Page 100 of In Step

Later, at the table, with everyone handing around plates of food and talking loudly overtop of one another, I took a second to pinch myself. I was actually here, sitting at Sunday lunch with Leroy and Judah’s family and friends. Go fucking figure.

I took a few seconds just to drink it in. Abe’s hand firmly clasped around mine and sitting in plain view, on top of the table—he’d barely stopped touching me all day. Cora’s eyes meeting mine with a fond smile, a carbon copy of Martha’s. Judah’s concerned glances, Morgan’s arm draped around his shoulder. Patrick looking smug and happy with a wide-eyed Kelly at his side. Terry and Hannah giggling over some private joke while Jam went around topping up everyone’s drinks.

Even Bossy had been invited to enjoy some play time with Prue while Possum was left to watch the world out the bedsit window and adjust to her new life. She’d settled into regular feeding and a warm bed but was still leery of being touched, and we hadn’t risked letting her outside yet. It was gonna take time.

I settled down in my chair and let the scene fill my heart, a smile slowly spreading over my face. My thoughts ran briefly to my father and my fucked-up family, but they didn’t dwell, and it suddenly hit me that it wouldn’t really matter if I got that money or not. If my father tied me up in court for years, I’d still be okay. I was enough as I was. I had a job, a place to live, friends, and maybe even a new kind of family. It was enough to start my life. I’d build that bridge with my sister and nephew somehow, but whatever happened, I’d be okay, and the man at my side had helped with a lot of that. Whatever became of us, I’d always have this.

Abe squeezed my hand and leaned close. “You okay, sweetheart?”

I slid my hand up the side of his face and he leaned into it. “Yeah, I think I will be.”

He gave me a knowing smile and then kissed me. “Yes, you will.”

* * *

“Will youpleasetell me where we’re going?” I grumbled from where I sat blindfolded in the passenger seat of my Accord while Abe drove around in circles, or at least that’s what it felt like.

He’d dragged me out of bed just as the sun was setting after a late-afternoon tasty set of hand jobs and then clearly lost his ever-loving mind. We’d driven for a good fifteen minutes while I listened to Nine Inch Nails blasting through the speakers, and stopping on occasion as Abe’s phone buzzed with a million and one texts which I wasn’t allowed to know anything about.

“Patience, grasshopper.” He used that infuriatingly calm tone he’d used with me all afternoon whenever I’d asked what he was up to because he had the world’s worst poker face.

“Okay, we’re here.” The car came to a sudden stop and he jumped out. “Stay there.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I grumbled some more and tried to keep the smile from my face because the whole escapade was too bloody cute for words.

He rummaged in the trunk for a bit, and then my door opened and he took my hand. “Okay, you can get out, but keep the blindfold in place.”

I slid out of the car, and he took my arm and we started to walk. It was a still night, but I could smell the sea, the salt on my tongue, fresh and tangy and laced with the slightly sour edge of a kelp bed partly exposed. It was so damn familiar—

“Hang on,” I said, pulling him to a stop and sniffing the air while tapping my foot on the ground. “I know this place. This is the damn wharf.”

“You’re such a nosy little shit,” he griped. “Okay, you can take it off then.”

I whipped the blindfold off, blinked to clear my eyes and adjust to the dim light that played over the hundred-year-old deck, and then stared at him. “We spent twenty minutes in my car driving... nowhere?”

He gave a coy smile that I wanted to kiss right off his face and so I did, surprising both of us. “It was a delaying tactic. Judah and Fox weren’t quite ready.”

“Judah and... ugh.” My heart sank. I really, really didn’t want to spend our last night together surrounded by other people.

He smiled and tipped my chin up. “They were only helping out. Look.” He turned my shoulders toward the beach on the other side of the boathouse and I squinted to check I was seeing right. Because there, at the far end of the small cove, about two hundred metres away, a massive bonfire blazed in the deepening shadows. “It took them two attempts to get it going,” he explained. “The wood was a bit wet.”

I spun around. “They did that for us?”

He shrugged. “As a favour. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me past the boathouse, with its curtains discreetly closed, and along the length of the bay to the private spot at the end where the bonfire roared. On the other side of the fire, tucked back behind the trunk of an old Pohutukawa tree, lay several blankets and a picnic basket.

He motioned for me to sit and pulled out his phone. A few seconds later, soft music rode the flat sand to the outgoing tide about ten metres away, while from the hill behind, the homestead morepork called out from deep in the bush.

Abe handed me two champagne glasses, popped the top off a bottle of sparkling grape juice from the picnic basket and filled them to the brim. He left me holding the glasses while he laid out a spread of cheese and hummus and crackers, and grapes and chocolate truffles, before finally settling beside me and taking his glass.

“Happy birthday, baby.” He smiled and kissed my cheek.

We clinked glasses and sipped on the tangy bubbly goodness, then wrapped the blankets over our shoulders, threw more wood on the fire, and drank and ate and laughed as the tide bled out to leave a flat floor of hard sand.

When our hunger was sated and the conversation quieted, Abe took my glass and set it aside. He flicked through his phone and the rich, reedy sound of an accordion washed across the sand and down to the sea, the sultry music beating in time with my heart. He stood and held out his hand, the fire crackling at his back, the salt on the air, the beach empty but for us.

I dropped the blanket from my shoulders and let him pull me into his arms. He hummed and ran his nose up my neck, breathing me in and sending a shiver all the way to my toes, which curled in the cool, damp sand. Then he lifted my arm up until it fell around his shoulders, and we were cheek to cheek, so close I could feel his heart thrum in his chest, his body hard against mine.

And then he sighed, a weighty rumbling breath that spoke of love and sadness and want, and his leg slipped between mine as he led me into the first steps of a slow, sensual dance. A tango, but different from anything we’d done, full of moves I didn’t know, so tight in his arms that we moved as one body. No plan. Just Abe playing with whatever came to mind, barely moving, and yet it somehow felt like we were flying, holding me so close I could almost slide under his skin.

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