Damaged Goods_A Small Town Romance

by Talia Hibbert

  She wasn’t.

  “Hayley,” Laura said, trying her best to sound warm and calm and totally okay. She was curled up on the divan in the living room, her gaze fixed on the silent, blank TV. “How are you?”

  “Oh, who cares about me? What’s going on with you? Tell me everything,” Hayley demanded. She was a naturally demanding sort of woman, and she liked gossip.

  But Laura didn’t know what to say. June threatened, and so did the tourists, but tempestuous weather kept Beesley from becoming too busy. Kids hadn’t broken up for the summer holidays yet, either. She still felt like she was in a sweet, seaside bubble, untouched by the outside world.

  Even if her bubble was a little unsettled by the distance she’d put between herself and Samir over the past two weeks. But that part had been necessary.

  Hadn’t it?

  “I’m good,” Laura said, barely feeling like a liar at all. She was good. Way better than she’d been with Daniel. Not as great as she’d felt around Samir. “Not much has happened since you last called. Midwife keeps banging on about my BMI.”

  “Maybe you should listen,” Hayley said. “It’s not good for the baby to be so inactive.”

  Laura sighed. “You know I swim every day.”

  “Mmm,” Hayley murmured. Laura’s sister was fond of the sort of exercise regime that gave one rock-hard abs and toned thighs. She had this strange idea that since Laura’s belly was soft and her thighs pillow-like, she did nothing but lie around drinking whipped cream through a straw.

  Laura didn’t have the energy to argue about it, so she was glad when Hayley changed the subject. “What have you been up to, though? You barely said anything last time I called.”

  “I haven’t got much to say, lovely. I’m relaxing.”

  “Think of something,” Hayley said flatly. “Mum’s getting on my nerves, asking for information. Although, if you’d speak to her—”

  “I do speak to her,” Laura interrupted calmly. She’d gotten better at that, in her weeks staying with Trevor. Better at standing up for herself, being firm. The way she used to be.

  She could almost hear her sister’s eye roll through the phone. “You know what I mean. You tell her the bare minimum.”

  “Just because she wants to be Mother of the Year all of a sudden,” Laura said crisply, “doesn’t mean I have to let her.” And then, before the argument lurking beneath that conversation’s surface could ferment, she changed the subject. “I’ve made a friend.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. Her name’s Kelly. She’s a waitress at this cafe I go to.” This cafe I go to, because for some reason, Laura still hadn’t told her sister about Samir.

  Why? She had no idea. She had no reason to hold Samir close like a hot water bottle on a cold night. Maybe it was because he starred in her good dreams as predictably as Daniel starred in her nightmares. Or because he kept smiling and bringing her omelettes and asking about the baby, even though she’d stopped showing up to their midnight meetings.

  Or because she’d given up trying to forget the way he touched her, the way he made her feel like a goddess and a woman all at once.

  “A waitress?” Hayley squawked, her sharp incredulity smashing through Laura’s thoughts. “Since when do you befriend waitresses?”

  Laura opened her mouth, then shut it again. “I… well, I don’t know. She’s nice. Really funny, and sweet. And she’s also a waitress. Does it matter?”

  “Does it matter? Don’t you remember at your rehearsal dinner, that waiter tried to give me his number and you—”

  “Don’t.”

  But Hayley didn’t hear the faintly murmured word, or maybe didn’t care. “You called the manager and complained about the staff harassing your sister? You called him uppity!”

  Laura remembered.

  You would think, with the number of awful things she’d done in her life, that they’d all blur together. But she remembered every desperate, acidic moment. Her stomach became lead and her skin tightened, hot and prickly as if coated in burning insects. Her morning sickness had stopped weeks ago, but she felt familiar nausea congealing in her gut and saliva pooling on her tongue. She remembered the look on the boy’s face—because he had been just a boy. A teenager, no older than Kelly’s Daisy, and he’d slipped Hayley his number without a word or even a look after they’d spent the whole meal flirting.

  Laura wanted to cry, but she had nothing to cry about. Monsters shouldn’t take all the tears.

  Hayley didn’t seem to be struggling at all. In fact, she was laughing. As if this was a happy memory. As if this was so fucking funny.

  She’d laughed at the time, too. And so had Laura. And all the while, she’d felt Daniel’s gaze on her, heavy and approving—for now. And she’d hoped that maybe he’d be kind to her that evening, maybe he’d admire her instead of seeing only her flaws.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” Laura mumbled, but she could barely hear herself over Hayley’s chuckles. So she repeated it, louder, sure this time. “I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t funny.”

  The laughter faded. “So why did you?” Hayley demanded, immediately belligerent.

  “Because… because…” Laura released a breath, and then the words came in a reckless torrent. “Because I was afraid that the whole thing would remind Daniel how I used to waitress. You remember? And he doesn’t like to think about that, or for people to know.” The Albrights were supposed to be the Burnes’ equals, Ravenswood royalty just like Daniel. She knew now that her name was the only reason he’d taken her in the first place.

  And he’d wanted desperately to hide her family’s little blips. The things nobody talked about. The fact that her parents had poured the Albright funds down a drain called drink when Laura was just a kid, and she’d been fighting secretly to survive ever since.

  She’d succeeded, too. She’d dragged herself back up to the position her family deserved. And when the staff got too comfortable, Laura skewered them. Better that than allow anyone to remember she’d once been them.

  At least, that was how she used to think.

  “Look,” she sighed, because Hayley’s silence was a little too stretched-out and sullen for her liking. “All I’m saying is, we could both stand to climb off our pedestals. It wasn’t that long ago I was waitressing to put us both through uni. We don’t have to act like we’ve always been this way.”

  “Don’t start getting all We the people,” Hayley snapped. “You never minded spending Daniel’s money.”

  Laura swallowed down her bile. If her sister was… unpleasant sometimes, well, that might be Laura’s fault. She was the one who’d raised Hayley. She was the one who’d spent years being a stuck-up, smug, superior bitch.

  And now she was trying to be Little Miss Perfect, just because she’d seen the error of her ways. Wasn’t that stuck-up, smug and superior all over again?

  “You’re right,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  There was a pause before Hayley sniffed, “Don’t worry about it. Listen, I’ve got to go, okay?”

  “Okay.” Laura tried not to feel relieved. It was disloyal.

  “Bye, sis. Love you.”

  “Love you.” She put the phone down and stared at the blank TV, and wondered what love really meant.

  Chapter Ten

  “Samir.”

  There was nothing so satisfying as the sharp slice and firm thwack of a knife gliding through onion to hit a chopping board. Samir made the sound again and again, pounding out a beat that matched his heavy pulse and grinding teeth, slashing the onion to pieces and ignoring his stinging eyes.

  “Samir.”

  Some people might say that the diced slithers of onion beneath his hands were too fine to be further attacked, but those people just weren’t committed enough. Or determined enough.

  Or frustrated enough.

  “Samir.”

  Focus destroyed. Rhythm blown. The blade faltered, then glided across the side of Samir’s thumb, spillin
g thin, tomato-red blood all over his fucking onions.

  “Shit,” he hissed, sticking his thumb in his mouth. Gross. Onion and blood was, it turned out, a horrible combination.

  Samir turned to glare at the man who’d thrown off his concentration. Max arched a brow in the face of his boss’s mightiest glower, patently unaffected.

  “Cut yourself?” He asked, as if he didn’t know.

  “Nah,” Samir said. “I’m just sucking my thumb cuz I’m still seven years old.”

  Max’s second eyebrow rose to join the first. “You sucked your thumb ’til you were seven years old?”

  “Jesus, man, what do you want?”

  “I want to know what’s going on with you.” Max folded his arms and leaned back against the gleaming, steel counter, his eyes as careful as his posture was relaxed. “You good?”

  Those two words were heavy as stone and soft as marshmallows all at once. You good? It was the question they’d agreed, years back, to ask each other regularly. A question they’d agreed to answer honestly, too. Always.

  And yet, something thick and uncomfortable lodged in Samir’s throat when he tried to tell the truth. Even as the tension drained from his muscles and the pointless, pent-up irritation dissolved from his bloodstream, he couldn’t force out what was on his mind.

  What came out instead surprised even him. “You really love Daisy.”

  Max’s expression didn’t falter, despite the random subject. “Of course I do. She’s my daughter.”

  “That’s what I mean. She…” Samir cleared his throat, moving to the sink to wash his hands. The cut was starting to sting.

  And if the action allowed him to avoid his best friend’s careful eyes, well, that was just a coincidence.

  “She was—what, seven, when you met Kelly?” Samir asked, trying to keep his tone light. He succeeded, too. His voice was raw and ragged as one of Max’s serrated blades, but it was light as fuckin’ air.

  “She was six,” Max said. “Same age as Poppy is now.” Poppy being the third of his and Kelly’s children. They were really committed to the floral thing.

  Samir nodded. “Right. So… when you met Kelly, how did you feel about—I mean, she had a kid, and you didn’t. Did that ever worry you?”

  “No,” Max said. “It might have. If Kelly was just another woman, it might have. If I’d met her, liked her, wanted to get to know her and find out where things led… maybe I’d have hesitated. I don’t know.”

  “But you didn’t?” Samir pulled a first aid box out of the cupboard, rifling through it for a plaster. “Hesitate, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You gonna look at me?” Max’s voice was gentle. This, Samir knew, was how he spoke to his girls. Samir was getting the baby voice. That realisation alone was enough to make him straighten up and turn around.

  Max was still leaning against the counter, looking as if he had all the time in the world to talk to Samir about the events of years ago.

  To be fair, the cafe was pretty quiet now the afternoon rush had passed. But still.

  “Well?” Samir asked, the harshness of his own voice driving away his gnat-like worries. “Why didn’t you hesitate?”

  Max smiled slightly. “Because with Kelly, I didn’t want to see where it went. I knew where it was going. I loved her. I didn’t want anything but her. And since I loved her so much, how could I not love Daisy?”

  Samir swallowed down the lump in his throat. “So you just… became a father. Just like that.”

  Max shrugged. “I could’ve knocked some girl up and become a father just like that. I chose to become a father. Wasn’t an instant process, but it was an instant commitment. I made the choice. That was that.”

  “You weren’t… anxious?”

  “Probably no more anxious than a single woman waiting to give birth to her first child alone.” That statement was followed by a less-than-subtle look. “The only difference is that no-one ever made me feel guilty for my worries. I was allowed nerves, I was permitted hesitation. It was only natural.” He shrugged. “People don’t seem to make those same allowances for the ones carrying the babies.”

  Samir nodded slowly. He knew himself; knew that it would take a while for those words to sink into his brain, and even longer for him to sort through them and decide what they meant. Or rather, what they meant for him. So he filed the conversation away. Let it sit, brewing like a good, strong cup of tea.

  “I didn’t see Laura today,” Max said. “That why you’re attacking my onions?”

  “Don’t worry about me and Laura,” Samir muttered, moving to clear up the mess he’d left on the chopping board.

  “You say that,” Max murmured wryly, “but over the last two weeks you’ve been different. You two have been inseparable since April—”

  “I wouldn’t say inseparable.”

  “I would. You’re like magnets. Even when you’re not connected, anyone can see that something’s pulling you together.”

  Those softly spoken words had Samir frowning so hard, he started to give himself a headache. “Don’t you have orders to cook or something?”

  “Shut up, boy. When she’s here, you barely speak, and when she isn’t, you wander into my kitchen and start slicing shit up like you’re plotting a murder.”

  “Don’t say that.” He wrapped a blue plaster around his thumb, shut the first aid kit, and turned to meet Max’s eye. “You make it sound like I’m angry at her.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. Of course not. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  Max’s brows arched. “Have you?”

  Ah. There, Samir faltered. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “Why don’t you ask her? Ask her, and then you’ll be sure.”

  Ask her? He couldn’t just ask her. Two weeks ago, he’d ruined everything. He’d practically mauled her on her kitchen table. She’d stopped showing up to their midnight meetings, and every time she saw him all she could do was blush and stutter.

  But it suddenly occurred to Samir that Laura did still see him. She still came into the cafe almost every day, just like she had before. She didn’t have to do that. Surely she wouldn’t do that if he made her uncomfortable. Would she?

  He’d know the answer to that question if he asked her.

  It was as if Samir had spent the last two weeks under a permanent storm cloud, only for his best friend to blow it away like so much dust.

  “There we go,” Max grinned. “That’s what I like to see!”

  And Samir realised he was smiling.

  In early June, the beach should be half-full of tourists. Today, though, a storm threatened, and the weather was cool, and the sea’s spray even cooler. So it was quiet as he strode across the sand towards the beach house.

  Max was locking up, so Samir had left early to wander the shore like a particularly obvious stalker. He’d never seen Laura on the beach in daylight, as opposed to moonlight, but it occurred to him that she might be out here despite the cold. She always had loved the ocean, and she lived so close. He could see the beach house in the distance now, its blue-painted wood panels bright against the grey skies.

  Grey skies which, rather embarrassingly, made him think about Laura’s eyes. Jesus. Next thing, he’d be writing bloody sonnets.

  He turned his gaze resolutely towards the ocean—and that was when he saw it. A flash of movement in the distance, a pale figure floating out at sea. Worry gripped him. The wind was picking up, and the water out here was deeper than it seemed. He wasn’t close enough to tell if the figure was just swimming, or if they needed help, or if it was a person at all.

  Samir was speeding up before he’d even made the conscious decision, jogging and then running over the sand, the bobbing figure drawing closer and closer. It was a person, he realised. A person floating aimlessly along in a way that might be therapeutic, but could also be dangerous.

  He picked up the pace, and slowly, details came int
o focus. One specific detail caught him, though; strands of long hair picked up by the wind, lashing at the sky like dark ribbons.

  It was ridiculous, and yet… “Laura?” He shouted. But he didn’t expect her, or whoever it was, to hear him over the growing whoosh of the waves. He wasn’t close enough. So he saved his breath and ran harder, the sand shifting beneath his feet, the quickening wind sending a rush of wild sensation through him in the way that only seaside wind could. His muscles pumped tirelessly, but he felt as if he were barely moving. Jesus, he needed to start jogging on the beach more.

  It seemed like he drew close enough to see her all at once. It was Laura, eyes closed, fully-clothed, from the looks of things, and bobbing around like a fucking buoy. Shit. Shit shit shit. A cruel fist twisted around his heart as he kicked off his shoes and ran into the water.

  The sea became a living thing insistent on shoving him from its embrace. He thrust against the force, making an arrow of his body, slicing through the waves as best he could. Saltwater flew into his eyes, occasionally finding its way up his nose. His technique was sloppy. No; his technique was frantic. He’d swum in this ocean countless times, but all of a sudden it was like his legs had forgotten how to fucking kick.

  And yet, somehow, he managed. He powered through the waves and reached her eventually, if not fast enough for his liking. When she was still a few metres away, he spat out a mouthful of sea and shouted, “Laura!”

  And, miracle of miracles, she opened her eyes. Her surprise was as clear as the tendrils of water-black hair plastered against her skin. “Samir?”

  Another second, and he had her. His hand closed around her wrist, even though he could tell, from this close, that she was actually fine. She was fine. But his heartbeat, wild as the ocean around them, didn’t seem ready to accept that message.

  He dragged her towards him through the water, too hard and too close. He shouldn’t be pulling her into his chest or pressing his forehead against hers, or running his hands over her face as if to check she was still there. But here he was, doing all of that ridiculous shit and more.