She laughed a little, but it wasn’t a proper laugh; there was no joy in it. “Aren’t you getting sick of me yet? You’ve seen me every day since being in Brisbane.”
I brought my hand up to her face, wrapping my fingers around her cheek. There was a brief second when she closed her eyes and leaned into my hand. “And if I had my way, I’d see you every day the whole time I’m here.” I still wasn’t going to tell her my plan about daily dates, but I was damn certain I would make it work somehow.
She recoiled, but I wasn’t sure whether it was from my words or my touch. I saw there were tears in her eyes and they were threatening to spill. “I can’t . . . I’m not going to pretend everything is perfect—”
Phoebe selected that moment to interrupt. Apparently she was bored of playing by herself with the ball. I grabbed it from her gently and then cast what I hoped was a winning smile but really I had no idea, because I’d never been a kid person, so I had no fucking clue what I was doing or what to expect. “Do you want to play soccer?”
Phoebe scrunched her nose up; her blue eyes sparkled in the slowly fading sunlight. “What’s that?”
“It’s a game. You kick the ball up the field and try to get it in the goal.”
She tilted her head to one side. “What’s a goal?”
“In soccer, it’s a piece of metal that’s shaped like this”—I made the shape of a soccer goal with my fingers—“and it has a net on the back.”
She looked up and down the field, obviously trying to find the goals. “There’s none. We can’t play.”
“Sure we can.” I pulled myself to a kneeling position and whispered into her ear, “We can pretend there are goal posts.” Then I pulled back and furrowed my brow. “Do you know what pretend means?” She was fucking three, I didn’t know what shit she did or didn’t know.
She nodded enthusiastically. “It’s when it’s not real. Like my daddy, I pretend him all the time.”
It was such an innocent statement, said with no malice or hatred, and yet somehow it hurt more than the worst fucking insult that had ever been hurled at me. How the fuck could a three-year-old girl know exactly what to say to break my fucking heart? I closed my eyes and took a shaky breath.
“Declan, you don’t have to do this, we can go,” Alyssa said, already halfway over to Phoebe.
I shook my head, steeled my resolve and plastered a fake smile on my face. “How about a game of two-on-one?”
Alyssa seemed to consider it for a moment and then nodded. I picked up my phone and slid it into my pocket. Then I grabbed her backpack and moved it over to the side of the park and we started our impromptu game of two-on-one soccer. Technically, it was Alyssa and Phoebe against me, but what happened in reality was that Alyssa or I would kick the ball softly to Phoebe who would boot it in any direction and jump up and down declaring she got it in the goal. She was too fucking cute to argue with.
The game continued for around half an hour or so until Phoebe decided she was bored with it and wanted to pick flowers instead. Who knew that three-year-olds could be so fucking fickle?
Alyssa and I walked slowly behind Phoebe as she started to duck in and out of the trees around the park finding flowers and yanking the tops off. Then she’d get bored with the one she’d picked and move on to another colour.
“Why did you come here, Declan?” Alyssa asked quietly.
“I don’t know. Mum was out and I didn’t see the point hanging around home when I couldn’t even get in the fucking house.”
“Please watch your mouth,” Alyssa said, but she smirked, so there was no real anger.
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “Habit.”
She nodded. “You’ll work on that, won’t you?”
I grinned at her, before giving her a little wink. “I’ll try.”
She laughed at the reference to our previous conversation. “Fair enough. That doesn’t explain why you came here though, just why you’re not at home.”
I stopped walking for a second, contemplating what she was asking. Why did I go to our park? Did I even really know? “I guess I just wanted to be reminded how good we were. We were good weren’t we?”
She nodded. “Yeah, we were good.”
“Until I fucked it up.”
She smacked my arm with her eyes opened wide, motioning in Phoebe’s direction, but then chuckled. “Yeah, until then.”
We fell into silence as we walked side by side. I could hear Phoebe talking to herself and to the trees and to any-fucking-thing that would listen.
“Well, I told you why I’m here. Why are you here?”
“Phoebe and I come here almost every day. It’s the one place that’s just ours. Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful for all the support I get from Flynn and my family, but sometimes I think I just need some time to be alone with her. This place always held so many good memories for me.” She kept quiet on the bad ones.
“I’m sorry for intruding on it. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I left?”
She shook her head. I reached out and grabbed her hand in mine. She didn’t pull away which made me smile. She glanced over at me and smiled in reply. It was like it always had been—when I was with Alyssa none of the other shit mattered, nothing else mattered, but then we’d part company and all my shitty thoughts would come flooding back in.
Phoebe came back to us with three flowers in her hands. “Mummy, which one do you want?”
Alyssa put on a look of mock concentration. “Um, let me see. The yellow one?”
Phoebe beamed at her and passed her the yellow one.
It was still so surreal seeing the blend of Alyssa and me in a walking, talking little package. A fucking cute little package with the perfect mix of each of us. I began to wonder what she would look like as she grew, and instantly regretted the thought because she would get older—and no doubt prettier—and then she would date.
Fuck me.
I didn’t even want to think about that but I couldn’t help it. Questions came unbidden into my mind. Would she have her heart broken by some dick? Would she find someone who was good to her? Would she be the sort to go to clubs and fuck random arsehole strangers? God, I hoped not. It may have been hypocritical of me—in fact there was no fucking may about it, it was hypocritical of me—but she was too good for that. She was too good for every fucking man who walked this earth or ever would. My free hand went to the bridge of my nose as I tried to put the thoughts out of my head before I went fucking crazy. For some unknown reason, I had a sudden compulsion to lock her into a room and never let her back out again.
Alyssa seemed to sense my stress, or maybe she just fucking knew my tells too well, and gripped my hand a little more tightly with hers, as if trying to hold me in place. “What is it, Declan?”
I knew it would sound stupid to Alyssa, fuck it sounded stupid to me, but I wanted to be honest with her. I didn’t want her to imagine the worst possible scenario for what was stressing me out. I looked at Alyssa, stress eating me alive from the inside. “She’s going to date.”
A look of shock passed across Alyssa’s features for a second before she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard, for so long, that tears started to run down her face. Phoebe started to chuckle at Alyssa. I stood there open mouthed because that was not the fucking reaction I expected. My stress grew into aggravation as the laughter continued. The longer the laughter went on, the more my irritation grew.
“I’m glad you find it fucking amusing,” I snapped.
Alyssa wiped a tear from her eye. “Sorry. It’s just . . . well, for someone who wasn’t sure he even was ready for this you’ve jumped on the protective ship pretty quickly.”
She seemed to choose her words carefully. I noticed she hadn’t used the words “dad” or “father.”
“It’s all right, Declan. That’s years away. And when the time comes, I’ll deal with it.”
I shook my head and pulled Alyssa closer to me. “No. We’ll deal with it. Together.”
Alyssa dro
pped my hand and looked away with a frown. The shift in her demeanour was instant and confusing.
“What is it?” I asked, reaching for her arm.
“Just stop making promises you won’t keep,” she hissed back at me. “Especially around her. I can deal with another broken heart, she shouldn’t have to.”
“Lys, I—”
She shot me a glare that froze my blood and stilled my tongue. Every ounce of agony and anger she’d experienced poured from the momentary eye contact. Then, scooping Phoebe up into her arms, she made a beeline for her backpack.
Placing Phoebe on the ground near the bag, Alyssa knelt in front of her and whispered, “We’re going home now, honey. Okay?”
Phoebe shook her head. “I want to play some more.”
Alyssa closed her eyes and sighed. “Please sweetie, Mummy needs to go now. If you’re a good girl we’ll get a treat later, okay?”
Phoebe pouted but didn’t complain. Alyssa started roughly shoving the toys back into the bag. I walked over and started to help but she pulled the bag off me.
“I can do it on my own, Dec,” she said. Something told me she wasn’t just talking about the bag.
“Alyssa, how can I get you to trust me?” I asked, needing an answer to that question more than ever before.
“I can’t . . . I just don’t . . .” Alyssa just shook her head. She waved her hand at me in dismissal, put the bag over one shoulder, hitched Phoebe onto her hip and practically ran from the park. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Now who’s running?” I shouted after her. I was pissed. I knew I had no right to my anger, but I couldn’t help it. My irritation was already at its maximum because of her laughter over my protective streak. Her running away only made it spike.
She didn’t respond and just kept going, disappearing into the trees before long. The last thing I saw was my little girl turn and blow me a kiss before waving goodbye.
A big part of me wanted to chase after them, to make Alyssa understand that I wasn’t going anywhere. Another part though, the small part I was trying to silence—the part that wanted to run from Alyssa and her magnetic fucking draw—told me to stay the fuck where I was because she wasn’t worth it. Those two parts ripped at each other until I told the smaller part to shut the fuck up and then ran after Alyssa. I escaped from the trees just in time to see her taillights disappear around the corner. I ran down the road after her, but she was gone.
I didn’t know what this meant for us. Did she just need space? Should I chase after her or wait for her to call me? The one thing I needed was to try to find some calm, because my anger was still simmering through my veins, burning me from the inside. If I had chased after her sooner, it probably would have been a disaster. Any conversation we tried to have would likely have been explosive.
For a moment, I sat on the kerb and tried to gather my thoughts, but the longer I thought about the way Alyssa shut down after my promise, the more my doubt seeped into my every pore. The negative words rolled through me—she would never trust me, so why should I bother to try to convince her to? Eventually, I pulled myself up off the kerb and headed back to Mum’s house. When I arrived, the front door stood open.
“Decided to grace us with your presence again, have you?” Mum asked.
“Mum, just fucking don’t, all right. Not now.” My mind was still twisted in knots and undecided over what I should do about Alyssa.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that.” Dad’s voice came from the kitchen.
“Well, if it isn’t the fucking invisible man,” I snapped back at him. Then I ignored him as I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a can of Coke out of the fridge.
“Declan, you sit down at that table—” he started.
“Fuck off.” I was ready to head back out the door again less than a minute after I arrived. Alyssa’s mood swing had put me on edge; I couldn’t deal with my parents’ shit too. Without waiting for him to start again, I headed for the front door.
“Declan!” Mum called out as she chased after me. “What has gotten into you?”
Her brow dipped into a frown and she reached for me before hesitating. A ghost of doubt crossed her face, and I wondered whether she thought I was going to fly off the handle like I apparently had during my parents’ trip to Sydney.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I took a deep breath. “What the fuck do you think?”
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”
“Alyssa. Alyssa’s what’s fucking wrong. Alyssa is what has always been fucking wrong.” I turned away from her and took a couple of pacing steps, my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides.
“What did you do?”
I spun on my heels. “That’s nice, Mum, real fucking nice. Of course it has to be something I’ve fucking done, doesn’t it? She couldn’t possibly have her own shit to sort out either? It couldn’t possibly be anything but my fuck-up, right?”
Mum looked like she was going to say something more, but I didn’t want to listen. All I could think was what a fucking waste of time the whole trip had been. All I’d done was rip open old wounds in my heart, tear some new ones in my soul, and it was all for nothing. Nothing had changed. I was still as empty as ever.
“You know what? I’m sick of everyone assuming the fucking worst of me. I know I’ve done some fucked-up shit, but seriously, don’t I get any fucking credit for trying to fix it?”
“You have to understand that one day of interest doesn’t make up for four years of neglect, Declan. It just can’t. Especially considering how roughly you treated her when you first left.”
Right . . . the three months I could barely remember. I closed my eyes and sighed. It did nothing for my sanity. I could only think of one thing that would, but doing it would be breaking the rules Alyssa had set for me. Fuck her, and fuck her rules. “Whatever. I’m going out. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
She nodded and then pressed a key into my hand. “Come home when you’re ready.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
She frowned, but didn’t say anything more as I climbed into my car and gunned the engine. I peeled off from the kerb with a squeal and drove into the ever-darkening horizon. Alyssa didn’t trust me. My mother had lied to me. My heart had been shattered and broken. My soul twisted and destroyed. More than anything, I needed to get away. To blow off some steam. There was only one way I knew how—a decent night out. A night of drinking and debauchery.
It wasn’t like Alyssa was trying to keep up her end of the bargain, so why should I? Would she even care if I just disappeared again? I doubted it. She had her perfect life already planned out, and it was clear from her, “I can do it on my own,” that she wasn’t including me.
Well, fuck her then.
Ten minutes later, I was tearing down the motorway in the direction of the Gold Coast.
Pushing the car past one eighty, I inched closer to home with every passing second.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: UNFORGIVEN
TRAVELLING AT ALMOST twice the speed limit down the M1 toward the Gold Coast, my mind was filled with the past, and with past mistakes.
As I drove along the highway, I passed the rides at Dreamworld, the studios at Movie World and the waterslides at Wet’n’Wild. On autopilot, my body knew just where it wanted to go. I took the Smith Street exit off the highway and followed it through Surfers Paradise and onto the Spit. I was going to our old hangout. After I finally had my licence, halfway through year twelve, Alyssa and I would come cruising regularly to the Spit with Ben and Jade. It had always bored Alyssa to tears because cars had never been her thing, but she’d had Jade to talk to and had endured the rest of it for me. Of course the shitty Datsun I’d driven then was nothing compared to my Monaro.
I knew the Spit wouldn’t be busy because it was a weeknight, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t coming for company. In fact, I wouldn’t have complained if I was the only car there. After pulling into the Sea World car park, I put the handbrake o
n, leaving the car running but not in gear. I locked my car so no fucker could disturb me.
Once I was settled, I thought about the last day and how much everything shifted and changed constantly with Alyssa. It was almost impossible to track where I stood with her.
Just that morning I’d had no idea what to expect, but then we’d agreed to try for an us and my hopes had skyrocketed. We’d had fun at the shops, like old friends, and then she’d frozen up when she introduced me to Phoebe and I’d taken the high road even though I hadn’t wanted to. Then, when I thought things were finally turning around, it went to shit. Somehow, I’d fucked it up in the park when I hadn’t even expected to see her there.
Why did I have to go there?
If I hadn’t, maybe I’d know still know where the fuck I stood now. Instead, I was down at the Gold Coast, trying to capture old memories of a better time. All I got instead was a constant loop of all the ways I’d fucked up over the years. Alyssa, my career, everything. It had all gone to shit. The only thing that connected all those dots was me.
I turned my stereo on, threw in a CD and cranked it up. The sounds of Metallica thumped from the stereo. Closing my eyes, I let the general noise of the band, and James Hetfield’s voice in particular, take over my mind. Just like I had as a teen, I let the angry words fill me, drowning out my thoughts completely. Tapping the drumbeat on my steering wheel, I allowed the music to do its job and distract me. It worked. At least until track four came on, and I felt like the song had been written for me and everything came flooding back.
Singing along at the top of my lungs, I vented my frustration through song. I was just fucking glad I was alone in the car park.
Just as I was finishing the last chorus, with an extra flourish on the “drums” on my steering wheel, I spotted a security guard wandering over. I turned down my music and pushed the button to wind down my window.
He noticed he had my attention when he was halfway to my car.
“Sorry, son, this is private property. You can’t park here.”
I nodded and waved to let him know I would be going. I pushed repeat on the CD player before putting the car in gear and driving off. I spent twenty minutes circling the Gold Coast, not knowing what the fuck to do or where the fuck to go. In the end, I drove around the streets that were closed off to become a racetrack once each year. Those streets, I knew fucking well after four years racing there in both production cars and ProV8s.
Declan Reede: The Untold Story (Complete Series) Page 37
