Chapter 28
Hayden
The night before
I looked up from the TV when I heard a car pull into the driveway. It was late, but sleep wasn’t going to come, not when Hunter was out with Jamie. The same hot, spiky feeling that tied my guts in knots when I saw my girl walk in with Brock’s arm around her had me shifting restlessly on the couch. I wasn’t watching the show that was on, couldn’t even tell you what the plot was or even what genre, because my entire focus was on my brother’s car. I took another sip of a beer I’d been nursing for hours when Hunter walked in.
You didn’t get to see him in a bad mood often, but when he entered the house, he had a face like a thunderstorm. A dark, shitty part of myself was elated. The date had gone badly. Jamie didn’t want Hunt, but hot on the heels of that came guilt.
And worry.
“What happened?” I asked, setting the beer down on the coffee table.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He stomped over to the fridge and grabbed a beer, but I was there to snatch it out of his hand. “What the f?—?”
“What happened,” I repeated, more forcefully.
“It was a disaster, alright?” His eyes flashed as he stared into mine. “I fucked up.”
No, no, my head shook from side to side.
“What did you do, Hunter?” He went to walk away from me, but my arm shot out. I watched his eyes narrow, then refocus back on me. My brother was always the one who started fights, but not this time. “What. Did. You. Do?”
A cruel smile twisted his lips and I hoped like hell I never looked like this. Hard. Brittle.
“Something special, I thought,” he replied. “The dinner, the dress.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if she was going to like those things, but I had to try and do something nice.” My brother stepped closer, making clear he’d knock my arm away if I didn’t drop it, but I wasn’t backing down, not this time. “I’m not like you. I can’t come up with the perfect date, get her laughing, and then claim a kiss as your prize, but I had one thing I knew she’d really want.”
“What…?”
That question felt like it was torn from my chest. I didn’t want to know, not really, because his mistake made sense. He hadn’t crashed and burned by taking Jamie somewhere that made her uncomfortable. It was worse, far worse.
“I told her the truth.” Hunter had said things along these lines before, because my brother was like a child. He just blurted shit out, thinking his little truth bombs were some kind of public service announcement.
“About what?”
But I knew.
“About me, about Brock, about all of us.” All traces of a smile were gone now as my brother stepped up to me, the tension growing by the second. His stare dared me, begged me, to make an issue of this. “About what we’ve all been hiding from her.”
“And why the fuck would you do that?” I snapped. My hand was up and shoving into his chest without thought, the rush I felt when he stumbled back addictive. “Why the hell would you think now was the time to drop that on Jamie?”
“Because I was sick of lying.” As Hunter straightened up I stared him down. “I needed to know. What she was thinking, feeling. That she knew this was real.”
“And how did she react?”
But I knew. I didn’t need to hear my brother say it, nor even try to read his expression, though I did both. I knew, because this was why I’d never said anything before.
“She ran.” His jaw locked tight and he stared me down, as if this was somehow my fucking fault. “She ran and then she rang an Uber, and I assume she went home.”
“You assume? You didn’t bother to find out?”
I was biting off every word now.
“When I tried to come after her, she ran further down the road, and when I called her, she wouldn’t answer,” he replied. “I made sure she got into the Uber safely?—”
“You idiot…” I said that softly, but only at first. “You fucking idiot.” I shoved him again, but this time he locked his knees and refused to be moved. “What the hell did you think was going to happen, Hunt? That you’d take her somewhere swanky and flutter your eyelids at her and all would be well? That all it took was for you to throw some money at her and a pretty face and she’d fall to her knees in gratitude?”
“Hey, my face is your face, remember?”
He tried to smile his way through this, but I wasn’t having it.
“Why didn’t we say anything?” I barked out the question. “Why didn’t Brock? Why did neither of us think to say something to Jamie before this?”
“I dunno, because you’re fucking pussies?” he said with a sneer.
I stood there, stunned, just staring at him, wondering how someone who looked just like me could have no clues whatsoever.
“Because she wasn’t ready.” I stepped back because Hunter was no longer my focus. My phone was snatched up from the coffee table and I was scrolling through my contacts. “Maybe she was never going to be ready, and that’s OK.” I looked up at him when I found Jamie’s contact. “It’s not about us, that’s what Brock and I have always understood, but you haven’t.”
I put through the call, listening to the phone ring, but with each buzz, tension wound tighter inside me. I’d heard horror stories about Uber drivers doing things to women at night, and when it rang out, I knew what I needed to do. I grabbed my keys and headed to the door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Hunter asked, but I let the screen door slam behind me, not stopping until I reached my van. “Hayden? Hayden!”
“What you should’ve.” I climbed inside and started the car, revving the engine before taking off for Jamie’s place.
I rang her number as I wound my way through the streets, but the phone just rang out again and again until finally it only got a few rings in before the call was rejected. My foot pressed down on the accelerator, taking corners with far too much speed, only slowing the engine down to idle when I arrived up her street, because there, under the streetlight, her hair turned to gold, was a familiar figure.
Jamie.
I watched her pay the driver, then pull away, the line of her body telling me everything. She looked done in, holding her slippers in one hand and her phone in the other, so that’s when I called her one last time. My heart was in my throat as I saw her stop, look down at the screen and then move…
To answer it, that’s what I needed. To hear her voice, clear or husky or even choked up. Something. But instead she tapped on the screen and I saw that the call was rejected.
Part of me wanted to feel the same way.
That confronted with the reality of how we felt, she took off, found her own way home and declined any attempt at communication. It wasn’t the way I’d thought tonight would go after that kiss. Because I still felt the imprint of her lips on my mouth, the taste of her on my tongue and that kiss had given me hope.
Only for Hunter to ruin everything.
That wasn’t my focus as she walked up her stairs. My eyes scoured the shadows, searching them for any possible threat, not able to take a full breath until she unlocked her front door and then went inside.
My back pressed against the car seat, the low thrum of the engine feeling like it vibrated all through me as I saw lights flick on, then turn off again until the entire apartment went dark.
She was in bed, alone, that body I’d felt against mine when I kissed her sliding between the sheets. Did she stare at the ceiling and remember as I did when I got home, marching down the hall and disappearing into my bedroom. Did her body throb in response to that memory, aching for more? Did she turn her face and bury it into her pillow, only to dream it was my chest she was lying on, my arm around her, stroking her over and over as she fell into sleep?
But she wouldn’t lie there by herself for long.
My brain let me have a couple of hours sleep, but the cool grey of the early morning greeted me when I opened them again, my heart pounding in my chest. I wouldn’t get any more rest this morning, so I jumped out of bed, checking my phone for replies, messages, and in the absence of them, the time. Just after 6 AM, I couldn’t front up to Jamie’s right now and check to see if she was OK, so I grabbed a towel and my wetsuit off the clothes line before jumping in the van to head down to the beach.
There was always something about the sound of the sea that settled me. That steady hiss, the rhythmic shift of the waves was kinda hypnotising, and plenty of times after a long session as kids, I’d sit there and just watch the ocean, all the angst of being a teenager leaching out of me.
Not now.
I felt flat, empty, hollowed out, somehow having ridden a roller coaster of highs and lows last night, but all of that adrenalin hadn’t had anywhere to go. It’s why I pulled on my wetsuit, then tucked my surfboard under my arm as I ran down to the water line.
Scoop, scoop, my mind was forced to focus on the movements of my body as I paddled out to the break. It shifted with the sway of the waves, rising up and then dipping down over the little ones that broke close to the shore, then my strokes got longer the further out to sea as I joined the line up.
“Eh,” one of the blokes sitting there on his board, waiting for a wave, said with a nod. “Which one we got this morning? The smart arse twin or the moody one.”
“Fuck you, Damo,” I replied, but without any real emotion. Every second I spent on the waves brought with it a strange kind of calm.
“Moody one then,” another bloke said with a sly grin. “Where’s your other half, Hayden?”
“Probably jerking off, calling his own name,” I replied.
That provoked a raucous spray of laughter.
“That why he’s not out here this morning?” Damo replied. “Too busy pretending to be a surfer for the camera but not wanting to mess up his hair with salt and sand?”
My eyes narrowed as I saw a wave approach. It was a decent size, my body already tensing, ready to face it.
“Do you wanna fangirl over my brother or do you wanna fucking take this wave?” I snapped.
Damo grinned, his teeth gleaming white in the growing sunlight, then started to paddle forth.
Men don’t tell other men that they really needed this, that the only time the shit swirling around in their head went quiet was when they were moving, doing the things that made them feel strong, but as we all paddled, I think they felt the same thing. Most of our lives were out of our control, but the waves? We knew how to deal with them.
There was a madness to surfing. Australian seas were wild, untamed things, with rips that’d drag you all the way out to sea if you weren’t careful, and surfers? They raced out to pit themselves against it, because then all that adrenalin had somewhere to go. My body moving, my hands paddling, my whole body dropping down low, as if in recognition of the ocean’s might, then as the wave began to swell, we went with it. Damo went for it first, but he didn’t make it, the sounds of his curses music to my ears as I rose up.
My body, my mind, they worked together, finding the crest of the wave, then my centre of balance. My feet landed on my board, the breeze sending a shiver through me as the water chilled on my skin, but that was all background noise to this. Surfing was just like the sea, full of unpredictable, wild fluid movements, and I did the same, hurtling down the face of the wave, then cutting back when I hit the shoulder.
I didn’t want it to end, this feeling of perfect pleasure. My entire focus was narrowed on prolonging the ride, but that’s not how it worked. One moment I was working with and against the momentum of the wave, then it won, crashing back into the sea and leaving me trailing off into the whitewash. This remained, though–a strange kind of peace that had my heart pounding and my head going quiet.
Which helped me to work out what I needed to do.
I couldn’t control Hunter any more than I could the sea. He’d shoot his mouth off, deliver his ‘truth’ like it was some kind of gift, but that had nothing to do with me. I had to make amends, apologise, explain why we hadn’t been upfront with Jamie, and then… I stared at the waves, the guys all moving in to catch the next wave and the next, and there was a pull in my chest to join them, but I couldn’t.
Then I’d have an answer to the question I’d been silently asking for some time. Was Jamie brave enough to see how good things could be between us? There was only one way to find out.