by Nicola Marsh
‘Listen to yourself.’ He sneered, his upper lip curled in derision as he folded his arms in a classic defensive posture. ‘I didn’t care for it,’ he mimicked, shaking his head. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
Hope knew exactly who she was: a foolish woman who’d fallen for the wrong guy. A woman so damn terrified of telling him the truth because he could turn out to be as untrustworthy as every single person in her past. A woman hurting so badly her throat seized with the effort of withholding her feelings for him.
He started pacing and she couldn’t help but ogle the flexing of his back muscles rippling beneath that splendid expanse of tanned skin. ‘You contact my foreman to get my address. You turn up here like a stalker when I obviously didn’t want to see you. Then you act like you’ve stepped in dog shit because my house isn’t good enough for you?’
He marched into the bedroom with a resounding ‘Fuck,’ followed by a wardrobe door slamming.
She should be happy: objective achieved. She’d pushed him away before he could wangle his way any closer, tempting her to blurt out the truth. But happiness was a far cry from the pain making her chest ache.
When he stomped back into the lounge she lamented the loss of all that beautiful skin. He’d tugged on jeans in a hurry, leaving the top button undone, and shrugged into a white T-shirt that highlighted the muscular chest beneath. ‘I want you to leave.’
Yeah, she’d got what she wanted all right. She disgusted him so much he couldn’t wait to see the back of her. But her feet couldn’t move. She willed them to but they remained rooted to the spot as she struggled not to blab the truth.
‘I said leave. We’re over.’
He almost yelled the last part and she flinched. Not from the cadence of his voice but from hearing the finality of those two words. Words she’d provoked him into saying but words that tore her apart regardless.
‘Goodbye, Logan.’
He couldn’t meet her eyes and stared at the TV relic in the corner. Stupidly, she wished he’d look her in the eyes so she might glimpse something, anything that proved he felt half of what she was feeling for him.
She wished he’d question her on her irrational behaviour, that he’d push for answers. Because she loved him she might’ve told him the truth about everything.
Instead, he backed up a few steps and opened the front door. Only then did he meet her gaze, defiant and challenging. But behind the defiance she glimpsed hurt. A world of pain she knew too well.
She understood pain. She’d channelled hers into being a productive, proud human being who’d broken free of the disappointments of her past. Yet a flawed one, because by falling for Logan she’d screwed up in a big way.
She couldn’t trust him with the truth; she couldn’t trust him, period. And while that choice was all on her it left her alone, devastated and yearning for something she could never have: a man to love.
So she did what had to be done.
She walked out the door without looking back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LOGAN SLUNK INTO the comedy club and found a seat in the darkest corner. The buzz of happy voices filled the air, mingling with the soft pop playing in the background. There were plenty of empty seats scattered around the periphery of the small room. He’d guess his dad wasn’t as popular after all these years as he used to think he was.
Stephen had never known that Logan had scoured the newspapers and online sites for any snippet in relation to his dad. There hadn’t been a lot in the early days but as Stephen Holmes had become better known on the comedy circuit the mentions had increased. Logan had systematically printed out those articles, no matter how innocuous, and pasted them into a scrapbook.
Which he’d burned after his mum’s funeral.
Stephen had been dead to him; why keep a physical reminder of the man who had consistently let him down his entire childhood?
He shouldn’t be here. Not when disappointment still clogged his chest an hour after he’d ended things with Hope.
She didn’t get it. Didn’t get him. She’d taken one look at his house and virtually accused him of lying about his wealth. Fuck. Just because he didn’t flaunt his money she’d labelled him a douche, or something akin to it.
If she’d given him a chance to explain, he might’ve taken it. He might’ve opened up about how the humble weatherboard in Footscray was the only place he felt truly at home. That he’d purchased it after saving for two years on his meagre apprentice’s wage. That he purposefully kept it simple because it reminded him of where he’d come from.
He might not have been back to Rally-Doo since he’d packed his bags after his mum’s funeral and headed down to Melbourne, but every time he set foot in his place he felt like he’d come home again.
He hadn’t picked Hope for a snob. So the fact she’d misjudged him so badly rankled and he’d overreacted.
The sex had been phenomenal as usual but there’d been something more this time...a deeper connection that had terrified yet exhilarated. He couldn’t stick around in Melbourne for her, and he certainly wouldn’t have her waiting around for whenever he lobbed into town, but while he’d showered he’d actually contemplated various scenarios as to how they could make this work.
Then she’d looked down her snooty nose at his place, he’d exploded and that had been the end of that.
He should be glad. They’d had a clean break. No emotional declarations, no drawn-out goodbyes. He hated fuss.
But he wasn’t glad. The hollow ache in his chest testified to that. He felt empty, like the day he’d discovered his mum dead on the kitchen floor, as if the only good thing in his life had been wrenched away.
A waitress approached and he shook his head. He didn’t want a drink. He wanted to confront the demons of his past and finally get some closure. Having this unresolved tension with his dad, combined with the guilt that he wouldn’t have known about Stephen’s cancer until after he’d died, didn’t sit well. He would meet with his father and have the conversation they should’ve had over a decade ago.
Stephen had returned his call, leaving a message about potentially meeting up next week.
Logan hadn’t been able to wait that long.
He preferred the element of surprise and turning up to one of his dad’s shows for the first time, with the intention of confronting him afterwards, would have to do.
A few more patrons filtered in as show time grew closer. The eclectic crowd, ranging from old hippies to young yuppies, made him feel out of place. He preferred a simple pub to this faux trendy club with its black tables, black carpet and silver-draped walls, the small stage taking pride of place front and centre featuring the clichéd crimson velvet curtain drawn shut.
It was stupid to feel this nervous as the lights dimmed. Logan would soon see his father for the first time in twelve years and his throat tightened. His heart pounded in time with the introductory music blaring through speakers around the room and his mouth grew dry.
The curtains drew back ridiculously slowly as Logan wiped his sweaty palms down the front of his jeans. Now that the moment had arrived, he wanted to make a run for it.
Then his father stepped forward to the microphone stand and Logan held his breath. His chest caved in on itself, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Tears stung his eyes and he blinked rapidly, willing the urge to hyperventilate away.
This was crazy, his over-the-top reaction. Grown men didn’t feel so weak.
Then his father grinned, catapulting Logan straight back to his fifth birthday, when his dad had presented him with a massive hardback dinosaur book and smiled at him just like that.
Rage made his hand shake as he dashed it across his eyes. This man had stolen so much from him. What could they possibly say to each other now that would erase the pain of the past?
But Logan had never been a quitter so he sat through
his dad’s show.
With every joke, every anecdote, his anger faded until he found his mouth reluctantly quirking into a semi-smile. Stephen was good. He commanded the room and held the audience captive. He delivered punch lines with impeccable timing. He related everyday incidents and made them funny. But what captured Logan’s attention the most was his dad’s self-deprecation—because he had the same sense of humour.
When the show wound down and Stephen gave a mock bow to signal the end, Logan couldn’t believe an hour had passed. Raucous applause filled the room and he found himself clapping too. As waitresses moved through the room, taking drink orders before the next act, Logan knew the time had come.
Time to confront his father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE FIRST THING that caught Hope’s eye as she entered her apartment was the letter propped against the fruit bowl. Stupid, how her parents still favoured snail mail in this age of cyber speed. She’d tried guiding them towards video-conferencing, even simple calling, but they stuck to their fancy embossed stationery to connect with their only child thousands of miles away.
Now probably wasn’t the right time to read the letter, considering she’d cried all the way home from Logan’s after her sabotage and his curt dismissal of their short-lived relationship, but she needed comforting and a tenuous connection to her old home might provide that.
She slipped off her shoes, picked up the letter she’d left there since yesterday and curled up on the sofa. Sticking her finger beneath the flap, she wiggled it a little, then yanked, tearing open the envelope. As she slid the thick sheets of paper out, the faintest waft of lavender tickled her nose. Her mother’s signature perfume. And just like that tears stung her eyes again.
Blinking, she unfolded the sheets, three in total, and started reading. Her parents’ letters were always the same. Her mum wrote the first page, her dad the second and her mum finished off the third. They gave her mundane updates of their life in an English country manor: the housekeeper’s grandson had started walking early at ten months of age; the gardener’s wife had been caught flirting with the mayor at the pub; winter promised to come early this year.
These trivialities usually annoyed her but Hope found herself re-reading the letter, deriving some comfort from the familiarity of it all. Some things never changed and her parents’ reliance on the traditional made her feel warm and fuzzy this time rather than intolerant and bored.
Interesting that she’d urged Logan to confront his dad when she hadn’t visited her parents in five years. At her parents’ continual insistence she visit, she’d given the excuse that she was establishing a business and her students relied on her, and asked them why they couldn’t visit her. They begged off flying the twenty-four hours from London to Melbourne, yet would happily fly first class around the world on a whim.
She’d taken it as yet another sign they didn’t give a fig about her, that they never had. But their letters arrived monthly like clockwork and they obviously read her emails, by their written responses. They weren’t demonstrative and a touch of approval on her head as a child had been the most she’d been able to hope for, maybe a hug to accompany the usual air-kiss on her birthday. It made her wonder, was she emotionally repressed too?
She didn’t think so. She wouldn’t have responded to Logan so openly and wholeheartedly if she were. But there was a world of difference between physical openness and acknowledging emotions.
She’d been more than happy to have sex with Logan but when she’d had the opportunity to explain herself an hour ago she’d clammed up and walked away without a backward glance. She could blame her parents’ lies, Willem’s too, and Harry’s ultimate betrayal, but emotional obtuseness was in her DNA.
They’d all changed her in a way, but she’d been more optimistic than her parents...until Willem. He’d been the one really to change her. To shatter her faith in love and following her heart, then to devastate her completely by revealing the truth of her parents’ duplicity when she hadn’t given him what he wanted. She hated him for it.
With her resolve to stay away from Logan wavering, this would be a good time to remind herself of exactly why she couldn’t trust those she let into her life.
Sighing, she stood and stretched out the kinks in her back, before padding into the bedroom to get her memory box, her one concession to sentimentality. She hadn’t looked at it in years but kept it as a reminder of who she’d been and how far she’d come. The trusting, naïve young woman had morphed into an independent cynic. She should be proud of how well she’d protected her heart.
So what had gone wrong with Logan?
Standing on tiptoe, she tapped the top shelf of her wardrobe, encountering the long, flat box tucked away beneath a stack of jumpers. She gripped it and slid it forward carefully until she could grab it with both hands. A little larger and longer than a shoebox, it hardly weighed a thing. Her keepsakes were scarce but meaningful.
Plopping down in the middle of her bed, she jiggled the lid of the box until it gave, revealing reminders of a time gone by. A programme from a play in Hyde Park; a menu from high tea at a posh London hotel; a matchbook from an overnight stay at a luxurious B&B in Bath.
Willem had been extravagant, wooing her with high-end dates and expensive gifts, inveigling himself into her life as if he’d been born to it. But he hadn’t been. He’d used her. He’d duped her into believing their three-month relationship had been real, only for her to discover his potent feelings and unwavering attention had been a sham. An elaborate lie perpetuated by an unscrupulous freelance journalist who’d gone to any lengths in order to get the story he wanted: in her case, an exclusive interview with her parents, the reclusive and wealthiest family in Yorkshire.
He’d wanted a story and hadn’t cared how low he had to stoop to get it, unrepentant that he’d hurt her in the process. He hadn’t cared about her and he certainly hadn’t loved her as he’d professed two weeks into their whirlwind romance. Despite watching people suck up to her parents because of their money her entire childhood, she’d fallen for a swindler. A stupid, gullible fool, taken in by smooth words, a charming smile and a man who’d appeared to be her equal in every way.
When she’d lashed out, he’d served up the truth about her trust fund as a parting gift. She hadn’t wanted to believe him and had confronted her parents, demanding answers. To her horror, they hadn’t baulked or shirked from the truth. Hell, they hadn’t even apologised. In their eyes, they’d been entirely justified in lying to her in order to bend her to their will.
‘It’s for your own good, dear,’ her dad had had the audacity to say, while her mum had looked on, dry-eyed, as Hope had crumpled in the face of their deception.
A month later Harry had recorded her songs and passed them off as his own to the world, cementing what she already knew.
Never trust anybody, ever.
She knew the screw-ups in her past were the reason she had pushed Logan away earlier. Seeing the overt poverty of his house had set off something inside her; the thought he might have fooled her too, that everything they’d shared to date might be based on a lie, had seemed too unbearable to contemplate.
But what would Logan hope to gain by pretending to be a rich guy? He’d made no moves to gain access to her fortune. He didn’t crave a cushy lifestyle. He was a man’s man who enjoyed the simple pleasures. He’d appeared uncomfortable when she’d taken him to the State Library and the Langham. He’d been more at home at the football and in his favourite pub.
It didn’t seem like a ruse but then, she’d been duped before.
‘Screw this,’ she muttered, slamming the lid back on the box. Reminiscing about the past wasn’t helping her gain clarity about her future.
As she shoved the box back in its spot, she realised something. She had no keepsakes from her time with Logan. Nothing but memories.
It saddened her. She’d have to make d
o with the studio, and remembering him every time she recorded a song.
She’d never forget him.
That would have to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AS LOGAN WOUND his way through the club’s patrons, he had plenty of time to second-guess his decision.
But he’d come this far; he had to go through with it.
A burly bouncer stopped him from slipping backstage so he gave his name and asked to see Stephen Holmes. The bouncer eyed him with suspicion before heading off, reappearing a few moments later and beckoning him to follow.
The air backstage smelled musty, making his lungs seize. Though that probably had more to do with stopping short when the bouncer pointed to a red door at the end of the corridor.
‘Thanks,’ he said, earning a grunt from the bouncer as he headed back to the stage door.
Logan glared at the damn crimson door, all too aware that what lay behind it was worse than anything he’d ever confronted before. He had no idea how long he stood in that dimly lit corridor but eventually he willed his feet to move and he trudged the remaining steps towards the door. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his cheeks as his fingers curled into a fist, ready to knock. But his arm rose halfway before the door opened and his father smiled that smile. The one he’d seen on stage. The one that made him feel five fucking years old, filled with hope and joy to have this man in his life.
His dad.
What a crock of shit.
Stephen Holmes didn’t deserve the title and never would.
‘Good to see you, Son.’ Stephen held the door wider, nothing but guileless expectation on his face. He’d aged gracefully, with creases fanning from the corners of his eyes, grooves bracketing his mouth and greying at the temples the only signs of him being fifty-something.
He wore a stylish black open-necked shirt and black denim with cowboy boots, adding to his agelessness. But when Logan met his gaze, he glimpsed the same mix of emotions rioting through him—fear, regret, sorrow—and saw that what his father must’ve recently gone through with the cancer scare had aged him.
