Insecure

by Ainslie Paton

  He was starving again. Salad for lunch, on the remains of a hangover after the workout he’d had on her gorgeous body, didn’t cut it. He could feel the vestiges of a headache bedding in behind his eyes. He needed protein, lots of it. “I could put something together.”

  She looked up. “I said I’d take care of dinner.”

  Okay then. And she’d called him prickly. He went back to the TV and sat while she made a noise in the kitchen that sounded more like crockery being rearranged than cooking. When the microwave pinged he tried to identify the smell and got a nose full of heated plastic wrap. He wasn’t a great cook, but Buster taught him the basics and they didn’t own a microwave.

  It’d be a long night and a stay in the guest room if the lockdown didn’t lift and he let this strangeness spread between them. He turned the sound on the TV down and went across to the big white counter.

  “We can do one of two things.”

  She scooped what looked like a beef and vegetable casserole onto plates and it smelled better up close. She gave him a look that said all he needed to know about how unhappy she was he was still in her space.

  “We can do this strained thing we’ve got going, or we can eat, and if the horror show out there doesn’t end tonight, we can sleep.”

  “You’ve got it all worked out.”

  He shook his head. He had none of this worked out. He didn’t understand what’d happened between her nightmare in the bath and this freak-out in the kitchen. All he knew was he wanted to be with her again before this finished.

  “Or I can leave.” It had to be less of an issue to get out by now, and if not, he’d slept in worse places than the foyer.

  “Eat, Mace.”

  He sat, picked up a fork and ate. She sat opposite him and did the same. He needed this, and to talk to Buster again. He needed to work out how to get past Jacinta’s pissy mood and accept her help with Jay.

  Fucking it out of her was an option. She liked him when he had her naked, when his lips found the secret little places on her body that turned her on. He liked it too. A whole lot more than he’d expected to. But that wouldn’t work if she thought he was a mistake.

  He’d been a mistake before. More than once. Usually that came later though, when he showed himself as useless boyfriend material. They weren’t in that space; she wasn’t the kind of women who did boyfriends, and she was still giving him that attitude. That sucked. He’d thought she was the woman least likely to get needy or go sour on him. Because he was the last thing she wanted for anything more than a good fuck.

  They ate in silence, until she said, “I’ve lost a day of work. I’m got a nightmare week ahead of me. I’m going to use the office. You’re welcome to stay, watch TV.”

  He got up and brought his plate around to the sink. She let him take hers. “Thank you.” She left him and went down the hallway. And that was that. A surgically clean cut, why had he spent a second wondering what to do?

  He stacked the dishwasher. Wiped down the counter. He found a phone extension and rang Buster, keeping his eye on the TV, on the lockdown reports. He could ring Dillon. He thought about Jacinta, how different she was out of her heels and tailoring, how much more real. He knew he’d think about how she felt, how she touched him with hands so sure they knew how to please, with movement so inspired to excite him, for a long, long time. Having her take him in the bath was his new favourite fantasy. He could play it in his head on repeat; Cinta sliding over him, her hands slipping on his chest, his on her hips, their mouths greedy for anything wet made of skin, and it would never get old.

  He shook himself. He had to quit it, it was making him hard. Calling Dillon would fix that. But the idea held less appeal than sleeping in the foyer. He wandered around the lounge room, the dining room. It was an extraordinary place, but it wasn’t a home. It was a magazine spread without real warmth or life. She didn’t have a single framed photo or an item that could be considered personal. It might’ve been a hotel suite. He learned nothing about her from being there.

  If she could see his place, Buster’s house, where he’d grown up. Chaotic: a jumble of her books and crafts, her old furniture, books and mementos, and his gear. Surfboards, bike parts, old vinyl records, and bits of hard drives, cables, chargers and componentry stuffed in every cupboard, abandoned on every available surface. It was dusty and smelled like old shoes and rising damp in the winter. There always seemed to be milk gone off in the fridge and ants in the sink. But it was comfortable, safe. It was a home.

  Off the dining room was a small deck but the glass door was locked. He played with the catch but couldn’t get it open, an electronic security override in place. Like everything here, state-of-the-art. There was a door off to the side and he pressed on the handle, expecting it to be locked or another furniture showroom. What he got when he found a light was a mind fuck.

  The vague smell of solvents buzzed his nose. There were canvases stacked against three walls, all sizes, some blank, some half finished. There were two easels, both covered with sheets. A long counter cluttered with jars, brushes, knives, spatulas. He moved into the room and pulled a sheet away from the tallest easel. The canvas on it was movie poster-sized; a woman, painted in fractured lines, running, glancing over her shoulder at something that frightened her.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  He turned to find Jacinta in the doorway, fury in her eyes.

  “You can’t be in here.” She waved a hand to indicate he should leave. He’d thought she was freaked out before, but watching her now, colour high in her cheeks, outrage making her body a temple of rigidity, he knew he’d truly frightened her, like the woman in the paining who wore Jacinta’s face.

  “This is you.” He meant the room. This was where she lived, here with the colours and smells, not in the pristine stillness outside the door.

  “Please come out.”

  “And this is you.” He looked from Jacinta to the painting. “It’s incredible.”

  “Mace.” A warning.

  Not heeded. “You should let people see this.”

  “This is not what you think. I hardly ever come in here. I haven’t picked up a brush for years. I can’t remember how long it’s been.”

  “Shame.” He knew next to nothing about art, but Buster had been a craft nut. Sewed, embroidered, knitted, fired ceramics, painted. He knew enough to tell that what Jacinta was doing in this room wasn’t paint by numbers amateur hour.

  “Please come outside.”

  “You gave it up.”

  “It was a hobby. I don’t have time. It’s not important.”

  He watched her face. He saw a veil of grief, of longing, steal across her features. She still stood at attention but her hands had dropped from her hips to her sides.

  “It is important.”

  “Once, maybe, not anymore. Come out.”

  “Show me.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Then leave me here. I won’t damage anything.”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s private.”

  “You scared I might learn something about you?”

  “You do think you’re special, don’t you, Mace?”

  He lifted the sheet back over the running Jacinta. “That was special.” He pointed to another canvas against the wall, a stormy scene all dark colours and torn vistas. It was upside down. He tilted his head to see it better. “That’s amazing.”

  “You have no idea what you’re looking at.”

  “Show me.”

  “No.”

  “Never picked you for a coward.”

  She left him there. He’d hoped for a fight. He’d hoped she might relent and show him all about this hidden life of hers etched and scraped and daubed on the canvases. He felt like he’d found the secret essence of her. The interior of the woman whose physical body had melted in his arms and shook apart when he was inside her.

  He moved around the room, paging through the canv
ases, pulling out the ones that looked finished, stacking them against the window. When he was done with that he had twenty of them. A half a dozen more, unfinished, abandoned like inadequate lovers, bad boyfriends, were still in the stacks.

  He sat on the floor and studied them. They didn’t make much sense. Didn’t tell a story. He’d hoped there might be more self-portraits. In front of him were landscapes, seascapes, and one scene of a tumbledown derelict house. She’d painted it to look freshly haunted. As though if he touched it, his hand would come away damp and gritty.

  When she came back into the room and sat beside him he didn’t speak. He waited for her to. She sat for a long time before she did and her voice didn’t sound right, it’d lost all its certainty.

  “I gave this up. I gave it up because I couldn’t have this and a career too.”

  What she’d said was coldly practical, but it sounded like heartbreak. But then what did he know, about painting, or about the woman who sat tensely beside him?

  “I haven’t held a paintbrush for five years. I’ve never painted in this room. It’s just storage.”

  He lifted his arm and she scooted under it to lean against him. “I should have it packed up; give the canvases away.”

  “You should paint again.”

  “I’ve probably forgotten how. It was a bit of escapism. I don’t need it anymore.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “When I’m old and grey I can take it up again for fun.”

  This didn’t look like fun. What Buster did with glue, sparkles and buttons, with knitted animals and scrapbooks before her fingers seized up, looked like fun. This looked like hard work, like struggle, creation and passion. “This was no fun.”

  She shook her head and he knew he was looking at Jacinta’s coding, what wired her, the place where she lived.

  He kissed her temple and she turned into him. There were tears in her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of her hand. “I didn’t want you to come in here.”

  He loved that she didn’t try to hide her distress. “I can’t do any harm. I’m only passing through.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way.”

  He shifted a little closer. Did she feel what he did? That he’d glimpsed something sacred in her, something no one else knew. That he didn’t like the idea of giving it up.

  “My mother painted. She wasn’t just decorative. She was good, not like me, she had real talent. Could’ve had her own shows. Sold her work. Made real money. She gave it up because Malcolm thought it was in poor taste. She gave it up like it was nothing. I don’t know why I‘ve had such trouble feeling okay about giving it up.”

  “You’ve got talent.”

  She turned her head and bit his shoulder. “What do you know about art?”

  “Nothing. But I know what I’m looking at.”

  “Bowl me over with your critique, Master.”

  He might have thumped Dillon for a crack like that. He pulled her around so they were face to face. “I know fuck all about paint. I’m looking at your DNA. That’s what you’re made of. That’s what makes you hurt, and gives you joy. That’s what you’re sacrificing.” He touched the helix of her ear, cupped her skull. “It’s a big call to give away what makes you feel alive.”

  She blinked at him, her eyes filled with tears again. ‘”What are you doing to me?”

  “Seeing you.”

  “You need to unsee. I’m not who you think I am.” Whoever she thought she was, she didn’t want to be this person, the one who could put images on canvas that felt like they could flood, burn, spook the room.

  He dipped his head and kissed her forehead. “Can’t do that.”

  “I knew you were dangerous.”

  She was joking at least, but she’d painted her fear and covered it with a sheet and he needed to know.

  He looked across at the easel. “The one who hurt you. Is that who you’re running from?”

  She put her hand to his face, to his rough whiskers. “You need to forget that.”

  He frowned. Impossible. After a night and a day with her he wanted to track that bastard down and torture him to breaking point then condemn him to a living hell because death would be too easy.

  “Who do you run from, Cinta?”

  She let go a sob. It wasn’t a sound he’d ever heard a woman make before. It was a torn thing, wrenched from her like true grief. He didn’t understand it, and he felt responsible for unleashing it. He hauled her into his lap and she wrapped herself around him. He rocked her while her breaths shuddered through her slender frame.

  When she quieted he lifted her face and kissed her. Not to stir her, but because he needed it. Needed the closeness of her breath, her mouth, to know he hadn’t somehow broken her with his clumsy insistence on getting in her business.

  She pulled away and he watched her regroup. Her spine straightened. She took the pin from her hair, finger combed it out, then twisted it up and pinned it tighter. She gave him a clear-eyed look.

  “People died in the fire yesterday. People died outside my front door today. Nothing is as certain as you think it is. My mother gave up what made her truly special to the world and she died too young to change her mind about it. I worry sometimes I’m making the wrong sacrifices. I’m tired. I didn’t expect you to be so...” She flapped her hands. “I thought I was the one in control.”

  He’d upset her. He really needed to leave her be. “I’ll go.”

  “I want you to stay. I want to help you get your funding. Jay will come for breakfast. We’ll talk to him then. If what you’ve got interests him, he’ll be straight with you. If he agrees to fund you, you won’t need to work at Wentworth anymore.”

  She stood up and smoothed her dress over her hips.

  He followed her to his feet. She was giving him the opportunity to make his life’s work happen, to realise his ambition. He made a move towards the paintings to put them back the way he’d found them. She deserved that much, and more, from him.

  “Leave them. They don’t matter.” She was by the door, her hand over the light switch. He’d invaded her privacy and he expected her to want it back.

  “Take me to bed, Mace.”

  He was halfway to her side and stopped. He shouldn’t want that so much. He shouldn’t need to feel her body cleave to his. This was way more than he’d bargained for, but for now he was ready to pay for it with every heated, heart-stopped breath.

  10: Jealous

  Mace fought against sleep’s drowsy weight. He wanted to watch Jacinta even as she was drifting into its grasp. What they’d done in her big tousled bed wasn’t the one night stand of I want you material, it was something else entirely.

  He had experience of how I want you played out, and found it mostly to be about ego and mindless animal need, satisfying enough when it wasn’t pathetically drunken and fumbled.

  What they’d done was the opposite; it was slow and gentle, careful and considered and it rocked his world. They’d caressed and flowed and rippled together, the boiling and melting so evenly shared, so exquisitely paced, it left him alive to the notion he’d been screwing women for more than decade and had never known what it was to make love.

  Because that’s what’d gone down.

  It filled him with both awe and regret. Regret that he’d wasted a lot of time being satisfied with good enough. Awe at having found that incredible tension and rhythm with a woman he’d never imagined trying for. Regret that it was only through divine circumstance it’d happened at all and wouldn’t happen again after tonight.

  Because as beautiful as it had been, it was also goodbye. Jacinta had used her body to tell him to go, tell him he’d gotten too close and didn’t fit well; was too big and silent and clumsy, too intense and stubborn and quick to misunderstand, to be part of her well ordered existence that didn’t include a personal life by choice.

  He watched her breathing deepen, her body soften. Her face was so pale, her body so slight, her hair so dark and messed up fr
om his hands. She was physically delicate, yet she could face down the tornado that was Malcolm without a flinch. She didn’t look severe to him anymore. She wasn’t starched and she hadn’t needed alcohol to rub away the armour. It was a skin she shrugged off when she felt safe enough to.

  He’d made her feel safe enough, but without trying, he’d threatened her too. She’d ricocheted between military and malleable in her reaction to him all day, but she’d wanted him to stay, and now he didn’t want the last moments of being with her to pass.

  She stirred, her eyes opened, closed, then blinked to focus on him. She lifted her hand to his face and he moved his head so he could kiss her palm.

  “How are you still awake?” She pulled her hand away. “Don’t be nervous about Jay.”

  He’d not spared a thought for Jay. Insanity, when nothing he or Dillon could have deliberately done would’ve led to it.

  “Sleep, Mace. You’ll need your wits about you. You’ll need to articulate exactly what it is you’ve got.”

  He pushed out a breath. He was code, not words. Words were Dillon’s black magic. He was the wrong man for this job and no amount of debugging would ever make him right for it.

  She smiled. “He won’t laugh at you.”

  “He can laugh all he wants. We know what we’ve got.”

  “Then it’ll be easy to explain. Jay speaks tech, you won’t need to dumb it down.”

  He watched her face, her eyes studying him.

  “Mace?”

  “I went alpha dick on him.”

  She laughed. “You did. You thought you had to fight him for me.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I liked it.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He’s protective of me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You sound jealous. You can’t be jealous of Jay. You can’t be jealous at all, there—”

  He kissed her. It was enough to know it. He didn’t need it said. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his back and for long moments he didn’t think about anything but the deep peace of having her in his arms.

  And that’s the way he slept, curled around her, breathing in sync with her, till he opened one eye to witness her slip away in the blue-grey dawn and alone, he dreamed of drowning in a hot, gritty, mist-filled sea.