Pause. Then, ‘Couldn’t I?’
‘Um – no!’
Another small pause. ‘So why did you punch me that night, Chloe?’
And it all came back in a rush. That first night. Marcus, with me. Nick, with Ruby. The other guys with their partners. And yes, okay, it wasn’t exactly every girl’s idea of a dreamy first date, but it had been friendly and fun. Right up until the moment Ruby had shown me that WAG guide of hers. Startled, I’d looked to Nick, wondering if that was some requirement for him, and found his eyes were already on me, hot and heavy. He’d shrugged, and up went his eyebrow. And he’d smiled, the half-smile.
And that was how it had started. One shared moment.
Then all those things happened. Vodka Vern, Ruby leaving, Nick waylaying me when I came out of the bathroom, asking me about Marcus and why I was with him.
And me punching him. Punching him!
Because … Oh my God. No, no, no, please.
But there was no holding it back. It was roaring in my head. Because punching him was safer than what I wanted to really do to him – which was slam him against the wall and kiss him. Punching was like some bizarre self-defence mechanism, born out of a need to make him not want me. A need to not want him. A need not to feel wild and jealous and angry, the way I felt when I looked at him with Ruby. I didn’t like that wildness, I didn’t trust it. I needed stability if I were to maintain the self I had constructed. I needed …
‘Marcus,’ I said, and pulled out of Nick’s arms. ‘Because I needed Marcus, that’s why.’
‘Whatever it is you think you needed, you wanted me, Chloe. You wanted me!’
‘You say that like it’s something to be proud of.’
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘Just because you want something doesn’t mean you just … just take it! You talk about whisking me out from under Marcus’s nose without even a thought for him. But do you know what Marcus told me? He told me to take it easy on you. And that’s the difference between you two, isn’t it?’ I looked around the room, disgusted. ‘“Take it easy on poor Nick!” Somehow I don’t think a crude affair in a hotel room is what he had in mind when he said that.’
Instantly his eyes narrowed, mouth tightened. ‘I don’t want you to take it easy on me. I want you to be however, whoever, whatever, you want to be. Now come back here, Chloe.’
‘I can’t, Nick,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be the black swan, I want to be the white one.’
‘Okay then, I’ll take the white one.’
‘The white one wouldn’t have done this to Marcus. Doesn’t it bother you, even a little? What we’re doing?’
‘No,’ he said, short and sharp.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, because I saw that tiny flicker of doubt in his eyes again.
‘There’s only thing I’d change – I’d do it sooner. And frankly, I’d tell Marcus to go fuck himself if he had a problem with it, instead of dancing around him for months.’ I opened my mouth, but he cut me off before I could form a word. ‘I mean it, Chloe. I’d choose you over him. I did choose you over him. I’ve wanted every cool-headed, hot-tempered inch of you since that first night. And I don’t need to sit through Swan Lake to get into that poor drowned schmuck’s head. Frankly, I’m getting tired of drowning.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means it’s about time I knew if I was wasting my time. So, I’ve told you I would choose you over him. Now, how about you tell me if you would choose me over him?’
‘Why would he want me back, after what I did?’
‘That’s not the question, Chloe.’
‘There’s no choice to make.’
He reached for my hand, held it over his heart. ‘Sure there is.’
‘Then help me,’ I said, wailed, begged. ‘Tell me about those circumstances. The ones you said would make what we’re doing now okay.’
Throb, throb, throb. His heart under my palm. ‘Can’t it be enough that I want you so much it’s killing me?’
I tested that in my head. Nick, wanting me that much. More than anyone had ever wanted me before. It sounded so beguiling. But just this morning, he’d been ready to palm me off onto his brother. Just like Ruby and all those girls who came after her, farmed out to his teammates. One thing goes wrong, the girl doesn’t fit, or she says or does the wrong thing, or the novelty has worn off, and bam! She’s packed off to the next guy to try again. I’d thrown Marcus away to become a groupie. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
‘Well, Chloe? Isn’t it enough?’ he demanded.
‘It’s enough for the rest of our time here, Nick. That’s all.’
‘Marcus got a year.’
‘Yes, but he loved me. And love has to be more, be worth more, than having the hots for someone.’
His mouth twisted. ‘And when was the last time Marcus expressed this grand love for you? Tell me that!’
‘Sunday,’ I said. ‘He called me, and he told me that he loved me. That he loves me.’
‘He called you on Sunday and said he loved you?’ Nick’s hand slid off mine, like he’d suddenly lost the strength to keep it there. ‘What else? What else did he say?’
‘We talked about the announcement of our split. Timing, wording …’
‘And he told you he loved you.’ A statement, like he was getting it clear in his head.
‘Yes,’ I said, but I was suddenly uncertain. Something felt wrong.
‘And can I assume you told him you loved him too?’
I lifted my chin. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Oh, only because you broke up with him.’
I slapped my hands over my ears. I couldn’t bear to hear those words just then.
Nick yanked my hands down. ‘Hear it, Chloe. Face it. You broke up with him. And he let you do it.’
‘I can’t bear to hear it – not from you.’
He stared at me. ‘Not from me. Because … what? It’s all my fault? The break-up is all big bad Nick’s fault?’ And then he laughed – harsh and cold. ‘Un-fucking-believable.’ Another laugh. ‘You love each other, but one kiss and it’s pfft, sayonara, have a nice life, and that’s my fault?’
‘To understand it, you’d have to understand the concept of … of loyalty and … and commitment.’
‘Oh, I see. Loyalty and commitment. Huh. Go figure.’
I drew myself up. ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’
‘No? You’re about to fly to Manila with the lust-crazed animal who came between you and brave, loyal, committed Marcus. Our loving hero calls to wish you a friendly bon voyage. He doesn’t demand that you tell me and your boss to fuck off. He doesn’t insist you stay with him in Sydney, or fly with him to Hawaii, and make it work between you. Somehow, despite that cosy and romantic phone call, you’re not only still broken up, but you’re a world away with the guy who did the breaking.’ Another of those laughs. ‘That’s love, is it?’
‘You wouldn’t understand the first thing about love,’ I said, fooling myself that the sneer in my voice could do the job of repudiating what he’d just said.
‘No, I guess I really don’t.’ His eyes went hard as stone as he unbuttoned his shirt. Then he all but tore the shirt off, turning his back to me. ‘You don’t do that to someone you love, do you, white swan?’
I sucked in a breath and held out a shaking hand to touch the scratch marks I’d made. ‘Oh, Nick.’
He spun to face me, throwing the shirt aside. ‘I don’t suppose you ever did that to Marcus, did you?’
‘No. I … No.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Because he didn’t need to be punished. And he wouldn’t have let you do that to him, anyway, would he? Would he, Chloe?’ Pace, pace – away, back. ‘Well, you can keep that tepid thing you call love. I don’t want it from you. Ever. I’d prefer to mate, the way we’ve been doing, than to have you love me like you loved him.’
My teeth had started chattering. ‘M–Mate?’
‘Yes, mate
. Like those swans of yours. They mate for life. Eagles, wolves, too.’ He smiled at me – and he actually looked like a wolf. ‘Does that scare you, Chloe? The idea of mating, for life, with me?’
I tried to laugh but it didn’t quite work. ‘What is this, the Discovery Channel? We’re human beings, Nick. Human beings don’t “mate”.’
‘Want me to show you my back again?’
No! ‘And animals don’t negotiate eight days’ worth of … of mating. They just do it, once, and it’s over.’
Pause. ‘So just to be clear … Just so I’m not the one misinterpreting this time … So I’m not disrespecting your undying love for some guy who –’ Stop. Breath. ‘Am I still going to get the rest of my allocated time? I mean, I’m assuming if it’s not love, we’re free and clear to keep going, right? No threat to Marcus if there’s no love involved. And he’ll never know, so he can’t be hurt by it. That’s why it was only ever going to be while we were safely tucked away in the Philippines, why it had to be strictly confidential. For him, right?’
One of those silences. During which I became almost unbearably conscious of every sound, every scent in the room, the slight rawness on my face where his unshaven face had rasped me. Tension, thick and drowning.
‘Yes, for him,’ I said, but I knew deep down that was only half the truth. The other half was all mixed up with my own desperate need for control. I wasn’t that little girl being passed along every time I made a mistake, not anymore. This time, I was in control of the end date.
‘Seven nights including tonight,’ Nick said, as though he were underlining a clause in a contract. ‘You’re mine for the week.”
‘Yes,’ I said, and marvelled that with all those thoughts of guilt and betrayal and control and fear twisting into thick skeins in my head, I could still feel a thrill at the thought of that.
‘And we keep going, no matter what?’ Nick pushed.
Do something worthy of all the angst before you start torturing yourself … ‘Yes, we keep going, as agreed,’ I said. ‘Unless you … Do you … Do you want to stop?’ I had no idea why I’d asked that, giving him an out when I wanted him so much, my body was practically weeping for him.
‘Yes, I want to stop,’ Nick said, and the shock of that almost stopped my heart. Until he added, ‘But I can’t, Chloe,’ and my blood flowed again.
‘So … what?’ I breathed out.
‘So I guess you keep punishing me, and I keep taking it.’
I started to shiver – which of course Nick saw, and the next moment, he was pulling me into his arms, sighing as he settled me against his chest. ‘Just one stipulation,’ he said. ‘We do it your way first – and I promise you, I can handle a bit of rough if that’s what you need, so give it all you’ve got.’ Then he tightened his arms around me. ‘As long as, on the second go, you let me do it my way.’
‘What if there’s no second go?’
This time when he laughed it was low and a little bit tortured. ‘I can pretty much guarantee there’s going to be a second and a third go. If it doesn’t kill me, a fourth, too. Every night, every morning. And if I could work out a way to sneak you off during the day for a fifth, believe me, I’d do it.’
I wondered if he could feel my smile against his bare skin. ‘So, what’s your way, Nick?’
‘Come with me, under the shower – because I’m not sure how you can stand the smell of me right now – and I’ll show you. Words are cheap, remember?’
And then he took my mouth in the deepest kiss of my life. And I was glad, because that meant I didn’t have to think. I only had to feel. And what I was feeling was perfect.
The next two days followed a pattern.
Nick would arrive at my room, I would attack him, which would be followed by sex ‘his way’ – which meant slow and thorough, with something happening to at least three of my erogenous zones simultaneously. Sleep. Then I’d wake in the morning with Nick wrapped around me, his fingers between my legs. (I know this sounds perverted, but I can’t begin to explain how lovely it was to know that was exactly where they’d be when I opened my eyes.) We’d have sex again ‘his way’, followed by a shower together where he invited me to attack him ‘my way’ if I was up for it – which, of course, I was. Then Nick would hurry back to his room and, separately, we would arrive in the lobby for the minivan transfer to the orphanage.
During the day, I spent my time between the playground and the orphanage proper, doing progress reports to camera and interviewing orphanage staff and members of the Do-It-Right team – all while pretending I didn’t see the children, pretending Honey wasn’t even there. I knew I was going to have to interview the children, but I seemed to have gone all Scarlett O’Hara over it – the whole I-can’t-think-about-that-right-now, tomorrow-is-another-day routine.
But when the team downed tools on our fifth day in Manila, Bryce announced work on the playground was ahead of schedule and would finish two days early – and that meant it was time for Scarlett O’Hara to exit stage right, and for Chloe Masters to stop pushing the children out of her immediate consciousness, step onto the stage, and do her damn job. It also meant I had only two nights left with Nick. And I was shocked to find that the reality of saying goodbye to him panicked me as much as the idea of getting up close and personal with the kids. The thing is, Nick had been my own personal buffer zone – not only taking my mind off the children, but also somehow blocking those shimmery premonitions of uncontrolled change that I dreaded. When I was with Nick, there was barely time to breathe, let alone think about anyone or anything else. But when I was alone, my past caught up with me.
Not only the distant past, which was front and centre every time I opened that particular red folder, but the recent past, which manifested through quicksilver memories of Marcus. The way Marcus smiled, so easy and uncomplicated; how it used to feel when he took my hand or put his arm around me, so steady and comforting; how he’d looked and sounded when he’d told me to take it easy on Nick, so kind and understanding. And with those increasingly frequent memories came the feeling that there was something I should know, something I should do, ask, see – all wrapped up with deep, distressing, horrible remorse.
Two more nights with Nick, and I would have no choice but to face what I’d done. Two more nights, and I’d be flying back to Sydney to confront the giant hole I’d ripped in my life when I’d broken up with Marcus.
But two more nights was not tonight, and not even tomorrow.
And so I bargained with my conscience, Scarlett style, to keep that torment at bay, at least. To let myself be consumed by Nick for two more nights. To take what I could, before I dealt with what I couldn’t.
But that night, our second last, Nick didn’t knock on my door. Instead I got a text message: Need to go out tonight. May be back late. N.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
So what did that mean? That he would come to me when he got back to the hotel? Or that he’d see me in the morning? I was going with the former, on the basis that with only two nights left, there was no way he wouldn’t turn up. I just didn’t know what ‘late’ meant.
But whatever it meant, I needed something to do to escape my dark thoughts about the children, about Marcus, about Nick, and what it would be like when he was no longer in my life.
First, I grabbed the red folder with the profiles, but I already knew the words by heart and the children’s faces were etched into my brain deeply enough to have me seeing them in my sleep, so revisiting the case studies was a pointless exercise that would stress me out to no purpose.
Next, I started doing a little suitcase reorganisation, but within minutes, it hit me that packing was an acknowledgement that my Philippines idyll was ending, and the reality of that was taking on increasingly nightmarish proportions the longer Nick was away from me.
I decided, instead, to concentrate my energy on controlling how this second last night with Nick would go. How I would look, smell, act, be. So I showered, washed and styled my hair, perfumed mys
elf, trowelled on some make-up, then decided to don some fancy underwear for the simple reason that Nick still hadn’t managed to actually see any of my fine and fabulous underthings on my body. I scrutinised each piece, wondering what had induced me to bring so much (seriously, it was as though my subconscious had known I’d be having a hot affair) and decided on a body suit in sheer forest green mesh. I intended to open the door to Nick without covering up. And then we’d see who attacked whom.
By that time, it was eleven o’clock, but a check of my phone revealed no new messages.
I was entering blink, blink, breathe, blink territory, so it was with a grim kind of determination that I grabbed a tiny bottle of gin from the mini bar, fixed myself a stiff drink, and turned on the television.
A hundred checks of my phone later, it was midnight.
And that was when I decided Nick wasn’t coming after all. It was a hard truth to face, that he would willingly forgo one of our last two nights together. I wasn’t sure how I should feel about that, but I certainly didn’t feel good.
Objectively, I knew it shouldn’t matter. Very soon, I wouldn’t have the right to wonder where Nick was, or who he was with. The same way Nick wouldn’t have the right to wonder what I was doing, with Marcus when we met up again, or anyone else for that matter.
But those things were in the future, they didn’t belong to the here and now. In the here and now, Nick Savage was mine. Mine, all mine, dammit! And I wanted to know where he was and who he was with and what the hell was going on! In short, I was jealous.
Jealousy was an unwelcome emotion for a girl who prided herself on her self-control, so I tried hard to throttle it back. Whatever happened tonight, by the morning, I had to be able to pretend there was nothing between me and Nick aside from professional courtesy.
And to be honest, drawing a demarcation line between our professional relationship during the day and our totally unprofessional relationship at night had been getting steadily more difficult, so I really needed to get it together ASAP. I’d caught myself staring at Nick across the hotel lobby that very morning, and only Derek waving a hand in front of my face had snapped me out of it. And this afternoon, on site, I’d almost grabbed Nick’s hand when he walked past me –it was instinctive, a reflex, dangerous.
Escaping Mr Right Page 16
