Welcome to Sugartown (30 page)

I remember
more of my dad’s strange behaviour over the last few weeks and yank
my hand away from his. “That’s why you took that picture of Sammy
and I on your phone the other day, isn’t it?”

“
It was a
nice picture.”

“
Are you
giving it to him?” I accuse.

“
I already
have, baby girl.”

“
Don’t call
me that.” I dump my bowl in the sink. The spoon makes a loud
clatter against the stainless steel and I wince.

“
Ana, we owe
him a lot.”

“
We don’t owe
him anything. He carved up a guy’s face, Dad!”

“
Yeah, and if
he hadn’t, I would have. He told me the truth about the night you
hurt your arm. He saved you then, maybe it’s your turn to save him
back?”

“
I wouldn’t
have needed to be saved if it weren’t for his ties to the Hell’s
Angels.”

“
Maybe not,
but he loves you, kid. He’s a good man and he’d do anything to
protect you. That’s good enough for me.”

“
You can’t
build a relationship on all the shit we have buried beneath us,
Dad. One day, it’s all going to come floating back to the surface,
and what then? All we ever did was hurt one another, and everything
and everyone around us. Sometimes you’ve got to cut your losses
before you gamble away everything you have left.”

“
That’s not
living kid, that’s barely surviving.”

“
Yeah, but at
least it’s not dying.”

“
Look, I’m
not saying you have to jump back into bed with him. I’m just
saying, maybe think about what he’s going through on the inside.
Alone.”

“
It’s all I
think about!” I yell through my tears. “Day and night, every minute
for the last four months it’s
all
I’ve thought about. So don’t you dare accuse me
of not giving this enough thought. I love him Dad, but he betrayed
me, more than once. He behaved like an animal, no better than
Scott—”

“
Ana!”

“
It’s the
truth. I love him so much it’s crushing me, but I don’t know if I
can forgive him all the same.”

“
I’m sorry to
hear that, kiddo, but you know where to find him if you decide you
can.”

“
Yeah, I
do.”

The weight of
my words hangs suspended in the silence between us and Dad turns to
leave. Before he walks away though, he stops and looks back at me;
his eyes are gentle and full of sympathy when he says, “I’ve never
pushed you to do anything you didn’t want to, Ana, and whether or
not you decide to forgive him is up to you, but he’s up for parole
in two months time. Now, I don’t know if he’s going to stick around
in this shithole town but he has a job with me for as long as he
wants it.

“
Despite what
you think, that kid is the only reason I’m not serving time for
murder. So I want you to think long and hard about this before you
make any rash decisions. What he did may not have been civil, but I
know him well enough to know he made a choice he could live with.
Question is, can you live with yours?”

Could
I?
I didn’t know.

Chapter Thirty

Ana

My annoying
cousin drove an even more annoying Holden Ute in a very pretentious
high-shine black. He’d been here for two weeks and I was ready to
shove the beast’s muffler where the sun don’t shine and strangle
him with the fanbelt. His precious and shiny new toy managed to
wake the entire street almost every morning when he’d pull in
before dawn and whistle his way up the drive. I didn’t know there
were that many available women in Sugartown to sneak out on before
dawn, but if anyone could find them it’d be Jackson
Rowe.

Jackson is
gorgeous in that typical Aussie kind of way: tanned skin, summer
sky-blue eyes, blonde hair that curls into Simon Baker ringlets if
he lets it get too long, a body like Chris Hemsworth and a face
like Ryan Kwanten. Even
I
have trouble taking my eyes off of him and our
mothers shared a womb—it’s sick and twisted, I know, but I’ve made
my peace with it.

Right now,
though, I wasn’t making peace with anything, I was on a warpath and
my beloved cousin was about to feel the wrath of a sleep-deprived
girl interrupted.

“God damn
it,” Holly yells as she pulls back the covers and shoves two dry
crackers in her mouth to stave off the morning sickness. It’s
pretty rare for her not to have crackers or another form of baked
goods in her mouth these days. “How is he still finding women to
screw in this town?”

“
I don’t
know. Just be thankful you’re pregnant and unlikely to fall prey,
too.”

“
Yes,
thankful,” Holly mutters caustically. “That’s exactly what I am.
Ana, I don’t know how much longer I can pull off this
I’m-not-pregnant-I’ve-just-eaten-one-too-many-tubs-of-ice-cream
ruse. If Jackson keeps looking at me like he wants to get all up in
this, I’m afraid I’m going to cave and let him bang my brains
out.”

“
You do, and
I will personally shoot both of you. As much as I loathe the
thought of having to see him dragging girls in by the hair at
midnight and tossing them out before the sun comes up, we need him
to move in with us. We won’t make the rent otherwise.”

Holly sighs
and flops back down on the mattress. “How the hell am I going to
live with that?” She gestures to the shared wall between my bedroom
and the bathroom, where we can hear Jackson running the shower, and
then she flings herself out of the bed and dashes for the
door.

“
Where are
you going?”

“
I have to
peeeeeeeee.” She switches her weight from foot to foot and crosses
her legs, one in front of the other, her hand tucked between them
like she’s a little kid. “How is it possible that this kid is the
size of a jellybean—he’s not even a real jellybean yet, he’s like
one of those overpriced Jelly Belly things—and he’s already pushing
on my bladder?”

“
You don’t
know it’s a he,” I reply.

“
Oh, it’s a
he alright. Little punk arse bastard. Only a male would wake me up
this early. He’s banging around in my vagina, Ana. Then he’s going
to tear it up from the inside and stretch it all out of shape so no
man will ever want to look at mummy’s pink bits again. Of course
it’s a male.” She stalks over and bangs on the shared wall. “Only a
male would be that inconsiderate.”

Jackson taps
back in the same spot she had and then we hear his deep chuckle
through the wall. Holly screams and lunges for the door.

“
You can’t go
in there, Hols. Jackson’s in the shower. Naked.”

“
Thank you
for pointing that out, Einstein. I’d wondered how people did this
fancy pants showering thing. God, Ana, I so did not need that image
in my head right now,” she snarks and stalks out of the
room.

“
I meant what
I said,” I yell after her, “keep your horny pregnant vagina in your
knickers!”

I hear the
bathroom door open and then a long relieved groan, which I’m hoping
is just Holly finding relief in the fact that she finally got to
pee, and not something else. I climb out of bed and go in after
her, just to be sure. She’s just standing up and arranging her
pyjamas into place when Jackson pushes the shower curtain back.
“Nice as it was to see your pink bits again, Holly, I don’t
remember there being an open invitation on that door.”

“
Well, if
some jack-arse man-whore didn’t come striding in and waking up the
whole goddamn town before sunrise and then hog the shower and steal
all the hot water before anyone even has a chance to see some I
wouldn’t have to barge in here to pee.”

“
That what’s
wrong here, Holly? You not seeing some?” Like a complete arsehole
he waggles his eyebrows at her.

“
Jackson,
don’t be a dick,” I mutter but neither of them are listening to me;
they’re both too absorbed in this sick little flirty power play
they have going on, and I’m starting to think the three of us
moving in together is going to be a colossally bad idea.

“
Oh, I’m
about to see some,” she declares with a snide smile and turns and
flips the hot water on, causing the pipes to groan and complain and
Jackson to leap out of the shower in all his naked glory to escape
the cold water. I avert my eyes from his very obvious arousal, and
Holly nearly doubles over with laughter. “Why, Jackson, I think
you’re shrinking in your old age.”

Jackson grabs
a towel from the rack and hastily wraps it around his waist as he
grins down at Holly, whose face is so smug it looks like she
swallowed a whole aviary full of canaries.

“
I don’t
recall you having any complaints sweet, sweet Holly,” Jackson
muses, and his smile grows wider. “In fact, I recall you begging me
for more, on your knees, on the bed, in the back of my mum’s car.
And then there was that one time you let me stick it—”

“
Shut up!”
Holly snaps, and her smug smile is completely gone.

“
Maybe the
three of us moving in together isn’t such a good idea,” I
say.

“
Oh, we’re
moving in together,” Holly says and strides defiantly from the
room.

“
Well, I, for
one, can’t wait. Better make sure there’s a sturdy lock for the
bathroom door, though. I’d hate to have my roomies walk in on me
while I’m bludgeoning the beefsteak.”

“
Gah! You’re
such a pig!” Holly calls out.

“
Oink,” he
shouts back, and I hear my bedroom door slam.

“
Why do you
have to provoke her?”

“
Because
she’s so much fun to poke,” he laughs and then deadpans. “Oops, I
mean provoke.”

I quietly
close the bathroom door and lower my voice, “She’s in a vulnerable
place right now, could you lay off for just five minutes?
Please?”

“
Why is she
vulnerable? Don’t tell me some guy finally managed to locate her
cold, black heart and break it in two?”

“
Do you ever
get tired of being such a complete tool, Jackson?”

He makes a
show of thinking about that and then smirks down at me. “Nope.
Never.”

“
Lay off,” I
say and walk back to the door. “I mean it. She’s not up for your
stupid playboy power trip right now.”

Jackson’s
brows knit together and he frowns. “Wait. You’re really serious,
aren’t you?”

“
As a heart
attack.”

“
What’s wrong
with her?” he whispers, and I can see the worry behind his clear
blue eyes. They can pretend to hate each other all they want, but
Holly and Jackson don’t have anyone fooled. In their own weird,
twisted way they actually care for one another. Which makes them
moving in together the most horrendous idea I’ve ever had. “She’s
not sick, is she?”

Both our mums
died of cancer before they could see out their fiftieth birthday,
so it’s not unexpected that he’d jump to that conclusion before
anything else. Losing more loved ones to the big C was my biggest
fear in life, too.

“
She’s not
sick, and it’s not my place to tell you. Just please, go easy on
her.” I gesture to his half-naked body. “She doesn’t need to be
distracted by all this.”

“
Hey, I can’t
help it if she’s gagging for—”

“
Jackson
Rowe, so help me god, if you finish that sentence I will tell every
available woman in this town that you have the clap and you will
never get laid again.”

“
Okay, okay.”
He holds his hands up in surrender. “Geez, when did you girls get
so fucking uptight?”

“
The moment
we started trusting guys like you,” I retort and perform a little
of my own slamming doors routine.

Chapter Thirty
One

Elijah

I press the
plastic prison phone to my ear and listen for someone to pick up. I
know it won’t be the voice I want to hear. She won’t pick up the
phone and be excited to hear my voice, and she won’t whisper that
she misses me into the receiver, probably ever again, but that
doesn’t stop me from praying to whatever god, entity, or chasm of
void space out there watching over us to let it be her.

The phone’s
been ringing too long. If no-one picks up then I’ve officially
wasted my six minutes, though it’s not like I have anyone else to
call.

It’s a
miracle the club haven’t found me on the inside, though most of our
guys would have been sent to a Sydney lock up. The Bandidos chapter
in Byron means there’s a few blokes from our rival MC stationed
here at Grafton prison, and I’m thanking fuck right now that no one
but the cops know I’m the son of a Hell’s Angels Sergeant-At-Arms.
I have just one and a half months to make it through before parole.
Just one and a half months and I’ll be able to see her face
again.

Just when I
think the phone’s about to cut out I hear someone snatch up the
receiver and say hello. It’s the voice I wanted to hear, though she
sounds annoyed and she’s breathing heavily, like she just ran for
the phone. I get lost in the steady rhythm of her breath,
remembering how she used to look when my hands and tongue were the
cause of her breathlessness.