She hissed and turned her face further away and he was bereft she’d found him here, but he might lose her here for a second time.
“You’re not a hermit squatter any more. I’m not sure how to feel about that. You were intimidating then; now that you’re this, I don’t know how to deal with you.”
That she’d come here, that they both had tonight, was a kind of symbiotic reaching for each other beyond his comprehension. Like she was the moon and he was the tide, and they were hooked to each other’s inevitable highs and lows. That she was thinking about dealing with him at all, it shook him greater than the surprise of her being here—he could almost make a home on that alone.
“You always knew how to manage me. Support me in all the ways I needed and was too arrogant to ask for. I’m not sure I’ll ever be exactly normal. In fact, that’s not the idea.” He’d be the black cockatoo flying with the seabirds. “The idea is to do something extraordinary.”
“I heard.”
What Drum heard was frustration. “I’m sorry about the car, about shanghaiing you. I’m sorry about the way I left you and how that hurt, but there was no guarantee I’d make it back, or have anything to offer you if I did, and I couldn’t tie you to that.”
Foley was so still, so contained. She was the cold front that replaced the steamy heat of their encounter that morning. She was more lethal this way, because her feelings were crusted by frost and he couldn’t find his way to her usual prickly warmth.
She kept her eyes away, trained on the horizon. “How did you do it? How did you fight your way out of the cave, off the cliff?”
He leaned forward so he could see her lovely face in profile. “I never stopped thinking about you, Foley. Wanting to be a different man, a better one. Wanting to be worthy of you. I needed a lesson in absolutes, in the value of the spaces between black and white, before I knew what to do about it.”
She grunted in annoyance, a hand coming off the railing to wave the comment away. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s so sensible it’s my new rule.” Her hand went to her side. He could reach for it. They’d started with a handshake when all they were to each other was a problem. “I bought a house. Not far, it’s a renovator’s delight. It’s called Sereno. I think you’d like it.”
“You bought the Beeton house.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “You.”
The most valuable thing in that house was hanging off a bent nail that held a strip of doorframe in place. His mother’s engagement ring. He hoped Foley would like that too, if he could earn the chance to show it to her. Why else had he kept it, carried it, keeping it safe from sand traps, teenage gangs and holes in his pockets, if not to bring it back to her?
“I don’t recognise you.”
If he could get her to look at him, just once, she might. “Yes you do. I’m not so different. Better clothes, better hair. I’m still type A. Still aggressive, moody and difficult, stubborn and set in my ways.”
She shook her head. “How did you get the scar?”
He put his hand to his cheek. “I fell. Out there on the ledge, the night I lost you.” It’d seemed a small price to pay for the pain he’d caused her.
She snatched a breath and gripped the railing with both hands again. A quarter turn of her face in his direction. “You might’ve gone over the edge.”
If he moved his hand, not a lot, an adjustment of its placement on the circular steel, he could touch her in a way she might accept. “I was already over the edge about you and I’d just sent you away. I could barely walk from the shock of it.” He moved his hand but before they connected, she took hers away.
“You’ve been missing for half a year. I got on with my life.”
“You did brilliantly. And I’m so pleased for you.” Was she going to tell him there was someone else? He deserved that pain. But if there was someone else and she loved them more, why was she here? “I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere, unless it’s to follow you.” He needed her eyes to read her soul. “The house needs work. I need work. I need you.”
She slammed her hand on the railing. “That’s insane. You’re a stranger to me.”
“More insane than me living in a cave; than us falling for each other?”
“I can’t trust you. I can’t be with you.”
“Then I’m homeless again, because nowhere I live will ever be a home without you.”
A shudder tripped through her and she lowered her chin so her eyes were on her feet. “I hate you for saying that.”
“You don’t hate me.” She’d have walked away. She’d have torn into him. She’d have made it perfectly clear there was no whiter shade of hope to depend on.
“It might go better for you if you didn’t tell me what to do.” She lifted her face but still angled away from him. “I’m not over you showing up with a car and buying my favourite house yet. I’m not over you full stop and that’s a problem, because I fell in love with a man who lived in a cave and was a terrible dresser. He had no money and shocking secrets. He took me on the worst dates, made me ride the bus for God’s sake, and the absolute shambles of the whole things is, I want that man back because I fitted with him despite how odd that was, how damaged he sometimes seemed, and what a pain in the side he was.”
She could’ve felled him effectively with a clump of seaweed. There was no density to his muscles, no air in his lungs. He was a lump of barely animated meat, but he had hope and it wasn’t flimsy, it was fine, strong silk wrapped around his wrists, connecting him to her.
“But you, with your new house and your big charity deal, you’re altogether different and I don’t know if I can fit with you. If I’d even want to.”
He was going to shake apart if she didn’t look at him. “I want you to live in that house with me. You’re not over me. Look at me, Foley. Oh God, please look at me.”
She turned her head. But her eyes were down.
“Let me show you who I am.” He unbuttoned his shirt. Shit, so many buttons. Her eyes came up as he pulled the fabric away from his side. She gasped when she saw it. Blue on blue, on sand. Four distinct puzzle pieces formed around an empty centre shaped like an F. Shaped like the day he acknowledged he’d fallen in love with her, in the wind, when she’d challenged him, when he’d seen her vitality and her tenacity, and they’d touched him to his core.
She turned. Her hand shot out and she traced the tattoo, fingers warm and delightfully curious. “You have the colours, the shape exactly right.” Her eyes came up to his face and locked on. “You saw this once.”
“I saw every part of you that night and every part I loved and memorised. I never stopped thinking about you, worrying about you, wanting you.”
She pulled her hand away as if it pained to touch him, but they were tethered now by anticipation and promise, by trial and the chance to build something triumphant.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t …” It wasn’t an idle protest; all her doubts brimmed in her eyes.
“We fit, Foley. We might never have met. We should never have fallen for each other, but against everything sensible, we fit, and I’ll do anything to help you see that, to win your trust again.”
“How can I love you and be wary of you at the same time?”
“How can you not? I’ve made you that way.”
“We’d need to do something about that. We’d need a more,” her hands flapped as she searched for the word. “I don’t know—traditional courtship. I’m not sure what normal for us would mean.”
It meant the chance to make remake his life, to make a home, to be extraordinary together. “It’s running on the beach. It’s dodging storms. It’s eating together, and talking and sleeping together.” It was everything they’d already tried out and so much more. “It would be love.”
She took a shuddering breath. “You never said you loved me until today, and you put me in a mood not to listen.”
She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t think it was love binding them through all the thin
gs that kept them separated. “I’ll make a mantra of it and say it obsessively. I love you, I love you, I love you. However you need me to, wherever you need me to.”
“And if I wanted you simply for a friend?”
Oh no, that wasn’t happening. “Then I lied.”
There was nothing accidental about the arm that hauled her up on her toes so that she crashed into him, or the test kiss he gave her to gauge her acceptance, or the way her arms wound around him and her breathing shorted.
She held his face, thumb rubbing over the scar on his cheekbone. “You made a puzzle for me.”
She’d made a new life for him. “No life I make for myself can be truly whole if you’re not in it.”
And he’d dedicate himself to making sure she felt that, knew it, never had occasion to fear it, for as long as the moon ran the tides and the waves crashed on rock, and there were edges to fear, explore and conquer.
The next kiss was the wonder drug, a cautious mix of tender desperation and unchecked lust. It was a blockbuster. A category killer. Close and deep. Starved and ecstatic. It was made to change perceptions, neutralise opposition, swamp the market and save lives.
Its active ingredient was all Foley, and its efficacy was as close to forever as two less ordinary lovers would ever have.
Thanks for reading Inconsolable, I hope you enjoyed it.
If you’d like to know more about me, my books, or to connect with me online, you can visit my webpage ainsliepaton.com.au follow me on twitter @AinsliePaton or like my Facebook page.
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If you liked this book, you might like my other books: Insecure, Floored, Detained, Grease Monkey Jive or Hooked on a Feeling.
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ISBN: 9780857992451
Title: Inconsolable
Copyright © 2015 by Ainslie Paton
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Inconsolable Page 33
