‘I can’t let you leave like this,’ his voice cracked with the pain. He hated to see her cry; hated it even more knowing he’d caused her tears.
‘It’s easier when I’m sleeping, is it?’ she snapped at him.
His head flicked back, the assault like a slap to the face.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it.’ She apologised instantly, her hand pressed against her mouth, as though she was trying to claw the words back.
‘Don’t. I deserved it.’
‘No, Brad. You really don’t. I’m a big girl and I know the score.’
His eyes met hers. There was resignation and sadness, but above all that was love. A love he didn’t deserve. A love that could go nowhere.
This time when he reached for her hand she let him take it. He pressed her fingers to his lips, breathing her in, steadying himself on the feel of her pulse beating beneath his grip.
‘I wish I was different.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, staring into his eyes. He could feel himself falling, losing himself in her again, his forehead drifting towards hers like a sailor searching for home.
‘That could be us in there, if I hadn’t, if I didn’t—’
‘But there would be no us, no me, if you hadn’t,’ she whispered back, her eyes piercing through his pain with her own.
He wished he could wipe away the pain, but he couldn’t. There was no way she would ever understand that the best thing he had ever done was tied so inextricably to the worst.
She must have seen the withdrawal in his eyes because she sighed heavily, regretfully, and pulled away from him to call the lift.
‘Like always,’ he thought he heard her whisper.
Within seconds, a bright ping and metallic swish of doors opening indicated the lift had arrived.
‘Ana, I…’ Brad started to say as she stepped across the threshold from ward to lift, desperate to keep her with him. To do something, to say something, that would change the way it always was with them.
‘Yes?’ she turned back to him, her face hopeful, her hand hovering over the button holding the doors open.
‘I’m…’ but he lost his nerve. ‘Ah…have a good night.’
Her face dropped at his words, her lips twisting into a bitter mockery of her usual smile. ‘Yeah. You too, Brad.’
The doors shut between them, leaving Brad staring at a metallic wall. He’d done the right thing. He had. Letting her go was the only thing he could do.
But the hollow ache in his chest disagreed.
Chapter Three
Ana sat in the car, the key resting in the ignition but she didn’t turn the engine over. She couldn’t. Not while her hands were shaking so much.
Deep breaths. She just needed to take a few more deep breaths and put the pieces of her heart back together. Shouldn’t take too long. She let out an inelegant snort at the thought, wiping at the tears still clinging to her cheeks. She was damn glad there were no witnesses to her meltdown.
It was like their relationship—if one could even call it a relationship—was a continual revolving door. She was always letting him in and he was always walking back out again.
Tonight had been different, though. Brad had opened up more in those few, stolen moments than he had in years. It was almost enough to give her hope, to open up the box of secret yearnings she’d buried deep in her heart.
But she couldn’t let them back out. It had taken too long to bury them.
As sweet as his words had been, nothing had actually changed between them tonight.
Her phone buzzed, vibrating on the passenger seat where it had fallen out of her handbag. She glanced at the screen. It was Gabby, again. Ana hit the red reject icon.
With a sigh, she stared back out at the dark car park. The last thing she wanted to do now was go out for drinks, even with her best friends. Maybe she could bail, feign a sudden migraine or something.
Reaching for her phone, Ana unlocked the screen to type out a quick message, but before she could open the program, a stack of Facebook notifications came through. Her finger hovering over the clear all button, she noticed one of the comments was from Cara.
Clicking on the notification from her friend, the social networking site opened to a photo uploaded by Stacey. Focusing on the picture, Ana stared at an image of herself and Brad and the twins. A hard lump formed in her throat as she continued to stare at the photo. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from it.
There was just so much…so much love pouring from the photo. It looked…oh, God, the way Brad was looking at her, he looked like he loved her. Like he adored her. But she knew that wasn’t true. It had to be a trick of the light or the camera angle. The love pouring out of him was for the twins, not for her. Never for her.
Before she started crying again, Ana scrolled past the photos to the comments below. There were a couple of congratulatory posts: one from someone asking Brad when he’d put that bun in the oven, and another from a girlfriend she’d gone to university with congratulating her on becoming a mum. She couldn’t help but laugh at that one. Did people not read the tag lines? Stacey had clearly stated that Aunty Ana and Uncle Brad were getting cuddles from Aidan and Laura.
Then she saw the post at the bottom from Cara. All she’d written was three question marks, but Ana got the message, a low groan escaping her from her lips. Damn! No way could she bail on the girls now. They’d think she was ditching them for Brad.
Clicking open the comment box to write her own response, Ana only just stopped herself from typing “It’s nothing, Cara”. She was also tempted to write “They aren’t mine”, but she didn’t. Neither response would go down very well. So instead, she typed in a quick “Aunty Ana loved her cuddles. Congrats again Cam & Stacey” and signed off the post with a little love heart.
Unable to help herself, Ana focussed on the photo again. It was beautiful, so beautiful. But such a lie.
Throwing the phone back in her bag, she started the car. Maybe a night of drinking was what she needed after all.
Ten minutes later, and feeling a lot calmer, she pulled into the driveway of Gabby’s three-bedroom brick home in Mt Gravatt, on the south-side of Brisbane. Slipping out of the car with her wine and handbag, Ana sidled up to the eighties-style concrete porch, with its bronzed railing and overgrown shrubbery.
Up until a couple of months ago, Gabby and Ana had shared a two bedroom apartment in Fortitude Valley. Then Gabby met Steve, fell in love and wanted to start a life with him.
It wasn’t that her friend had ditched her, nothing of the sort. Ana had been in love as well; at least she’d thought so at the time. She’d planned to move in with Carl, her boyfriend, at the same time Gabby moved in with Steve. But when push came to shove…she just couldn’t make that kind of commitment. Not to him, anyway.
It had been too late to take back the notice they’d given on the apartment. And besides, Ana couldn’t handle living on her own. She needed company. She got all antsy when she was by herself. So she’d moved in with her brother while Gabby migrated out here to family-ville.
Ana still found it weird to think of Gabby settling down and living in the suburbs. Since they were kids Gabby had always been the wild one; organising the best places to sneak out to; procuring their underage booze; buying their fake I.D.s. She’d been the first to lose her virginity, been caught in a sexting scandal at Uni and shocked just about everyone when she opened up her lingerie store with a special sex toy section in the back.
But now Gabby was putting her wild days behind her, settling down to suburban unwedded bliss with a strait-laced accountant. It would have been impossible to fathom if Ana hadn’t witnessed the blossoming of their relationship.
At least Gabby hadn’t closed her store.
‘Knock-knock,’ Ana called out as she pushed open the unlocked front door and let herself in. There was no response to her greeting, but she could hear the dull murmur of voices towards the back of the house and followed the sound down the corridor. The darkened h
allway opened up to a wide, galley-style kitchen with ugly green and white tiles along the walls and murky brown linoleum on the ground. Not the most inspiring of choices, but it was just a rental.
She could hear the faint strands of Katy Perry’s latest single coming through the back screen door. Throwing her bag under the mottled green kitchen bench, she grabbed her favourite wine goblet and poured herself a hefty glass of the bubbling yellow liquid. She paused at the back screen door and took a deep steadying breath. She could do this.
‘Hiya!’ she greeted her girlfriends as she stepped out onto the back patio, her megawatt smile plastered across her face. Two heads swivelled from their seats, followed by the squeezing sigh of air from the lounge cushions as Gabby and Cara moved to welcome Ana with much-needed cuddles.
‘Let me just put the wine down,’ Ana laughed, managing to land the glass on the table without spilling a drop before returning the embrace of her two besties.
The two women were like chalk and cheese. Gabby had always been on the pudgy side with a mop of dark brown curls and a ready laugh. On the other hand, Cara was model-thin with long, straight ash-blonde hair that matched her ice queen persona. She was fiercely protective of the people she loved, but with that came a tendency to believe she knew best. From the chips of ice Ana could see in her eyes, she knew Cara had well and truly jumped onto the lecture wagon already.
Before her friend could open her mouth, Ana held up a hand to halt the tirade.
‘I really don’t want to go there. We just happened to turn up at the hospital at the same time. Okay?’
‘But—’
‘No buts tonight, Cara. I just want to forget about him. Can we do that?’
Ana could tell Cara didn’t want to let the issue go, but at her side Gabby was frantically nodding her head and encouraging Cara to concede.
‘Okay fine, we won’t talk about it…tonight.’
‘Thanks…I guess,’ Ana answered, taking the sting out of the words with a grin. The last thing she wanted to do was fight with her friends over Brad. Especially when her emotions were so close to the surface she was only just managing to keep the lid on them. Smiling wider, she pushed the lid tighter, ‘So, are we drinking or what?’
‘Absolutely,’ Gabby affirmed, reaching for her glass.
‘I need a refill,’ Cara said, grabbing for her own empty glass. ‘Be back in a moment,’ and she slipped back into the kitchen.
With the two of them alone, Ana sank into the outdoor settee next to Gabby.
‘Are you really okay?’ Gabby asked quietly, as she settled into the cushions.
‘I will be,’ Ana assured her with a watery smile.
‘I have to say, Brad looked pretty good with a baby in his arms.’
Ana flicked wary eyes to her friend, but there was nothing malicious in Gabby’s face—just warmth and hint of teasing.
‘Brad looks good no matter what.’
‘Yes, but this was different. The two of you just looked so…right together.’
Tears pricked at the back of Ana’s eyes, Gabby’s kind words threatening her loosely-held control more than all the criticism Cara could have thrown at her.
‘But we’re not. So, um, can we talk about something else? Please?’
‘Of course,’ Gabby agreed, falling silent as she fought to change the topic of conversation.
Out of habit, Ana reached into her pocket to pull her phone out, but it wasn’t there. Where had she…oh, she must have left it in her bag, inside the kitchen. Dammit! She felt practically naked without it beside her. Now she wouldn’t be able to hear it if it rang. Not that she was expecting it to ring. She wasn’t, but—
‘That’s right!’ Gabby exclaimed, drawing at her attention again. ‘You don’t know what happened to me this week. You will not believe it.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘I had some surprise customers in the shop.’
‘Okay, I’ll bite. Who?’ Ana answered distractedly, half her mind still trying to figure out how to sneak her phone out here.
‘Steve’s parents.’
‘Uh-huh, and why was…Oh wait, you haven’t met them yet, have you?’ Ana pushed thoughts of her phone aside to focus on her friend.
‘I hadn’t.’
‘Oh, dear…’ In her mind’s eye, she saw two strait-laced retirees wandering through the displays of edible underwear and lacy g-strings that dotted Gabby’s shop, their eyebrows resting somewhere near the ceiling.
‘Was Steve with them, at least?’
‘Nope. Just the two of them. They were wandering around like normal customers and I went to greet them, as I do, and they asked if I was Gabby. I said yes, and they introduced themselves as Karen and Bill, Steve’s parents.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘Holy hell, girl, what did you do?’ Ana took another sip of her glass, her eyes wide as she watched her friend. If she’d been in Gabby’s place, she’d have been freaking out. In fact, she could almost feel a sympathetic blush warming her cheeks now.
‘What could I do? I just kind of got all excited and gave them cuddles, a tour of the shop and asked them over for dinner that night.’
‘Seriously? How could you be so calm?’ She wouldn’t have been, but then again, she wasn’t Gabby. ‘So they came to dinner, then?’
‘Yeah and that all went fine. But then the next day who should turn up at the shop but Bill.’
‘What?!’ Why would he have turned up alone? Oh, God! Had he expected…No. Surely not! A band of tension circling around her chest, Ana stared at her friend, hoping this story wasn’t going the way she feared.
‘Where are you up to?’ Cara stepped back outside and slipped into the single lounge chair opposite them.
‘Steve’s dad has just rocked up at the shop. By himself.’ Ana spared a quick glance at Cara before turning her impatient eyes back on Gabby. ‘So, what did he want?’
‘As you can imagine, I was rather shocked to see him. But then he explained that it was his and Karen’s anniversary the following week and he wanted to get her some pretty lingerie.’
‘Oh, thank goodness!’ The circle of tension eased around Ana.
‘What do you mean “thank goodness”? I had to help my boyfriend’s dad pick out a sexy bit of lace for his wife! Can you imagine the images going through my mind as he shifted through the garments I gave him? It was…I’m scarred.’ Gabby shuddered violently at the memory, her brown curls scattering around her plump face.
‘Oh my God! Of course it would have been horrid. I didn’t mean it wasn’t. I’m just glad it wasn’t any worse.’
‘How could it have been worse?’ Gabby demanded, staring at her.
‘Well, I just thought he could have been there to, you know,’ Ana couldn’t verbalise her suspicions, so she wiggled her eyebrows instead. She could tell the moment Gabby understood because her eyes widened, her face went red and she let out a horrified scream.
‘Eurgh! Gross! How could you even think that?’ she demanded, but Ana could barely hear her over the sound of Cara’s laughter.
Gabby shuddered, slamming her glass down on the table. ‘I’m going to have nightmares about this, you know. He is totally gross, with a full pot-belly happening, and he’s practically bald, except for the wiry grey hair skirting around the back of his head.’
‘What a vision for a future Steve,’ Cara taunted, her dark red lips smirking around her glass.
‘Steve will never look like that.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well, even if he does, I’ll be old and grey too, so it won’t seem as bad.’
‘Mm-hmm. Keep telling yourself that,’ Ana added, taking another sip of her wine.
‘I will. Now do you guys want to hear the rest of the story, or not?’
‘There’s more?’ Ana raised her eyebrows in surprise, glancing over at Cara who shrugged.
‘Yes, there’s more. About an hour after I sold Bill the Lustful Deli
ght crotch-less teddy, Karen turned up.’
‘Had she found the teddy?’
‘No. She wanted to buy Bill an anniversary present. So, fifteen minutes and one cock ring later, she walked out the door.’
Ana sputtered, almost choking on the wine she’d just sipped.
‘Your future mother-in-law bought a cock ring?’
‘Yes.’
‘From you? Her son’s live-in lover?’
‘Yes.’
‘That…that…’ but words failed her. One quick glance at Gabby let her know she wouldn’t appreciate the laughter bubbling inside Ana, so she clamped down on the giggles and exchanged a horrified, but equally amused look with Cara.
This could only happen to Gabby.
‘Did you tell Steve?’ Cara crossed one elegant knee over the other, pulling down her black pencil skirt.
‘Of course I did. They’re his parents.’ Gabby looked at her as though the answer was obvious, which Ana guessed for Gabby, it was.
‘What did he say?’ Ana curled her foot up beneath her, snuggling in for the story.
‘He just laughed and said “welcome to the family”.’
‘But Steve’s so…’ Ana struggled to find the word.
‘Strait-laced?’ Gabby supplied.
‘Exactly.’
‘Apparently that’s what growing up with experimental parents will do to you. He said they’ve always been like that. They tried to keep it under wraps when he and his sister were kids, but they were always very affectionate, and when that bedroom door was locked, they knew to stay well away.’
‘Wow. That’s…and after all that, he’s fallen for you, an exact replica of his mother.’
‘Not an exact replica,’ Gabby denied, sculling a large mouthful of wine.
‘That might actually beat my horror incident of the week,’ Ana said as she took another sip of wine, her mind drifting back to Monday afternoon, a shudder running through her at the memory. ‘No, actually, I think mine might be worse.’
‘Why? What happened?’ Cara’s wide, grey eyes were curious over the rim of her glass.
‘I walked in on Kelli and Travis getting intimate in the kitchen.’
A Love Worth Saving Page 4
