Page 34 of The Mechanics of Lust

“You wear the name on the inside?”

He shrugged and looked away. “It stops people from asking.”

Shit.My heart squeezed and I pressed a kiss to his hair. “What about this one?” I lifted the leather band from where it nestled in the fair hair on his chest, and the silver heart spun in the fading light.

“Gil gave that to me the day we took Callie home from the newborn unit.”

It was like a cold bucket of water to the face. The wristband I could understand. That was Callie. The heart seemed more about their marriage.

Like he’d read my mind, Luke fingered the heart and said, “To be honest, I’m not even sure why I still wear it.”

But I thought I knew. Gil had a powerful effect on his men.

“Will you tell me about Callie?” I redirected again. “What she was like?”

Luke studied me for a moment, then wrapped his arm around my waist and began to talk, starting with how he and Gil first met. “I saw him at a party of a mutual friend. Gil was in his first year at uni and I was doing my pilot’s training. I literally spotted him across the room, and that was it for me. I hounded the poor guy until he agreed to go out.”

So, it was love at first sight and not too dissimilar from Holden’s experience meeting Gil for the first time. What was it about that man? And yet Gil and Luke hadn’t lasted. There was a lesson in that somewhere, I supposed.

Luke spoke about his cousin’s offer to be their surrogate and the joy of those first few years with Callie when he didn’t think life could have gotten any better. The years when he and Gil had been in synch, their marriage solid. He said nothing about what had happened to change that, and I didn’t ask.

“She was a super kid,” he said, keeping his head on my chest so I couldn’t see his eyes. “Loved school. Had a nice set of friends. Laughed a lot. Desperately wanted a dog, which I now regret we didn’t agree to. Loved anything to do with being outside. Trampolines, parks, the ocean, camping, all of that.”

I twirled my fingers through his hair. “That’s why you and Gil scattered her ashes in the Havelock River last year, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. She’d have loved everything about the station. The scenery, the rivers, the sheep, the lake, but maybe especially the dogs.” He glanced up, a broad grin in place. “Jojo in particular. There’s something about that dog that’s always made me think of Callie.”

My fingers froze in his hair and I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading over my face. “Really? Jojo loves kids, which has always surprised me since she’s hardly had anything to do with them.”

“But there’s a softness about her, a kindness, right? Whereas Nina is more... brash. Not unkind, just morehere I come, I guess, more self-contained.” He nestled his head back on my chest and something flip-flopped in my belly at the idea this man knew my dogs well enough to pick those subtle differences up.

“Right.” I tried to keep the surprise from my voice.

Luke reached up and pushed my hand through his hair again.

I chuckled and kept going. “You like that, huh?”

“It feels nice.” He settled again. “Callie wasn’t perfect, don’t get me wrong. She was smart as a whip and that landed her in trouble more than once. With my job taking me away from home two or three nights a week, Callie wasn’t above playing Gil and me off against each other to get what she wanted, and it could cause friction between us until we twigged to what was happening. Gil was the day-to-day presence in the house and mostly I followed his lead. But it still took a fair bit of communication to make sure we were on the same page with what was going on in Callie’s life. We did everything together as a family. We had a lot of fun.” He swallowed and took a deep breath. “She was pretty much our entire focus... maybe too much.” He went quiet for a minute and it wasn’t hard to put that equation together.

“It must’ve been hard to be away from her all those nights.”

“I hated it. I was considering swapping jobs.” He hesitated. “Well, for a lot of reasons that I am sure you can guess, and then Callie was killed and everything changed.”

I pressed my lips to his hair but said nothing as he took a few short gulps of air.

“It felt like the world stopped turning,” he finally managed, his voice wisp thin like it might break at any moment. “I was flying that day, and by the time I finally got to the hospital, Gil had just come back from surgery. When he woke up, he was like a stranger, his voice flat and unemotional, in complete shock. He kept repeating over and over that she was gone because of him. That it was his fault. That he was sorry.”

His eyes lifted to mine, and what I saw there stole my breath. They were riddled with pain and so much regret that I found myself wriggling down until we were facing each other side by side so I could kiss him. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“It’s okay.” He tucked a lock of hair behind my ears. “I knew what Gil was saying was all bullshit, but I still couldn’t seem to stop that small part of me that wanted to blame him for forgetting the friend’s birthday present that day. For having to take Callie home before the party so she could get it. For putting the two of them in that intersection in the first place.” He paused, his breathing laboured, his eyes glassy, and I stroked his cheek with my fingers.

“It’s only human to try and find something or someone to blame.”

He smiled sadly. “Maybe. I never accused him directly, but I kept asking him the same questions that first day about how fast he was going, and why he hadn’t seen the other car, and how he could have forgotten the present when I’d left it by the garage door that morning so he couldn’t miss it, and so on. It was a fucking horrible thing to do to him even though I managed to stop myself after that first day and apologise. It was too late. Gil says he blamed himself anyway, and that what I said made no difference. He was asking himself all the same things. I’m not sure I believe him. And no matter that our marriage was well on the rocks by then, I should’ve been a better person that day and I failed.”

“Losing Callie must’ve put a huge strain on you both,” I conceded, beginning to fully appreciate what a total dick I’d been in the things I’d thought and said.

“You could say that.” He cast me a wry look like he knew exactly what I was thinking, and then fell onto his back, moonlight washing across one side of his face, the other left in deep shadow making his expression hard to read. “Callie’s death was like a huge black hole that sucked away everything good that was left between us and left nothing but anger and grief. And we got really good at taking both of those out on each other until it got to the point where I couldn’t see a way out for either of us, other than leaving. Gil had moved out of our bedroom months before, and he refused to go for joint counselling, saying he needed to focus on his PTSD first. He pretty much shut me out and I was spiralling fast in my own way.”

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