All We Have

by Len Webster

  She shook her head. “No, I’m fine. Thank you for grabbing everything.”

  “Julian, don’t drop Ally’s things. Max isn’t here for you to blame him for your clumsiness. Ally, you don’t have anything valuable in your stuff, do you?” Stevie asked with concern in her voice.

  “Serge knows what’s what.” Ally entered the apartment and glanced over her shoulder to see Julian hold his hand out to her bodyguard.

  “Julian, be nice,” Stevie said and then closed the door. Then she led Ally into the kitchen and leant on the bench. “I’m not going to show you around since you’ve been here plenty of times before. It’s so good knowing that you don’t have to go back to Sydney. Julian is going to love having you here.”

  “Speaking of Julian, let me see that ring,” Ally insisted.

  Her roommate laughed and then held out her left hand to her. On her finger was a beautiful ring with a silver bird on it. It was simple. And it was for them.

  “I would have taken Julian for a diamonds kind of guy.”

  “He’s promised a wedding band with, I quote, ‘a billion diamonds on it.’ But I love this not-an-engagement ring. It has substance.” The smile on Stevie’s face was breathtaking. She had the happily ever after she’d thought she didn’t deserve.

  “So when are you getting married?” Ally curiously asked.

  Stevie glanced down at her ring and then back at Ally. “Un jour.”

  “Un jour?”

  “Someday.”

  Ally’s chest exploded with a pang of envy. She wanted what Stevie and Julian had. But ever since she met Robert Moors, no man she’d spoken to made sparks fly. She did go on a date with one of her brother’s best friends, Adam, last month, but she found herself comparing him to Rob. And that wasn’t fair. In the end, she had decided Adam would stay her friend. Dinner between them was nice and that was how she wanted to remember it as.

  “So, umm, Julian has a surprise for you,” Stevie said, pulling Ally out of her reminiscing.

  “A surprise?”

  Stevie chewed her bottom lip as she nodded. “He’s kind of in your bedroom right now.”

  “He’s … Oh.”

  “You know what? Julian and Serge might need help with your stuff. I’ll go see if they need help.” Stevie pushed off the bench and quickly made her way towards the front door.

  When she heard the door click shut, Ally breathed out, trying to regain a proper sequence of heartbeats in her chest. She hadn’t seen Rob for several months. Not since the night Clara and Noel had their goodbye dinner. He had dragged her out of the apartment to talk. He had ended up ripping out her heart and keeping it for himself.

  “I don’t know how I can stay away from you, Allison. But I have to. I can’t be with you. I don’t even know if I have feelings for you. I don’t even know what it is about you… I just want to be your friend.”

  Then a few weeks later, he had said that being friends was too hard over the phone. It was heartbreaking to hear. She had packed her bags to move to Melbourne, but the moment that call had ended, her clothes returned to her wardrobe. Out of courtesy, she had messaged him that Stevie had returned from England but she got no reply. At that moment, she knew she would never matter to Robert Moors.

  Not in the way that meant she mattered to him.

  And not in the way that meant she’d be his.

  “Had to get a fuckin’ IKEA bed,” Rob mumbled once he had put the white sheet over the mattress.

  The Fjell bed he had spent the last hour building was a nightmare. It appeared simple enough to build with a white frame and no storage drawers. The instructions were illustrations with dos and don’ts on how to build the Swedish bed. But after struggling to decipher the pictures, Rob went with his gut and built it the way he believed the manual was trying to tell him to. Stevie had already inserted the doona into the dark blue, flowered pattern cover. All Rob had to do next was put the bedding on and he was out of there.

  Rob picked up the doona and spread it over the bed. Once he was happy that it was flat and at the right length, he picked up the pillow and sat on her bed. With a sigh, he positioned the pillow where he believed Stevie had said to put it. The six pillows that would be on the bed were ridiculous. But he wasn’t one to argue with her. Not when she was dealing with the gash on his brother’s hand.

  Then he picked up the light blue European pillow and was about to put it against the headboard when he heard, “You’re the last person I expected on my mattress.”

  Rob stilled. He knew her voice anywhere. It’d been months since he last saw her. Weeks since her last message to him. He couldn’t deny he had been an asshole to her. He wanted more with her, but he couldn’t. That spark from their first kiss still played heavy on his mind and chest. But he was terrified of what would happen if he gave in to those urges, gave in to those wants and needs.

  Gave in to Allison O’Connor.

  Rob quickly dropped the pillow, scrambled off the bed, and then cleared his throat as he straightened his spine. “Ah … yeah … Julian needed my help to build your bed,” he explained poorly. His gaze shifted from the almost made bed to her.

  Allison’s ash-blonde hair was in waves. Her eyes bright with flecks of yellow and green, she wore black skinny jeans and a tight off-the-shoulder emerald top. A lump lodged in his throat as his eyes met her plump pink lips. The same pair he’d kissed seven months ago. The same pair he’d dreamt of. And the same pair that he had rejected by the Yarra.

  He had rather leave her than fall for her. Using his brother’s fiancée as an excuse, and for that, the guilt erupted in his chest. Rob had misled Allison from the very start. He had thought friends could work, but he had been wrong. Every message she sent only made him want her more. He wanted her to tell him every detail of her day in person rather than through text messages. Their supposed friendship had Rob wanting more. And in the month since she had messaged him about Stevie’s return, he wanted to know what she had been up to, about her day, if she was still lonely in Sydney. But he had gone and done the worst thing possible to hate him.

  He had never called or texted her back.

  A month later and here they were, in the same room. Rob, the pompous asshole. And Allison O’Connor: Beautiful. Stunning. Everything that made his reluctant heart go wild.

  “You’re shirtless,” she pointed out as she squinted at him.

  Rob glanced down to see that she was, in fact, right. He balled his fists, not thinking about the fact that they were alone once more. He was a man of control, and he didn’t want to experience what it was like without it. The one time he had, she had kissed him. Rob sucked in a deep breath of air. “My business shirt was restricting.”

  “That’s not all that’s restricting with you,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s good to see you.”

  Allison sounded sincere, genuine, and even hopeful. Her hazel eyes glimmered, and he mentally cursed. Why her? Why did she have such a pull on him? It’d be so easy to give in to her previous demands and be with her. Be something different to her. But for Rob, it was complicated. He had never wanted to admit to her that his coach, Ralph, had warned him that getting involved with the Sydney socialite would be bad for his image and his hopes of making the Olympic team and qualifying.

  “Yeah.” He sighed and then bent down to pick up his shirt. When he stood straight, he glanced over her bed and decided he’d finished his job. He had built the bed she’d sleep in tonight. And with that thought, satisfied he’d make his brother happy, Rob made his way towards the door.

  “Is that it?” she asked in a small voice, preventing him from leaving her bedroom, her hands finding the doorframe and blocking him. “That’s all I get out of you?”

  Rob stared at the cream-coloured carpet, not wanting to face her. “What am I supposed to say?” he asked exasperated.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  Then he lifted his chin to see that her hazel
eyes had glazed over. If he were a better man, he’d tell her the truth. He’d tell her how much he had missed her and wanted her. That he had needed her in the months that they had been apart. But he wasn’t a better man. He was the horrible kind.

  Somewhere, underneath it all, he had fallen in love with Allison O’Connor. Fallen in love with her broken smile. Fallen in love with her vulnerability. Fallen in love with the way she laughed. And he’d fallen in love with the way she opened up to him and trusted him. She didn’t deserve to be loved by him. He had told that to Julian months back in their father’s backyard. That he had fallen in love with someone he shouldn’t have. Someone like Allison.

  “Then I don’t know what to say, Allison.”

  Her bottom lip trembled. That wounded expression she had made the night he had told her that he was seeing someone had returned to her face, causing his heart to clench in that familiar pain.

  “Maybe, ‘Hi, Ally. It’s good to see you, too. Sorry, I’m an inconsiderate asshole.’ Or even, ‘I’m sorry I made you cry all those weeks ago and never called or texted.’”

  Rob’s hold on his shirt tightened as he looked her straight in the eye. “Can’t. Move aside, Allison.”

  “No! Tell me why it’s so easy for you not to care!”

  His nostrils flared as he slipped on his shirt and then buttoned it. “Because it is easy. You’re just a kid. And well … I don’t have feelings for you. You were vulnerable and I let you kiss me. I shouldn’t have and I regret it.”

  His heart obliterated as he watched her tears slowly drag themselves down her face. He wanted to brush them away, but he knew it would only complicate things for them. Allison dropped a hand from the frame and then stepped aside.

  “Then you just made ripping my heart out very easy, Robbie,” she said. The pain in her voice was so clear that he had winced.

  Robbie.

  Not Rob.

  Not Robert.

  Robbie.

  “Don’t you ever call me that again!” he spat out as he stormed past her and left the apartment. When he had slammed the front door closed behind him, he had screamed, “Motherfucker!” into the empty hallway.

  Once the steel elevator doors opened, Rob looked into the lobby to find Julian and Stevie by some boxes. They were talking, oblivious to what surrounded them. He watched as Julian tugged on Stevie’s hand and then wrapped his arms around her. Julian kissed the top of her head and the woman Rob had thought he’d end up with closed her eyes and rested her head on her fiancé’s chest. The jealousy enveloped him. He wanted that. He thought he had wanted it with Stevie. But the truth was that if circumstances were different, he’d want it with the woman he’d hurt plenty of times upstairs.

  He would never stop feeling guilty when it came to Allison. He’d hurt her so many times that he wasn’t sure what made him a good man anymore. The man his mother would be proud of was not the man he had been. With a sigh, he reached over and pushed the button for the sixth floor. Glancing over at his brother, he noticed that Julian was staring at him with an ‘are you okay?’ expression on his face. Rob only shook his head as the elevator doors closed.

  The ride back to Stevie and Allison’s apartment was excruciatingly long. Rob didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know why he was returning. When the doors opened, he took a hesitant step into the hallway and then another until he was face-to-face with apartment 6B’s front door. Rob clenched his fists so that his blunt nails dug into his palms. It wasn’t painful. It was to stall, to give him a few seconds to come up with something. Anything to rid him of his guilt. But Rob knew the truth was that he’d never banish it. It would always linger long after she would eventually walk away.

  Deep down, Rob knew he was shooting himself in the foot. He was in dangerous territory with no game plan. Once inside the apartment, he trod carefully towards her room, he thought of all the times he had wanted to confess. To tell her he didn’t care about what his coach had said. To tell her that if she’d give him a chance they could be together. And to tell her that the Olympics didn’t matter. But that would be a lie she’d see right through. The Olympics were his dream. The dream. And no one could ever come between him and Rio.

  No one did until Allison, slightly drunk and almost cake thrower, entered his life.

  With a deep breath, he entered her bedroom to find her sitting on her bed facing away from him. Rob wandered over to her and quietly sat down. He glanced down to see her twiddling her thumbs, and on instinct, he reached over and grasped her hand in his. Then he entwined his fingers with hers, feeling the immediate surge of warmth fill his chest. It was how he remembered. Her soft touch was one he’d missed and needed.

  Allison lightly squeezed his hand and then sighed. “I won’t ever call you that again. I’m sorry, Rob.”

  His chin dropped; his eyes now on his knees. The hurt in her shaky voice was horrible to hear. And it was worse knowing he had put it there. “I’m such an asshole to you, Allison. I’m so sorry.”

  She sniffed and Rob glanced up to see her wiping away her tears with a smile. The laugh that soon followed had him furrowing his brows at her.

  “You can call me Ally.”

  “I know,” he said and then twisted his body so that he faced her properly. “But I don’t really want to and I know that’s not fair to you.”

  “It’s not,” she agreed with a nod. “I won’t stop you from calling me Allison. You don’t have to pretend to be my friend or apologise for what you said earlier. It is what it is. We are what we are. I get it, Rob. You don’t have feelings for me. It’s okay.”

  I lied to you.

  I am lying to you.

  “Alli—”

  She shook her head and then pulled her hand from his. “Thank you for building my bed. I appreciate it. I wouldn’t be confident in Julian’s assembling skills.”

  The loud pings from his pocket had Allison smiling at him. With an irritated sigh, Rob stood up and pulled his phone out. His annoyance doubled when he saw that it was his coach.

  Ralph: Need I remind you what that girl will do to your career? Stay away from her, Rob. If you want Rio, you’ll leave her alone.

  Rob glanced from his screen to find Allison staring up at him with her big hazel eyes. Innocent and completely unaware of what she could do to his dreams. He pressed his lips together and gazed at her, hoping the expression on his face was one she could read as apologetic.

  “It’s my coach. I have to get down to the club for a training session,” Rob lied. It came so easy to him that it surprised him.

  Allison got off the bed and nodded. The flicker in her eyes and the slight frown on her face told him that she saw right through it. “I’ll see you around. Good luck at training.”

  It would be so easy to kiss her. All he’d have to do was reach for her and their lips would find each other. But it wouldn’t be fair. Not on him. And definitely not on her.

  “I’m sorry, Allison,” he muttered. He had let those hazel eyes of hers bore into him one last time before he left her room and then her apartment. Once he closed the door behind him, he dragged his feet towards the elevator.

  He’d received a message from his coach just as he pressed the down button on the elevator panel.

  Ralph: I’m sorry, kid. But rowing isn’t a scandalous sport. That girl will ruin the sport’s and your integrity. You already gave up the London Olympics for your brother. I’d hate to see you give up Rio for a girl with a reputation like hers.

  Rob: I know.

  As Ally sat on the lounge floor going through her suitcase, a loud thump had her lifting her chin to find Julian dusting his hands. Her eyes then landed on the box on the floor and she glared at him.

  “Aaaaand you’re finally moved in. Looks like Blondie and I won’t be having loud sex anymore,” Julian noted as he bent down and opened the flaps of the box.

  She took in her new roommate. Julian’s frame wasn’t as tall or as large as his brother was. His light brown hair matched Rob, but the
colour of their eyes differed. The older Moors’ were a fraction darker, whereas Julian’s were a lighter blue. They were the lightest pair she had ever seen—remarkably beautiful—but she wasn’t going to admit that to Julian. He’d tease her and hold it against her for as long as she breathed air.

  “Excuse him,” Stevie said as she set her box on the couch. “He won’t be getting laid for a while after that.”

  Ally laughed as she removed several books from her large suitcase. Then she swung her gaze over to see Julian shaking his head.

  “What an empty threat, Stephanie. Just for that, I’m withholding sex. You can beg and plead all you like. Ever since I proposed, you’ve wanted me. Well, now, you can’t have me.” Julian stood up and then walked over to Stevie.

  His fiancée lifted her chin and raised her brow at him. “You did not propose, Julian.”

  “Technically, I did,” he said, pointing at the ring. Then he bent down and pressed his lips to hers.

  Ally rolled her eyes at them. When she noticed Serge entering the lounge room, she rose to her feet and tiptoed through all the mess they had made while they unpacked her belongings. She left her making out roommates to see the concern plastered on her bodyguard’s face. Ally hadn’t seen that look of concern on his face before.

  “Hey,” she said in a small voice once she reached him. “Are you okay?”

  Serge had squared his shoulders and had pressed his lips tightly together before he asked, “May we speak outside, Miss O’Connor?”

  We’re back to the formalities.

  She nodded and then turned her attention to Stevie and Julian. They were no longer kissing. Instead, they looked at her with curiosity, as if they were trying to figure out what Serge could possibly want to talk about in private. She knew she needed to steer them away from her secrets.

  “Julian,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know that you and Stevie can have loud sex whenever you want, right? I’m not a child. I know about the birds and the bees.”