Fool's Paradise (Cartwright Brothers Book 5)

by Lilliana Anderson

  "I suppose not," I said, sliding it into the freezer with a sense of unease. I wanted it, but I didn't know if I could bring myself to drink it. Not now that the cat was out of the bag. Not now I knew he was watching me, knowing how weak I really was. It kind of changed our dynamic a little. Suddenly, I wasn't the tough in-your-face girl I forced people to think I was, I was the angry damaged woman who drank too much to cope.

  Be you. Be raw.

  You don’t want me raw.

  But I do.

  Toby saw me. Me. The person I tried to hide from view. In only a few days he’d seen peeks of the darkness inside me and he hadn’t recoiled in disgust. He’d reached out, and he’d supported me. I don’t deserve him.

  He didn’t deserve a mess like me. He was too good. Despite all he’d done. He was good.

  I don’t deserve him.

  “THIS NEVER CEASES TO AMAZE ME,” I said as the highway landscape shifted from red sand and tiny shrubs to towering trees and ocean. We were driving past the great Australian Bight, the part of the country down the bottom where it looked like a literal bite had been taken out of it. The change from nothingness to lush seaside wasn’t sudden. It was this gradual alteration that crept up on you then seemed like it was there all at once. It felt like driving along the edge of the world.

  “You like the sea?” Toby asked, glancing to the side and taking a deep breath of the cool ocean air.

  “Who doesn’t? I swear just looking at it calms me. Like, it’s so vast it makes me feel inconsequential, which makes my problems less important.”

  “I get that. It’s part of why I like to surf and sail. Everything is so much simpler out there. Mother Nature is in control and you’re just taking your chances with everything else.”

  “Humans make life very complicated,” I mused.

  “That they do,” he agreed, spotting the signs for the Head of the Bight Lookout. Our American friends from the last rest stop had told us the whales were putting on a show there. I’d never seen a whale off a TV screen before and hoped they’d be rolling around today too.

  After trekking our way along the ridiculously long walkway, we made it to the viewing platform where a few other tourists gathered, phones in hands as they filmed the water below.

  “The whales,” I breathed as I placed my hands on the guardrail, watching the sleek black bodies roll about in the surf far below. They splashed, and they spun, performing a lumbering ballet that had me enthralled for hours, until the last one dove back into the depths, disappearing from sight, their ballet over.

  I continued staring at the surf, long after the whales had moved on, outstaying the tourists, feeling too overwhelmed to move. They were so enormous, yet so... graceful. Free. Not burdened by life and its absolute fuckery. I wanted that. God, I hate feeling like this, so…lost. Toby remained by my side, steady, silent. A presence I couldn’t ignore but took great strength from.

  “Do you ever want to jump the guardrail and tumble down the cliff?” I asked after a while of us being alone.

  “Metaphorically or literally?”

  I closed my eyes, and a tear slid down my cheek, drying almost instantly in the warm air and the wind. “Both.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, his voice soft yet harsh and painful.

  Opening my eyes, I turned my gaze to his, seeing the accompanying torment that came with such an admission. “Me too,” I whispered.

  He moved closer, wrapping his arms around my shoulders as he pulled me to him, placing a kiss in my hair. “Do you want to jump right now?” he asked, his voice so thick I almost didn’t hear the question.

  I shook my head against his chest. “I want to stay like this.” It was a terrifying truth, the need to have his arms around my body, the scent of his skin in my nose as the heat of his body mingled with mine, calming me, completing me. I need him.

  “Me too,” he whispered, tightening his grip as I buried my face in the fabric of his shirt, breathing him in, filling my lungs with everything that was him—strong, powerful, compassionate, warm. It felt good to be held, good to let out a drop of pain and have it completely understood.

  Toby was quickly becoming my everything. I didn’t want to let go.

  I couldn’t.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE MONSTERS IN MY MIND

  TIRED OF THE heat and cramped accommodations of the camper van, we found ourselves a hotel room in Ceduna. I almost cried from joy over the air conditioning. We were seven days into our cross country drive, halfway to our destination. I’d started out on this journey with Toby, hell bent on getting back to Melbourne to get rid of my biological devil. But the distance we needed to travel had forced us to slow down, put the weight of our combined worlds on the back burner while we experienced an Australia most residents never saw. It was beautiful. It was life changing. It was soul affirming.

  I felt so naked out here. Not just physically, but down to the bone, exposed nerve endings and sharp pieces of my heart protruding from my flesh. Toby was my grounding rod, keeping me from exploding and setting fire to everything around me.

  He’s a good man.

  Probably the only good man I’ve ever known.

  I don’t want to let him go.

  The more time I spent with him, the more I wanted to alter our course, stop Grey without Toby losing that last piece of his soul. I needed to protect that, needed to keep this kind and gentle man from losing himself to the monster he became in his nightmares.

  “You cry in your sleep,” Toby stated, his voice breaking into the quiet of our darkened room.

  “I do?” Blinking rapidly, I realised I was crying then too. My tears pooling on his chest where I’d been resting, listening to the strong beating of his heart, the soothing in and out of his breath.

  “Yes. But if I do this”—he ran the tips of his fingers up and down my spine and I curled into him blissfully—“you calm and sleep peacefully.”

  “You’re too good to me,” I whispered, feeling another tear slide from my eye and splash onto his skin.

  “I’m rough with you. I pull your hair, I bite your skin and leave bruises behind when I grab you too tight. I’m not good.”

  “You are. None of those things are done with malice. You mark me with your passion and take care of me like I’m a child who can’t do it for themselves.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No. I like it. I’ve never had that before. Even when I was small I had to care for myself. It feels good to be vulnerable with you. I always thought I’d hate it, but I’m coming to need it. To need you.”

  “Is that why you cry?”

  “No. I cry because I’m broken.”

  “Because of something Grey did to you?”

  I nodded, my head moving against his chest. His fingers kept moving, doing their soothing up and down, drawing out a feeling that sat deep in my belly then crawled up into my chest before pushing against the backs of my eyes. I didn’t want to face any of the things that had happened, but they kept rising up, tapping against my skull, trying to escape. Toby didn’t press for me to go on, and it took a few goes at opening my mouth before the words came out. But once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I needed him to know me. All of me.

  “The first and only time I ever met Grey was a few years ago in Adelaide,” I said, my voice not much more than a whisper. “I was there on a job, searching for a teenage runaway who’d found herself hooked on drugs and paying with her body.” I paused and ran the tip of my finger in a circle around a small freckle on his stomach, swallowing the ball that had lodged itself in my throat. “My mother was a prostitute. Died of a drug overdose right in front of me.” I pressed my finger lightly against that freckle. “I was nine.” The image returned to my mind just as clear as if I were seeing it for the first time, her eyes rolled back as she shook on the floor. “She was foaming at the mouth and I had no idea what to do to help her.” I flattened my hand against his skin, forcing a shaky breath as I used our connection to ground
me in reality. “I suppose that’s why I took the job so personally. I wanted to save that girl so badly. I wanted to save all the girls…”

  Moisture tickled the side of my face before I realised an entire river of tears was streaming from my eyes, running straight down and settling at the point where my skin met Toby’s. I blinked, but I couldn’t stop them if I tried. I’d held them in so long that I couldn’t put them back, couldn’t rebuild that dam. So they fell, saturating us both while I kept my face turned away.

  Toby’s fingers continued up and down my spine, keeping me soothed. I didn’t think I could keep talking without his touch.

  “I only have a few memories from when I was small. Something about the mind blocking trauma, I’m told. But what I do remember came flooding back the moment I found that girl. She was in this brothel. The kind that wasn’t registered or legal. The kind where any kink you were into could be purchased. I freaked out, and instead of just doing the job I was hired for, I decided I’d get the place shut down, be the saviour those girls and kids so desperately needed.” A surge of sorrow crashed into me like a wave against a rock. I closed my eyes against the violence, furrowing my brow and focusing on getting the words out. Words I’d never spoken aloud. Events only I had the details to.

  “I called the cops and anonymously reported what I knew. Waited for them to come and do their jobs, but…” My head ached as I forced myself into a sitting position, wiping my hand over my face and Toby’s stomach, futilely trying to get rid of any evidence of crying. There was little point.

  “The cops arrived. I was keeping watch, needing to see the raid go down. Then just as the first cop gave the order to break the door, the entire building ex—” I shook off the ill feeling that climbed into my throat and surged forward, eyes closed because I couldn’t watch Toby’s expression as I relayed this.

  “It exploded,” I tried again, glad to get the words out this time. “They were all inside. Women. Children. The only bonus was that the sick fucks touching them were in their too. But the screams.” I let out a jagged breath as my voice turned hoarse. “The screams. I hear them still. Every time I close my eyes. It’s like a kaleidoscope of that moment and everything that came after.”

  “That’s why you drink.” Toby’s voice almost startled me, forcing my eyes to open and focus on the present, the dimly lit room and the only good thing in my life: him.

  “Partly,” I said, watching his soft expression swim away as tears filled my vision. “After the explosion, I should have just gotten out of there. But I was stupid and stood around when a small crowd of onlookers gathered, watching in horror as the place burned down. Then a man approached me—the one who blew up your boat—and told me that his boss didn’t like meddlers. Next thing I knew, I was thrown into the back of a car, tied up with a bag over my head gangster-style.” Pulling my knees up to my chest, I raked my fingers through my hair and cradled my aching head in my hands as I curled into myself. “The next few days, maybe weeks, are a blur. They called it, ‘breaking in the new girl’, told me I had to pay them back for what I’d taken from them. They beat me. They drugged me. I was… I was… r… raped.” The last word came out as a gasp. I’d often alluded to an awful past, but I’d never said the actual word before. “Repeatedly.” I ran my hand over my face, wiping at my nose, sniffling as I looked up to the ceiling. “Grey’s men weren’t gentle, and I fought. God, I fought so hard against them. And when I finally stopped, finally gave in and accepted that I couldn’t escape, they sent Grey in to test me.” My stomach flipped and twisted, and I placed both hands on my face, covering my eyes as I fought forward when all I wanted to do was to shut up, keep it inside, behind the vault doors. But I’d opened them up and now everything was coming out. I couldn’t stop even if I tried.

  “I’d never met my father in person. I knew who he was and what he did. But I’d never seen him up close. When I realised it was his whorehouse and his men who’d been defiling me, I don’t know why, but I laughed. He smiled back and said, ‘I heard you were being a good little filly. Seems you need a stallion to properly tame you.’” I lowered my hands and shook my head at the ridiculousness of those words, laughing a hollow laugh. “That’s when I told him he didn’t want to fuck me. He asked why. I told him I was his daughter. Then he struck me so hard that he cracked my cheekbone. I guess I’d lost my mind at that point because all I could do was laugh as he beat into me and called me a filthy liar and any other name he could think of. He raped me anyway, spit in my face then kicked me to the ground.” I clicked the nail of my thumb against my bottom tooth as my tears dried up, replaced with a red-hot-belly rage that I needed to sate with my own father’s blood. I hated the man. Hated him with the intensity of all the fires in hell. Only his death would fix this. It was the one thing I was sure of.

  Toby had gone still as he listened, shocked, disturbed, horrified? Probably all of the above. I was opening the window on my torture and letting him climb right on in. Welcome to my nightmares. Grab a chair, they’re unending.

  “You know,” I continued, needing to keep going with this hideous word vomit. “I thought he would kill me then and there, and I was honestly OK with that. But I woke up again, cleaned up, bandaged up, with him sitting in the chair beside my bed, demanding to know exactly why I thought I was his child. I explained who my mother was. Then I watched his face pale. Even the devil could feel regret. He had to live with the fact he’d fucked his own daughter.” Shaking my head, I laughed a little through my nose. “Vile cunt.” I released a heavy sigh. “After that, he was different towards me. He fed me, visited me, no one touched me. But they still confined me to a single room. He did a DNA test, and when the results came back a match, he offered me a seat ruling by his side.” I scoffed as I relaxed my posture a little, the worst of my story over. “Rule by his side?” I met Toby’s eyes, his jaw clenched as his eyes swam with fury and so much sorrow that a fresh wave of tears flowed from my eyes. “Don’t, Toby. Don’t feel sorry for me.”

  He took my hand. “I’m enraged,” he ground out, barely able to contain his own anger. “He raped and beat his own daughter. Right now, all I want to do is kill him slowly, bring him back to life and do it all over again. I want to watch him bleed.”

  Leaning in, I pressed my forehead to his. “I want that too,” I whispered. “I’ve wanted little else since my escape. Hated myself for being too weak to kill him at the time. I just walked away like a coward licking my wounds.”

  “You are not a coward for getting out of there alive.”

  “I didn’t escape. He let me go.”

  His eyes popped. “Grey let you go?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t trust it either. When I told him I’d rather die than join him, I thought death was exactly what I’d get. Instead, he unlocked the door, said it was his one and only favour to me. But if I ever did anything to cross him again, if I ever told another soul he was my father, he’d hunt me down and wouldn’t be so lenient the next time.”

  Toby’s grip tightened around my hand. “Jesus, Blair,” he said, his words so strained it felt like the same debilitating desolation I felt. It felt like fury. It felt like a much-needed shield against my despair. It felt like…everything I needed.

  “That’s why I drink. Because I’m a fucking mess. I always have been, but after Adelaide I was chaos personified, and I had to fight so hard with my demons to become somewhat functional again.” I met his eyes and gave him a self-deprecating smile. “If you can call it that.”

  “I think,” he said, getting up and pulling out the vodka we’d stashed in our room’s freezer before returning to the bed with that and two small glasses. “That you, Blair Page, are the strongest fucking human being I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.” He filled up both glasses half-way then handed me one. We both downed the contents in one gulp.

  “Good fortune?” I wrapped my fingers around the empty glass, my hands shaking slightly as a shiver passed through my body. “Because of me you lost your boat an
d your dog.”

  “No, Blair. Grey did those things. And we’ll make that scum-sucking-bucket-of-puss pay for everything he did to you, I promise you that. But you. You have done nothing but give me reason to live.”

  “Toby,” I whispered, my eyes swimming. “Don’t compliment me.”

  He took my glass and placed it with his on the bedside table before he sat on the bed next to me. “Why not? There’s a hell of a lot to compliment.”

  “Because I can’t handle people being nice to me. It’s not normal. Men like you, good men, don’t exist in my world.”

  “Men like me.” He pressed his lips together and slid his knuckles along my cheekbone, so soft that I leaned into him like a purring cat. “I’m afraid your standards might not be very high, sunshine. I’m really not a good man.”

  “You are to me,” I whispered, placing my hands on either side of his gorgeous face and urging him towards me. I wanted his mouth on mine, I wanted his body in me. I wanted him to take away the pain of my past and make my final days even more perfect than he already had. If only we could be like this forever. Not just seven more days.

  He leaned in, his hot breath washing over my face before he paused at my lips. “Are you sure you want this, Blair?”

  “I’m positive, Toby. Chase away the monsters in my mind. I need you.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SUCH A BABY

  WITH A SMIRK, I broke a tiny piece of toast off and threw it across the table. “What are you looking at?”

  Toby watched the crouton-sized crumb bounce off his light blue T-shirt and land on the table, his eyes sparkled with mirth.

  “Just you,” he said, taking a mouthful of coffee. We were in the dining room of our hotel in Ceduna, fuelling up before hitting the road yet again. Most of the hotel was still sleeping except another couple sitting in the far corner, a family with two little kids, and the hotel staff.