Page 93 of Keep Your Guard Up
“Can’t work out why—it’s pretty deserted,” I joked.
“Hasn’t anybody ever told you that the places with no people around are the best places to be?” he replied, though there was a faint trace of amusement in his voice.
That was something, at least.
“No, they haven’t. Most of us don’t like to be alone.” I walked around JJ’s ute to where his legs dangled off the end of the tray. He was leaning back on his hands, the gaps between the leaves in the tree above casting a freckling shadow over his figure. Whatwasn’t casted in shade was glistening under golden sunlight. He looked beautiful. If it weren’t for the tempestuous storm raging on in those eyes, he’d look the perfect image of contentment.
Turning my back towards the tray, I pushed up on my hands and lifted myself onto the warm metal. It creaked under my weight but held steady as it always did.
“I like to be alone,” he said quietly, gazing out over the green valley of rolling hills and tall trees.
“Oh.” My heart sank.Of coursehe wanted to be alone. A living tornado had ripped through his life for the last three years. “I’m sorry. I’ll just—”
He stopped me with a strong, warm hand to my thigh.
“You don’t count,” he murmured, watching the hand on my thigh, waiting for me to move it. “You don’t bring noise, you bring quiet.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, or if he even needed me to say anything at all. So, I didn’t.
We sat in the quiet of the lookout for hours. Literally, hours. Neither of us spoke a word, just sat in comfortable silence.
The sun had just started to set, the sky brightening with hues of orange and pink, when he finally spoke. “I was sitting right here the day JJ called me with Al’s job offer for Knock’s.” He was still staring so blankly, so lifelessly at the kilometres of nature that stretched out below us. “I sat right here, waiting to end it all.”
Shock, pure and real, whizzed through my body. Steadying my hand, I lay it over his that was still holding onto my thigh. A surge of panic flooded my system, the panic of coming so close to losing him for good. Losing him before I’d even known him.
“That call was what stopped me from doing it. Al’s offer was more than just another job offer—it was the opportunity of a lifetime. An opportunity for a new start, away from the mess that was my life. I sat up here and promised myself that I would neverlet it get this bad again. If she was right, and I wasn’t enough of a man to have a partner, I simply wouldn’t. I would rather be alone for the rest of eternity than live through the fucking nightmare that was my life again. I burned the letter I’d written to leave under one of the picnic tables, went home, packed whatever shit I could into a few meagre duffle bags, and left. I’d called my lawyer on my way back to the house of horrors. As it turns out, he’d already had divorce papers drawn up for the occasion two years ago. He’s a good guy, Mitchie, so he came and met me at the house. I put the fat stack of divorce papers underneath my wedding band, top-decked the toilet, and left.”
“And then what happened?” I asked softly.
“I went to see my sister.” The haunted ice over his face cracked, just a little, at the mention of her. “I hadn’t seen her for two years. She’d been in rehab for nearly two and a half. But the second I saw her … it was all worth it. Every punch, every kick, hell, everystab, was worth it. Because she was here, and she was alive and mending her mind.”
“Two years is a long time to be in rehab.”
“It’s one of those special facilities where they don’t necessarily have a timeline program. Getting off the drugs is the easy part in comparison to staying off them. I don’t know what, but something … happened to her. When she was living with our mother, something just wasn’t right,” he said, a slight shake of his head as if trying to clear hazy memories.
“She never told you?”
“We never asked. Dylan and I made a pact not to. She came home with our father one day, and she lived with him and us after that. That was all that mattered. She was safe with us.”
“Will she be getting out any time soon?”
He squeezed my thigh gently three times. “She will when she’s ready. I was hoping to bring her to the title fight at Darlington Harbour, but I don’t think she needs, or wants, to return tothe place where it all fell apart.” He finally looked at me. “She’s gonna love you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. She always wanted a sister growing up. It was on her Santa list for a few years.”
“Sounds like we’ll have some fun together.”
He looked down at me, a heartbreaking storm brewing in those eyes, even though it was a clear sunny day. I couldn’t help but reach for him, to put a hand on his face. A subtle, small flinch ricocheted through his body. Apology written clear in his eyes, he turned and pressed his lips into the palm of my hand.
“You know, the day I first bumped into you in Lozza’s …” He trailed off before shaking a thought free from his head. “Talia had been blowing up my phone. Threats, accusations, emotional manipulation; the whole lot. I was on the phone with her when I ran straight into you. She was trying to convince me to ‘come home’.”
“But you didn’t go?” I said softly.
“It was like … the world, the universe, fate—whoever the fuck it is that decided this was where I needed to be—threw me a bone. As soon as my phone fell into that fucking puddle of Sunkist, an unbearable weight lifted from my shoulders.”
“It did?” I squeaked, fighting like hell to keep my jaw from slacking.
