8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Alison was working out. Her ex-husband had been the one to install the little gym off the side of the garage and now Alison took a grim kind of pleasure in knowing it was his investment that allowed her to grow stronger.
She’d always kept to a gym routine; it was part and parcel of the whole society wife expectation, right along with the spa days and hair appointments. She’d seriously considered letting the whole thing slide after her husband let down his side of the bargain, but she’d found that not only was her pride too strong, but at least some parts of her lifestyle were, at heart, for herself.
Exercise was one of them. Where once she’d fretted over keeping her abdomen trim or her legs taut, now she only thought in terms of strength and longevity. She’d outlast that fucking bastard if it killed her; there was no way she’d abandon her son to his clutches by anything as prosaic as a goddamned heart attack. No, Alison was going to be harder to dispose of than that, of that she was adamant.
Besides, she reflected, if Hope’s wandering gaze was any indicator, the side effect was that her legs were still absolutely benefiting.
Alison towelled the sweat from her forehead and began to stretch. If cooling down was her aim, thinking about the frank lust Hope had radiated toward her was probably not the way to go about it, but four days later, she found the recollection hadn’t lost an ounce of heat.
That morning she’d finally given in and touched herself as she lay tangled in her bedsheets. The whole experience was so deeply unexpected: the bold desire in those warm eyes, the deliberately teasing glimpses of intensely feminine curves, Hope’s easy sensuality all pointed directly at Alison, for Alison. Even in Alison’s discomfort and bemusement, she’d been sharply aware that sitting across from Hope, right there at the table, she’d gotten wet.
It was a discovery she really didn’t want to fully face. The younger woman hadn’t let her hide from it though, lightly observing Alison’s guilty gaze with clear pleasure. Had Hope been wet? For her? Oh god, Alison had come hard against her fingers at the very thought of it.
Which was why she’d fled for the gym to work out even harder. None of this was in the plan. Alison was too damaged, too late, too dangerous, too everything to let herself pretend she could let go and pursue something so misguided. Even though Hope’s little intake of breath as Alison had bid her goodnight had made it stomach-clenchingly clear to her just how good letting go might feel.
God. Alison met her own eyes in the mirror that her husband had installed to admire himself as he built muscle to ensnare the wife of a killer. Hope had declared she was going to be Alison’s friend. Alison was quite sure that if Hope knew what was good for her, she should run as fast and far as she could.
Harry had come up for the weekend again. Ever faithful, he’d come every weekend since Alison’s panicked call after her run-in at the lake. She knew that he’d be there for her every weekend in the future, possibly forever, as long as he knew she needed him.
Theirs was the most unexpected of friendships. She’d been not quite twenty-two years old, a law student, discovering herself to be pregnant that morning, then almost disassociating with stress on her first day of an internship. The lawyer she’d been assigned to follow had been wildly unimpressed with the pale, almost non-verbal young woman who’d arrived just barely on time, despite the rumours already flaring about exactly who she was connected to.
Harry had been the barrister who’d swooped in to wrest Alison away from his colleague’s berating, recognising the white-lipped signs of an impending panic attack and tucking her in his office out of sight of the circling vultures. Already in his forties, on the cusp of partnership, he’d asked his secretary to hold his calls and with a deft, ironic touch, neatly wrought her confession .
Pregnant by her married law professor. That was where her legal career almost began and almost ended. Oh, the excruciating cliche she had been too young to understand she’d been.
Simon Hartmann had been the crush of every law student. Debonair, achingly handsome, already so celebrated. He was only a part-time professor; the rest of his career was as partner of his own firm, fighting for justice on behalf of those who’d been wronged by the system. He was young for the list of achievements he held: thirty-nine and heartbreakingly heroic. He was incredibly cerebral, his lectures both dense with theory and peppered with exciting anecdotes from his performances in the courtroom.
Alison had been sideswiped when he’d met her eyes one day on the way out of class and had visibly lost his breath. It all started so slowly, because Simon, of course, was incredibly upright and deeply principled. He was acutely aware of the ethical implications, of the power differential, of his responsibilities to his marriage, and the implications for her as his student. But oh, the explosive pain of such longing. Alison had been on fire at her sudden attainment of power, bringing such a serious and important man to his knees with nothing more than stolen glances and a bitten lower lip.
One day, as the lecture theatre still slowly emptied around them, he’d whispered to her, just out of earshot of the other students, his voice cracking with desperation as he told her he couldn’t stop thinking about her, that he was driven mad by wanting to touch her, that he couldn’t think straight when she was near him. She’d wrecked him, just by her presence .
Three days later, gasping and trembling, Alison had let him take her, riding him with shocked desperation on the floor beside his desk in his huge corner office, overwhelmed by the passion of being so needed that Simon Hartmann would risk everything, just to be inside her.
Afterwards he’d held her, his eyes wet, telling her he’d fucked up his whole life, because Alison was all he needed. Nothing that felt like this could ever be wrong, she had to understand. He was so trapped by his circumstances, but now that he’d tasted her, he’d do anything to keep seeing her. He was already hard again, Alison molten from his ardent need for her.
For three months, they’d pretended not to know each other in public, while in private he was risking every chance he could. Once he’d even fucked her in the hall closet at a law school function, his hand over her mouth to quiet her, as students and professors milled past the door, her orgasm frantic from the risk of exposure.
And then this. Two lines on a pregnancy test.
Harry had listened. He’d patted her shoulder while she cried and handed her tissue after tissue.
“Men,” he’d said, as she’d almost choked on her own snot. “Disgusting animals, every last one of them. Don’t look like that darling, you’re not to be ashamed. If I could get pregnant I’d have been knocked up a thousand times and that’s just this week. Now what would you like to do? ”
He’d offered to accompany her to an abortion provider, but despite her politics and personal beliefs, Catholic school had pummelled its way into her subconscious. Or perhaps, even then, even on a basic cellular level, she’d felt Jac’s presence and wanted him despite everything. Or maybe - Alison still hated herself when she thought of it now - maybe young Alison imagined that she’d found the only way to make Simon really hers.
And so Harry had marched with her across town, straight into Hartmann & Hungerford, all the way into Simon’s office. He’d made Alison wait outside, momentarily, and to this day she had no idea what he’d said, unable to hear anything other than the harsh tones of short sharp conversation that ended with Simon ripping open his door and tugging her into her arms.
“Darling, ” he’d said. “Oh baby. Oh, what have I done to you?”
Within six months, he was divorced and they were married. Barely eight weeks later they were parents. Alison, perhaps because of the scandal in which she’d swooped in and nabbed one of the most powerful men in the business, was embraced with exuberance by the other society wives. It was as if she were a worthy foe to be respected, rather than a terrified, twenty-two-year-old, brand new mother, with no life experience, fast fading friendships with women her own age and a husband who kept her neatly on a pedestal while his own life remained busy and intact.
Harry, though, was with her every step of the way. At first, he was like a fond uncle, watching Simon’s every move with a jaded, protective eye. He brought her a present as well as the baby the first time he’d come to visit them. He’d immediately assessed her isolation in her vast new home in Toorak and suddenly, there he was: one day burping a grizzling baby against his shoulder so Alison could take a shower, the next week passing her cabbage leaves from the fridge to tuck into her bra against the red hot pain in her left breast.
“I’ve got sisters, darling,” he explained without so much as blinking as he helped her latch her baby to her ravaged nipple. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Honestly, I’m practically a midwife.”
When, slowly, Alison finally grew up, they became equals. He was her fierce advocate, and she was his. Harry’s propensity for romantic drama knew no bounds and she deeply adored that every damn time, he thought it might be love. Simon actively disliked him, which, she realised later, was yet another one of his bright red flags. It was deeply mutual.
“He’s an absolute shit, my darling,” Harry validated her repeatedly almost twenty years later. “He was born a shit and he’ll die a shit. If you’d been a grown-ass woman when you’d met him you’d have slapped his face and kicked him in the dick. Don’t be ashamed, my love. I believed Nathaniel when he said I was the one and I was fifty-seven. Would you like another margarita? ”
Harry had been caught off guard that past weekend, when out of nowhere, as they tripped down Gold Hill’s main street on the way to brunch, Alison had flung her arms around him and kissed his craggy cheek. Despite their long intimacy she wasn’t an especially cuddly human .
“Harry. I love you, you know that?”
“Settle down, my love. What’s happening? Not seeing rogue henchmen in the front garden again are we?” He sounded worried.
“No,” she denied, shaking off the thought with a slight chill. “But there’s nothing like a brush with the Grants to remind you that life is tenuous. You’re the love of my life, quite frankly, so I thought I should tell you that.”
“I knew this would happen eventually,” he sighed. “Though I didn’t think it would take twenty years . Sweet girl, you’re very beautiful - honestly, I’ve always thought so - but you’re rather lacking in the goods I need to be satisfied.”
Out of absolutely nowhere, the image of the soft swell of Hope’s bare breast made her lose her breath.
“I’m afraid, Harry, that so are you,” she said neatly and he gasped in desperate offence.
“How dare you?” he exclaimed. The two of them squabbled all the way into the cafe.
She didn’t tell him what she’d really meant though.