Rhino Ash (Saturday Barbies Book 2)

by Lindsey Black

  ‘Yeah buddy, I miss your dad too,’ he whispered. He could only hope Finn’s day didn’t get any worse.

  He fed Anubis, and let the dog sleep on the bed while he showered. It wasn’t until the water was beating down on his head, sealing him in a cocoon of heat and roaring water, that he allowed himself to cry, remembering the sight of burned bodies and the pained screams of the dying. He’d never wanted someone to see him cry, but right then he would have given anything to have Finn there. Instead he cried himself into a near stupor until his skin pruned uncomfortably and he forced himself to dry off and go to bed. He fell asleep hugging Anubis, his face buried in silky black fur.

  He wouldn’t have woken when Finn got home, except Finn had a shower, the running water pulling Ashley from his dreams. He sat up and stared blearily through the dark. Finn hadn’t turned a light on, knowing the house well enough in the dark. Anubis was asleep on his back by the door, feet in the air.

  Ashley slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat in the dark, able to see well enough with the moonlight coming through the window. Finn didn’t say anything, but Ashley knew Finn knew he was there. After a time he turned the water off and climbed out, taking the towel Ashley offered and drying off before straddling Ashley’s lap and slumping against him.

  He wrapped him up in strong arms and let him breathe, knowing the feeling. It hadn’t felt like home until Finn was there and Ashley realised his perception of home was changed, no longer his apartment and his friends but instead, this man.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He reached for the arm Finn had injured earlier and found it cleaned and treated.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Am so tired.’ Finn had been on a double shift as best Ashley could tell, and they’d been at three arson attacks and who knew what else in that time. Finn had chased down the arsonist, and that had been hours ago. Ashley didn’t need to be told twice, he wrapped Finn’s legs more firmly around his waist and stood up, amused by how easy it was to lift him. He took him to bed, curling up with him under the blankets, letting Finn sprawl, clutching one of his biceps as if it were a teddy.

  ‘I missed you. Wished I was with you all day,’ Finn sleepily insisted. But then he was asleep, his breathing even and his body disturbingly still. Ashley stared at him for longer than was necessary but it took a while to see him in the dark to his satisfaction. The circles were dark under Finn’s eyes and his face had a pinched look to it, his skin pale and clammy despite the shower. He was completely spent.

  Ashley watched him sleep for longer than was appropriate. He didn’t remember falling asleep himself.

  ‘Hey.’ Finn was smiling brightly, right in front of his face when he opened his eyes. The sun was up and bright rays of light coming through the window caught in Finn’s dark hair, streaking it with red and russet. He was, as usual, stunning and completely unaware of the fact.

  ‘You are stupidly good looking.’ Ashley was a tad disgusted that anyone could look that good first thing in the morning. People spent hours in front of the mirror trying to make their hair look like Finn’s did when he rolled out of bed.

  Finn laughed at him and pushed him onto his back, climbing over him and kissing him, hot and heavy and more than a little needy. Delighted by the kisses, Ashley didn’t realise at first that they were different to usual, harder than Finn usually liked and tinged with desperation.

  ‘Finn?’ He mumbled against his lips. ‘You okay?’

  ‘No,’ Finn admitted. ‘Just … please, kiss me. I want to forget everything I saw yesterday, okay?’

  ‘Okay …’ He could do with some of that himself. But he had to wonder at what Finn had seen, because what Ashley had been privy to was enough. Any more and he was sure he would have broken, but Finn only wanted kisses and time alone to forget instead of reflect.

  But then, Finn had seen a whole lot of death. Had been left for dead himself.

  So Ashley spent the morning distracting them both, making sure they were both exhausted and spent before they attempted to take the dog for a walk. But they were too exhausted and even Anubis seemed disinterested so they went home and ordered a pizza to be delivered and drank beer on the couch while watching Finn’s ridiculous collection of eighties children’s movies.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Ashley blinked at the screen, then at Finn.

  ‘Are you asking about my feelings on today or Artax dying of depression?’ He pointed to the horse currently dying in the swamp on the television and Finn turned to stare at it, blinking in confusion before shoving at him.

  ‘Today! What the hell? Does he really die of depression?’

  ‘Something like that. How did you never notice that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Guess I never really cared about the horse. I was too busy being afraid of the damned wolf!’

  ‘You mean Nothing, right? You’re scared of Nothing?’

  ‘The Nothing,’ Finn corrected. ‘And yeah, when the Nothing is a big black wolf with blood on its teeth, and I’m ten, I’m scared of the Nothing.’ They were both laughing though, and that was always a good thing.

  ‘It’s just been a bad couple of shifts. Today was so horrible. I can’t understand how anyone could do that to someone.’

  ‘Bad people don’t really justify what they do, they just do it,’ Finn whispered. He took Ashley’s hands in his own, like he had that evening at the scene, stroking his knuckles and feeling out the crevices between his fingers.

  ‘Are you close to finding the people doing this?’ Because while he knew there was a limit to what he could be told, he felt he’d earned the right to know anyway. He wasn’t going to tell anyone, wasn’t about to run off and alert the media. He wanted to know the bad guys would be stopped before they hurt anyone else, and his boyfriend was in a position to tell him that.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Finn admitted. ‘We’ve got a few of them in custody, like the guy today and Dao from the warehouse fire, but …’

  ‘Don’t tell me they’re going free!’

  ‘They might, but not yet,’ Finn admitted. ‘That’s not up to us, it’s up to the court, but for now they’re in prison. The problem is they’re not in charge, and we’re really close to getting the guy in charge but right now we don’t have him and if we act too soon we won’t get him, we’ll only get close to him, so …’ He shrugged.

  ‘So now you wait,’ Ashley surmised and Finn nodded wearily.

  ‘Now we wait,’ Finn agreed. He still had the slightly pinched look to his features he got when he was tired and Ashley wanted to wrap him up and tie him to the bed and refuse to let him go anywhere. Someone else could catch the bad guys for a while.

  ‘Are you on shift tonight?’

  Finn nodded instead of replying, nuzzling Ashley’s throat, leaving a trail of pale hickey’s across his collarbone and then collapsing against Ash’s shoulder once more.

  ‘Me too. Do you mind if I send you messages at work? I haven’t because I know sometimes it could be distracting or whatever.’

  But Finn was smiling at him, laughing silently and he just shook his head.

  ‘I don’t mind. But don’t get angry if I don’t reply. Sometimes I don’t check my phone for the whole shift, I try to leave it in my locker as much as possible, but I do check it when I can. I’d like messages from you.’

  ‘Good. You can message me whenever you want, but if I send something really weird back, know that the guys probably got my phone and are trying to sabotage me.’

  ‘How would I know if it was someone-else weird and not just you-weird?’

  ‘Ha. You’re hilarious.’ Not. Ashley pinched Finn’s hip and smirked when he squawked in protest.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Finn sounded nervous. He’d never sounded nervous before.

  ‘Anything,’ Ashley agreed, knowing it went both ways. It had to, or it wouldn’t work.

  ‘Do you really hate Harriet that much?’ This was about Ben and the barbeque, and Ashley knew that immediately, b
ut it took him a few breaths to separate himself from the question. To remember that Harriet was important, and that while he hated it on the surface the car was a piece of Finn and that made it vital.

  ‘I don’t hate your car,’ he corrected softly. ‘I think it’s ugly as sin and I can’t believe you’re not late to work every second day of the week …’

  ‘It usually breaks down on the way home, not on the way in …’

  Ashley stared benignly at him and eventually Finn shrugged and shut up.

  ‘It’s a piece of crap, and deep down you know it. But I don’t hate it, because I get it, okay? I know it was the first thing that was ever yours, and more importantly it was the only thing you had after you had everything taken away. I know the only thing that means more to you than that car is your dog, your sister and your nephew. I suspect the car ranks ahead of your parents, and I think that has something to do with however they reacted when you got back, but that’s just a guess.’ He really wasn’t sure what had happened, but he was aware that what little Finn had said mentioned only his sister and sleeping on her couch in their decrepit little house in Riverstone with its dead gardens and there had to be a story behind that.

  ‘I don’t hate your car, Finn. I wish you would get a new one because Harriet is dangerous, but she’s also your safety net and I would never ask you to give that up.’

  Finn was quiet and still, staring at nothing, eyes wet but tears not falling. Ashley wondered if he’d said too much until Finn finally wrapped his arms tight around his neck and tried to burrow into his chest in his need to be closer, kissing him over and over between whispered thank yous and I love yous.

  ‘Shhh,’ Ashley murmured, smiling because it was usually Finn doing the soothing and he found he rather liked it. ‘I understand, Finn, I promise I do.’ He’d spent hours lying in bed, studying his memories of Finn’s expressions, the way his body stiffened and relaxed at different times and reasoning why. Searching for triggers, each so minute because the man’s default setting was to hide everything. Consciously he was there in the moment, but some small part of the man’s psyche was still trapped in Africa, refusing to show signs of weakness because it would mean his death. Ashley doubted even time would strip that from the subconscious.

  ‘My parents …’ Finn took a deep breath, shifting against Ash’s side until he was comfortable again and toying idly with Ash’s nipple. It hardened and sent prickles of heat to his groin, but Ash didn’t say anything, closing his eyes while he enjoyed it.

  ‘They were never that supportive when we were younger. I got an offer to go to the AIS, you know, for running? But they didn’t have the money to drive me down to Canberra every weekend, and there was no way they would consider relocating. They wouldn’t even pay to put me on a bus, and in the end I realised I didn’t care, that I didn’t really want to go but it was that awareness that they didn’t want to have to bother. That it was too much work for them, even if it had been my dream. I think that stuck with me. Anyway, they really didn’t care when I told them I was off to Africa. It shocked them because they weren’t expecting it, but they didn’t try and stop me. They’d packed up my bedroom and turned it into a study before I even left; actually made me help them do it.’ He was laughing but Ashley heard the brittle pain beneath it and held him tighter. It wasn’t negligence Finn was talking about, it was indifference. His parents had simply been too self-involved to give their children any more of themselves. It was a common problem in the suburbs, and the reason a lot of kids ended up in trouble.

  ‘Anyway, before … before I left the game reserve, Justine sent me an email telling me she was pregnant and that Mum and Dad had thrown her out because she wouldn’t get rid of the baby. I don’t see how that makes any sense, kicking her out pregnant at sixteen but they did it. I sent her what little money I had and found a friend she could stay with until she could afford her own place, and I went and did the private security course. I figured it would make me a lot of money really fast and I could help set her up.’

  And the rest Ashley knew. Bloody hell.

  ‘My parents came around, after they heard I’d been … Well, they didn’t want to lose both their kids. So Justine moved back in with them and saved the money I’d sent. She had the baby and got a job and saved everything and bought this house, and she went to uni and got her teaching degree. She did so well.’

  So had Finn, but there was no point trying to tell him that. In his mind his own stupid decisions had resulted in what took place. To anyone else it was little more than a series of extremely unfortunate events and he’d simply been a kid who somehow made the best of it and managed to live.

  ‘When I got back, they tried to be understanding, but I had all sorts of nightmares and stupid things set me off, and I realised after a while that they blamed me for being taken and for the things I did. So I asked them about it.’

  Fuck, no.

  ‘They said I chose to do what I did, and that it had been my choice to join the ADF, and that I chose to help kill all those people. That if I hadn’t wanted to do it, I would have refused and it would have been better that way. Their friends said I was a murderer, and it shamed them.’

  Ashley closed his eyes against the itching and hugged Finn tighter to dull the ache in his own chest. People were so cruel, and so selfish. His family were insane, but in the best ways and they would never hurt one another that way. They teased and joked and made fun of one another, but they were always there, always in contact, always reminding one another that someone loved them and was interested in their life. He couldn’t imagine life any other way and to know that was how Finn had lived hurt.

  Worse, they’d then cut out what small pieces of him remained and poured acid on his remains. Their son had survived and all they’d cared about was what people whispered under their breath in line behind them at the supermarket. And somehow Finn still loved them and blamed himself right along with them.

  ‘I’m not ashamed of you,’ Ashley said firmly, in case Finn needed to hear it. ‘And I know you made the only choice you could. Wanting to live doesn’t make you evil, Finn. What they said was wrong.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ he said flippantly, but the pain was still there underneath.

  ‘It doesn’t make it hurt any less,’ Ashley clarified and Finn nodded, his smile small but at least present.

  At least he finally knew why Finn hadn’t asked him to meet his parents. He’d mentioned them a few times, but Ashley got the impression he didn’t see them much.

  ‘Can I meet Justine and Drew?’

  ‘Of course,’ Finn looked perplexed, pondering the question. ‘I haven’t offered, huh. That wasn’t deliberate. She works school days and then I went to the barbeque with you last Saturday and then I was working, so …’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Ashley laughed at him. ‘As long as I’m not your dirty little secret,’ he joked. ‘I just want to meet the family.’

  ‘She’s not as stupid as yours,’ he warned and Ashley had to laugh, which only made Finn more serious. ‘Really, she won’t threaten to kill you or call you an idiot or demand you sell your car. No one will use toilet paper for cocoons or turn into a butterfly.’

  Ashley lost it. His family had made one hell of an impression.

  ‘They’re crazy, hey.’

  ‘Your family are completely bonkers, but I like them. They don’t care what people think as long as they’re together. That’s how it’s supposed to be.’

  Yes it was.

  Finn was sleeping, Anubis snoring where he was sprawled over his feet, so Ash took his phone outside and sat on the back step. The Hills hoist in the backyard looked like a Halloween decoration, twisted out of shape and hanging in mangled wire lines lit up by the moonlight against an otherwise dark sky. He would have to wake Finn and get them to work soon, but for now everything was still and quiet and he had needed the time to think.

  He dialled Taylor and didn’t have to wait long for him to pick up. He had a shift soon as well, a
fter all, and Ashley seemed to recall Sietta had a gig tonight so he’d be strung out on adrenalin.

  ‘Hey. Did you use my call to escape the rampage?’

  ‘What is wrong with him, seriously? You’d think it was his first time playing, every time. He actually asked me where his fingers were a few minutes ago, because he didn’t want to forget them!’

  Ashley snickered, watching a fruit bat fly overhead and disappear into the neighbour’s single, lone tree. What was with these people and their minimalist gardens? Was it that hard to plant a weed and let it get out of control? That would have to be an improvement on the austerity all around him.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I’d be happy to chop them off and put them in a Tupperware container for him with his name on it and everything so he wouldn’t forget them.’

  ‘You did not,’ Ashley cackled.

  ‘I wanted to,’ Taylor groused. ‘I love him, but God damn he’s stupid when he’s in a mood.’ The same could be said for anyone, and really it was more that Sietta was so not stupid the rest of the time that you noticed when he was nervous and not thinking straight.

  ‘Does he ever have dreams? Or … sleep funny, or anything?’ He had no idea what he was asking, or what he wanted to hear but he heard Taylor sigh heavily and a door close and figured his brother knew anyway.

  ‘Yeah. He still hardly sleeps, and always waits for me to sleep first, and he locks everything and triple checks the locks. He has bad dreams, kicks me a lot and wakes screaming before I even know what’s going on.’

  Finn didn’t do that. Ashley hadn’t known Sietta did that, and thought maybe he shouldn’t know but he’d asked.

  ‘I can’t even tell half the time if Finn’s awake, or asleep. I never hear him when he moves around the house.’

  ‘No, I know,’ Taylor agreed. ‘He’s like a ghost. He told you, right? About what happened?’ He was checking, and it was nice. Ashley was happy about it.

  ‘Yeah. I get it. But … Don’t you worry you’re gonna fuck him up?’ Ashley blurted and for a moment he was horrified with himself but Taylor was laughing, knowing.