by Leah Ashton
Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted to say to her, after the words had eluded him all night long.
He broke their kiss, but kept his mouth close to hers, so as he spoke, his lips brushed against hers.
“I hate that you hate wanting me, Lou,” he said. He paused. Swallowed. “I want you to love wanting me.”
She pulled back, putting too much space between them. “Love?” she said, with confusion in her gaze.
“Love,” he repeated.
And then the water that still flowed over them turned cold.
Chapter Seventeen
Lou rushed out of the shower – away from the frigid water, and also away from Nate.
She kept her back to him as she wrapped herself in a towel, but she could see Nate behind her in the mirror as he dried himself off and draped his charcoal coloured towel around his hips.
He met her gaze in the reflection. “Lou …” he began.
But she shook her head, and darted past him before heading back to her room.
His footsteps were noisy behind her on the cottage’s imperfect floorboards.
“You need to go,” she said, as she yanked open the drawers of her dresser, randomly searching for underwear that she tugged on in jerky movements. With her bra straps halfway up her arms, Nate touched her elbow, and she sprang away as if burnt.
“Don’t,” she said. Then she had to make herself look at him. He was still in his towel, still practically naked. The sun was yet to rise, so only a bedside lamp lit the room, but it was still enough light to make his skin glow golden. For every line and shadow of his body to be beautiful. “You really need to go. Now.”
His gaze was hard and stubborn. “No,” he said. “Not until you tell me why you’re so upset.”
Her bra on, she turned her back to him as she headed for her wardrobe. “This isn’t funny, Nate,” she said tightly.
“How could I possibly think it is?” he asked, and he sounded so genuinely surprised she turned on her heel.
“Love,” she said. “Really? That’s the word you chose?” She shook her head.
“What’s wrong with love?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’m a bit sensitive because good things didn’t really happen for me last time that word was thrown around between us. Okay?” She swallowed. Hell yes, she was sensitive about it. Hearing Nate say that word – even in the context of sex – was not okay. Because it had made her heart leap in a way that was completely unacceptable. “You were right when you said I’d told myself last night couldn’t happen again. I had. And I’m telling myself again now. I’m telling you now. It’s not going to happen again. Ever. So, you really, really need to go.”
Lou closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted.
She couldn’t believe she’d ended up here again: in a place where Nate could hurt her. Because he could, so easily.
Last night, and in the shower, it was all too easy to imagine more nights, more showers, more intimacy, more Nate. In her house, in her life.
In her heart.
But then he’d gone and mentioned love, and the futility of her silly day dreams had been laid bare.
“I didn’t just throw the word around, Lou,” Nate said. He’d stepped up close to her. Not crowding her, not at all, as she reached back inside her wardrobe, and tugged on the nearest shirt in reach.
But as always, because he was close, he was all she was aware of.
“I chose that word,” he continued. “Deliberately. After spending all night trying to figure out what I was going to say to you this morning.”
This made her pause. She stood there in her shirt and knickers, staring at this tall, broad, naked man in her bedroom who was just so confusing.
“All night?” she asked.
He nodded. “I haven’t slept,” he said, “because – you know – potential murderous bikies in the vicinity, so I had a lot of time to think. To watch you sleep, and think about the past two days, as well as the past twelve years.”
She shrugged, all nonchalant. “So, you want me to love having sex with you,” she said. “Too easy. You win, I do. But it doesn’t mean we’re doing it again.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t about sex, Lou. It was about wanting you. I want you in my life again. I want what we’ve had these past two days, and I want what we had twelve years ago – there’s been no one else like you. I’ve never felt this way about anybody but you—”
“Haven’t we covered this?” she interrupted, turning her back to him again and unclipping a skirt from its hanger. She didn’t like how good Nate’s words sounded to her, she didn’t like it at all. “Remember? You were obsessed with me. We clearly have a really strong physical attraction, but surely, you’re the last person to see that for more than it is.”
She unzipped the skirt and stepped into it, then tugged it up over her hips. She had absolutely no idea if it matched the shirt she was wearing, but she wasn’t capable of working that out right now.
“That would be true,” Nate said, “if I didn’t love you all those years ago. If I walked away because you loved me and I didn’t feel the same way.”
She zipped the skirt up violently, then met his gaze with a hard, narrow glare. “That is exactly what happened, Nate.” She put her hands on her hips. “Please,” she said, and she was horrified that her throat was tight and her eyes had begun to sting with unshed tears. Why was she letting him do this to her again? “Go.”
He walked away, and her stomach sank which made no sense, right? Because she wanted him to do that. She wanted him to go.
In silence, he went to where his clothes were neatly piled up on the top of her dresser. She watched him drop his towel without hesitation, then pull on his boxer shorts, jeans, and T-shirt.
This was it. He was leaving. It was over. Again.
But he left his wallet, his phone and keys on the dresser as he walked back to her.
She hadn’t moved – she’d barely breathed – since he’d walked away from her.
“I couldn’t say this wearing just a towel, Lou,” he began. His gaze was intense, like he was trying to look straight into her soul. “But that isn’t what happened. It’s what I told myself, but it wasn’t what happened.” He shut his eyes, squeezing them tight. “Fuck, Lou, I can still see you. Looking down at me and smiling, and telling me with such confidence that you loved me. I remember everything about that night. I remember you had a mozzie bite near your elbow. That you had pale yellow sheets on your bed. That you wore perfume that smelled like cake and how good your skin felt beneath my hands …”
His eyes were open now, and Lou just couldn’t look away as her body ignored every message her brain sent that she should. That she had to.
“I was obsessed with you, Lou, but I was in love with you. And I didn’t realise that until today, but it’s true. It’s been true for twelve years, and baby – I think”—He took a deep breath—“I think I actually never stopped loving you. I think—”
“Stop,” Lou said, reaching out and pressing a finger against his chest. “Just stop right now, Nathan Rivers. You do not get to come back into my life after what you did and spout this crap, okay?”
Because it had to be crap. It couldn’t be real.
She couldn’t risk it being real, because then, what did that make her?
Vulnerable. And she did not want that.
“And it doesn’t matter anyway. Haven’t you listened to a thing I said? I didn’t really love you. I was young and dumb, that’s all. Dreaming of rainbows and a fantasy that doesn’t exist. Whatever you think you feel, I know I don’t feel it myself. I know it.”
Could he tell she was telling this to herself as much as him?
Maybe. “Lou, come on …”
But suddenly he went still. Silent.
Everything about him had become tense.
So tense, that she knew to speak in a whisper. “You heard something?”
He nodded, then soundlessly crept to his phone an
d rapidly typed a message before grabbing the wooden baseball bat she’d kept in her room for nearly twenty years, holding it easily in one hand. “Might be nothing,” he said. “But I think it’s something.”
There was another sound now. Louder. More determined.
At her front door.
Like someone was trying to jimmy open her front door.
An image of displaced plant pots and soil flashed across her brain, and fear started to grasp at her gut. To trail ticklish fingers down her spine.
“We stay here,” Nate said, grasping her hand and leading her to the furthest point in her room from the door. He reached under his pillow on the unmade bed and handed her something.
A knife.
“Use this if you need to,” he said. “Don’t hesitate.” He held her gaze.
“I won’t,” she said, and she goddamn hoped that was true.
Surely, she couldn’t fuck up yet again? Not with her and Nate’s lives on the line?
“Hide,” Nate whispered urgently. “He can’t see you when he walks in.”
Whoever was at the door wasn’t caring about silence now, and there was a crack as wood began to splinter.
She had a ridiculous, redundant moment of concern for the stained-glass door she loved before refocusing on concern for her own life and Nate’s. She flicked the knife in her hand open and watched as Nate walked with determined steps to her open bedroom door before she dropped to a crouch beside her bed.
From here, she could see Nate reflected in the mirror hanging on the open door of her wardrobe.
He stood there – tucked against the wall beside the door architrave, the bat already held up and ready.
Old metal hinges creaked as the front door finally swung open. Footsteps moved heavy and swift down her hallway, the journey both terrifyingly short and mind-numbing long as fear and anticipation warred. She never wanted the stranger in her house to get here. She also wanted him here right now so this would end.
So Nate could end this.
It was the gun she saw first.
The man – and it was a man – held it in front of him with both hands, like some sort of bad TV police detective or something. But regardless, for a split second, that gun was all she saw reflected in the mirror in her bedroom doorway.
Then Nate moved.
Whoomp.
That was the sound the bat made as it flew through the air and hit flesh.
Thwack.
Was the sound it made when it hit bone.
And it hit bone. A lot of bones.
Once, twice, as the stranger in the hall fell to the ground, screaming as he clutched at his broken arm and attempted to scuttle in the direction of the fallen gun. A third time, thwack. To the side of his head.
And that was that. No more screams.
The house was silent.
Lou stood beside Nate, staring down at the intruder who was all dressed in black.
He was unconscious, his arm at all the wrong angles. Nate moved around her room and reappeared beside her with handcuffs he’d retrieved from his backpack. He swiftly cuffed the man’s good arm to the broken one.
The stranger didn’t move. Was he dead?
She considered checking for his pulse, but the idea of touching him revolted her. Even in the dark, the man was clearly a facsimile of Carey, all muscle and aggressive tattoos.
Nate retrieved the gun, and held it ready against his thigh. “I’m going to check he was alone,” he said. “You stay here. E-SWAT shouldn’t be long.”
Lou barely had time to nod before he was moving, and she watched as he slipped in and out of her second bedroom before moving on to her lounge. A moment later, he was out the front door, leaving Lou half-dressed – her shirt untucked and feet bare – beside the unconscious or dead bulk of what was presumably a Notechi.
But before she could step back into her room for shoes – or to otherwise get ready for E-SWAT’s imminent arrival, she heard something.
And before she had the opportunity to even register what it could be, an unfamiliar voice was right behind her.
“Drop the knife.”
Lou flew to face the voice, and a shadow was before her. A female shaped shadow. The woman stepped forward, into the light thrown from the bathroom.
She held a gun in her hands, pointed directly at Lou’s chest.
“If you scream,” she said calmly, “I’ll shoot.”
The woman’s gaze darted beyond Lou to the body on the floor behind her. Only for a second, then back to Lou, but it gave Lou enough time to notice the sheen of tears on the woman’s cheeks. Tears? She also wore all black like the man on the floor – a singlet, jeans, boots.
“Drop,” she said. “The. Knife.”
She shifted the firearm, as if taking aim.
Thoughts raced through Lou’s head. Where was Nate? Where was the E-SWAT team?
Her ears strained to hear him, or to hear approaching sirens but she heard neither.
She gripped the knife hard, trying to work out what to do.
“I’ve used this before,” the woman said, again so, so, calmly. “Don’t think I don’t intend to use it.”
Those words were so resigned, so empty – so absolutely believable – that Lou dropped the knife. She only needed to stop this woman from shooting for seconds probably, minutes at the most – before backup would arrive.
“Kick it to me,” the woman said. “And to me. Not past me or I shoot. Got it?”
Lou nodded and did exactly what she was told.
She just needed to keep this woman calm. She took a deep breath. Then another.
Where was Nate?
The woman pocketed the knife in her jeans, the gun barely moving from where it was aimed at Lou’s heart.
“On your knees,” the woman said. “Now.”
Lou dropped to the floor, and immediately the woman was beside her, the muzzle of her gun shoved hard against her temple. Lou looked up at the woman. She had long hair, neatly scraped off her face into a ponytail, and her face was a study of tension – her jaw hard, her mouth drawn into a tight line. She’d definitely been crying.
Then she dropped to her own knees.
“Now let’s wait for your boyfriend,” the woman said softly.
“He’s here.” Nate’s voice came from the kitchen. “Police,” he said firmly. “Drop your weapon.”
At his voice, the woman slid quickly behind Lou, barricading herself behind Lou’s body.
As she moved, the gun moved with her, shuffling through Lou’s hair until it pushed hard at the base of her skull.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “How about you drop your weapon, or I put a bullet through your girlfriend’s brain?”
The gun pushed ever harder against Lou’s skull, and literally all she could focus on now was where the barrel touched her. Maybe she’d still been adjusting to the fear, then the relief of what had happened with the male intruder, but only now did fear fully reassert itself. And it properly did. The woman’s calm determination. The tears. The gun.
Lou was fucking terrified.
“Nate …” she began, but she honestly had no idea what she was trying to say.
“An Elite SWAT team will be here any second,” he said. “You’re going to get caught. But if you stop this now—”
The woman laughed. “Drop your gun, SWAT-man,” she repeated. “Drop it now.”
It was impossible for Lou to see the woman’s finger tighten on the trigger, but she sensed it. Every cell in her body sensed it.
“Please …” she begged.
“Fine,” Nate said tightly. His gaze kept flicking beyond the woman, as if he expected the E-SWAT team to storm the cottage at any moment.
The thing was, they might not have any moments to wait.
Nate held his hands and weapon in the air, then slowly placed the gun on the ground.
“Great,” the woman said, and the bite of the gun’s barrel was suddenly gone. “I have a new plan.” She got to her feet. “You
stay down there,” she said, waving the gun at Lou. “And you, SWAT-man, you come over here. Slowly.”
Nate did as he was told and also dropped to his knees only a metre or so from Lou.
The woman now stood between them in the hallway, training her gun first on Lou, then Nate.
“How about I shoot you first, so your girlfriend can experience how it feels to watch someone murder their boyfriend?”
The words were so calm, so blasé, that it took a second for Lou to register their meaning.
But then, suddenly, the tears made sense. The not worrying about the police arriving made sense.
This woman didn’t care if she got caught. She wanted revenge.
She shook her head. “Do you even know why we’re here?” she asked neither of them in particular. “It’s so fucking stupid. Shaun is – was – Brent’s brother. You know the guy you killed? I told him not to do this. I told him to let it go, but here we are. And he’s fucked up, and now everything’s fucked up. The Notechi are going to be fucking pissed, and what am I going to do now?”
The tears had started again, trickling unheeded down her cheeks.
She’d been waving the gun about, but now she steadied it again and aimed it at Nate.
“Why did you have to do it? I mean, I get it, but still …”
The calm veneer had cracked and fallen away completely. There was nothing blasé about her now.
Yet, her aim was steady.
Despite the tears, she was determined.
But the thing was, Lou had been watching Nate. Not directly, not obviously. But she’d been watching him.
Watching him as the woman rambled and delayed, and her attention lost its laser focus.
So, when out of nowhere, Nate smacked the gun out of the woman’s hands, Lou was ready for it. And she was ready to grab the gun as it skittered along the jarrah floorboards, and the instant her hands gripped it, she was on her feet.
“Don’t move!” she yelled.
But the woman did move, damnit, and suddenly that flick knife was in her hands.
She held it out in front of her body as she glared at Nate – totally ignoring Lou.
“See?” she said, “Everything is so fucked up. So very fucked up.”
