back and indicated to Evie that he was going for a walk.

  A few minutes later, he pulled his Canadian phone out from its hiding place under the seat of the truck and plugged it into the USB adaptor to power it up. It buzzed into action the moment it switched on, a long list of messages he would—of course—ignore.

  He tapped in Howie’s number. “Rehab?” he snapped the moment Howie picked up. “Are you serious?”

  “It’s what you get for going AWOL, Mikey. But you’re a lucky son of a bitch. Strive are prepared to keep your contract intact if you conquer your addiction.”

  “What fucking addiction?”

  “They’re looking for a hero, Mikey. They’ve got a whole comeback campaign planned for you and Saskia, ‘Exercise your Demons.’ Catchy, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Well, you damn well better be,” Howie shouted. Adam held the phone away from his ear but could still hear Howie yelling about how he, his father and Saskia were all planning a trip to Australia if Michael didn’t haul himself back to Vancouver, ASAP. “That rehab story’s bought you a week, Mikey. You better be on a plane home by then, or Saskia’s lawsuit won’t be the only one you’ll be running away from.”

  “Howie, you—”

  “Oh, you can bet your ass I would. You’re not holding up to your side of our contract. Do you have any idea how much money your father and I would be losing if Strive drop your sorry ass? Not to mention Saskia? Think about it, Mikey. You’ve got seven days.”

  Evie leaned against the truck watching Adam pitch the tent in a campground they’d found not far from the Adelaide River Inn, a bar that was on her places-to-visit list.

  “We should go there for a drink tomorrow,” she said, as Adam pegged one end of the tent. They preferred to sleep out in the open, but there were a handful of other people here which compromised their privacy. “I want to see Charlie.”

  “Who’s Charlie?”

  “The buffalo in Crocodile Dundee. Have you ever seen that film?” She did an impression of Paul Hogan as Mick Dundee, mesmerizing the beast who was blocking the road. “Charlie lived here until his d
eath. He now stands proud and stuffed by the bar at the Adelaide River Inn.”

  The corners of Adam’s mouth curled, but Evie didn’t pursue a bigger smile. She was feeling pretty subdued herself.

  She’d lied to her mum.

  Despite her best intentions to tell Mum all about Adam, the moment she heard Bernadette Blake’s voice, she knew she couldn’t.

  How could she describe their relationship to her mother when she couldn’t even describe it to herself? Were they girlfriend and boyfriend?

  Or just shagging?

  It was more than that, of course. Evie could feel it in the generous way he made love to her, could see it in his body language at all other times. But … where was it going? And what would happen when they got to Darwin?

  Adam was clearly avoiding the topic and for once her inbuilt anti-cowardice turbo was refusing to kick in, preferring to switch to self-preservation mode instead. If she asked, she might not like the answer. And so Evie had ended up telling her mum that Adam was nice and they were getting along, seeing the outback just as planned.

  Adam finished erecting the tent. Was it just sex, or did she mean something to him?

  If only she could read his mind. He looked different this evening. Distracted somehow. More serious. She’d caught his dark expression when he thought she wasn’t looking.

  He clipped back the tent’s opening, pushed his mattress inside and looked up, the air heavy with this sudden tension that had descended between them.

  “Are you thinking of sleeping on the back seat tonight?” he asked.

  “Do you want me to?”

  She thought they’d go round in circles like this, skirting each other, trying to figure out what the other wanted—one of those awkward pussyfooting carousels. But he hooked a finger in the collar of her vest and pulled her close, his voice low and rough. “You know what I want.”

  And that night he got it.