Austin had to disagree with that statement. “You are still him,” Austin commented lightly. The man that had been here when she got back to town was still the man she left.
“I am now,” Tyler stated with an obvious tone. “You coming back brought me back to me. Even Natasha see’s how you being here has changed me back to the man I used to be. The man I loved being. I don’t know how, Austin, but you have both the ability to make and break me and that still scares me. I grew up knowing that but even now, at twenty-five years old, the power you have over me terrifies the shit out of me because I know I will only ever love you.”
Austin diverted her eye contact as the tears fell, “I know that feeling.”
“You know for us to heal completely from everything we need complete honesty right?” he asked and she began to chew her lip nervously, he watched her nod at him. “I want you in my life, Austin. I need you in it, but I’m still in the dark.”
“I know,” she whispered back, nervous that she would be forced to tell all.
“Okay,” he said reaching for her hand as they sat close to one another. “Why did you leave then? Please tell me, Austin. Make me understand,” Tyler tried and knew he wouldn’t force her. He just wanted to see if what he was feeling was strong enough to take the blow of the past.
He couldn’t deny that he just wanted to take Austin right here, right now.
“No,” she replied, “Don’t make me. Please.” She didn’t want to relive this now, not when the moment had been so intimate and perfect. She didn’t want the nightmare to attack her when she was with Tyler. She didn’t want to have that clawing into her when she knew Tyler would be going back to Natasha right after.
“Fine,” he said and in the heat of the moment he kissed her with a force she hadn’t felt in years. Tyler still kissed her the way that made the flame of their love combust and burn brighter and as the heat prickled across her skin she didn’t care about the consequences right now. She gave her all to have a piece of the past back.
Her mother might hate her, some of town might give her accusatory looks, but Tyler really didn’t hold a grudge and that made her heart flutter with hope entirely.
Neither thought their actions through as they just began to strip, allowing their skin to connect and find an alliance like they had years ago. Throwing her shirt to the side, Tyler began to work Austin’s bra as Austin unbuckled his belt. Their kissing barely lightening as they dove further into this forbidden oblivion.
Moving from the soaking wet kitchen, they went into the living room at the front of the house. Tyler lowered Austin against a pile of unused cloths that were used to cover the floor when they were painting. He knew it wasn’t romantic but it was all they had and he wouldn’t be leaving until he had gained back another part of him before the night was up.
Losing her jeans and ripping her panties from her body, he gave her a wicked grin as she stared at him with the utmost lust, and she found that he didn’t lose his eye contact as he thrust into her, penetrating more than just her body with his penis. She felt full and content by the feel of him inside her again after over six years and she didn’t want it to end. Her soul felt complete and her cracked heart was healing.
Feeling him withdraw and then thrust back into her heated core, her back arched with the absolute pleasure and for the first time since she knew when, Austin felt like she was home, she was safe, loved, and that the bad memories were just nightmares.
Both got lost in the power of this love making until they climaxed one right after the other. Tyler gave his all for this moment of perfection. Falling beside her, he moved her hair to the side and they just stared at one another in this state of bliss, neither speaking.
It was like time had left them unchanged. He still felt the same and he could see from the content grin on Austin’s lips that she did too. Six years on and their bodies still spoke to one another on more than one level.
However, as the heat sweltered across their skin still, Tyler sat up a little bit, “We can’t do this more than this one time.” He looked apologetic as he spoke and he looked exceedingly guilty by it as well and she had to accept this new warped reality.
Austin had wanted to believe this was them relinquishing an old flame, but it wasn’t even close to igniting that old fire. This, whatever this was, was closure. Tyler had let go of every memory he held with Austin and she knew she had to do the same.
The guilt suddenly became ever so apparent on Tyler’s facial expression and Austin felt bad for taking advantage of the situation and allowing it to get this far. Christ, she had just had unprotected sex in a house that everyone was in and out of while restoring it with a man she had deceived and ran away from because she got scared and allowed grief to swallow her without so much as a grasp of help.
“We can’t do that again,” he told her and grabbed his Calvin Klein’s to put back on. As he pulled them up, he stood to full height and turned to face Austin as she lay wrapped in the sheets. “I can’t risk Tasha finding out about this.”
Standing up, she put her back to him; Austin knew she had lost everything for one moment of lust. She tried to stop the tears that beckoned an onslaught along her lashes. She would never let him know how much that comment had hurt her.
“It’s okay, she will never know,” Austin vowed, her voice was low and broken. She turned back to face the man her heart begged for only breaking herself more. This was their dirty little secret now and it would stay trapped in the confines of this house. “I think its best we forget we ever did that.”
“Yeah,” Tyler replied, unhappy by the conclusion to the most amazing love making he had been given in the last six years. “I better go, I need to go and meet Natasha. I’ll see you around, Austin.”
Austin remained silent as she stood now wrapped in one of the cloths, her body pleasantly sore and naked underneath and her heart was doing the familiar descent towards the floor for another shattering impact.
Watching him leave to go back to Natasha broke her heart far worse than ever leaving this Godforsaken town had done. Sinking to the floor, Austin felt dirty for loving a man that was taken by another woman. Her man was no longer her man. She couldn’t live in that past anymore.
Chapter Fourteen
AUSTIN’S heart hadn’t taken a proper beat since hearing Natasha’s baby news two days ago. She had been at the house, but Tyler had dropped her a text to say he was spending a few days alone with Natasha. Again, Austin faltered. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering the what if’s in life. She imagined if Tyler would have been like that had he known about their baby, and for once, she realized that hindsight was not an amazing thing. Actually, hindsight was what was killing her most right now.
She never did text back to Tyler with much emotion. A simple ‘okay’ and she got on with fixing the house. Now it was more prevalent to her to just get the house painted and leave town. This wasn’t her home anymore and she was realizing it. Her mother never spoke to her, her siblings and her father were torn between her and her mother, and Tyler, well, he was slipping away from her ever getting a chance at having him in her life. As for the rest of Point Arena, she was still their biggest freak show.
“I wished you had never come back,” Natasha said out of the blue after watching Austin focus on the added plans for the house. She had stood there hoping Austin would take notice of her presence but, she never did, she just got on with what she was doing.
So the bitch struck up.
Austin looked up suddenly and with complete shock. She thought she was in this house on her own, getting on with the new developments and ideas, hiding herself away and keeping her pain out of plain sight. She had channeled herself into some new ideas and she needed to now run them past Tyler whenever he came back around and she wanted to impress with him with them. Since they had made love he had pulled back marginally and had claimed to be busy with work – that old chestnut again, but since the baby news he had barely bothered with her.
Refusing to be the bullied here, Austin decided to show she had grown stronger. “Yeah because you haven’t made that abundantly clear once since I’ve been back,” Austin spoke with sarcasm and got back to her plans ignoring Natasha. “Sorry, if you think I’m ignoring you, Natasha. I have nothing worth saying to you.”
Natasha felt the heat bubble in her chest as she realized her comments didn’t affect Austin in the desired way she had hoped for. None of them had and that disappointed her. Austin was the girl she had easily taunted, but not anymore. She wasn’t that girl that went to school and won Tyler over. Taking a deep breath, she cut her plan in half, and spoke the next part with clarity and the right level of emotions.
“I lost the baby,” Natasha told Austin and felt a weight lift off her shoulders as she got rid of her lie with another lie. She then looked down and begged the tears to build in her eyes and scratch at her throat. The baby might never have been real, but with a miscarriage she was sure to see Tyler devastated and give her all of the emotions that Austin never had all those years ago. It hadn’t taken a genius to work out that Austin lost that baby and Natasha wasn’t completely stupid. She knew that Austin wouldn’t have ran from Tyler with the truth and when she arrived back in town without a baby, Natasha saw her opportunity. Now she was exacting her plan regardless of who got hurt.
She needed Tyler to carry on loving her and not go back to Austin ever again.
Natasha knew it was deceitful, but she would rather not have to lie about a pregnancy that wasn’t going to actually have any form of output when the entire nine months were up. So she had thought up a cunning idea, one that would make her fall into Tyler’s arms and the grief would completely eclipse Austin’s presence all together. They would be a couple that lost their baby and Austin would be pushed completely out.
She just had to break the news to Tyler once the seed was planted in Austin’s mind. Once that was done, and Austin was guilt ridden, Tyler bereaved, everyone pitying her and her loss, would she really kick Austin in the teeth.
“Yo-You lost the baby?” Tyler voice suddenly broke into the tense air as he asked Natasha. The shock barely being registered after what he had heard. He had literally just walked through the door to hear Natasha beating into Austin and now he had overheard this and he felt all viable air sucked from his lungs.
Natasha spun around shocked that Tyler had heard that. “Tyler,” she tried to make her eyes water a little more. She went towards him, expecting to get sympathy and love and condolence, but she didn’t. It didn’t even border close to those emotions. No, she got hostility thrown at her and distance thrust between her and him.
“I-I,” Tyler stuttered and averted all eye contact together. “I need to get out of here.”
He left her completely neglected.
Natasha turned back to Austin and saw her watering eyes and it seemed to make her snap even more. Her plan against Austin had started to backfire and now the victim of her scheme was looking more remorseful than her fiancé had. “This is entirely your fault, Austin!” Natasha blamed Austin as her anger took on a life of its own. “If you had never come back, Tyler and I would be fine and happy, and I’d still have his baby to show him that we were meant to be.”
The reaction Natasha was expecting again didn’t surface. Instead the newer Austin fought back.
“I had every right to come back here,” Austin informed Natasha with a fierce tone. She wasn’t going to let this new turn of events chase her away and she certainly wasn’t the bullied girl that Natasha had loved to torment all through school. Not anymore. She wasn’t the Austin that grew up in this town. She had died the night she had lost Tyler and their baby.
“You’ll leave like you did before, Austin,” Natasha told Austin with sheer certainty. “If it’s not by choice, I’m sure you’ll find yourself forced out soon.”
Gulping, Austin felt a feeling of foreboding settle upon her but she tried to shrug it off. She wasn’t leaving this town just yet, that much was sure, and she couldn’t see anyone pushing her out of the town either. She had bridges to rebuild and relationships to fight for and even without Tyler’s love, she couldn’t run again.
Chapter Fifteen
THE sinking feeling in her never died and life resumed as Austin had expected it to. She had barely seen anything of Tyler like she had thought, but it didn’t stop her from going out of her mind. It meant she didn’t get to see Tyler revel in the grief and she didn’t have to feel her heart breaking at the thought of him having Natasha’s potential offspring.
She stilled in her actions of cleaning the window, he had lost the baby. Natasha wasn’t pregnant anymore. She had lost the baby. Austin guessed it was down to not wanting to sympathize with Natasha on any level, but as she now made the connotation, it was all she could think about. Natasha and her were now more alike than ever. They were on an emotional level that they could relate on. A little sniggering from within broke her away from that empathetic track and made her understand that her and Natasha would never relate, not when they both wanted the same thing – Tyler.
“Aussie, it’s your week to do the grocery shopping,” she heard Tom call up and she was thankful for a new task, one that drove her away from the house. “I don’t mind going, but we had a deal. ”
“No it’s fine. It is my turn. I’ll go now,” Austin shouted down to him and didn’t want to waste time; she wanted to run away from her thought processes. “Anything you need?”
“Nothing other than the usual,” he called out and went back out to the garden to finish the patio.
Austin threw the rag down and decided she wanted to go shopping and then do nothing but relax for the rest of the evening. Window cleaning, hanging curtains, fixing odds and ends could wait until another day.
“I’ll meet you at home okay? I won’t be long,” she called out to her brother who stuck his thumb up as he concentrated and then left to begin the short journey.
Austin walked into the store and immediately felt like all eyes were on her and the lips of the gossipers didn’t halt at all as she walked the aisles.
“I can’t believe she can even show her face after what she did.” She heard two of her and Natasha’s moms’ friends gossiping.
“I know right? It’s disgraceful that she’s even sticking in town,” Austin sped up as that bit was voiced and she felt victimized and belittled in the grocery store.
She kept her head down looking at the list and instinctively grabbed things and put them in the cart, she looked up as she noticed someone in the aisle and was stopped immediately from carrying on.
“I think it’s best you leave,” Stephen, the store manager, who she had gone to school with, said as he stepped in front of her fully. His face was dark and accusatory and he wasn’t going to take any victims.
Austin looked at him, her hands gripping the cart, “Excuse me?” she asked as she looked over her shoulder in despair, “What have I done?” She looked down at the cart to see if anything was in there that really shouldn’t have been, but all she saw were the few groceries she had just picked up.
“Oh, you know what you’ve done and we don’t serve murderers in this place,” he told her and put his hands on the opposite ends of the cart. He watched the shock expression erupt upon Austin’s face. “I think it is best you leave.”
Ridicule wrapped itself around her hastily. Austin felt the flush of embarrassment creep across her face and chest as they started to burn bright crimson. She ran from the store confused and completely ashamed of the treatment.
“When you’re going to push a pregnant woman around next time make sure you actually have the guts to accept what you did!” She heard from behind her as she literally ran to her car. That statement did stop her. Push?! She had never even touched Natasha so how the hell had she- Bitch! – she had been framed beautifully and she now knew it.
She quickly realized, if no one else had, that the pregnancy must have been a lie because she had never pushed Natasha and within a week s
he had gone from being happily pregnant to not. Irrational she knew, but she had to hang hope on that. After all, she hadn’t done a thing wrong.
Then it struck her. The comment from earlier that week which she had tried to brush off was now hitting her properly. You’ll leave like you did before, Austin. If it’s not by choice, I’m sure you’ll find yourself forced out soon. She knew Natasha was lying about being pregnant all along now. Little did Natasha know was that Austin wasn’t going to leave without actual physical force.
Looking back she saw the sales clerk watching from the doorway and quickly got into her car and headed home. Even in her car it didn’t seem like she could evade the attention. Everyone was looking and willingly pointing at her and she was beginning to grow self conscious as she drove.
Pulling into the drive she was thankful to be home until she looked up and saw one of the living room windows missing. Getting out of her car she rushed in, her breathing racy, her heart pumping and struggling with the rising fear.
What she found didn’t even enter her mind.
“Tom, what the hell happened?” she asked as she found her brother cleaning up glass from the wooden flooring.
“I think this is yours,” Tom told Austin, standing as he did so. He picked a brick up from the table on the side and handed it to her. “I don’t know who would do it, but it’s pretty clear what they wanted to convey.”
Austin took the brick and had to sit down. As she read it and felt sick – You know you just never should have come back. She looked up at her brother with wild, scared bewilderment. She had no idea how to handle this type of vandalism.
“What is that about?” he asked her, unimpressed by the damage occurred. “I was lucky I was in the kitchen and not still sitting on the couch.”
Shaking her head, Austin felt a headache beginning to spread across from temple to temple, “I got thrown out of the grocery store,” she told her brother looking up at him. “For being a murderer.”
A Fire That Burns Page 7
