Beneath the Skin

by Melissa James

  He reached into his truck, pulling out a bag of sweets he’d bought at the last roadhouse. ‘Hey, littlefella.’

  The boy looked up, looking reassured by the use of Pidgin. Danny handed him the bag of sweets.

  ‘Got a bad cut there, littlefella,’ he remarked, pointing to the bandage.

  The boy drew his body up in pride. ‘We was fixin’ a dingo fence, and I ripped my leg. I got seven stitches!’

  ‘Nice havin’ the Koori lady doctor here to help,’ Danny remarked casually.

  ‘Yeah. She went in a plane. I wanna go on a plane, one day,’ the kid said, a wistful look in his eyes.

  ‘Too bad, eh,’ Danny commiserated, heart racing. ‘So which way did the plane go?’

  The boy pointed north.

  Danny thanked the boy and climbed into his truck. He drove out of the community, whistling. Back on the road, he opened his map, searching out Indigenous communities to the north. ‘I’m coming to you, Janie. This time, it’s forever.’

  Last chance, Janie, Monster whispered as the curtain fell between them again.

  CHAPTER

  9

  ‘Well, that was fun.’

  Having returned the errant Genevieve to her anxious owner, Adam and Elly walked across a field toward Mrs Jenkins’ boundary fence, their shoes and jeans covered in mud. She watched as Adam swung the rope back and forth, catching it each way.

  ‘I always enjoy a Genevieve chase, getting out in the fresh air and sun. It reminds me of Grandpa’s farm.’

  ‘That’s what puzzled me about you being so obsessed with becoming a cop, Claudius. You’ve always been such an outdoors kind of guy. I didn’t get the attraction.’

  ‘Too many reruns of Law and Order and 21 Jump Street as a kid, I guess.’ He scratched his neck, giving her a sheepish look. ‘Car chases, drug busts, shoot-outs with the baddies.’

  She grinned. ‘And now you’re in your Blue Heelers phase.’

  He chuckled. ‘I guess I am—but it’s far less exciting here than the show.’

  But still you bucked Jepson tradition and expectation. Even Sharon hadn’t been able to talk him out of it. His father had bragged he’d become the youngest commissioner in history, but beneath the joke, the sense of parental disappointment had been obvious. If they didn’t go into politics or the law, Jepsons owned land—and Adam’s brother Jared was to inherit the farm.

  ‘But in Sydney?’

  ‘In Sydney it was fairly exciting. I got to do all I’d dreamed of. I came to Macks Lake for a quiet environment for Zoe. She needed that security, after—’ He snapped the rope like a whip. ‘Better get you home. We’ve been forty minutes already. Sarge isn’t known for his patience.’ After a pause he said, ‘After that drive-by, I think I’d better keep that date with Mrs Collins. Her information might be vital to the case.’

  ‘Of course.’ She strode to the fence, shaking off his hands when he tried to help her over. ‘I can do it myself.’

  ‘Elly, let me help you.’

  At his almost exasperated tone, her head whipped back to him, eyes burning. ‘You should know I’m no shrinking violet. You spent your life fighting expectation, so stop trying to make me someone I’m not.’ She marched to the station’s truck on the other side of the highway. The warmth that had begun to bloom inside her as he confided his early dreams withered.

  What’s the matter with me? It didn’t matter how many times she told herself Adam had the right to grieve for his wife, the anger lanced her in sharp stabs with every sentence he left unfinished. He didn’t deserve to torture himself over Sharon, who’d reminded her of Elsa from Frozen: the ice princess. If Adam’s wife had had a heart, Elly had never once seen evidence of it. Why did he love her still, three years after her death?

  Why did he ever love her at all? But that was the question she’d never have the guts to ask.

  ‘Elly.’

  The hand on her arm, simple as it was, stopped her midstride. Gently, so tender, he turned her to face him.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s not you—you know that. I …’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘I came here—I wanted nothing to remind me of the past. Now you’re here, and it’s bringing so much back. Good things I’d almost forgotten … I kept it all buried. But then, when I remember you …’

  ‘It all comes back, good and bad.’ She swallowed and closed her eyes. ‘I know.’

  ‘If I could just get rid of …’ A soft sigh of frustration, then she felt his forehead rest against hers. ‘I wish I wasn’t part of your bad memories. Don’t deny it. I know how much I hurt you.’

  When she swallowed and nodded, his skin moved against hers. No longer so alone. Almost afraid, she found his hand, wrapping her fingers around his. ‘Not now, Adam. Not this time.’

  He reached for her other hand. Barely touching compared to before, but …

  ‘Elly,’ he whispered against her cheek. ‘I was sleepwalking. You’ve woken me up, made me feel again. I don’t know what to do with this.’ A soft admission, lost and sad.

  ‘Me either.’

  A long silence while neither moved, only breathing. She expected the silence now, waited for the withdrawal. The ghost between them broke the beauty of the moment. Sharon was a wall fifty feet high, an invisible watchtower between Adam’s guilt and his living again. Would she find him somewhere inside, the Adam she’d lost?

  ‘This was why—’

  ‘It’s all right, Adam. I know.’

  ‘You can’t know,’ he whispered, still not moving. Did he too want, need her touch, to feel the connection between them? She was chasing shadows inside him, never knowing the right one to follow. Who would win, the living or the dead?

  ‘I do. It’s all right, Adam,’ she said again, soft with regret. ‘It was there from the start. It’s what broke us.’ She waited again for his withdrawal, the ice that froze him whenever he thought of her, the unspoken name.

  A slow nod, and he still didn’t move away from her. She barely breathed lest she shatter their connection, a new bond more delicate than cobwebs.

  ‘I want to fix it, Elly. I really do.’

  ‘I know.’ But all the glue in the world couldn’t repair the broken pieces of who they’d been. ‘We can only go on from here.’

  ‘Only if you stay,’ he murmured.

  She breathed in, sharp, hard.

  ‘You woke me up.’ He bent, moving his cheek against hers, a slow awkward dance of hands and cheek on a cracked road filled with the smell of old mud and cow dung. Nothing else touching. Neither of them daring to move closer. ‘You promised you’d stay. You can’t let me go back to that—what I was.’ He hesitated, and she felt him willing the pain down. He barely breathed the final words. ‘So many years, using guns and fast cars and cuffs to feel alive. Then here, nothing—nothing but going through the motions for Zoe. Nobody else could …’

  He couldn’t say the rest, but she knew. Only you. Just as he did for her.

  ‘I didn’t know, Elly.’

  She longed to ask, just to hear the words after so many years alone, waiting for what would never have happened if she hadn’t come here. But it was too big, too frightening to say so soon, so she nodded.

  He kept talking, as if to himself. ‘All these years. I’d almost forgotten. I wanted to forget. Then you came.’

  She knew—oh, how she knew—but she had hardly dared hope he would know. A link for a lifetime, a hole the size of the outback without him, without her: fallen, hurting things, accepting less, because it was all they could have. The past fourteen years in silent symphony.

  ‘I thought it would be dead, just a dream that we’d ever find this again,’ she whispered.

  Another movement of his cheek against hers, his touch warm splendour in a vast, threatening world. ‘You came for that. You needed to know if it was—if we were dead.’

  Her nod was another caress, drinking it in, all she couldn’t have for long. ‘But—’

  ‘It’s even more.’ Closer, still barely touching.
‘Part of me wishes it was over.’

  ‘Yes.’ Don’t say it. Breathe, just breathe, and let him remember.

  ‘If—’ He shook his head. ‘I wish I’d known then.’

  She couldn’t open her eyes as she said it. ‘Before her.’

  He stilled. She felt the pain as he spoke. ‘It’s too late, Elly. I wish to God it wasn’t.’

  She looked up. Night fell between them with the unspoken name – the shatterer of all they could have been. Adam’s broken pieces were so similar to hers, but bore a different name, one he wouldn’t speak.

  ‘I always hated triangles. Three angles, and only two match,’ she whispered. ‘The other’s left out.’

  A soft, rumbling chuckle. ‘You never did make any sense of maths. What about equilateral triangles?’

  She smiled. For him. He was right: it was too late. It had been too late the day he met Sharon. Coming here had been an attempt to capture butterflies in a net ruined by holes; all they could have were sweet shadows of the past, and the knowledge made them both ache. Hadn’t she always known that, if it could be like this for them, it would also end like this, all undone?

  ‘Even the words for triangles were stupid. Equilateral. Isosceles. What idiot makes up names like those, anyway?’

  ‘Nerds,’ they answered together, and laughed. Two broken things smiling bravely, remembering when they’d been whole.

  ‘Jonas wanted you back,’ she said eventually.

  When he didn’t answer or move, she opened her fingers, tipped her head back. He dropped her hands, and she returned to the car.

  ‘I’ll take you home.’ She heard the savage snaps of the tether between his hands as he followed her. ‘Baz and Simon can watch outside.’

  ‘You left her alone at the house?’

  Rick followed Adam into the office. His friend wheeled around, staring at him. He opened his mouth, and closed it. ‘Baz and Simon are watching the house,’ Adam said.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Rick snarled, sick with fear. She meant so much to him already, so damned much. She needs me.

  ‘I bought her a portable panic button that calls straight here.’

  ‘That’ll help if she’s shot!’

  Adam frowned. ‘Butt out, Rick. Elly needs space when she’s overwhelmed.’

  ‘So you think you know her.’ Arms folded over his chest, he faced his friend in open challenge. ‘Do you really think she hasn’t changed in the fourteen years since you ditched her?’

  Adam gritted his teeth before answering. ‘Why does it matter so much to you? And don’t say it’s because she’s a sister. I haven’t seen you obsess over other Aboriginal women who have come in needing help.’

  He might have given an honest answer if he thought Adam really wanted to know. Instead, his brows lifted. ‘Maybe that’s because their cases weren’t so bloody desperate, or because I wasn’t locked out of the cases. As Aboriginal liaison officer for the region, I was the officer in charge—or at least heavily involved.’

  Adam conceded the point with a nod. ‘I didn’t ask for you to be locked out of this one, mate. I’m sorry you are.’

  ‘Did she?’ He hated that he couldn’t talk the case over with Adam as they usually did: sitting here with coffees; sitting at home talking as they watched the footy. But he knew the answer. He’d scared Elly away, not once but twice, with all he felt for her, and she was on the run. From him.

  Adam fiddled with a pen on his desk. Answer enough.

  ‘I can help,’ he murmured, less aggressive now—almost pleading. ‘She’s my people. Let me in, Adam.’

  Adam blew out a hard sigh. ‘I wish I could, mate—you know that. But it’s not my call.’

  ‘Talk to her. I know I can help.’

  ‘I did,’ Adam said quietly. ‘You’re not helping with all your demands, mate, or by implying that Elly isn’t her real name in an open office. She’s already dealing with Spencer. You have to back off, give her space.’

  He knew Adam was right. But it wasn’t the same. Not even Adam understood. He was frightening Elly away, and she was the only one with the right to push him out of her case—or let him in. He had to put a lock on his tongue. He’d tried and tried, but he was obsessed. He knew it and she knew it. If he could make her understand …

  I can. There’s only one way.

  Not yet. I have to wait for the right time. Then she’ll understand all I can’t say.

  He felt his eyes turn hard and cold, looking through his friend. It was obvious what he needed to do, and nobody could stop him. He turned for the door.

  ‘Don’t go to her,’ Adam said softly. ‘Your intensity frightens her, mate. She needs quiet and space and gentle handling when she’s this freaked out. You have no idea what she’s been through – even before Spencer began stalking her.’

  For a moment, the situation hung on a knife’s point, his defiance and his need; friends divided in a way he’d never foreseen. Both thinking the same: You can’t have her. She’s mine.

  Then Rick spoke, just as softly as Adam had. ‘She’ll need a friend when you hurt her.’

  ‘I won’t—’

  ‘You will. You know it, and I know it. Even she knows it. The guilt colours everything you do. You have no right to Elly until you can forget your wife.’

  Adam clenched his teeth again. ‘I said butt out, mate.’

  He turned his head, looking at Adam over his shoulder with burning eyes. ‘Will you marry her … mate? Will you commit to her, give her the family she needs? Because if you can’t, then you’re the one who should butt out.’

  ‘How do you know what she needs?’ Adam snapped. ‘You met her less than two days ago, and you’re acting like a bloody expert.’

  But he saw right through his friend for the first time. ‘Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you’re not thinking of the good Elly is doing for you, for Zoe, and damning the consequences for her when she’s left alone again.’

  Silence met his accusations. Guilt, suffering, loss and a dozen other emotions crossed Adam’s face: an admission without a word.

  Rick looked right into that pain, knowing there was something more important this time.

  ‘Haven’t the Jepsons done enough damage to her? Let her go, mate. Let her walk away, and find a life without you.’

  Without waiting for an answer he left Adam’s office, knowing he was right. Elly deserved the commitment his friend could never give her until he laid his unquiet ghost to rest.

  Adam wanted to punch his mate’s lights out. Hating Rick for the first time, because he’d held up a mirror to his soul, and to Elly’s deepest need.

  She’s not here for protection. She’s here for you.

  All the wrongs he’d done her years ago, he was doing all over again. Reverting to the boy who’d never fit in with his family, he was reaching for the vivid life, the sense of belonging he’d only known with Elly, without counting the cost—not to him, but to her.

  He ached to have a second chance with her, but for his own sake. Breaking his promises to her, and to his dead wife. Hating himself for only thinking of stopping it. He knew he wouldn’t, because he needed her. Now three words screamed inside him, released like ugly birds: What about Elly?

  What a mess. What a damn freaking beautiful mess. If the situation wasn’t breaking Elly now, it soon would be. He couldn’t give her what they both knew she needed, because the soft presence of his dead wife wouldn’t leave him in peace.

  Please, Adam, swear to me. It’s all I ask of you.

  It had seemed little enough to vow at the time. Now it was like the glass that had fallen over his body today: multicoloured, and sharp enough to draw blood. It left the darkest part of him exposed, and willing to ruin the best friend he’d ever had to save himself. Not waving, drowning, and only Elly could pull him out. But at what cost?

  It’s not fair, Sharon, it’s not bloody fair.

  ‘Annelly, can we get more pizza tonight?’

  Elly smiled at the hopeful little angel’s
face, mischief dancing in her green eyes. ‘Sorry, little one. Before Daddy went to pick you up, he told me about the rules around here. That means a good dinner.’ As Zoe’s face fell, she leaned down to whisper, ‘I bought fresh peas and chicken, and I’ll make oven fries, too. Want to help me shell the peas? You can play boats with the shells in a bowl when we’re done.’

  Zoe’s eyes lit up. She helped Elly with childish enthusiasm and gleeful laughter. Once the peas were shelled, she dived into a cupboard, retrieved an enormous bowl, and created a pool both inside it and on the floor around Elly’s feet.

  ‘That’s a novel way of entertaining her. Most people use the TV.’

  Elly turned to find Adam behind her. She caught her breath. He wore jeans that moulded to his legs and a black T-shirt with white letters across it that read I’m Not Normal. His skin was a deep bronze from his time in the relentless Australian sun. He was so much like the boy she’d lost that she ached.

  ‘I think I’ve spent too much time in remote areas.’ She kept her voice light, trying to will her heart to stop pounding. ‘The kids who don’t have PlayStations or Xboxes have novel ideas about entertainment. Besides, I like having her here with me. She makes me smile.’ She looked him over again, knowing her eyes held the hunger she didn’t know how to hide. ‘Great outfit, Claudius, but the bunny lady will hardly be impressed.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s the point. I want her to be unimpressed. She’s not getting the message any other way.’

  She laughed. ‘Poor Mrs Collins. I wonder if any guys have taken so little care about their appearance for me.’

  His eyes darkened as he looked her over. ‘I doubt it.’

  A wild blush filled her face. Her blood pounded with the needs vying in her: to keep him safe, and to keep her distance. To love his body, just once. But there was a new distance between them since he’d dropped her home this morning, and she didn’t know how to bridge it, or even if she ought to.

  ‘Look, Daddy, I got a pool! Annelly maked me a pool! Wanna play boats?’

  As Adam dropped to his haunches to play with Zoe, the phone rang down the hall.