Floored (28 page)

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“I was frightened.” Her voice shook and she knew it was from fear of what would happen next not the savage suck of humiliating memories. “I was pissed off. I loved Justin and he took everything I thought was real, everything I’d worked for and made it a nightmare.”

“But you didn’t report him.”

She had no answer that worked. How could she tell Sean she couldn’t report Justin because of what she’d done: out of outrage, out of hurt, out of retribution? Out of being blindsided with Justin’s duplicity and her own stupidity. Out of revenge and greed, venial, but pure and simple too. One moment of madness that condemned her to running, to hiding, to screwing up any chance of collecting more new memories with this man.

Sean stood, left the bed. He found his grey trackpants and pulled them on. His silence was more ominous than his cross-examination. He came back and sat on the bed again a look of weary resignation on his face.

“Here’s the way I see it. I’m the guy who works undercover. I’ve been an open book with you in every way I could. But you.” He closed his eyes, opened them again with a throaty sigh. “You have these secrets and you want to hold on to them and there’s nothing I can do to make you give them up. I think they hurt you. I think I can help you. But you’ve got to want me to.”

“I’ve told you everything.” She couldn’t look at him. He already knew that wasn’t true.

“I don’t believe that.”

“You’re calling me a liar.” There was no weaker point she could make but she managed to keep the misery out of her voice, acting the one being wronged.

“Everyone lies, Cait. You’re no more a liar than I am when I have to be.”

“Then what, what do you want from me?” It didn’t matter what he wanted, the only thing left for her to do was run, run again. Run from Sean so she didn’t force his hand. She had to get out of this bed, pack her things, leave him the gun and go. But it was so hard to move when he was looking at her like that. As if he knew the way out of this. He was looking at her like he’d forgive her anything. He reached for her. That action worse than anything he’d said. Worse still, how she wanted to fold into him.

“The gun stays with me.”

She nodded; teeth jammed together too close for words.

“I don’t want you to run. I want you safe.” He curled his fingers impatiently, a come-here gesture, and that was all it took; she pressed against his chest. “I can try to worry quietly.”

He would succeed at breaking her into tinier pieces. He dropped his head, he spoke close to her ear, so his words shot straight to the place where her hope had lived and died. “I want you happy. I want you with me.”

29: Shifting Sands

Sean packed the car while Caitlyn used the teller machine in the pub. This is not how he thought the morning would play out. If someone had told him he’d stumble into the bathroom, knock her toiletries bag off the shelf, and find a .40 calibre Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol spilled on the floor with her shampoo, conditioner and body lotion, he’d have bet his life savings against it.

He’d heard the clunk as it hit the tiled floor. He told himself it was a perfume bottle or some other item of vanity. But Cait didn’t do vanity and he’d heard that sound too often. Hard polymer and steel resounding as it dropped. When he hit the lights there it was.
Jesus
. At least the safety was on.

He knew she wasn’t being straight with him, but what the fuck? Then the look on her face when she saw him, shock, panic, the way her eyes bled fear until she realised he wasn’t going to shoot her—that very nearly ripped him in half. He’d wanted to go to her and kiss the horror out of her but he’d needed answers first.

He still didn’t have them. He couldn’t shake the feeling everything had turned to shit.

He watched her wait in line. She’d let him hold her, soothe her. She’d responded to his kisses, going deeper with him until some spark lit in her and she was pushing him for more. He let her take the lead. But there was a desperate quality to it. As though she wanted to climb into his skin with him and disappear.

She’d wanted to forget and he gave her a piece of fleeting oblivion. He made her eyes glaze with anticipation of release. He made her claw his back to hold onto him, and bite his lip to hold onto herself. He’d had his moment to fly too, but the soul of it was all screwed up; too full of unspoken fears and failed expectations.
Already
.
Shit
.

She came across the road. The way she walked punctuated her distress. Slow footfall, her shoulders slumped forward, eyes down on the wallet in her hands. Was this something new? He went to her side. He got a watery smile, the intention of which was to make him back off. He backed off. For now.

By tonight they’d be in Eucla, five hundred kilometres away from this false start.

She drove. He did the non-physical equivalent of pacing, one foot resting on his ball joint making his knee pump. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it till she leaned over and put her hand on his thigh. He stopped. She snatched her hand back. “Sorry.”

She’d said that like a chant while they tore up the bed. He’d let it go then, it was woven in with her shudders and sighs. But not now. “What are you sorry for? Sorry for the gun? Sorry for the sex?” Sorry she’d met him? Couldn’t blame her. It came out rough, a knife with a serrated edge. Just what she needed. Even with her sunglasses on she looked stricken. Just what he deserved. “Fuck. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay. I’m not sorry about the gun. I could’ve told you but it’s none of your business. I did what I thought I had to do and it’s over. I want to get past it.”

“So past it you want to move across the country.” If he sounded any more pissed off he’d earn himself the silent treatment for the next five hours.

She gave him a look, so quick he might have missed the slight turn of her cheek. “I’m sorry it ruined a perfect moment. I’m sorry I worried you. I’m…”

“You thought it was perfect?”

Another quick incline of her head and her chin dropped. “I wanted you so badly. I waited, but you were gone so long I fell asleep. I was worried you were hurt or you’d go stale on the whole idea. I’m—”

“You thought it was perfect.” He got the barest hint of a smile out of that. “Christ, Cait. It
was
perfect. I knew it would be good, but I…” How did he tell her she rocked his whole world? He grinned at her and she grinned back and all the crap of the morning fell away.

He tapped the centre console to up the volume on the Thirsty Merc CD and sang along with Rai Thistlethwayte to
Twenty Good Reasons
, cutting in on the line about guilty hearts then belting out the chorus, all about a guy needing twenty good reasons to let his girl go.

She couldn’t help but listen to him. He only hoped she heard.

By the time they made it to Eucla they’d broken every one of Cait’s driving rules and then some, except the one about not driving for more than seven hours.

Eucla, population eighty-six. A gold rush town history used then forgot in a hurry, leaving behind a telegraph repeater station and the effects of a rabbit plague that created sand dunes with territorial expansion ambitions. They’d made it to Western Australia. They had the choice of the Eucla Motor Hotel or the Eucla Motor Hotel. Or driving on. Driving on meant next stop Kalgoorlie but that was another eight hundred clicks and they’d started late. So the Eucla Motor Hotel was it for the night.

And the night was young.

She was in his arms before the door clicked closed. The same nervous hunger in her eyes as this morning, and the taste of her sweet and sugary from the raspberry jubes he’d fed her in the car. Was that all they were, a bunch of broken rules?

Tonight there’d be time to test that, to learn each other, to see if they were more than anticipation meets loneliness and circumstance; to take another go at perfect, and a good hard look at that bottom of the cliff theory.

He backed her up against the door. “No interruptions tonight.”

She said, “No,” and it sounded like the pop of a starter’s gun. A green for go. He brought her hips to meet his, no doubt where this was going, slow and fast and all speeds and temperatures in between.

“The things I want to do to you.”

“Are they legal?”

She teased. He slapped. An open palm to her backside. She jumped. “Between consenting adults.”

She tightened her old around his neck. “Will I like it?”

He stopped moving, palmed her cheek and looked into her eyes. “I’ll know if you don’t.” But inside the kiss that followed he wasn’t sure that was true. She had too many secrets for him to be sure of seeing the truth in her.

“No lies, Cait. No more secrets.”

She held his head so they were forehead on forehead, as if mind-reading might do instead of talk. He tucked his hand between her legs and swallowed her gasp. “I want more than this.”

He had her shuddering. The words, “I can only hate you so much,” jerked out of her.

Then there was no more talking, only telepathy; the sixth sense of desire and lust.

Moving together into the room, there was the mad, fumbling dance of stripping each other; knowing the precise action to make the other soften, tighten, want more. That first hot moment when skins collided and caresses took the shape of push and pull. The language of unintelligible sounds that told you everything you needed to know to give more, less, harder, quicker.

Sean’s world narrowed to the warm softness of Cait’s skin, to sounds she made from the back of her throat, to lips he left open and wet, and came back to again and again for the drug of her kisses, for the reflex of giving, for the glorious throb and thrust of coming together.

That was round one. The opener.

In round two they made it to the bed. There was no hasty fumbling. Just mind-blasting pleasure.

In between round two and three there was a lot of giggling, and not all of it hers. It was play without objective and fun without trying. He felt like a kid, unselfconsciously excited about nothing. Like the muscles in his cheeks might give out from smiling.

Round four was the decider.

It started in the pokey bathtub shower, marvellously too small for two. Add soap and slick silken skin and it was dangerously slippery. Not that any excuses were needed for holding close, or laughing, or sucking kisses that stopped the frigging clock, made the water run cold when it met hot bodies.

It moved to a kitchen style chair. Where the mood changed. Went deep. Became sultry. Got deliberate and urgent, and somehow essential to his fucking continued wellbeing. It levelled out at intense and stayed there, for minutes, hours, whole centuries during which Eucla’s sands might’ve shifted and rabbits plagued and he’d have been insensible to any of it. There was nothing but her and the secret of what she could do to him that he’d never break, never want to.

How was it that this was his reality? He’d found the girl when he’d been lost to himself. He’d found himself and won the girl. Only to learn he’d lose her, too soon. Even if he could learn her secrets, she was staying in Perth. He had no reason to be there and professional reasons to go home.

He was Eucla’s shifting sands, searching for a way to engulf her. He was a new rabbit plague, devouring everything in his path to do it.

When she slept, he called Stud. The gun, the look on her face when she’d left the teller, the way her eyes showed him guilt beneath the cover of control. He needed to know what she was dealing with so he’d know how to deal with it too.

30: Rough Justice

It’d been obvious for days now. They were cruising. Sean had no pressing need to be in Perth. Caitlyn could see he’d have lingered in Eucla if there was anything outside the bedroom to look at other than sand and they’d given the inside of the bedroom a forensic investigation. No surface untouched by their lovemaking.

She knew why he hadn’t called it quits. It was making her stomach churn as she seesawed between hope and despair. He felt something deep for her. He hadn’t said it, but he showed it, even when he was at his most suspicious and holding a deadly weapon. And when he was holding her—she saw shooting stars under her eyelids, grasped new possibilities in the palm of his hands, and smelled happiness in the cedar scent of his skin.

But wanting to stay with him meant either telling him the truth or keeping her ugly secret. Oddly they amounted to the same thing. She’d end up alone. Because she couldn’t continue to lie to him. Inevitably she’d slip up, or he’d figure it out. Beyond that, lying to him felt like committing another crime, this one against a man who’d never done anything to deliberately hurt her. At least if she kept her secret she’d stay free.

Meanwhile Sean wasn’t in any hurry and neither was she, so they had this time together to scorch an incendiary memory on her brain.

Compared to Eucla, Kalgoorlie was Sydney. Western Australia’s second biggest town after Perth. It was an old gold rush town and still home to the country’s largest open pit goldmine. The Super Pit ran 24/7, but the real rush in Kalgoorlie now was about mining other metals and the business of supplying the world with raw materials.

Apart from the fabulous historic pubs—twenty-five of them, and the famous Hay Street brothels, once as many as the number of pubs—the thing Cait most wanted to see was a boring old Commonwealth Bank branch. She wanted to check her balance after the monthly car loan payment and her last naphthalene rent cheque went through, but the teller machine in the Eucla pub was screwy, probably offline. It’d given her a balance of a hundred dollars instead of the thousands from Sean’s deposit that were there.

They split up. Sean took the car and went to suss accommodation. She hit the Hannan Street branch, right on closing.

It didn’t matter how often she asked the teller to check the balance, it came back the same. One hundred dollars. She couldn’t convince him the line in the printed statement showing the rest of the money disappearing in a single withdrawal three days ago in Sydney wasn’t one she’d made.

She walked out of the bank with Justin’s laughter ringing in her head and panic making her near blind and deaf. One hundred dollars was what she’d left him when she cleaned out the safe.