“They’re in the dryer at the moment. I put them on early this morning, so they won’t be too much longer. Do you want something to eat?”
Fuck yes. I was famished, especially after not getting to eat my meal the night before because of Blake fucking Cooper. “Yeah. What is there?”
“I made some pancakes this morning and there’s some batter left over. I can cook that up for you if you like.”
“That’d be great. Um, do you think Alyssa or Flynn will want some?”
She chuckled. “Who do you think I cooked them for originally?”
“Oh.” I nodded before attempting to ask the most vital question. “So, is . . . um . . . is . . .”
I couldn’t manage to force the words out and ended up standing there making odd gestures with my hands instead.
Thankfully, Mum seemed to understand and answered me as she pulled the frying pan down to cook the pancakes. “No, dear, Phoebe’s with Ruth for today.”
I nodded, relieved. I was still unsure what to do about Phoebe, especially seeing as though Alyssa and I still needed to have our talk. I did know I wasn’t quite ready to meet my daughter yet, even if that did make me an arsehole. The truth was, I didn’t know how to deal with kids—especially not my own. While Mum started cooking, I took a deep breath to steady myself and walked back out to greet the two people in the dining room again. I sat down across from them. With the table blocking my pants from view I somehow felt even more exposed. Especially with the way both Flynn’s and Alyssa’s gazes kept dropping to stare at my naked chest.
“Excuse me for another second,” I said.
I raced back into my room and tore around trying to find a shirt or something, anything that would cover my nakedness. I finally found something in the bottom drawer—my pyjama drawer. It was an oversized boy band t-shirt that Alyssa used to wear at night when she’d stay over, always in the spare room of course—or at least so our parents believed. The tee was the only thing from my old room that might fit. Wearing a too-tight shirt would be just as bad as wearing none at all. When I pulled the t-shirt on, I felt like I’d stepped five or six years back in time.
Mum was just putting the pancakes down on the table when I arrived. I offered Flynn and Alyssa some more, but they just politely refused. It was obvious Alyssa was trying hard to hold in her laughter at the sight of me. She had to remember the shirt just as well as I did. The boy band tee was given to me on Christmas by an aunt who was told that they were the band for the kids. She’d bought the XL because she wanted to make sure it would definitely fit me. As such, it had swum on me and Alyssa had claimed it as a nightshirt. No doubt me wearing it was as vivid reminder for Alyssa of our time together as it was for me. It was obviously too much for her because she grabbed Flynn’s hand and pulled him into the living room. Although I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was to get away from me and my ghastly outfit or because she thought I would want some privacy while I ate.
I spread butter and sugar over the pancakes and quickly tucked in. Fuck it felt good to have something in my stomach after so long. The more I ate, the more I felt ready to face the day. To face Alyssa. I didn’t know why the fuck Flynn was there, but I was sure I would be able to convince Alyssa to talk to me alone without too much coaxing.
First I needed clothes though. Proper clothes. My clothes.
Once I’d finished eating, I took my dishes into the kitchen and cleaned them off before heading into the laundry. Mum was just pulling my clothes from the dryer.
Thank fuck.
I could hear the sound of Alyssa and Flynn talking in the living room as I grabbed the thinnest shirt and pants I could find in the pile of clothing. Unfortunately, I had packed for winter in London, not summer in Brisbane, so my choices were limited. If I was going to stay in Brisbane for any length of time, I would need to go shopping or risk dying of heat stroke.
While I changed, I heard the front door open and close and then a car drive off. The sound sent my heart racing as I worried Alyssa had grown impatient waiting for me to get my shit together and talk to her. I cursed myself for fucking around so much worrying about what fucking clothes I had on. I threw the old jeans and t-shirt back onto my bed and then walked to the living room, fearful I would find it empty.
Thankfully, it wasn’t.
The fucker, Flynn, had left, but Alyssa sat there staring down at her lap. I walked over to her and offered her my hand and what I hoped was a winning smile. “Walk with me?”
She didn’t answer, but did put her hand in mine, which I took as an acceptance.
“Mum, we’re going out for a bit,” I called, leading Alyssa out the door before Mum had a chance to respond.
Alyssa and I walked in silence. I held her hand in mine, refusing to let go unless she pulled away. She seemed almost as reluctant to break the contact as I was though. Without words, we both headed straight to our table. For so many years, the park—and specifically the table in the middle of it—was our spot to go to after school when we couldn’t decide whose house to go to, or when we preferred a general lack of parental supervision. The park was where we’d shared our first kiss, and also where I’d said goodbye to her. It seemed fitting to continue our history there.
Alyssa didn’t drop my hand until we were only a few metres away from the table. She led the way over to it and sat sideways against the table, curling one leg underneath her. I sat next to her, turning into her and mimicking her position. Then I sighed.
Last night, I had been terrified of her walking away and not talking to me and now, with her right in front of me and us alone, I just couldn’t think of anything to say. She rested her hand on the seat in front of her and once again, I copied her position. Our hands linked between us—even though I hadn’t specifically planned on touching her. I wanted to ask why she was waiting at Mum’s house for me and why Flynn had been there. I wanted the answers to so many questions and yet now that she was in front of me only one thing mattered. Her.
“Are you okay?” I asked, knowing how grossly inadequate the question was, but it was a start.
She looked away from me for a second. When she looked back, she had a question rather than an answer on her lips. “Are you?”
I laughed darkly and then shook my head. “Not really, I don’t think.”
She nodded. “It’s a lot to take in, to understand. Even after almost three and a half years, I still find there are days when I just don’t get why it had to happen the way it did.”
“Will you tell me about him?”
She smiled and her eyes developed a faraway gaze. “He looked just like you. A perfect miniature Declan. It’s strange because when I was pregnant that was one thing I dreaded most. I had no idea how I would react, how I would cope, if the babies looked like you. Once he was in my arms, though, it didn’t matter what he looked like.” She dropped her eyes. “Of course, he was already gone by then, so he was just my little sleeping angel.”
“You didn’t get to hold him while . . .” The lump had grown inextricably in my throat again.
She shook her head. “No. Because they were premmie, they were in humidicribs. I didn’t get to hold him until after, when I had to make the decision about donation.” A tear ran down her cheek. Unthinkingly I raised my hand and brushed it away.
“I’m such a huge fucking arse,” I said. “It’s no wonder you hate me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t hate you, Dec. I just don’t know you anymore, not the real you.”
“I’m still the same though, Lys. Just a little bit more fucked-up.”
She chuckled but there was no humour in the sound.
“I think you were right when you said that I don’t know you anymore,” I admitted.
She dropped her head and nodded.
Touching my fingers to her chin, I guided her to look at me. “But I’d like to get to know you again. If you’ll let me.”
“I’d like that too, Declan. I just . . .” She trailed off, uncertain how to word her feelin
gs.
“You’re afraid?” I guessed.
She nodded as fresh tears sprung to her eyes.
“Of me?”
She seemed to struggle with her composure for a second. “Not of you as such. I know you’d never hurt me physically or anything. I just . . . I can’t trust you. I don’t know if I can survive what we had before. Not anymore. Not with someone else to think about.”
“I want to fix that. How can I?”
She shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I guess time will be one way.”
Time? I thought about that. I had another month and a half or so before I was due back in Sydney. But I knew that wasn’t the sort of time Alyssa was talking about. Then I remembered Alyssa’s words on the plane. She was leaving Australia for good. She was only in Australia for another couple of months. A fissure ripped open in my chest and my breathing sped as a panic attack gripped me in its icy claws.
They’d never been as frequent as they were now. I turned so that I was sitting with my back to the table and leaned forward to put my head between my knees. I cupped my hands against the back of my head and tugged on the hair there. I tried to calm myself down but it wasn’t working. The thought of Alyssa leaving for good in just a few months, of never seeing her again, tore at me. Once again, she rubbed small, calming circles on my back.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing,” I panted, trying to get her to talk about something that would hopefully stop the panic.
“I’ve pretty much been full-time at uni. Between that, a part-time job down at the local shop and Phoebe, I’ve been pretty busy. And then I got the job offer from Pembletons.”
Fuck, that wasn’t helping. My breathing hitched again and Alyssa seemed to sense that because she shifted her body a little closer. I was treated to the scent of her, and that did help calm me a little.
“I’m not taking the London offer,” she whispered.
My breath left my body in one exhausted, but relieved, sigh. “Why not?”
“I can’t be that far away from my family. Or from Emmanuel.”
I nodded. Which meant she’d never move to Sydney. Which meant if I wanted to be with her I had to give up what could be a promising fucking career or at least one that could be promising again if I could get my head back in the game. And that meant we were right back where we’d started.
Something inside me screamed at me to run again. Run as far away as I could as fast as I could. Get the fuck away from Alyssa and all the drama she was sure to bring into my life.
No! I thought in response. Fuck that.
Sydney wasn’t that far from Brisbane, a little over an hour by plane. If I could be fucking man enough to pick up the phone, maybe we could at least be friends again. Although, I wasn’t sure whether friends would work when I was getting hard as a fucking stone just from her rubbing comforting circles on my back. This smallest amount of contact from her did more for me than being balls-deep in any of the whores from the clubs.
I didn’t understand why she had so much sway over me, but it had always been that way. That’s what made me run initially and had kept me running since. I didn’t want to be tied down and unhappy in my job like my father was. He’d worked crazy hours for as long as I could remember and he’d told me so many times how he’d had his dreams and maybe he could have achieved them if he hadn’t married so young and fucked up his chances.
As always, I was torn between what half of me wanted and what the other half feared. Alyssa and the fucking perfect connection that made me want to bury myself in her.
Finally, I was able to gather control over my breathing and the panic subsided. I turned back toward her, resting my arm on the table and putting my fingers in my hair instead of linking them with hers again.
“Where does that leave us though?” My heart hammered my ribs, trying to break free as I asked the question.
“Is there an us?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I’d like there to be. Would you?”
She shrugged. “Yes and no. I don’t want to get hurt again, Dec. It nearly tore me in two when I saw you—” Her words died on her lips. She met my eye and seemed to have an internal debate. “In the hospital,” she added in a hushed whisper.
I frowned. The hospital was after so much other stuff between us. Unless . . .
“You were there? After Morgan . . .” I trailed off.
She closed her eyes and her tears wet the lashes. She didn’t confirm it, but she didn’t have to. Her reaction made it clear that I hadn’t been having visions. She’d actually visited me in the hospital, but obviously hadn’t wanted me to know.
“Then when you got on the plane beside me, I cursed fate. How could I be so unlucky? And then we . . . ” She tailed off, but I didn’t need her to elaborate. I knew exactly what she meant.
Fucking without complications. Yeah, fucking right.
“Do you know the real fucked-up thing about that night?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I wanted to tell you that I loved you before you bolted from the room.”
With a frown, she narrowed her eyes at me.
“I didn’t even realise you meant sex without strings until after you’d left. I was so fucking drunk when you found me, I just didn’t know what was happening. It ripped my heart apart when you walked out of the room.”
I thought she might see the truth in my words, and realise that I’d been changing since that night. But instead her face was set with anger.
“Is that why you went back downstairs? To the bottle of whiskey?”
I nodded. “It was the only thing that made sense.” I wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty, I just wanted her to know the truth. Her reaction, however, startled the fuck out me.
She started to scream at me. “You thought the best way to deal with that apparent pain was to drink a fucking litre of alcohol?”
I was shocked and sat blinking at her, unsure of what she wanted me to say. She seemed to be demanding a response though so I nodded again.
“Fucking hell, Declan. You really haven’t grown up a fucking bit have you?”
I just stared at her, uncertain of what I was being blasted about, but unwilling to add to it by saying the wrong thing.
“This is what I fucking mean about trust. One thing goes wrong and you fucking drink yourself into oblivion and end up in hospital. I mean Christ, what if I’d left for the night or didn’t hear that bottle smash. You could have been fucking dead. How would I explain that to Phoebe? How could I tell her that her father died in a fucking alcohol binge session because one thing didn’t go his fucking way?” She’d started her rant in shouts but ended it in tears. As soon as the crying started, I felt emotion return to me. I pulled her tightly into my chest. She sobbed against me for a few minutes before her breathing settled.
“This is what I mean, Dec. I can’t trust you to make decisions if that’s the sort of place they lead you to. And if I can’t trust you to make responsible decisions, how can I trust you with Phoebe? How can I trust you with me? I think you need therapy.”
I scoffed. “Been there, done that.”
When she pulled away, her face was set into a mask of determination. “You need to talk to a psychiatrist. If you genuinely want me to try to trust you again, that’s what I need you to do. Before we can ever have a hope of there being an us you need to sort yourself out. I won’t allow Phoebe’s life to be ruined just because you don’t have yourself together.”
“So let me get this straight. You’ll only allow me into my own fucking daughter’s life if I see a shrink? And I don’t get a fucking say in that shit?”
Her eyes flashed. “Legally, she’s not your daughter.”
“Fuck that. You and I both know she is. I don’t give a flying fuck about legal. If I want to see her, I fucking should be able to see her.”
“Do you want to see her?”
Alyssa’s question startled me with its frankness. “Um . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she asked incredulously. “Are you kidding me?”
“Look, fuck, I’m trying to be honest here. I’ve known for all of a fucking week that I’m a father. I don’t fucking know how to deal with that shit. What I want to do though is what’s right.”
“What’s right is sorting yourself out and then seeing her.”
A dark chuckle escaped me. She had no fucking idea. “Sorting me out could take fucking years.”
Alyssa’s response was a genuine laugh. She either didn’t realise just how fucking serious I was or she was trying to lighten the now tense atmosphere. “At least start trying, that’s all I’m asking.”
“What do I get in return?”
She raised her eyebrow at me. “Besides being less fucked-up you mean?”
A scoffed exclamation left me. “Yeah, besides that.”
“What do you want in return?”
“Will you agree to let me take you on a date?”
She thought about it for a second and then nodded. Then she smiled slyly. “One date for every session.”
It was clear she thought she’d outfoxed me. “How will you know if I’m actually going?”
“It’s about trust, Declan. I will try to trust you again. Part of that will be you earning my trust by showing me you are worthy of it. If you lie to me about something as simple as whether you’ve had a therapy session or not, how can I ever trust you on anything else?”
I nodded. It made sense. “Do phone sessions count? If I have to see a fucking shrink, I’d at least like to go to one close to home but”—I dropped my voice and broke eye contact because it was hard to admit to my feelings after hiding from them for so long—“I don’t want to wait until I go back to try us again.”
Declan Reede: The Untold Story (Complete Series) Page 33
