Welcome to Sugartown

by Carmen Jenner

  I saw in Holly’s eyes just how much her heart was breaking and mine breaks for her. I wish my mum were here. Holly’s parents have never been overly affectionate with her. They pushed her to get good grades and, as far as providing for their child went, they ticked all the right boxes, but emotionally they’re somewhat stoic people who forget that kids need the emotional support a parent provides too.

  My dad is surprisingly astute at knowing when his kids need a cuddle and yes, he certainly can be a boar of a man but underneath the fleshy, frightening exterior, he’s a big old teddy bear. Still, only a female would know how to really deal with this situation, and right now I wish to god Holly wasn’t lumped with some inexperienced nineteen-year-old who has no idea what she’s going through.

  I feel, rather than see, someone sit down next to me. I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even think about the fact that they’re sitting too close for normal personal space boundaries. I don’t give them much thought at all until I hear Holly say, “Are you about done with the waterworks, because I could really go for some Baskin-Robins right now?”

  “What are you doing—”

  She shrugs like she hasn’t just made the biggest decision of her life. “I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “You’re not alone in this, I’ll be there. And if your parents won’t help you, we’ll move in together. Dad told me this morning that Jackson’s coming to stay with us for a while. He can’t stand being in that big old house in Tenterfield all alone after my aunt died, so he’s selling and going to be crashing on our couch. Maybe we can get him to move in with us someplace and it will cheapen the rent.”

  “Oh joy, your hot cousin whom I’ve slept with exactly twice—the same amount of times, in fact, that he’s been to Sugartown—is coming to stay, and you want me to live with him while I’m pregnant with a fat arse? Geez, Ana, you couldn’t have told me all this before I got myself knocked up? Jackson Rowe moving to Sugartown is fucking monumental!” she yells, and everyone in the room turns to look at us. “Oh, go back to reading your magazines and pretending like you aren’t all here to kill your babies.”

  I blink up at the madwoman formally known as my best friend, and she waves her hands at me to hurry up and get out of my seat. She starts to move toward the door, but before she turns completely, I see her hands briefly rest on her stomach.

  She turns around to glare at me for taking too long. “Come on, woman. I want ice cream before you drive me home, and I need a whole damn pint of chocolate-chip cookie dough.”

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Ana

  The following day I sit at the kitchen table sulking over my cereal. I’m in one hell of a mood, thanks to sleeping on the lumpy couch all night. Holly’s occupying my bed at present, and is the reason for me not getting a whole lot of sleep last night—her pregnant arse snores.

  After we got home yesterday, she came clean to her folks and the bastards gave her a pretty hefty ultimatum: destroy the life inside her that was going to “ruin her life”, or ship out and pretend she has no family left. I swear it took a freaking miracle to keep me from punching them both in their snobby, bitter faces.

  I threw together a bag for her and dragged her out of that house before they could change her mind. This was her decision to make; how dare they not support her in this? That was their grandchild they were talking about offing.

  Now, my dad runs around the kitchen, tearing the place apart in an attempt to find something he’s lost. Probably just the number for Gary’s Pizza Palace down the road.

  “Dad, can I talk to you about something?” I hadn’t told him yet that Holly was pregnant and would be crashing with us until the two of us could find our own place. Not that he’d care; Holly is like the daughter he never knew he wanted to have. I’d just rather he hear it from me first, than the rumour mill in town.

  “Can it wait, sweetheart? I’m running kinda late.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I mutter then frown, because it dawns on me that it’s only 10 am on a Sunday and my dad never goes anywhere this early on a Sunday, unless it’s to the shop to buy more bacon. Assuming that this is what he’s looking for, I fish the keys to his Harley out from under the paper and hold them out to him. “Where are you going?”

  He glances at me briefly and takes his keys from my outstretched hand, then averts his eyes like he’s guilty of stealing the last slice of pie from the fridge. “I’m visiting a friend.”

  “Okay, cool,” I mutter and go to sit back down, but my dad’s staring at me with an odd expression that makes me rethink what he just said.

  He’s not visiting a friend at all.

  I narrow my eyes on him. “You’ve been going to the prison? For how long?”

  “Since he went in,” he replies, and he at least has the good grace to look a tad bit sheepish.

  Suddenly, I want to be sick. Knowing my dad has been visiting Elijah behind my back brings all the guilt rushing back to the surface. He’s just Dad’s employee, but he was everything to me. It hurts to know my father’s had that kind of interaction with him, even though I’m still not sure I’m ready to.

  “He never mentioned seeing you.”

  Dad’s brows shoot skyward. “You spoke to him? When?”

  “He called me yesterday, while you were out.” I think back to hearing the surprise in Elijah’s voice when I answered the phone, and then I look at my dad and the realisation hits that he wasn’t calling me at all—he was calling my dad. “You’re his weekly phone call?”

  “He has no one else, Ana.”

  “That’s why you asked me to take Sammy to rugby on Saturdays, isn’t it? To get me out of the house?”

  “I knew you weren’t ready to talk to him, but the kid’s all alone in the world, Ana. We’re all he has left. I gotta get going. I’ve got a two hour drive, and if I don’t haul arse I’m gonna miss visiting hours.” Dad sees me wince and his whole face softens. He steps toward me and takes my hand in his. “You could come, too. He’d love to see you.”

  I remember more of my dad’s strange behaviour over the last few weeks and yank my hand away from his. “That’s why you took that picture of Sammy and I on your phone the other day, isn’t it?”

  “It was a nice picture.”

  “Are you giving it to him?” I accuse.

  “I already have, baby girl.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I dump my bowl in the sink. The spoon makes a loud clatter against the stainless steel and I wince.

  “Ana, we owe him a lot.”

  “We don’t owe him anything. He carved up a guy’s face, Dad!”

  “Yeah, and if he hadn’t, I would have. He told me the truth about the night you hurt your arm. He saved you then, maybe it’s your turn to save him back?”

  “I wouldn’t have needed to be saved if it weren’t for his ties to the Hell’s Angels.”

  “Maybe not, but he loves you, kid. He’s a good man and he’d do anything to protect you. That’s good enough for me.”

  “You can’t build a relationship on all the shit we have buried beneath us, Dad. One day, it’s all going to come floating back to the surface, and what then? All we ever did was hurt one another, and everything and everyone around us. Sometimes you’ve got to cut your losses before you gamble away everything you have left.”

  “That’s not living kid, that’s barely surviving.”

  “Yeah, but at least it’s not dying.”

  “Look, I’m not saying you have to jump back into bed with him. I’m just saying, maybe think about what he’s going through on the inside. Alone.”

  “It’s all I think about!” I yell through my tears. “Day and night, every minute for the last four months it’s all I’ve thought about. So don’t you dare accuse me of not giving this enough thought. I love him Dad, but he betrayed me, more than once. He behaved like an animal, no better than Scott—”

  “Ana!”

  “It’s the truth. I love him so much it’s crushing me, but I don’
t know if I can forgive him all the same.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, kiddo, but you know where to find him if you decide you can.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  The weight of my words hangs suspended in the silence between us and Dad turns to leave. Before he walks away though, he stops and looks back at me; his eyes are gentle and full of sympathy when he says, “I’ve never pushed you to do anything you didn’t want to, Ana, and whether or not you decide to forgive him is up to you, but he’s up for parole in two months time. Now, I don’t know if he’s going to stick around in this shithole town but he has a job with me for as long as he wants it.

  “Despite what you think, that kid is the only reason I’m not serving time for murder. So I want you to think long and hard about this before you make any rash decisions. What he did may not have been civil, but I know him well enough to know he made a choice he could live with. Question is, can you live with yours?”

  Could I? I didn’t know.

  Chapter Thirty

  Ana

  My annoying cousin drove an even more annoying Holden Ute in a very pretentious high-shine black. He’d been here for two weeks and I was ready to shove the beast’s muffler where the sun don’t shine and strangle him with the fanbelt. His precious and shiny new toy managed to wake the entire street almost every morning when he’d pull in before dawn and whistle his way up the drive. I didn’t know there were that many available women in Sugartown to sneak out on before dawn, but if anyone could find them it’d be Jackson Rowe.

  Jackson is gorgeous in that typical Aussie kind of way: tanned skin, summer sky-blue eyes, blonde hair that curls into Simon Baker ringlets if he lets it get too long, a body like Chris Hemsworth and a face like Ryan Kwanten. Even I have trouble taking my eyes off of him and our mothers shared a womb—it’s sick and twisted, I know, but I’ve made my peace with it.

  Right now, though, I wasn’t making peace with anything, I was on a warpath and my beloved cousin was about to feel the wrath of a sleep-deprived girl interrupted.

  “God damn it,” Holly yells as she pulls back the covers and shoves two dry crackers in her mouth to stave off the morning sickness. It’s pretty rare for her not to have crackers or another form of baked goods in her mouth these days. “How is he still finding women to screw in this town?”

  “I don’t know. Just be thankful you’re pregnant and unlikely to fall prey, too.”

  “Yes, thankful,” Holly mutters caustically. “That’s exactly what I am. Ana, I don’t know how much longer I can pull off this I’m-not-pregnant-I’ve-just-eaten-one-too-many-tubs-of-ice-cream ruse. If Jackson keeps looking at me like he wants to get all up in this, I’m afraid I’m going to cave and let him bang my brains out.”

  “You do, and I will personally shoot both of you. As much as I loathe the thought of having to see him dragging girls in by the hair at midnight and tossing them out before the sun comes up, we need him to move in with us. We won’t make the rent otherwise.”

  Holly sighs and flops back down on the mattress. “How the hell am I going to live with that?” She gestures to the shared wall between my bedroom and the bathroom, where we can hear Jackson running the shower, and then she flings herself out of the bed and dashes for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to peeeeeeeee.” She switches her weight from foot to foot and crosses her legs, one in front of the other, her hand tucked between them like she’s a little kid. “How is it possible that this kid is the size of a jellybean—he’s not even a real jellybean yet, he’s like one of those overpriced Jelly Belly things—and he’s already pushing on my bladder?”

  “You don’t know it’s a he,” I reply.

  “Oh, it’s a he alright. Little punk arse bastard. Only a male would wake me up this early. He’s banging around in my vagina, Ana. Then he’s going to tear it up from the inside and stretch it all out of shape so no man will ever want to look at mummy’s pink bits again. Of course it’s a male.” She stalks over and bangs on the shared wall. “Only a male would be that inconsiderate.”

  Jackson taps back in the same spot she had and then we hear his deep chuckle through the wall. Holly screams and lunges for the door.

  “You can’t go in there, Hols. Jackson’s in the shower. Naked.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out, Einstein. I’d wondered how people did this fancy pants showering thing. God, Ana, I so did not need that image in my head right now,” she snarks and stalks out of the room.

  “I meant what I said,” I yell after her, “keep your horny pregnant vagina in your knickers!”

  I hear the bathroom door open and then a long relieved groan, which I’m hoping is just Holly finding relief in the fact that she finally got to pee, and not something else. I climb out of bed and go in after her, just to be sure. She’s just standing up and arranging her pyjamas into place when Jackson pushes the shower curtain back. “Nice as it was to see your pink bits again, Holly, I don’t remember there being an open invitation on that door.”

  “Well, if some jack-arse man-whore didn’t come striding in and waking up the whole goddamn town before sunrise and then hog the shower and steal all the hot water before anyone even has a chance to see some I wouldn’t have to barge in here to pee.”

  “That what’s wrong here, Holly? You not seeing some?” Like a complete arsehole he waggles his eyebrows at her.

  “Jackson, don’t be a dick,” I mutter but neither of them are listening to me; they’re both too absorbed in this sick little flirty power play they have going on, and I’m starting to think the three of us moving in together is going to be a colossally bad idea.

  “Oh, I’m about to see some,” she declares with a snide smile and turns and flips the hot water on, causing the pipes to groan and complain and Jackson to leap out of the shower in all his naked glory to escape the cold water. I avert my eyes from his very obvious arousal, and Holly nearly doubles over with laughter. “Why, Jackson, I think you’re shrinking in your old age.”

  Jackson grabs a towel from the rack and hastily wraps it around his waist as he grins down at Holly, whose face is so smug it looks like she swallowed a whole aviary full of canaries.

  “I don’t recall you having any complaints sweet, sweet Holly,” Jackson muses, and his smile grows wider. “In fact, I recall you begging me for more, on your knees, on the bed, in the back of my mum’s car. And then there was that one time you let me stick it—”

  “Shut up!” Holly snaps, and her smug smile is completely gone.

  “Maybe the three of us moving in together isn’t such a good idea,” I say.

  “Oh, we’re moving in together,” Holly says and strides defiantly from the room.

  “Well, I, for one, can’t wait. Better make sure there’s a sturdy lock for the bathroom door, though. I’d hate to have my roomies walk in on me while I’m bludgeoning the beefsteak.”

  “Gah! You’re such a pig!” Holly calls out.

  “Oink,” he shouts back, and I hear my bedroom door slam.

  “Why do you have to provoke her?”

  “Because she’s so much fun to poke,” he laughs and then deadpans. “Oops, I mean provoke.”

  I quietly close the bathroom door and lower my voice, “She’s in a vulnerable place right now, could you lay off for just five minutes? Please?”

  “Why is she vulnerable? Don’t tell me some guy finally managed to locate her cold, black heart and break it in two?”

  “Do you ever get tired of being such a complete tool, Jackson?”

  He makes a show of thinking about that and then smirks down at me. “Nope. Never.”

  “Lay off,” I say and walk back to the door. “I mean it. She’s not up for your stupid playboy power trip right now.”

  Jackson’s brows knit together and he frowns. “Wait. You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” he whispers, and I can see the worry beh
ind his clear blue eyes. They can pretend to hate each other all they want, but Holly and Jackson don’t have anyone fooled. In their own weird, twisted way they actually care for one another. Which makes them moving in together the most horrendous idea I’ve ever had. “She’s not sick, is she?”

  Both our mums died of cancer before they could see out their fiftieth birthday, so it’s not unexpected that he’d jump to that conclusion before anything else. Losing more loved ones to the big C was my biggest fear in life, too.

  “She’s not sick, and it’s not my place to tell you. Just please, go easy on her.” I gesture to his half-naked body. “She doesn’t need to be distracted by all this.”

  “Hey, I can’t help it if she’s gagging for—”

  “Jackson Rowe, so help me god, if you finish that sentence I will tell every available woman in this town that you have the clap and you will never get laid again.”

  “Okay, okay.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “Geez, when did you girls get so fucking uptight?”

  “The moment we started trusting guys like you,” I retort and perform a little of my own slamming doors routine.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Elijah

  I press the plastic prison phone to my ear and listen for someone to pick up. I know it won’t be the voice I want to hear. She won’t pick up the phone and be excited to hear my voice, and she won’t whisper that she misses me into the receiver, probably ever again, but that doesn’t stop me from praying to whatever god, entity, or chasm of void space out there watching over us to let it be her.

  The phone’s been ringing too long. If no-one picks up then I’ve officially wasted my six minutes, though it’s not like I have anyone else to call.

  It’s a miracle the club haven’t found me on the inside, though most of our guys would have been sent to a Sydney lock up. The Bandidos chapter in Byron means there’s a few blokes from our rival MC stationed here at Grafton prison, and I’m thanking fuck right now that no one but the cops know I’m the son of a Hell’s Angels Sergeant-At-Arms. I have just one and a half months to make it through before parole. Just one and a half months and I’ll be able to see her face again.