Insecure

by Ainslie Paton

  “What are you doing? Oh God, don’t.”

  The shirt he was about to put on went in the duffel, along with few others. He swung the bag up onto the bed and she gasped. She was standing too close.

  “Move away.”

  “Mace, you’re scaring me.”

  He barked a laugh. Seeing her with that knife had terrified him. Thinking she might hurt herself when she ran out of other things to rip into sliced into him. Waste of emotion. He was her second best and he’d been an idiot to forget that.

  “Move the fuck away from me.”

  She reached for him and he shifted, dodging her contact. She put her hand on his arm and he brushed it aside. He needed to get past her to get to his gear from the bathroom. He’d go to Dillon’s tonight. Come back for more of his stuff later. She could deal with the lease.

  She got in his way, he tried to step around her and she blocked him again. He shoved her too hard, knew it the minute his hands made contact with her arms. Her eyes went wide and she stumbled backwards. He made a grab for her but she tripped and went down hard on her side with a shocked cry.

  “Fuck.” He reached for her and she flinched, scrambling backwards on the floor to get away from him, making whimpering noises. “Fuck, Cinta.”

  She braced her arms over her face, curled up, frozen, cowering on the floor at his feet. She thought he was going to hit her.

  He thought his head might explode.

  He’d never hit a woman. He’d never threatened one. But he’d made the woman he loved afraid of him and he’d done it without thinking.

  He staggered to the other end of the room, away from her, away from the horror he’d caused. He leant against the wall, but his legs weren’t holding and he sank to the floor, his head in his hands, his heart utterly shredded.

  28: Different

  Jacinta said his name but he didn’t respond. She crawled across the floor and when he realised she was near, he startled and lifted his head. If he wasn’t hunkered down he’d have run. Their eyes locked. She couldn’t catch her breath. He was gutted, appalled. He thought he’d hurt her.

  “I...you.” The tears came again and she couldn’t speak. She crawled the rest of the distance between them and stopped in front of him. He didn’t move, just looked at her with the death of everything she loved and admired about him in his eyes. “Mace.”

  He angled his head away. His hands were shaking.

  “You didn’t hurt me. I tripped. You’d cut out your own heart before you’d hurt me.”

  He groaned, the sound of his shock its own wound. He opened his arms and she crawled into them and they were both breathing short, holding each other too tight, her face in his shoulder, his lips in her hair. He dropped his knees and she sat between them, her legs around his back, her palms on his face.

  “You didn’t do anything. That’s an old fear. It’s nothing to do with you. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He took her hands and held them to his chest, where his heart galloped. His throat was working but his jaw was clenched so hard, words would have to smash his teeth to come out. Thoughts she couldn’t read shifted like storm warnings across his face until he closed his eyes and shuddered.

  “Mace, please don’t leave me.”

  “Only to find the fuckwit who did that to you and make him history.” His voice was low with menace; his features settled into a fearsome expression.

  She stroked her thumb over his brow, trying to sooth the tension out of him. Most of hers had dissolved the moment he held her. “He is long gone. He was a mistake and I thought I was well past it.”

  “I need to know what happened.”

  “No. No, you don’t. It’s not part of us.”

  “You thought I was going to hit you. I thought my fucking head was going to cave in. I have to understand it.”

  She took him by the hand to the studio, seeing for the first time with clarity what havoc her tantrum had produced. That’s what it was, pure and simple, a tantrum of epic proportions. Mace called her princess that first weekend and that’s exactly how she’d behaved, like she was privileged, entitled to have things go her way.

  She should be happy for Tom. Happy her thinking had influenced the board. Thankful the ideas she had would change for the better the way Wentworth treated its customers.

  She thought she’d known shame, but it was nothing but scorched ego. She bit the inside of her lip. Her real shame was the shambles she’d made of this room and how she’d changed the way Mace felt about her. The broken canvases, the paint on the floor, what she’d said to him and the way he was tentative with her—that was humiliation, that was disgrace.

  He pushed the table back against the wall. She wrapped both arms around him, but he stiffened. He was putting distance between them, scared of himself, of her. There was so much to say to set things right.

  “Please don’t. This is my mess. I need to clean it up. I don’t deserve your help.”

  He removed her hands and bent to pick up broken glass. “You didn’t deserve to be hit. Nothing you could do is an excuse for that. You didn’t deserve to lose your mum, have Malcolm as a father, have him teach you to hate and fear a part of yourself. You didn’t deserve to lose out to politics when you were right.”

  He picked up a tube of paint and tightened the top on it, then flung it at the wall. “Those fuckers.” His anger and confusion lived in the taut tendons in his neck and the hard lines his face had settled in.

  She hardly understood her own behaviour but she owed it to him to explain as best she could.

  “I forgot about shopping, like I forget everything when I’m working in here. But I had the radio on and I heard the newsbreak. I came out to see what time it was. I was going to dash out before you got home. And I heard it, Henry being interviewed. I was so angry with all of them I didn’t know what to do. I was painting, playing at being an artist, while they were re-engineering Wentworth using my plans without me. I wanted to tear this room and everything in it to pieces.”

  He looked around at everything but her. “You did a good job.”

  “I frightened you.

  He leaned on the workbench, his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were shifting, wary.

  “I’ve done it twice tonight and I didn’t mean it either time.”

  Now he focused on her. “Tell me about the second time. ‘Cause God help me, Cinta, that’s got me knotted tight.”

  She reached her hand out to him, but the look on his face, so closed up, so distrustful stopped her. “Five years ago I lived with a man. His name was Brent. He was a global tax specialist for a mining company.” She took steady breaths to make sure she could keep her voice level, calm. Mace’s breathing was short, his shoulders up.

  “It was something like what just happened to us, but we weren’t arguing. I got in his way, he tried to get around me, he bumped me, I tripped and fell. We laughed about it. I didn’t think anything of it.” Not at the time. Her eyes went to her bare feet, later she’d recognised that accidental bump for the deliberate push it was. “I was wrong.”

  Mace expelled a grunt of loathing, and she looked over at him. His whole body was poised, assessing an invisible opponent, looking for the weakness.

  “A week later he shoved me into a wall and there was no excuse for it. He apologised and I forgave him.” She breathed deeply, Mace wasn’t breathing at all. She had to get the worst said. “That was my mistake. A month later he smacked me so hard he knocked me off my feet and gave me a black eye. He said he thought that’s what I wanted, what I needed from a man.”

  Mace’s hands went to the edge of the table behind him, his scarred knuckles white as he gripped it, his head dropped forward. He was going to need her words to find his.

  “I threw him out. I had him charged with assault. He lost his job and he moved overseas. I never saw him again after the night he hit me and I thought I was well past it.”

  His head snapped up. “But I brought it all back.”
<
br />   She couldn’t deny it. He’d brought that moment of crippling fear roaring back. And now it was a vast chasm of misinterpretation opening up between them.

  “I know to my last breath you would never hurt me. I thought I’d lost you. I thought you were going to leave me. I got in your way, it was so like...when I fell, I stopped thinking and I panicked.”

  Mace held his temper but anxiety vibrated out of his skin and floated in the room like noxious fumes. There were two strides and a blast zone between them and Jacinta could see no way to knit enough reason to pack the crater. He was going to leave her now for an entirely new reason, one she’d already made her peace with, one he had no fault in.

  “I’m not frightened of you, Mace. I’m terrified I’ve proven myself not worth going through all this for.”

  She gestured to her self-portrait. “I painted that after Brent left me. I wanted it as a reminder not to look over my shoulder in fear. But I’ve been doing that for a long time. I was frightened of being like my mother, frightened of not measuring up to Malcolm, frightened of committing to another relationship.”

  She’d never wanted to hear Mace’s voice so badly, but in his fear of what he’d done to her he was mute to her need. Her eyes stung, her limbs felt heavy, she might fall again and this time it would be into the black emptiness of being without him.

  “I’m so tired of all that. I don’t want to be ashamed or frightened of any part of myself anymore. I love you. I hurt you. I screwed up.”

  It was difficult to hold her head up, impossible to look at the cool wall of apprehension in him. “I need very much, just for now, for you to at least pretend to give us another chance.”

  “Can’t pretend.”

  She heard him move, but she’d closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch him walk away. She would lay down in the mess and sleep till the end of time, never have to deal with being without him.

  His hand was warm on the back of her neck. “Can’t deny this cuts me up.”

  She gulped and he must’ve felt it. She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

  “Can’t believe how brave you are.” He kissed her forehead and she hooked a finger through the empty belt loop of his jeans.

  “Can’t leave you.”

  “But you were going to.”

  He brushed hair off her face, curled his fingers around her ear. “Can’t deny I wanted out.”

  “Are we not stronger than an argument?” She couldn’t do this again. She dropped her hand from his waist. If they fought and she said things she didn’t mean in anger she had to know he’d go toe to toe with her, wasn’t going to pack a bag and leave.

  “Ah fuck, Cinta.” He stroked her upper arm with the flat of his palm, smoothing down to her elbow. She lifted her hand and they clasped. She read only distress in his expression and it occurred again she was asking too much of him.

  “You’re focused and tenacious about everything else in your life. Don’t give up on you and me. Not yet, please not yet.”

  He reached for her other hand and she gave it into his grip. He rested his forehead on hers. It wasn’t the crushing hug she craved, but he was still here. She lifted her chin to prompt a kiss and he went with it, his lips soft on hers, tentative in a way not even their first kisses had been. Her hands went to his hips and he didn’t break away. He touched her cheek, her chin, the edges of her ears, her throat with the tenderest kisses, light like bright butterfly wings. He was silent and steady, the movement of his hands caressing her back and neck, made to take the place of words.

  He would stay, he would forgive, he would try. It would have to be enough not to hear confirmed what his body was saying.

  He took her to bed, after a bath, after a grocery run and a mushroom omelette. Neither of them was hungry but he insisted she eat. Between the sheets he touched her with gentleness bordering on reverence, intensely alert to her, watchful and remote. Uncharacteristically silent in the one place his tongue was unguarded. It broke her in a new way, his reticence to talk, to hold her, grip on to her, move her as he willed.

  “You can’t hurt me, Mace. Not here.” He slicked kisses down her body, giving her his touch but not his thoughts. “Please talk to me.” He settled between her legs, nudging her knee aside. He was going to hide his feelings in the sex. She struggled upright and tried to push him back. He looked up and his expression was so filled with sorrow it burned. She shoved him, slapped her hands on his chest and pushed, wanting to knock his distrust out.

  “Don’t shut down on me. Don’t you dare lock me out. Don’t make this into something it’s not. If you’re going to leave me, do it because I’m a spoilt princess, not because you think I’m too weak to take your touch.” She glared at him and he gave her nothing. She moved to the edge of the bed and stood up; she didn’t know what to do next, if he left, if he stayed.

  “Get back in this bed.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. He lay on his stomach, he hadn’t shifted. “Why?”

  “Get back in our bed.”

  The changed description mattered, but not enough. “I worked hard to get over Brent. You’re making me feel like I’m too weak, too frail for you. I was not a victim then. Don’t make me one now.”

  He rolled over and sat up cross-legged, the sheet bunched in one hand. “I need you to come back to bed. I need it to be different.” He lifted his face and her whole body stung from the look in his eyes. “I nearly left you tonight because I can be a fucking hothead.” He ground his fist down into the bed. “Do you know how that makes me feel?”

  She could see it, regret poured out of him, it bunched the muscles in his abdomen; it lifted his shoulders and darkened his eyes.

  “I might’ve left you because you were upset and hating the world and you had a right to, and I couldn’t see straight. All I heard was you rejecting me and that’s not what you were doing. I nearly left you over nothing. Because yeah, we’re stronger than some shouting and breaking things. And I’m not going anywhere. I think you’re incredible. I love you and I need you.”

  She stood at the end of the bed facing him. He was so intense he changed the temperature of the room, made her body hot and cold and shivering through both climates.

  “But tonight I need you differently. You are all I can see, all I can think about. All I want to feel, and I came so fucking close to fucking it up. Don’t ask me to be the same with you tonight, because I can’t do it. Get back in this bed, Cinta and let me love you the best way I can.”

  She got back in the bed and he loved her so carefully, so deeply, with hesitant reverence in his hands, with quaking obsession in his words, that he redefined their togetherness.

  29: Penalties

  Lunch with Aaron Turnbull wasn’t exactly a job interview, but it was the kind of networking you did when you needed a job interview to manifest itself out of thin air. And thin air had been in plentiful supply when Aaron called with an invitation. He’d want something, that’s for sure. Jacinta had to hope what he wanted was also useful to her, because she’d had to knock back lunch with Carmen and Ingrid and that would’ve been far more interesting. No, not interesting, it would’ve been a straight up serve of no hidden agenda, no posturing, no power play, fun.

  She gave Aaron a smile. Let the posturing begin.

  “Unemployment looks good on you, Jac.”

  He leaned forward, invaded her personal space and kissed both her cheeks, holding on to her upper arm a touch too long for someone she’d not spoken to in recent memory. She tried not to scowl at either the comment or the overfamiliarity, but the short form of her name made her cringe. He hadn’t earned that. How would he like it if she called him Ron?

  “Why has it been so long since I’ve seen you?”

  Ron would’ve been busy with two ex-wives and four kids since they’d been MBA classmates. He was busy now checking out her legs. “Dumb question. Busy.”

  He laughed, followed it with a shrug. “I always knew I could call you up in two years or ten and you
’d be the same old clever chops and it’d be like we’d spoken yesterday.”

  Jacinta shook her head. He definitely wanted something. “And my best ruthless, heartless, no friends in business, that didn’t come across?” She’d put proper clothes on for this, makeup. Carmen would’ve had something outrageously funny to say. Ingrid would’ve given them an update on her online dating challenges. No one would have used the expression clever chops and thought they were being amusing.

  Ron laughed again. He’d gotten fat and his hair was thinning. He’d been the one to watch in their class intake and proven it by launching his own consulting firm and then not crashing it in a blaze of bad decisions. “I must’ve missed it.” He had a hide like a well-fed croc, he’d have ignored it. He’d also gotten rich, quick, if the magazine lists were in any way accurate.

  “Hmm, maybe that’s where I went wrong.”

  “I heard the old man cut you off at the knees. True?”

  She inclined her head. “True enough.” It was no secret, and no one in the industry bought the idea it was her free choice to explore other options, follow private passions. Odd that, so far, that’s exactly what she was doing.

  “What did you do to deserve that?”

  “Did you ask me to lunch to get the gossip, Ron?”

  “Of course I did.” He waved at a waitress. “Did you just call me Ron?”

  This meeting was a waste of good lipstick and she’d only been in the restaurant for fifteen minutes. “Good Lord, what do you want,” she enunciated clearly, “Aaron?”

  “Don’t be like that. Tell me how you’ve been?”

  For seconds, while he scanned the menu, she thought of telling him she was at a weird place in her life where wearing her work clothes felt like playing dress-ups, where she was more likely to have paint under her nails than polish on them, that she was making friends for the first time since school days, and had a lover she cared about for the first time in forever.

  That would shut him up because it was deeply personal and there was little place for that in business. Particularly this kind of business, masquerading as a friendly catch up lunch, but in reality, all about using the sucker you share a tablecloth with for your own personal gain.