Illusive

by Nina Levine

  “She did have a heart attack, so they’re keeping her in for more tests. They’re talking about an operation or something to help her. But she also has diabetes that she hasn’t taken care of so they’re helping her with that, too. I’m pretty sure she’s going to be okay, though.” She paused for a second and hesitantly said, “She asked about you. Said she wanted to see you if you were up for it.”

  Apprehension ran through me, and my hand moved to my chest as I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure, Magan. I need some more time to work it out in my mind. I’ve spent my life desperately wanting her in it, but last year I got to a place where I accepted she didn’t love or want me. To rework that will take some time. Can you understand that?”

  “Sort of, but mostly, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want her in your life. I think about her pretty much every day and am so glad she’s come back.”

  I squeezed her hand. “I’m happy for you, but for me, I just don’t trust she’s back to stay, and I don’t think I could take another rejection from her. I think it would break my heart completely.” My voice caught and I swallowed back more tears.

  I can’t do it.

  I can’t take the chance.

  She stared at me for a moment, like she was really processing what I’d said. When she spoke, her words broke my heart. “That, I do understand. I can’t imagine how hard it’s been for you…you never got to see her again after she left you…at least I have. I saw her twice in my life – once when I was nine, she came to see me on my birthday, and then when I was thirteen, she came to one of my sports days at school.”

  The thing that broke my heart the most about her words was that she was so happy to have seen her mother twice in her life – twice. In a world where most children take for granted that they’ll see their mother’s face every morning when they wake up, here was my sister, happy she’d been blessed with two visits. This made me want to visit the woman even less now. I felt my indecision begin to blur into anger and tried to shove it away. Anger never solved anything. In my experience, it only ever seemed to make it worse.

  I finished making our tea, and as I passed her a mug, I said, “Can we change the subject for a bit? I’m feeling overwhelmed with this and need to think about something else or I might start crying again.”

  She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Sure.”

  I leant my elbows on the kitchen counter. “Tell me about your boyfriend.”

  A look crossed her face but she quickly pushed it aside and gave me a happy smile. I wondered at what that meant, but she threw me when she said, “I’d rather know about your man.”

  “My man? I don’t have a man.” I couldn’t count Griff as a man in my life so there was no point talking about him.

  “You must. You’ve got this glow or something to you. Like you’ve recently had sex, so fess up.” She waited with a huge grin of expectation on her face.

  “There is someone, but he’s not my man and never will be my man. We slept together once, and I’m sad to report, it won’t happen again. He’s a stubborn hard-ass who will never let anyone in.”

  “Wait, didn’t you tell me you don’t believe in one-night stands?”

  I threw my hands in the air and sighed loudly. “God, that rule is coming back to bite me in the ass. I swear I’m never telling my friends about my sex rules anymore. I break them once, and everyone wants to give me grief for it!”

  She frowned. “How many sex rules do you have?”

  I laughed and took a sip of tea. “None, but if I ever make another one, I’m not telling you.”

  “So tell me about this dude. He must be hot for you to break that rule. Have you got a photo? I need to see what he looks like!” she exclaimed. I was sure red blushed across my entire face, and it must have because she pointed at me and asked, “Did you take a sneaky photo of a man?”

  I covered my face with my hand and nodded. I’d never done something like it in my life, but I hadn’t been able to resist a photo of Griff while he slept the other morning. “Yes.”

  She put her hand out. “Give me your phone. I need to see this photo.”

  I found the photo on my phone and passed it to her. “See why I broke my rule?”

  Her eyes widened and she looked at me in disbelief. “Holy fuck, Sophia, this dude’s way hot. Are you sure he’s not interested in seeing you again? I’d be doing everything in my power to get him if I was you.”

  “Trust me, he’s not interested in me. I’ve practically thrown myself at him, and made a fool of myself numerous times, but we won’t talk about that… he’s made it clear he only wanted one night.” A thought hit me. “God, for all I know, he probably thought the sex was bad… I hadn’t even thought of that until now.”

  She stared at me for a moment. Handing my phone back to me, she said, “Geez, this relationship stuff never gets easier, does it?”

  Laughing, I said, “It probably does for women who have their ‘man-shit’ together, but I don’t, so it’s not getting any easier for me.”

  “What is ‘man-shit’?”

  I glared at her. “Are you making fun of me?”

  She held her hands up defensively and shook her head. “No! You just say the funniest things sometimes, and I don’t always know what you mean.”

  “When you’ve got your ‘man-shit’ together, you’re good with men. You know those women who seem to effortlessly flirt with a man and always seem to know the exact right thing to say to them? They’re the women with it all together. That is not me. I open my mouth and the crap that comes out of it makes men run…I’m sure of it. I kid you not, I’ve been in a bar before trying to flirt and after I’ve said something totally cringe-worthy, I’ve watched as the guy’s eyes glaze over and then he excuses himself and I never see him again.”

  Her expression had turned soft, and she gave me a huge smile before saying, “I love having you as a sister. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have to teach me about ‘man-shit’ and how to take sneaky photos of men while they sleep.”

  I laughed and then she started, too.

  And I realised that even on shitty days when nothing seemed to be going your way, it was the little moments with those you cared about that could help pick you up, dust off your hurt and get you ready to go back out into the world.

  * * *

  The next morning, I dressed to impress for work. I’d slept fairly badly, but I was determined that today was going to be a good day, and I’d always had good days when I dressed well and looked good. So that’s how I decided to start this day. I wore a red pencil skirt that sat just below my knees, a white, fitted blouse that – if I did say so myself – made my boobs look freaking awesome, and red stilettos. I curled my long, blonde hair into soft curls that fell over my shoulders, and paid more attention to my makeup than I usually did for work – almost the same level of attention I would pay to it if I were going out for the night.

  I was running on time, I’d made my lunch, which meant I didn’t have to spend money on it, and everything was going well as I headed out to my car. And then everything turned to shit.

  As I backed the car out of the driveway, something didn’t feel right, so I pulled up in the driveway, and got out to check my suspicions. I was right – one of my tyres was flat.

  Argh!

  I had been shown how to change a tyre once in my life, a very long time ago, and I was sure that if I attempted to do it now, I’d screw it up. I recalled something about chocks and jacking, and not much else. Knowing my luck, the car would roll down the freaking street.

  I wanted to throw my hands in the air and scream out an obscenity, but instead, I pulled out my phone and googled how to change a tyre. How To Change A Tyre – For Dummies came up and I figured that was as good a place as any to start. I scrolled through the instructions and it actually didn’t sound that hard. Surely, I could do this.

  The first thing it said to do was block the wheels at the opposite end of the flat tyre so the car didn’t roll. Bing
o! I was on a winner here – my car would not roll while I changed this damn tyre. And luckily, I had some spare bricks in my back yard, so I headed out there to grab them. Everything was going great guns until my bloody stiletto wedged itself in the grass and as I tried to walk, the shoe didn’t want to come with me, and I tripped. And I landed on the mound of dirt I’d recently had delivered. Landed, as in, face first, body flat against the tiny hill of dirt.

  I hate my life!

  Like seriously, could this week get any worse?

  I pushed myself up and dusted off all the dirt I could, but I was going to have to change outfits now because this one looked like it was in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. I bet I looked like I was fighting goddamn zombies.

  Grabbing the bricks, I carried them out to the front yard. I briefly considered calling the RACQ to come and change the tyre for me, but I figured I could do it much faster.

  I placed the bricks where my instructions told me to and then checked what I had to do next. It involved a screwdriver so I quickly ran inside to find one. Five minutes later, I had the wheel cover off the flat tyre, and was secretly proud of myself for getting this far.

  Next, I had to loosen the lug nuts and this was where it got tricky for me. The damn nuts had been put on so tight that I didn’t have the strength to undo all of them. I managed to loosen two of them, but I struggled with the rest. And as I was putting all my weight behind it, I fell on my damn ass on the driveway.

  “Oh my God, I fucking give up!” I yelled out.

  As luck would have it, it was right at that very minute that Griff pulled up across the road and stared at me sitting on my driveway looking like a zombie fighter from some damn apocalypse movie, yelling swear words out at whoever would listen.

  He removed his helmet and walked across the street to where I sat. Looking down at me with a smirk, he said, “Sitting down on the job there, sweetheart. Tyres don’t change themselves…you kinda have to do some of the work.”

  I scrambled to stand, but the length and tightness of my dress did not help my cause, and the manner in which I finally made it to a standing position would have to be classified as the most unladylike manner known to exist. Griff did extend his hand to help me, but in my wisdom – or lack of it, if you chose to be honest about the situation – I declined his help. He shrugged, crossed his arms over his chest, stood back and watched as I made a fool of myself. All with that huge smirk of his that I wanted to wipe off his face with my zombie-dirty hand.

  Glaring at him, I said, “Don’t even get me started, handsome. Today was supposed to be a good day – unlike yesterday that was the shittiest day ever and shall never be spoken of again. I was having a good hair day, and my makeup was the bomb, and my clothes were awesome, and then the goddamn tyre decided to have a hissy fit on the one day that was going good for me. No problems, I said, I can handle this shit – and I was – but then my stiletto decided it liked the grass more than my foot, and it also decided that, hey, your hair and face would look so much better with some dirt – dirt – on it. Hell yes, let’s make you look like a zombie fighter today, my shoe said. But, not to be outdone, my tyre decided to have the last laugh and knock me on my ass. Well, screw it all, I’m going to go inside, find another freaking amazing outfit to wear, fix my hair and face so that it still looks like I stepped out of Cosmopolitan and then I’m going to find a way to get to work that does not involve changing tyres, because there is no way I am letting a tyre dictate whether I have a good day or not.” I finished what I was saying and took a long breath.

  He stared at me as his smirk morphed into a grin, and then he said, “Go inside and do whatever you need to do. I’ll change your tyre so you can drive to work.”

  I stared back at him. “Why do you do that? Why do you act like an ass and then do something really nice? It confuses the hell out of me. You confuse the hell out of me!”

  “I confuse the fuck out of myself, sweetheart,” he replied, and his sexy, gravelly voice was in full swing today. And it just made me even more confused. It was like he was flirting with me even though I knew there was no way he was.

  I decided it was time to remove myself from his presence. “I’m going to go and get changed. I’d really appreciate you changing the tyre. Thank you.”

  “No worries,” he said as he stepped closer to me. He reached a hand out and cupped my cheek, and then swiped his thumb over my chin. “You had a clump of dirt there,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “I figured you would want it gone.”

  His touch shot through me, and – good God – I wanted him.

  I wanted him like I needed air.

  I’d never wanted a man who didn’t want me back, and it caused all my insecurities and doubts about myself to flare up. And I hated that, because I’d put the time in to learning to love myself enough to be able to look past those doubts.

  I took a step back, and said, “I won’t be long.” And then I hurried inside.

  I had to find a way to forget Griff.

  I had to move on to a man who wanted me as much as I wanted him.

  14

  Griff

  I turned the television up as images of Jeffrey Bond flashed across the screen. The headline read – Bond To Go To Trial – and then they flashed to photos of his brother and discussed his murder. According to the news journalist, Bond’s family had sworn revenge on the killer, and Bond himself had reportedly said that once he got off the charges and released from jail, he’d personally take care of his brother’s killer.

  Good luck, asshole.

  Switching the television off, I grabbed my keys and headed out to my bike. It looked like it was time for me to put another plan into action in order to force Danny’s hand on getting me off the trial as a witness. No fucking way was I going on that witness stand.

  As I sped off towards the clubhouse, I began piecing the plan together that had been sitting there waiting for me to decide to act upon it. Problem was, my thoughts kept drifting off to Sophia and this morning. She’d looked so damn cute sitting on her driveway with dirt all over her. When she’d taken the time to tell me what had happened - in only the way Sophia could - my dick had hardened because, fuck, that woman was sexy when she dropped her mask and let the words fly out of her mouth.

  Christ, I had to get her out of my head. She was occupying too much of my time.

  The trouble with that was I liked her being in my head.

  And that was a whole other problem in itself.

  * * *

  I spent a few hours going over the surveillance from our restaurants and Indigo, looking for anything that might give us a clue about the fire at Trilogy, but came up short. Leaning back in my chair, I rubbed my neck. The knots I had there were only getting worse, and my training sessions weren’t doing much to take the edge off.

  “Griff, you got a minute?”

  I looked up to find J standing in the doorway and motioned for him to come in. “What’s up?”

  “Just wanted to give you an update on Ricky.”

  “You found much on him yet?”

  “He likes Asian women and coke. Besides that, he’s kept his nose clean the last couple of days so we’ve learnt nothing.”

  “Shit. This motherfucker is smart. Who would have figured?” I said, frustrated as hell that we were still no closer to getting confirmation he was behind the fire.

  J grimaced. “We’ll keep tailing him, and Nash is working on some other angles. He’s gotta fuck up somewhere soon.”

  “I’m not so sure he will, J. He’s been around for years, and you don’t build a business like that by making stupid mistakes.”

  “We talking about Ricky?” Scott asked, joining us.

  “Yeah, there’s still no leads on the fire,” I answered him.

  He nodded his head slowly, his gaze fixed firmly on me, and my skin prickled – something was off with him. Keeping his eyes on me, he said, “J, can you give Griff and I a moment?”

  Fuck.

  I
’d always trusted my instincts and right now, they were telling me something was very wrong.

  “I’ll keep you updated,” J promised and left us alone.

  Scott entered the office, closed the door behind him, and stared at me as if he was trying to figure something out. And in that instant, I knew that he knew.

  Standing, I said, “You know.”

  His nostrils flared and his shoulders tensed. He clenched his jaw, and nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  My gut clenched in a knot. I’d always wondered if this day would come. Had been unsure how I’d feel if it did, but I’d never figured I’d feel the way I currently was. Regret washed over me. Scott had become my family, and to see the look of disbelief, anger and pain on his face now…that shit cut deep. “How?”

  “Jesus, Griff - how?” he thundered, his face a dark cloud of rage. “Ricky fucking told me. He showed up with a file on you. But I don’t want to talk about how; I want to talk about why. Why the fuck did you do this? I trusted you like a brother. Like fucking family! If I hadn’t seen that file, I wouldn’t believe it to be true.” He raked his fingers through his hair, and added, “You had me fooled, that’s for sure.”

  I stood my ground. I had a lot to say, and needed to find a way for Scott to understand and believe that I spoke the truth. Because this would be the truth. Finally. “I’m gonna give you the truth, but it’s gonna take a bit to get there. Can you give me that at least?”

  His hard look didn’t change, but he nodded. “Go on.”

  “I was raised to be a cop. My dad was one, my uncle was one, and my grandfather was one. My cousin and I went through the academy together, but it never felt right to me. I never wanted what everyone else wanted for me. I finished my training but I never pursued a career after that.”

  “So you just walked away?” he demanded. His face had contorted into ugliness at the mention of cops, and I didn’t blame him. The police weren’t high on Storm’s list of trusted people.