Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (42 page)

She almost stopped him, because that would leave her with Damon and she’d have to face him. She took a deep breath, digging her hands in her pockets to stop from tracing them up his back and around his waist.

“Georgia, I made a mistake coming here, didn’t I?” He sounded different, but he was the same man who’d lied, who’d discarded her.

“Like I made a mistake trusting you.”

He turned to face her. “I won’t stay, but I wanted to see you and apologise.”

“For dumping me, using me. You could’ve done that on the phone. From Sydney. Months ago.”

He inclined his head. “For everything I did to you. For denying you the courtesy of knowing what was going on.”

“I worked that out. You were fairly explicit. You loved the sex but not the person.”

“I fucking loved the sex, but I’d give my voice to have treated you with more respect.”

Her mouth dropped open at the swear word, her body went from strung together to hot liquid flush as it remembered what it was like to be throbbing and needy and have his words purred in her ear as he entered her body.

“And I’d have done anything for you except put you through the same thing that ruined your marriage.”

“Right.” She folded her arms across her chest. “The doing it to protect me defence. I can’t imagine what would make you think I’d buy that.”

He shifted, swaying, knocking against the wall. “I had cancer. I needed more surgery.” She reached for him and stopped herself. That’s why he sounded so different. “The prognosis wasn’t good. I expected to lose my voice box.”

The tears in her eyes were sudden, but they weren’t going to fall. He’d shut her out and she missed him so badly.

“I couldn’t offer you blind and mute. I couldn’t offer you angry and shut down. I know what you went though. You told me when we met you weren’t up for dealing with someone else’s issues like that again. I couldn’t do that to you. I needed you to be free.”

Cancer—dear God. It’d taken her mother, turned her grief-stricken father into a drunk. But Damon was standing here, fit, healthy, with a hushed voice that drenching her in feelings and made her knees loose and her throat tight. “But the worst didn’t happen.”

“It did.”

“You have a voice. With some engineering…” She trailed off. They’d announced the production date on
Dystopian Conflict III
had slipped. Hamish found that out. “Do you still have cancer?”

He shook his head and a fall of hair slid over his forehead.

He had cancer and he’d sent her away. He’d taken any decision she might make about standing by him away from her. “From where I’m standing there’s no worst.”

“You’re standing another world away from me.”

“I’m standing where you put me. You decided this.”

“I thought losing my voice, my work, was the worst thing I’d deal with. I didn’t understand losing you would be like losing all my other senses.”

She closed her eyes. Couldn’t look at him. He’d never voice Vox again. “I need you to go.” Now, right now, before she did something she’d never recover from, like touch him, forgive him.

She’d once said she’d forgive him anything, but she’d been lust struck, love dulled, she’d had no idea what she was talking about. He’d thrown her away when he was hurting and now he was okay he’d shown up to wreck her all over again. She wasn’t a toy to be picked up and played with one day and thrown away the next. She wasn’t a good time girl or a martyr. And she didn’t know any way to fix this.

“I used to function well without you. I can’t do that anymore, Georgia. I got to keep a voice, but it’s not enough without you.”

Love meant you were attached to someone else, and when you were separated part of you didn’t function as well. He was functioning just fine. He could take his honey tongue and clever words and work their magic on someone else; there’d be plenty of takers.

“Go home, Damon. You said it. I’m not up for this. I don’t want you here. We’ve got nothing to say to each other anymore.”

He blinked, those knowing eyes. “My favourite colour will always be you.”

She turned her head away. She could fall apart when he left.

“My favourite smell, my favourite taste.” He closed the gap between them, a hand finding her side, stepping up to her shoulder, her chin. “Georgia on my mind. Look at me and tell me you don’t want to try again.”

She let him turn her head, but she kept her eyes closed. “I don’t want you in my life.” He couldn’t make her love him again. His lips on her forehead, his hand moved to her hair. She should push him away. She held her breath. She didn’t want him, but he whispered her name and it was all the colours of the heavens and she cleaved to him, hands moving under his coat to hold him.

He kissed her, lips firm and sure, mouth gentle, but not hesitant. Her traitor mouth kissed him back, like her insurgent fists filled with his shirt, her turncoat hips pressed to him. But the kiss was just another weapon and she would not sing for him again. She shoved against his chest and he stepped away, dropping his stick.

Hamish was in the hallway. “Everything all right?”

She wiped her mouth and bent to get the stick. “Damon is leaving.”

Damon turned his head towards Hamish. There was a strange moment where no one moved. Damon and Hamish appeared to be sizing each other up. She tapped the handle of the stick against Damon’s hand and he took it. He said, “Be good to her.”

“Now that I’ve learned how again, you can be assured of it.”

Damon used the wall and his stick to reach the doorstep. He moved over the entrance easily, tapped for the stairs then stumbled, going to one knee.

She cried out, dashed forward, but he righted himself and kept moving, tapping down the stairs and the path to the gate, opening it, going through it and closing it behind him. He walked to the gutter. She watched from the doorway as he pulled out a phone. He’d call a cab. He’d get in it and drive away. He’d go wherever he wanted, pick up his life and live it as though she’d never happened.

“You could stop him.”

She shook her head. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re only a shadow standing here. He’s taking the best part of you with him.”

She turned her back on Damon and faced Hamish. “Sentimental rubbish. That makes no sense.”

“You were worried about your appearance and the man is bat blind. And that was the kind of kiss I’d give an arm to experience.”

She stepped around Hamish. Why couldn’t he have stayed in the kitchen? “Yes, well, we know I’m an idiot. I married you.”

“So don’t be an idiot again.”

“I’m not.” Damon was still at the kerb.

“You’re letting the man you’re in love with walk away without you. At least he had the guts to try. You hardly gave him ten minutes.”

She reached for the doorknob to close the door. A cab pulled up. “He doesn’t need me. He’s perfectly fine by himself.” Damon put his hand to the cab roof and stepped off the gutter. He folded his stick.

“No, he doesn’t need you and yes he’s fine, but you’re missing the point.”

She ignored Hamish. She watched Damon feel for the car door latch. He looked back towards the house and she flinched. He couldn’t possibly know she was watching. He couldn’t possible know she was incapable of imagining her life without him.

She closed the door.

She closed that chapter of her life.

35: Surviving

Angus poured. Damon would need more than coffee to make it through the jet lag. But it was a start. He’d kicked around London for two days, thinking Georgia might call, might get over the shock of seeing him and he could start his apology all over again.

Plain dumb to try to see her without talking to her first, but it seemed like the right kind of cheat. If he called her she could hang up, send his number to her message bank. He should’ve called her, got a message to her months ago.

She’d been so upset, wounded, her voice torn up, her words so harsh. He’d forced that kiss on her.
God
. She hadn’t wanted it at first. But he couldn’t help himself, he needed to touch her so he didn’t fall on his face, and he nearly had anyway. She’d been staying with Hamish all this time, what did he expect?

It’d been tempting to hang out for longer, but she wasn’t going to call. He could’ve gone back to the house but that would be cruel. He’d heard her loud and clear. He could’ve phoned Hamish, but he couldn’t bear the thought of hearing victory in his voice. Georgia didn’t want him in her life. So here he was, sitting across the bar from Angus as he set up for opening, fuzzy-headed and emotionally trashed.

“If your hangdog expression is anything to go by, you’re feeling more than jet lag? You want something stronger?”

Tempting. He shook his head. Stronger was what he needed to be, but he wouldn’t get it from a bottle. “She didn’t want to know me.” But she’d kissed him back, like he was her missing sunlight. He needed to stop thinking about that and focus on how tight and hard her voice was, how much rage there was in the way she pushed him away.

“That’s a shit, man.”

He sipped. “I brought it on myself. I broke us. And the ex-husband might be all right, worked out his stuff. She’s staying with him. Not impossible they’d get back together.”

“Shit.”

“I get lucky with the cancer. I get to keep a voice. I get the dog.” He looked down to where Mel was lying at his feet. “I don’t get the girl. I was never going to get the girl anyway. That wasn’t how it was going to go. You convinced me to try again, you and Heather, Jamie and Taylor.” He dropped his chin to his chest and spoke to his legs. “I should’ve listened to Sam. He called it. Said I’d wrecked it.”

“We all should’ve listened to Sam.”

He nodded. Turns out Sam could write songs. Songs that didn’t suck and suited Taylor. Almost an entire album of them.

“What would you give up to have Georgia back?”

He held his cup out for a refill. “Not coffee.” Angus took the cup, poured and put it back in the saucer. “What would you give up to keep Heather?”

“No question, the bar.”

“You’d be giving up a huge part of yourself. Would she want that?”

Angus bumped around behind the counter in an annoyed fashion.

Damon pressed. “Would she want you to be less than you could be?”

A bottle got slung in a bin with a dull clink. “Quit with the hard questions. I thought you were brain dead?”

“I could sleep for a week, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. Heather would want you to be the best, the happiest you can be because she loves you. If that’s without the Blink, fine. Taylor kept her secret because she thought it would make Jamie act against his best interest. She didn’t want him to have to choose something he didn’t plan on because he was cornered.”

Squeak of a towel in a glass. “How does this relate to you?”

He sighed. He’d had a lot of time to think, but living in his head for months hadn’t produced any answers. “Fucked if I know. I screwed it all up.”

Angus laughed.

“All I do know is I’m grateful every day for the fact you and I can sit and talk like this and I’m not speaking through a tube in my throat.”

“There’s that.”

“That’s major.”

“Singing again would be major.”

“I don’t have the range. I don’t have my character voices. They’re gone. I’m Vox after a hard night on the grog 24/7. Fortunately the entertainment world still wants me as a grumpy cat. I might have to learn to like the creepy things after all. And if that show doesn’t last more than a season, that’s what Avocado is for.” An alternate source of income, plus an outrageously vague new hope Taylor might record Sam’s songs.

“The speech therapist said you were fit for duty.”

“Spoken word, yes. But I don’t think I can sing. It’s pushing my luck.” Like he’d pushed it with everything; his sight, his career, Georgia.

Angus poured something salty in a bowl, nuts or pretzels. “Since when did you play safe with luck?”

He laughed. “Maybe since now.” The edge of the bowl slid against the back of his hand. He put his fingers inside it.

“Should I be worried about that? I’m dead bored with being pissed at you.”

He crunched a nut. “I get that.”

Angus moved the bowl away. Performance art—pissed with nuts. “No you don’t. You don’t get it at all. You think being blind comes with a flip side of guilt. You need a little more consideration and because you get it, you feel like you’re indebted. Pucker up, man, it’s the same for the rest of us. Our disabilities just aren’t so obvious.”

A wet cloth slapped the bar top. Angus was on a roll.

“Look at Taylor, can sing like an angel but talk about self-sabotage. She never got over being the adopted kid, feeling unlovable. She’s mothered you something fierce since she first popped you with that potato gun and you told her she’d blinded you, and she did it because she didn’t think she was good enough to be your friend, thought she had to earn it. And that’s exactly what screwed her up with Jamie. Talk about never learning.”

The cloth slapped down again. “Look at Sam, barely finished school, dyslexic, started Royal Flush because he didn’t think anyone with any sense would employ him. Never had a music lesson in his life, taught himself to drum and now he plays piano. The class bloody clown, wait till you hear the lyrics he’s written, so damn beautiful, they’ll make you want to gag.”

“And Jamie?”

Angus crinkled something, screwed the top on a bottle. “Think little brother has it together, at least now. Barely bothered by his asthma these days. Remember him as a kid, all those trips to hospital. All those times we nearly lost him. But what a flipping idiot. Too stupid to tell Taylor he loved her for all those years.”

Damon could hear the smile on Angus’s face.

“Heather?”

“Is one hundred percent perfect, and I don’t want to hear another word about how she was once anorexic and is obsessed about food. Obsessed, like if it’s not green it’s going to take ten years off her life; like bring pizza into the house and she thinks she’s put on a dress size by the time you open the lid.”

Damon smiled. He heard love, pride, obsession of another kind in Angus’ voice. And he was catching on. “And you?”