by Sean Kennedy
“I said,” and this was done through my gritted teeth, “I wouldn’t do it with anybody else.”
He caught on. “Oh. Good. That’s what I was hoping you would say.”
“You nuff nuff,” I said to the man I loved.
“Are we ready?” the instructor asked.
“Let’s do this,” Dec said.
It was far too late to back out now. We never had before, after all.
We were counted down from ten, and as one, Dec and I stepped off the ledge.
IT’S DIFFICULT to consider bungee jumping as symbolic of life when you are rocketing head first down a gorge, praying your giant rubber band isn’t going to snap and dash your brains out on the rocks forming the rapids rushing up to meet you.
Dec and I screamed into each other’s faces, holding on to each other for dear life, even though we were strapped so tight together there wasn’t any fear of coming apart.
And just as I really believed we were going to die, the band snapped into action, and we were flying back up. The terror had passed; we knew the safety precautions were working, and as we fell again, the screams turned into laughter. Probably just pure relief from having survived, but genuine nonetheless.
So, yeah, maybe the whole bungee jumping experience was a metaphor for life.
The blood rushed to our heads, but in pure giddiness, we kissed each other as we hung upside down, putting Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson to shame.
I could have almost touched the water had I reached down, but Dec and I were content to lazily swing over it, waiting for the winch to carry us back up and swing us the right way around.
“Are you happy?” Dec asked, a little out of breath and raspy from the screaming.
I beamed at him. “Fuck yeah. Are you?”
He nodded. “Fuck yeah. Can we do that again?”
Overtime
THE CALL came, as you’d expect, when you least expected it.
“Simon,” Paddy said, panicked. “It’s started, and they’re coming so fast they’re probably going to be here in an hour. You better hurry up. I tried calling Dec, but he didn’t answer.”
I was already grabbing the car keys and running up the stairs to the second floor. “He’s in the shower. We’ll be there as soon as.”
“Okay.”
“Is Nyssa okay?”
“Ours never came so fast! She’s in a state, as she thought she was going to give birth in Fitzroy Gardens.” The whole family had come over to Melbourne for the impending birth and had been planning a relaxing day of quality time together.
“Imagine if she’d given birth in the Captain Cook cottage,” I mused.
“Simon! Focus!”
I was running through the bedroom now. Maggie watched me, her ears flattened with annoyance. “We’ll be there!”
I threw open the bathroom door and yelled, “They’re coming!”
“Very funny, Simon,” he said above the water, his back to me. But he must have recognised the hitch in my voice, and whirled around, shampoo stinging his eyes.
“Get your fucking fit body out of there and get dressed!” I told him and ran out.
I ran back in, and he was just stepping out of the shower. “I can’t believe I just said that!”
A very naked and wet Declan Tyler shook his head as he wrapped a towel around his waist. “Get the car started, I’ll be down in two minutes!”
After running down the hall, I skidded to a halt outside the nursery. A lot of changes had taken place in there: two cots stood side by side, and we had papered one wall with a forest motif. Every item you could imagine for the arrival of twins was stacked up against the walls, some of them still in their boxes. Dec had insisted on a jogger’s pram for when he went running. I had let him handle that, because there was no way that thing was going to be used by me. The only things missing were the babies, and they were going to be here sooner than expected.
The room looked comfortable and designed with love. It felt totally different to the night I thought I saw the ghost in there. Maybe it had been just a fevered dream, or tired eyes inventing a human shape out of some boxes and blankets. Whatever it was, I hadn’t seen it since. If she had existed, I liked to think she’d recognised that the house was ready for a new family and had moved on. Which Dec and I’d better start doing, or else these kids would enter the world without us being present.
Dec was at the car in a minute and forty-eight seconds, shoes and socks in hand, as I was on the phone with Roger. Wet patches showed through Dec’s clothes; he hadn’t even dried himself properly, and his hair was still plastered against his head.
“I hope you put on deodorant,” I said, and the person on the other end of my phone squawked in my ear. “No, not you, Roger. Dec. Yes, Dec always wears deodorant. Just get to the hospital so you can help look after Nyssa’s kids!”
Dec watched me with amusement. “Good thinking.”
I turned the key in the ignition. “I’m capable of it sometimes.”
“I never doubted it.” He seemed remarkably calm as he pulled his socks on and slid his feet into his sneakers, as if it was just any old day.
“Are you nervous?” I asked, my eyes on the traffic as I pulled out onto St. Georges Road.
“Are you?”
“I asked you first.”
“Of course I fucking am!”
He laughed. “Always to the point.”
“So answer my question.”
“I’m not just nervous. I’m scared shitless.”
“Too late now.”
“Drive faster,” he urged.
At least he wasn’t wanting me to drive to Mexico, as the old Dec who ran away from problems that scared him would have. Getting the car over the water would have been impossible.
When I pulled up to the emergency section, he stared at me.
“I’ll go park, you get up there now.”
“No,” he said.
“Dec, stop arguing with me, and go before you miss it!”
“Go and find a proper parking space,” he instructed me. “We’re going up there together. If we’re late, we’re late together. But we’re going to both be there.”
I threw the car back into gear, and we were pretty lucky with finding a space that wasn’t too far away. Still, Dec grabbed me by the hand and pulled me along as he ran for the main entrance.
Out of breath, I sagged against the wall of the lift as it climbed to the floor of the maternity ward. “Do you think we’ve made it?”
“I’m sure they probably would have called us by now if the babies were here.”
“Okay.” Declan watched the numbers crawl along the LCD screen. It seemed to be taking forever.
Life was going to change for us as soon as we walked out of these doors.
Maybe life had changed as soon as we received Paddy’s phone call.
Or maybe it had changed all those months ago, when Dec and I had stumbled home from our engagement party to find Nyssa sitting on our doorstep, willing to offer us the opportunity of a lifetime.
The sliding doors gave us a view into the maternity ward. Even from this vantage point, it looked peaceful, despite the frenetic energy of the nurses as they moved between rooms and patients.
Dec came to a stop just before the sensor would read us and let us through. “I was thinking about Margaret.”
It could definitely be considered mystic that Dec brought up the Piedimonte’s Psychic when I had been thinking of the ghost only minutes before. “Uh, Dec, don’t you think we should be going in?”
“Just a sec. I need to say something.”
I dreaded to think what it could be. I hadn’t seen the ghost woman since that night months ago and thought it might have been a dream. I still wasn’t sure. But I knew if she did exist, she was harmless, and at the very least was a good omen. All I knew for certain was that there were two babies coming much quicker than expected, and I didn’t want us to miss their first breaths in this world. “What about Margaret?”
“So, the job and the kids,” I agreed.
“Yeah, and that means my third dream will come true as well.” He looked at me with such love in his eyes that it was almost overbearing. “You. You’re going to be okay. The tumour, being scared about becoming a father. You’re going to be fine.”
“You really think that?”
“Hey, everything else happened. But you know something?”
“What?”
“I already knew it. There was never any doubt in me about you. There never has been.”
“I suppose it seems anticlimactic to just say ‘ditto’?” I asked.
He laughed. “I had no doubt that you felt the same. So it’ll do just fine.”
I wanted to say something more, to give the most flowery purple prose about how much he meant to me, but it wasn’t needed. He already knew those things. Instead I took his hand.
“Are you ready for all this?” Dec asked, nodding towards the doors. His hand gripped mine, whether due to his own nervousness or not wishing to give me the opportunity to run. But we stood there, overcome by the enormity of the moment.
“If you’re here with me, I am.”
He squeezed my hand reassuringly. “Same here.”
But we still stood there for a moment, taking it all in, until I stepped forward, pulling him with me. The doors took a moment to register that we had finally made up our minds, and slid open to let us through.
More from Sean Kennedy
The most important things in Simon Murray’s life are football, friends, and film—in that order. His friends despair of him ever meeting someone, but despite his loneliness, Simon is cautious about looking for more. Then his best friends drag him to a party, where he barges into a football conversation and ends up defending the honour of star forward Declan Tyler—unaware that the athlete is present. In that first awkward meeting, neither man has any idea they will change each other’s lives forever.
Like his entire family, Simon revels in living in Melbourne, the home of Australian Rules football and mecca for serious fans. There, players are treated like gods—until they do something to fall out of public favour. This year, the public is taking Declan to task for suffering injuries outside his control, so Simon’s support is a bright spot.
But as Simon and Declan fumble toward a relationship, keeping Declan’s homosexuality a secret from well-meaning friends and an increasingly suspicious media becomes difficult. Nothing can stay hidden forever. Soon Declan will have to choose between the career he loves and the man he wants, and Simon has never been known to make things easy—for himself or for others.
Sequel to Tigers and Devils
After an eventful and sometimes uncomfortably public courtship, Simon Murray and Declan Tyler settled into a comfortable life together. Now retired from the AFL, Declan works as a football commentator; Simon develops programs with queer content for a community television station.
Despite their public professional lives, Simon and Declan manage to keep their private life out of the spotlight. Their major concerns revolve around supporting their friends through infertility and relationship problems—until Greg Heyward, Declan’s ex-partner, outs himself in a transparent bid for attention.
Though Simon and Declan are furious with Greg and his media antics, they can’t agree on what to do about it. Declan insists they should maintain a dignified silence, but both he and Simon keep getting drawn into Heyward’s games. Simon and Declan will once again have to ride out the media storm before they can return their attention to what really matters: each other.
Sequel to Tigerland
Young Australian Micah Johnson is the first AFL player to be out at the beginning of his career. Retired professional football player Declan Tyler mentors Micah, but he finds it difficult, as Micah is prone to making poor life choices that land him in trouble. Nothing Dec can’t handle. He’s been there, done that, more times than he’d like to admit. Being Simon Murray’s partner all these years has Dec quite experienced in long-suffering and mishaps.
As usual, Simon thinks everything is going along just fine until his assistant, Coby, tells him a secret involving an old nemesis. Simon and Dec’s problems mash together, and to solve them, they must undertake a thousand-kilometer round trip in which issues will have to be sorted out, apologies are finally given, and a runaway kid is retrieved and returned to his worried parents.
Stodgy British archivist Henry Percival-Smythe slaves away in the dusty basement of Ealing College in 1934, the only bright spot in his life his obsession with a strange Australian mammal, the thylacine. It has been hunted to the edge of extinction, and Henry would love nothing more than to help the rare creature survive.
Then a human whirlwind spins through his door. Jack “Dingo” Chambers is also on the hunt for the so-called “Tasmanian Tiger,” although his reasons are far more altruistic. Banding together, Dingo and the newly nicknamed Dash travel halfwaytd around the globe in their quest to save the thylacine from becoming a footnote in the pages of biological history.
While they search high and low, traverse the wilds, and fight the deadliest of all creatures—man—Dash and Dingo will face danger and discover another fierce passion within themselves: a desire for each other.
The truth is that those who make a difference usually get martyred. What good are you dead?
Ezra Kneebone is most at home in the skies, piloting his airship with his best friend Jazz, even if it doesn’t quite pay the bills or warm Ezra’s empty bed. Those same skies are also the territory of a man known as Icarus, who uses his metal wings to steal from the rich and feed the poor. Icarus and Ezra could be soul mates but for one thing: Icarus has a bounty on his head, and Ezra is desperate for money.
Against the wishes of Jazz and her partner, the formidable Lady Bart, Ezra is determined to get his man… in more ways than one. But when Icarus saves Ezra’s life, Ezra realizes he would be betraying a hero—and his heart—if he turned Icarus in. Unfortunately, the bounty is tempting more than one hunter, and Ezra will find that loving a fugitive may mean becoming one too.
Readers love the Tigers and Devils series by Sean Kennedy
Tigers and Devils
“These characters are so well drawn they fairly leap off the page.”
—Read React Review
“The love story was beautiful and romantic, the characters were likeable and relatable, but most importantly it was about friendship.”
—Romance Around the Corner
Tigerland
“There is pathos, love, humour, drama, friendship and lots of fun in this book, which makes it stand above the rest.”
—Reviews by Jessewave
“I enjoyed this entertaining and well-written story. The pacing is smooth, the personalities nicely developed and the relationships believable.”
—Literary Nymphs Reviews
Tigers on the Run
“Tigers on the Run is a must read for fans of this author and this couple. I highly recommend it to you!”
—Joyfully Jay
“What a fabulous follow-up… It was just perfect! Thank you Mr. Kennedy!”
—Paddylast Inc
SEAN KENNEDY lives in Perth, Western Australia, but his heart still belongs to his hometown Melbourne—which is also the home of Simon Murray and Declan Tyler from his series Tigers and Devils. A disciple of cult leader David Lynch, Sean survived the twenty-six-year wait for a third season of Twin Peaks.
Website: www.seankennedybooks.com
Twitter: @sean__kennedy
By Sean Kennedy
Australian Christmas in New York
With Catt Ford: Dash and Dingo
I Fell in Love with a Zombie
Ports of Call
Protests and Proposals
Secret Santa
Wings of Equity
TIGERS AND DEVILS
Tigers and Devils
Tigerland
&nb
sp; Tigers on the Run
Tigers on the Way
Published by Harmony Ink Press
GET OUT
The Ongoing Reformation of Micah Johnson
Micah Johnson Goes West
The Obstruction of Emma Goldsworthy
Published By DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Tigers on the Way
© 2019 Sean Kennedy.
Cover Art
© 2019 Catt Ford.
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
