Page 23 of Into These Eyes
Then I push past her and race for the public restrooms. As I slam through the door, sweat flashes over my skin and saliva rushes to my mouth. I don’t even make it to a toilet. I throw up straight into the basin.
Twisting the tap, I squeeze my eyes shut and purge my mostly empty stomach. When everything’s gone, only bile remains.After a few more painful retches, I cup water into my mouth, swirling and spitting it out before splashing my clammy face.
Once I’m sure the nausea has subsided, I grab a bunch of paper towels and hold them to my face as I breathe. In and out. In and out. Until the rhythm calms my trembling body. Only then do I lower my hands and look in the mirror.
I’m hot all over, but the face staring back at me is ghostly white. Except for the streaks of mascara beneath my eyes. Although my body isn’t vibrating anymore, my hands shake as I reach into my handbag and find the makeup I keep inside.
When I step outside the bathroom, a nurse hurries around her desk and places a gentle hand on my arm.
“He needs you now,” she says, before rushing off toward his room.
I remain rooted to the spot. Hesitating, I sway on my feet until my back connects with a cool wall. The urge to run surges through me so powerfully, I push off the wall and stride along the sterile corridor in the opposite direction.
After what Dad whispered in my ear, I should keep walking and never look back.
But I can’t.
I stop dead in my tracks, then turn and head to his room.
Feeling like I’m on an ethereal plane where I’m completely numb, I stare at the shadow of a man who was once my father. He’s not conscious. The pain meds have made sure of that, but something’s changed. Not just physically. He doesn’t seem to be here anymore.
His shallow breaths are a mechanical operation that has nothing to do with the man who once occupied his body.
The nurse’s words come back to me.He needs you now.But does he? Or am I already too late? I wonder if he left the moment I walked out of his room.
Either way, I find myself holding his hand, squeezing and rubbing until his body tenses. With a gasp, he deflates on a final exhale.
And he’s gone.
Forever.
Some part of me wants to place a kiss on his wrinkled forehead, while another demands I scream at him.
In the end, I do neither. I let the nurses take over and wait for the doctor to arrive and officially declare my father dead. I’m not sure what happens after that. It’s only when I’m standing outside the hospital in the scorching midday sun that I come back to myself.
I haven’t cried, and I don’t think I will. Even if the urge comes, who would I be crying for? I didn’t know the man in that hospital bed. How could I? For half of my life, he’s lied to me. To Anika.
As heat penetrates the icy death inside me, my mind snags on something monumentally important. And refuses to let go.
I won’t think about the man I once called Dad.
Instead, I’ll focus on another man.
A man I no longer have the right to hate.
Chapter 12
Gavin
After slathering my freshly popped toast with butter and a scraping of Vegemite, I turn it over, take a huge bite and let the salty explosion rest on my tongue for a moment before I chew. As much as I hate my new accommodation, I love the freedom to eat whatever I want, whenever I choose. Hot toast was a rarity in prison, but hot toast with real melty butter, that was non-existent.
Finished with another mind-numbing shift at the poultry factory, I’m home by lunchtime. Which is the sole thing I like about the only job I’ve secured in the six months since my parole. Although I’m not a fan of the 4am start, knock-off time makes up for it in spades.
Just as I pop the last bite of toast in my mouth, a sharp rap comes from the door. Confident it’s Benny, who was released on parole only a few weeks ago, I continue to chew as I swing the flimsy caravan door wide.
And almost choke.
A woman dressed for the corporate world—not this lowly caravan park filled with ex-cons on parole—stands in strappy high-heels two steps down from me. When a wolf whistle lets loose from another caravan, she turns her head in search of the source. But I don’t. My attention remains pinned on her. The blazing sun highlights dark red notes in the few loose strands of hair that have made an escape from her severe ponytail. While her eyes aren’t on me, I take in her large sunglasses and the fitted green business dress clinging to every curve of her body. When it ends several inches above her knees, my gaze drifts down her smooth, naked legs to pretty, manicured toes.
