Getting Real

by Ainslie Paton

  But he was shocked at what just happened, and his hands trembled from the surge of need coursing through him. He’d gone from terror she’d been hurt, to knowledge he could help her, to losing control. She’d gone there with him, carved herself against him, the two of them almost combusting at the side of the road. But she was barely herself. She was hurt and confused, and having her very own panic attack, and he’d used that as an excuse to—what? If Rand hadn’t arrived, what would have happened? He knew he hadn’t been capable of stopping.

  He turned away, disgust rising bitter in his throat. He was the worst kind of saviour, a rescuer turned predator. He attended to the Harley, reefing it back upright in one hard jerk, using strength fuelled by anger.

  Rand had Rielle standing now and they walked the grass verge towards a clump of paperbarks. She needed this, a chance to revisit the event sensibly, calmly with someone she trusted. Not someone who would use the opportunity to take advantage of her pain and confusion.

  “She’ll be all right, Jake,” said Harry, leaning on the bonnet of her red beetle.

  He answered distractedly, “Yeah.” This wasn’t like being scared of spiders or leaving the house or heights. He didn’t know if it was possible to get over believing you’d killed your own mother. He’d leave. He’d done enough damage. Rand could take the Harley, Rielle could travel back with Harry. Rie didn’t need him anymore. If she ever truly had.

  “Seriously, Jake, she’ll be all right. Those two—they’re survivors, they’re strong.”

  He looked at Harry, Bonne’s keys tight in his palm. “You can’t know that.”

  “You’re right, I can’t know. But I look at what they’ve achieved together and the odds against them; so I want to believe she’s strong enough to overcome this too.”

  He grunted in rough agreement. He wanted to take off, but he wanted to see Rielle turn back more, see her face, take his own reading on whether she could beat this or be beaten down and savaged by it.

  “It’s okay to love her, Jake.”

  “What?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. We can hardly even say we’re friends. It’s just physical, a distraction that’s all.” Jake flung those words at Harry hoping to shut her up, hoping to convince himself. He knew them to be a lie the moment they filtered into the reality of the hot afternoon.

  Better to go now than face a thank you from Rielle. Than face her rejection when she figured out how predatory he’d been, how close he was to taking her at the side of the road with no regard for where they were, or why they were there. He started towards Bonne but Harry said, “Here they come,” and he had to stay.

  Rand had his arm around Rielle’s shoulder and his face was as ruined as hers, but there was also a resignation and peace about them both. They’d faced this horror fresh again and it hadn’t destroyed them.

  Watching them, he said to Harry, “You’ll take her back.” It was an instruction, not a question.

  “Rie needs you,” Harry said.

  “No, she doesn’t.” Jake threw his leg over Bonne’s seat, but halted his hand on the ignition when Rielle broke into a run. She stopped in front of the bike. “I’m coming with you.”

  He couldn’t meet her eyes. “No. Go back in the car with Harry.”

  “Make me.”

  It was so unexpectedly feisty. His words from last night thrown back at him, that it rocked him. He looked up; she was drawn and tear-stained, but standing straight and strong, hands on her hips—the Rielle of the football field, the Rielle of the trapeze: brave, charged and certain. He hated himself, but he could not leave her.

  He gave her his hand and she climbed up behind him, hugged close, splayed her hands over his abdomen and chest. She breathed into his ear, “I’ve been frightened of this forever. Thank you for talking me down.”

  She pressed her face into his shirt and he thought she might be crying again. He had no idea what to say to her. He picked up her right hand, all healed now, no bruises or tenderness, and held it over his heart, pressing it down like a bandage, and she curled her index finger over his thumb.

  Rand joined them with Rielle’s helmet. He had another he’d taken from the car for himself. He had a quiet smile on his face. “I don’t know if I should let you ride with this guy now I’ve seen what he can do on a bike.” He touched Rielle on the shoulder. “He’s a maniac.”

  “He’s my maniac,” she said, taking the helmet. Jake jammed his own on so he wouldn’t have to say anything.

  With Rand and Harry following, they formed a cavalcade back to the city, hitting school pick up traffic and the early peak hour. The closer they got to the hotel, the more anxious Jake became. The right thing to do was to leave Rielle, give her space; because he no longer trusted himself to be around her and do the right thing.

  When they pulled into the hotel’s front drive he was reluctant to shut down the bike. He wanted a quick getaway. He wanted to go home, sit on the back deck and argue with his dad about returning to the family business, con a meal from his mum, throw a ball for Monty. Anything to get some distance from the self-loathing he felt.

  Rielle dismounted and shook her hair free of the helmet and went to Rand. But when she realised he hadn’t followed her, she came back and took his hand. “Don’t go. I need you.”

  He shut down and dismounted, leaned against the bike. “You should stay with Rand tonight.”

  She glanced back at her brother, settling himself in the passenger seat of Harry’s car, and shook her head. “No, he needs his own time. He’s lived with me and this whole nightmare for too long.”

  “Rie, I… it’s not right. I don’t trust myself. What happened back there—you didn’t need—”

  “What happened is that you saved me, Jake. You brought me back from that dark place and you showed me what I was living for. Please don’t leave me alone tonight.”

  38. Survivors

  Back in her suite, Rielle left him with a pink sunset for company. Once she’d asked him to stay, she made it impossible for him to leave. But he was unsure what she needed from him, the distraction of a lover or the care of a friend. Jake didn’t think it should be possible to separate the two, but that’s what she’d wanted from him: one not the other, lover not friend, distraction not companion, and look where that had gotten them. He’d been no real help to her when she needed it and even his white knight act was tarnished by his raging lust for her.

  This wasn’t purgatory; this was hell.

  He took a beer from the bar and chased it with another. He might have had a third but she called him from the big marble bathroom.

  She was sitting on the wide bench, the mirror at her back. She looked exhausted. He didn’t know how she was still awake. “Can you do something for me?”

  He stayed in the doorway. “Anything.” Everything, if it would make up for how he’d violated her trust.

  “Help me undress.”

  He nodded, stepped into the bathroom and went to his knees to start with her boots. Her hand played in his hair. Once the boots were on the floor with her socks, he stood, unsure what to do next.

  “My shirt.”

  He unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it back from her shoulders and down her arms, tossing it to the floor.

  “My jeans.”

  He unhooked her belt. She was watching him carefully, eerily calm. He undid her zipper and she shifted so he could pull the jeans over her hips and down her legs. He kept his movements efficient, clinical, avoided touching her unnecessarily. Now she sat in her underwear. He’d let her manage that. He turned away to start the rainwater shower.

  She called him back. “We’re not finished.”

  “Baby, you should take it from here. Let me get the shower ready.”

  “We’re not finished.”

  He went back to her and stroked his hands down her arms. He sighed. She didn’t know what was good for her. He wasn’t good for her right now, except to put her safely to
bed, alone. He’d watch over her, but he needed to keep his distance. “What do you want me to do, Rie?”

  “Undress all of me.” She pressed her forehead to his and whispered, “I want you to see all of me.”

  Her underwear left little to the imagination. “I see you, Rie. But I did the wrong thing by you and I need to—”

  She shushed him with a kiss. He let her touch his lips with hers, but didn’t respond.

  “The real me, Jake.”

  Her words made his body stiffen with incomprehension. His “How?” came out hushed, almost reverent.

  “My jewellery.”

  Okay, he could do this. He removed her rings, her wrist cuffs and earrings and eased the glittered stud from her nose.

  She handed him a cotton ball. “My makeup.” She gestured to the bottles of lotion on the shelf and he frowned. Her makeup was industrial strength stuff; except for her lipstick it didn’t kiss off, sweat off, wash off or come off on the pillow.

  She laughed softly. “It’s not that hard. Start with my eyelashes.”

  He frowned. “How do I—?”

  She closed her eyes. “You’ll work it out.”

  He did, but she talked him through it too. He removed her fake lashes, peeling them away tenderly. He used the cotton ball and a handful of its jar mates with a special liquid to remove her airbrushed makeup. She angled her face so he could stroke slowly over her skin, each swipe revealing more of her translucent beauty and an insanely cute dusting of honey gold freckles. He smoothed his thumb over them. They were so unexpected. This was what he’d glimpsed in Gym Girl’s averted face. But this was different.

  This time she wanted him to see.

  He had to fight to keep his hands steady because her bravery and this revelation, this gift of her real self, was breaking pieces of him off and turning them to mush.

  “Now my hair.”

  He’s seen her blonde hair before as well, in swirls with the black and red or green, and tied tight and sweat banded in the gym, but he’d never seen it loose. She had to talk him though how to unwind her custom hairpieces. He was thick fingered, unsure what he was feeling. Apart from the various colours, there was no difference in texture or obvious pins or clips. Eventually he managed to separate the strands, remove the silky pieces of colour and her golden blonde hair was in his hands.

  He brushed it back and held it in his fist, studying her face. Her violet eyes were full of moisture. Would she let him see them turn green?

  “Will you show me your eyes?”

  He stood between her legs, his hands resting on her shoulders while she pinched her coloured contacts out. When she lifted her face to his, her gaze was so fresh, so stripped back, so honest, it was as though he could see her through all the ages of her life to date. From before the accident at fourteen, her bright, bright future ahead of her; to her sudden adulthood at sixteen, newly orphaned, alone in the world with Rand; and at every age that brought her now into his arms.

  He was overwhelmed. “God.” He shook his head, closed his eyes, swaying slightly. She’d given him what he’d always wanted at a time he was least deserving.

  She rubbed her knuckles over his cheek. “Almost done.”

  When he opened his eyes, she was smiling—gap toothed. No falsity, no armour. His wolf warrior woman was totally naked to him in all the ways that mattered.

  She was Rielle and yet she wasn’t. She was Gym Girl and yet she wasn’t. She was Arielle, completely, unbearably exposed to him.

  “You’re so fucking incredible.”

  Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and she let them flow, over silken sun-kissed skin. Her voice shook. “I look like her.”

  Jake wanted to touch Rielle, gather her, love her, but he was no longer worthy. “Like your mum?”

  She nodded. “I don’t deserve to look like her. She was beautiful.”

  “God. You’re beautiful, Rie.”

  She shook her head violently. “Not like this. Don’t you get it? Not like this.” Her face crumpled. “When I’m like this, I can only see what I did to her, to Ben and Rand and me. I see what we lost. I can’t do it,” she finished on a sob, and collapsed into his open arms.

  Now he saw. Now he really got it. This was the kernel of her conflict; her two halves, and the ghost in the mirror who haunted her made her prefer fake to real. He stroked her back, his face tucked closed to hers, struggling against the pull of his own tears. “You were only a kid. It can’t be your fault, Rie.”

  She pulled back to look up at him, eyes heavy lidded and wet. “Not entirely, I can see that now. It’s a bad piece of road. I never realised how bad until today. It was wet and Ben was tired. But if I hadn’t caused an argument, things would be different. She’d still be here. He might too. They said the accident triggered his tumour.”

  If this wasn’t real life, the part that can leave you forever wounded and bleeding, Jake might’ve had words of comfort, of hope or sustenance for Rielle. He had nothing. He was as stripped naked as she was. And even if he’d had a golden throat and visionary words, they’d have made no difference to her. He couldn’t touch her pain to heal it, only to band-aid it. She’d hugged this truth, this pain so hard it was who she’d become. She was the only one who could change that.

  “I promised myself I’d make it up to her, to Dad, to Rand. But it doesn’t matter how successful we are, it’s not enough. I have to learn to live with it—to live with myself. There has to be a reason for me not dying too.”

  He wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her, snagging her robe from the back of the door, carrying her to the lounge room. He helped her tie the robe and settled her in his lap on the couch. Rielle snuggled into the curve of his neck and he held her with arms almost numb from a heart overfilled with emotion and no longer capable of supplying the rest of his body with what it needed.

  “I should have bled to death. I could have died of internal injuries.”

  “But you didn’t, Rie. It made you strong.”

  “It made me scared. And being in Australia brought it all back like it was yesterday. I see it in my dreams. I see that road. I feel the rain and smell the blood and I hear Ben screaming. I see Maggie in the hospital. All the tubes. The noise of the ventilator. She never opened her eyes again. I made promises to her, but she never knew.”

  Jake sighed. “Ah, Rie.” He swallowed hard, his throat aching with the tenderness he felt for her.

  “If only I’d been different, been better—”

  “Ah, baby you can’t think like that.”

  “I do think like that. How else can I think? I’ve been scared my whole life, Jake and you knew it and I hated you for it.”

  He hugged her closer. “It’s okay—it doesn’t matter. We’re past that.” He looked down at her, no longer teary but so vulnerable.

  “It’s not okay. It’s why I don’t do relationships. I’m no good at them.” She turned her face up to his, and he kissed her forehead. “Why did you want to leave me?”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m ashamed about what happened.”

  She gasped. “You came for me—you saved me.”

  “I…” he stumbled on thoughts too intense, on explanations that were inadequate.

  She climbed across his lap. “You knew what to do and you brought me back from that blackness.”

  He took her face in his hands. “But I didn’t know where to stop, Rie. And that was loathsome. You weren’t in any position to decide how to react.”

  Her green gaze was so tormented. “I need you tonight, Jake. I need you to help me forget.”

  He could not refuse her.

  They ate a room service meal and watched a movie, staying close by each other and when they went to bed it was with soft, slow kisses and gentle caresses. They came together languidly with infinite tenderness, nothing hurried, nothing frenzied, just softness and immeasurable kindness.

  Rielle’s green eyes were the window to her deepest self, her pain, her fear, her determination t
o survive and Jake fixed on them wondering if she’d ever show them to him willingly again. He watched her fall asleep, the expression on her face untroubled for the first time in a week.

  Sleep took a long time to come to him that night and when it did he dreamed of screeching tyres and tearing metal, screaming voices, sirens and flashing lights. He woke in the pitch dark, his heart thudding in his ears and knew it to be Rie’s continuing nightmare he was seeing, and marvelled again at how brave his wolf woman was.

  Harry drove to Bondi Beach. She planned for a sunset, fish and chips, a bottle of wine, time to wind down, and a chance for Rand to talk. He was quiet in the car, his fists curled in his lap, tension in the line of his jaw, a muscle in his thigh jumping to its own internal beat. He was looking out the passenger-side window, but she figured he wasn’t seeing the passing city and suburbs.

  When they’d been chasing after Rielle, he’d been keyed up, hyper-vigilant, sensitive to everything going on around him, and talking rapid fire about nothing important. His mood now was different. It scared her a little. He was a stranger, and she felt that to speak to him would be to intrude.

  When she parked, he turned to her and she saw his wet eyes, the tears on his cheeks he made no move to wipe away. Outside of funerals and babies being born, Harry had never seen a man cry before. It made her clench her jaw to see Rand so distressed and to know he wasn’t hiding it from her.

  “I could do with a hug,” he said brokenly.

  She leant across the gear stick to put her arms around him, tuck his head into her shoulder. He sighed roughly and his fingers bit into her sides as he hugged her hard. They stayed that way a little while until he composed himself.

  “I think maybe I was dreading Sydney almost as much as Rie,” he said, shifting back into his seat. “I just didn’t recognise it. She was right to go back, to see it again. Fucking awful piece of road. No wonder there’s a bypass now, but still—” He looked out the front window towards the sea; a flat, peaceful bay, not a white cap in sight. “I’m not sure she’ll ever get over it.” He wiped his hand down his face and turned to Harry. “I shouldn’t have pushed her to come back here. I thought it might help. Might make her see it differently, take the fear out of it.”