by Ally Blake
They hit Laurel Avenue, right as one of the McGlinty boys was cordoning it off, sending any traffic on a detour. A detour away from Rafe.
Sable wound down the ancient window. Squeak-squeak-squeak. “Fred? Ed? Let us through!”
“Can’t, Ms Sutton. Mumma said we need to start putting out the cones for her parade.”
Squeak-squeak-squeak. Janie wound down her window too. “The parade is tomorrow afternoon, you goose!”
Fred—or was it Ed?—blanched. “But Mumma—”
“Let ’em through!” Carleen and Mercy stood outside Bear’s, holding one another up.
“Thanks, Carleen!” called Sable.
Carleen lifted a fresh bottle of Pumpkin Spice liqueur in salute.
Janie shot Sable a grin. “What happens during the Pumpkin Spice Festival stays—Nah, who am I kidding? Whatever happens today will go down in town folklore for ever.”
The McGlinty boy hopped to it, moving traffic cones so that the VW could sneak through. And they were off once more. Heading towards the Radiance Reserve.
* * *
It was stop start traffic as they hit the path leading into Reserve. Over the tops of the trees Sable could see the tip of the Ferris wheel turning over, and she thought she could even hear the fairground music. And where the day before there had been acres of fresh green grass, there was now row upon row of sleek European sports cars that would look more at home in Monte Carlo, along with dented old Datsuns with their owners shining them up with pride, and more FJ Holdens than she could count.
Spying a gap in the low wooden fence lining the path, Janie hooked left, bumped over the small gutter and hit the grass.
Gripping the window frame, Sable said, “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Yep,” Janie insisted, eyes scanning the crowd as she bumped over the grassy ground. “I helped create the mud map for every car coming today. Rafe has me on the payroll as Bossy Little Sister.”
Someone official-looking suddenly jumped in their way, holding a glowing arrow. Waving madly that they head off to the left. Janie rolled her eyes, but did as she was told, and they soon found themselves in a sea of Beetles and Kombi vans, all splashed in bright, hippy colours and motifs.
Janie parked, and they both hopped out of the car.
Sable strained to see Rafe through the streams of cars and the burgeoning crowd. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Standing on tiptoes made no difference. But what if...?
She walked around the car, pressed her hands into the bonnet. “Think it’ll hold me?”
Janie grinned. “Never know till you try.”
Sable kneed her way up onto the bonnet, pausing for a second when it made a light crumpling sound. If the thing buckled, she did know someone who could fix it.
She redistributed her weight and slowly stood atop the curved roof of the old Beetle. And wondered what the hell she’d been thinking.
Rafe. She was thinking about Rafe.
Eagle eyes on high alert she scanned the crowd. Looking for dark curls. Broad shoulders. Sending out sensory feelers for a man of strength and goodness. A great big beautiful forgiving heart. And hotness that surpassed all hotness.
There! By the big rigs. Dark chambray shirt and jeans while everyone around him was rugged up in scarves and beanies. All that glorious inner heat keeping him toasty warm.
Sable shivered, wrapping the leather jacket around her T-shirt. Wishing she could wrap herself around him. Hoping, if she hadn’t screwed everything up so badly in her effort to do right, she might yet get that chance.
He was distracted, phone to his ear. Other hand on his hip. Frowning off into the distance.
Sable’s next breath in was a shaky one.
“Hey!” called Janie from way down below.
Sable didn’t dare look. She couldn’t take her eyes off Rafe lest she lose him. Again.
“I found her! She’s here! With the Kombi vans.”
“You talking to Rafe?” Sable asked.
Janie gave her a thumbs-up.
In the distance, Rafe spun on his heel, his gaze glancing off the cars in between them and the growing groups of people who were now turned her way, pointing at the crazy lady standing atop the car, as if expecting some kind of announcement. Or catastrophe.
Rafe’s hand flew out to the side as he shrugged. Sable imagined she could see his frown deepening. Oh, how she loved that brooding frown. Proof how seriously he took himself, and his place in the world. How deeply the man felt.
“Tell him to look up,” Sable said.
“Look up!” said Janie.
Rafe did just that. Stilling the moment his eyes found hers.
“Give me the phone,” Sable said, carefully crouching down and holding out her hand.
Janie reached up and slapped the mobile into her palm.
The phone was warm when it reached her ear. Or maybe her ear was warm already. She felt hot all over. Feverish. But determined.
She had no plan of what she ought to say. In fact her entire future felt blank. Beautifully so. No plans, wants, wishes, dreams, hopes, regrets or fears bar what she might do in the next minute. Bar convincing Rafe to give her another chance.
“Rafe,” she said into the phone, her voice little more than a breath.
His voice came to her, deep and dubious. “I thought you’d gone.”
“Still here. Can we talk?”
“Kinda busy right now.”
Sable blinked and the hundreds of cars still streaming into the park came back into focus.
“Right. Of course,” she said. “Yeah. Me too.”
His laughter came through the phone all tinny and faraway. But she could feel him thinking. Considering. Weighing up what was more important.
And the sense that she had pulled away, right to the very outer reaches of the invisible rubber band that had always held them together, softened, just a little.
“What the hell are you doing on top of the car, Sutton?”
“Not just any car. My car. The one you made me. With your own bare hands. Because you were smitten with me. Even back then. Even when you kept telling yourself you couldn’t be. When you were so convinced you—that wild Thorne kid—didn’t know how to be happy.”
“Sable—”
“I had to see you and it felt like the quickest way.”
She heard him breathe in deep. Saw him, even at a distance, do the same. Then his head dropped, his hand went back to his hip.
She waited. The whole world waited. Trapped between breaths. Between heartbeats. Then he lifted his head.
“Sable,” he said, only this time his voice was a rough, sexy, surrender.
The urge to go to him, Hollywood style, leaping from car rooftop to car rooftop, was huge.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, his voice a low growl.
She felt it in her spine. Her veins. The tips of every hair on her body.
She teetered but stayed upright. “You can’t possibly know what I’m thinking.”
“I can. And I do.”
Yeah, she thought, doing a little of her own deep breathing. He really could. He really did.
Her heart trembled, her knees shook, as she said, “So what am I thinking?”
He ran a hand over his mouth. Then looked at her. Right at her. She felt it, like an arrow through the heart, even from so far away. “You’re thinking that maybe you were a little hasty yesterday, pulling the rug out from under us.”
“Really? What else?”
“You’re thinking you didn’t give my plan, my request, proper consideration.”
Sable sighed. “Then tell me. Tell me what you think I should do.”
“Stay,” he said as he took off, his long legs eating up the ground between them. “Don’t move.”
“But you�
�re busy.”
“Story of my life. Though clearly that word takes on less meaning when you’re in the picture.”
“You’re welcome?”
Another laugh. Another skitter of sensation down her spine. This one scattered all the way to the ends of her fingers and toes. She shuffled her feet a little wider in case her knees gave way, only to feel the roof of the car strain.
She wobbled. Then the car wobbled back. Her foot slipping an inch.
“Rafe?”
He must have heard the panic in her voice as he began to run. Towards her. In slow motion.
Well, not in slow motion, but that was how it felt. As if he were now the one pulling out the Hollywood stops. Only she couldn’t run towards him too, as she was stuck on top of a car, in slippery city-girl boots.
One wrong move and the car would go full Herbie and send her flying.
And then there he was in all his dark-curled, broad-shouldered, unshaven glory. His perma-frown in place, the phone still at his ear.
She made to crouch, to go to him, only to be met with a creak. And a groan. The ground seemed to swell and keel. And it suddenly felt a longer way down than it had been up.
She froze, knees bent, one hand out to balance, the other holding Janie’s phone to her ear.
“Sable,” Rafe’s voice murmured in her ear a split second before she heard it in person.
“Hi,” she said into the phone, to him.
“Everything okay up there?”
“Yep. I’m fine.”
“Meaning you’re in straight-out panic mode, right?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He put his phone in his back pocket and held out a hand.
She tossed him Janie’s phone. He looked at it, passed it on to his sister and gave her a look that sent her off in the direction from whence he’d come. Chatting to the car owners, directing, taking over. Bossy Little Sister in action.
Rafe climbed onto the car as if it were nothing. A mountain goat. Or a man who knew his way around the load-bearing walls of a car chassis.
When he reached the roof he took her around the waist and drew her to her knees, then her backside. Weight distributed over the windscreen frame, she sat, legs sliding down the window. While he uncurled his long self beside her.
“I thought you’d gone,” he said, looking down at his hands, playing with a blade of grass he must have nabbed along the way.
The constant movement of his hands was so familiar, she near choked on the feelings spilling through her. “I thought about it.”
“Couldn’t get a bus ticket?” he asked, glancing her way.
She nodded. Slowly. Mesmerised by the emotion in his eyes. The heat. The hope.
That hope was everything. Her touchstone. Her true north. The hope that she’d finally, truly found her way back to him.
It was enough for Sable to stop prevaricating and leap. Figuratively. For she was clutching every muscle in case the entire car deflated underneath them.
“Rafe.” She swallowed. Watched his dark gaze follow the small movements in her face. “When you asked me to stay the night of the dinner party, I know you said you wanted it to be a ‘no-strings’ thing, but the thing is...”
She dragged her eyes from his before she found herself lost in his eyes. “The thing is, I’ve spent so much of my life on the run. First with Mercy, dragging me from town to town. Then from my own shadow as I struggled to figure out where I fit every time we stopped. Then you came along and for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to stand still. To simply be. It was a heady thing. Magical really. Overwhelming. So much so I ran from you too.”
She glanced up at Rafe to find his eyes on her. Gaze full, dark with emotion. Then his hand slid slowly around her back, hooked her around the middle and drew her in. His chin landing on top of her downcast head.
It was so sweet, so tender, her throat threatened to close up. But she had more to say.
“I came here with a plan,” she said. “But a little voice kept telling me that it was an excuse. That I was still running away. From LA, sure, all those opinions of people I’d never met. But mostly from the anger I felt at myself for all those lost years. And when I found out, yesterday, that I wasn’t pregnant, it felt like a slap from the universe.”
Sable scratched at a loose thread in Rafe’s jeans. Before her hand landed on his knee. He took her fingers in his, turned them over, entwined them together.
“I promise you weren’t the only one.”
She slid her head out from under his, shook her hair from her face and looked back at him.
“I was caught up in the romance of it all. Your return, the feelings still between us, the notion of a ready-made family. When you told me it didn’t take... I’m so sorry, Sable.”
He lifted his hand, ran his thumb along her cheek, gathering a tear she hadn’t even felt drop.
“Do you know how rare it is to fall the first time you try?” she asked.
“I’m thinking, pretty rare.”
“Even the healthiest people in the healthiest relationships can struggle. So much comes down to luck and timing.”
“I can imagine.”
“And...” She stopped. Swallowed. “And the thing is, I don’t want to stop trying. With you. For as long as you’ll let me. And if it never takes, if it’s not meant to be, then...we can find another way. Or not. We can take it as it comes. I can handle that. I can handle anything, so long as we do it together. For the truth is, in coming back here I was running. But I was always running back to you.”
Then there was nothing—no colour, no sound, no people, no light, not one thing in the entire universe bar Rafe. The glint in his dark eyes. The way his fingers gripped hers. The way his eyes drank her in, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
He lifted his hand, this time sliding it behind her neck, cupping her, owning her. His words were a blur amongst the sensations taking her over at his nearness, his touch, the rumble of his voice, the heat of him. “Then stay, Sutton. Be with me. No rules, no promises, no transactions. Because you want to. And because you know that I want you to, too. Stay. For ever.”
Sable threw herself into Rafe’s arms. He rocked back as he caught her, the car rocking beneath them too. Sable scrambled to find purchase, the heels of her boots scraping against the windscreen.
“I’ve got you,” Rafe murmured into her hair. “I’ve got you.”
And the words hit so deep, she could have sobbed till she was nothing but a husk.
“Well, I’ve got you too,” she said when she could finally find her words. Holding onto his shoulders, she leaned back. Heart fierce, throat tight, filled with such certainty she barely recognised herself. And yet felt more fully herself than she had in years.
“I love you, Rafe,” she said, the words she’d held back for fear she’d made it impossible to ever hear them back falling from her lips with ease. “I always have. Being away from you, I was only ever half of myself. And I thought that was enough. But now... I’m back. And I love you. And it’s everything. No matter our luck. No matter our timing. No matter where we live. No matter if we are blessed with a baby. Or not.”
When she stopped to take a breath, Rafe pressed her hair away from her face, and held her cheeks and looked deep into her eyes. His voice gruff as he said, “Ditto.”
Man of few words, her guy, but the words he said, he meant.
She pressed forward and kissed him. Lips to lips. Eyes slammed shut. A promise. And a thank you. Everything she felt releasing on a rush of breath. A rush of realisation. Of admitting something she’d always known.
He pulled back. Said, “I wasn’t done.”
“Oh. Right. What else is there to say?”
Rafe laughed, the move lighting up his whole face. “Just that I love you too. Loved you since the first moment I saw you. Loved
you more every day you let me near. I loved you when I first kissed you. Loved you even when it pained me to give you time—to grow up, to be sure that you really wanted a lug like me. I loved you as you glared at people who dared hold their bags tighter when I walked by. When you stood up for me against my father. When you took to Janie like a sister. I loved you even as I lost you. Twice.”
Sable felt the tear fall that time. And the next. For she’d been more than forgiven. She’d been seen. Understood. And given the space to figure out what Rafe had known from day one.
That she was his and he was hers and they were more together than they could ever be apart.
Sable was ready, aching, by the time his lips met hers.
It was a slow-burn kind of kiss. The kind that lit a fuse, trickling deep, burning heat through every part of her until she was alight. Melting. Desperate for the heat to be quenched.
She threw her leg over his, gripped his glorious hair, moaned into his mouth—
A cheer woke her from the dream, to find it wasn’t a dream.
Sable’s eyes snapped open to find herself sitting on top of a dented black VW, in the small alpine town of Radiance, Victoria, surrounded by strangers—cheering strangers—and classic cars as far as the eye could see. The scent of wet leaves and damp dirt and petrol filled the air. The scent of home.
“We have an audience,” she murmured.
Rafe glanced out over the crowd, looking far less discombobulated than she felt. Until he ran a hand through his hair, a shaky hand. Big, strong and in demand, he was a quiet small-town boy at heart. One who needed few and loved fiercely. It made her smile.
Till he said, “You stood on top of a car, waving me down like an idiot. What did you think would happen?”
She thumped him on the arm. Then flapped her hand towards the crowd. “I didn’t think that would happen.”
Only it didn’t make her stomach churn the way it had when people stared at her in LA. Or when she walked through town. Because she knew she had nothing to be ashamed of.
Then, seeing his gaze was on her mouth, hungry and intense, she sank back into another kiss. A warm kiss. Lingering. Full of promise. And forgiveness. And lots of lovely, fresh, blooming new feelings.