Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Isabelle looks up at me, eyes full of patience and safety. I take a deep breath, reminding myself of all the ways Isabelle has opened up to me over the last few months. I can do this with her. But I also need to do this for myself.
“We were twenty-one. August’s dad wasn’t really in the picture, but he showed up every few years, and it always ended in a fight between his parents, with Evelyn yelling at him that he was either in or out of their lives.
I was at his house when his dad rocked up.
His sister, Kit, took off to a friend’s house, so I told August I’d take him somewhere if he wanted as well.
He grabbed a bottle of tequila from the house as we left, and we drove to one of the lookouts on top of Nowra Hills, where you could look down at the city.
He drank, and I stayed sober to look after him.
I didn’t realise how much he’d drunk. I thought he was just sipping at the bottle, but then it all seemed to hit him at once, and he was slurring and swaying and getting so mad, but I just let him get it out.
Then Kit called. She had gone to some party with a friend, and a guy was being a bit too forward and kept following her around, so she wanted us to pick her up.
We told her to stay with a group of people she trusted until we got there, and it was all fine, but Kit and August started fighting in the car as we were driving back to my house.
I couldn’t concentrate, and August took his seatbelt off. ”
I stop, eyes blinking up at the ceiling, needing a moment to rein in the emotions before they hit breaking point.
Maybe she can sense how hard this is for me.
How raw it still feels. I try to speak again, the words locked in my throat, until something crosses her face.
She puts a finger to my lips, before she slowly pulls off her mask.
“I don’t remember my birth dad,” she starts.
“I was three when my mum finally reached the point where she couldn’t take the abuse anymore, feeling brave enough to press charges and overcome the fear of his retaliation.
He beat her so badly, she had to call an ambulance.
Before that, she always tended to the injuries herself.
When help arrived, they took one look at my mum, the carnage around our house, and called the authorities.
My sisters and I were in foster care for six weeks while Mum got a lawyer, thanks to Life Vine, and did everything she could to prove we were safe with her.
I don’t really remember anything from that time.
Chelsea remembers a little, but I’ve lived with watching my mum fight those dark days, those moments where she forgets that she doesn’t have a reason to be scared anymore.
I guess that’s why I always try to be open and honest with people.
You never know what kind of life they’re surviving, they’re rewriting, but everyone needs a safe space.
Sometimes they can’t be that for themselves, but I can be. ”
I can feel my eyes prickle and well with every word.
“I’ll be your safe space, Gage.”
Her own bravery to navigate life as it comes—to hold the good tight with both hands, but equally hold the harder parts, the darker ones, with a more gentle acceptance—encourages me. I reach for my own mask, and as I pull it off, it feels as though the tethers that had me bound to my guilt loosen.
“I was trying to pull August back in his seat. Shouting at him to sit down properly, to put his seatbelt back on. I took my eyes off the road for one second. One. And I missed the car crossing the intersection into our lane. He hit my side of the car, but August, he went straight through the windshield, cos he didn’t have his fucking belt on. ”
A defiant tear slips down my cheek. Isabelle looks pained as she lets hers flow freely.
“It wasn’t your fault, you have to know that,” she says fiercely.
I tighten my hold on her as I lose my internal battle. Emotions spill faster than I can holster them.
A soft hand rests over my jaw, ushering my eyes to hers, and she sweeps her thumb under them. “Tell me you know that,” she demands, then whispers, “Tell me, Grim.”
My heart feels like lead. “It wasn’t my f-fault.”
A quick, soft kiss is pressed to my lips. “Say it again.”
The tightening in my gut releases, my limbs regaining feeling after being locked up so tight with the memories of August. My breath shudders as I draw it in and say the words again. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Isabelle’s fingers run through my hair before she pulls my lips to hers. The soft touch holds me, the orange and rose of her perfume bleeds into my pores as if I can steal her calm and call it my own.
Why doesn’t anything feel as heavy when she’s near? It’s almost like I can see her light as it breaks through the dark shell of my mind, reaching in to pull me to the surface. She shatters the barricade as much as she enforces the armour. “Can I take you somewhere?”
***
With one hand on Isabelle’s thigh, we drive to the cemetery where August is buried. She rests a hand on top of mine, lacing her fingers through, grazing her thumb over my knuckles as she stares out the window.
I don’t think she realises how her presence settles me. I can’t explain it, but it’s something that has slowly built ever since the weekend a few months ago in Royal Harbour. Speaking of.
“Hey, do you remember much about Royal Harbour?”
She chuckles, turning her head to look at me. “You mean how we fell asleep on the plane?”
I clear my throat, straightening in my seat. “Ah, not quite.” I quickly look over at her, then back at the road. “The night we went out drinking.”
“Oh my god!” She laughs. “I’ve never drunk so much in my life. I felt so rotten the next day.”
“Well, we kinda talked a lot that night.”
“I do remember that,” she says softly. “You pretended I was your girlfriend.”
“Do you remember me giving you a piggyback ride?”
She jerks up. “What? No!”
“You remember me helping you to bed?”
“Oh, no. Is this about to get embarrassing? Maybe it’s best if you don’t tell me.”
I laugh, bringing her hand to mine and kissing the back before setting it on her thigh again.
“I put you to bed, went back to my room, but it turned out we had adjoining rooms. You came in looking for the bathroom, so I helped you back to bed, but then you asked me to stay.”
She gasps. “Did we have sex?”
“What?” It’s my turn to be shocked. “Of course not. I’d never do that. We just cuddled and went to sleep. In fact, with you is the only time I do sleep.”
She says nothing, making me nervous as I quickly glance over at her, trying to gauge her feelings.
“I thought I could smell you.” The words are wistful and far away. “I thought you had embedded yourself in my skin somehow. I felt so foolish. All morning, I had my nose tucked into the neck of my jumper, trying to smell you on me. It was the only thing helping to keep the nausea at bay.”
My heart settles, and I relax back in my seat. “Thank fuck. I could smell you on me for the rest of that day. I didn’t even want to shower.” I bite my lip, then sheepishly add, “I liked having your perfume around me.”
“I’ve had a crush on you ever since that weekend,” she says.
“Me?”
“Yes,” she says with a laugh.
“You should know, when we fell asleep on the plane, we ended up cuddling again, and Beth got it on camera.”
Isabelle shrieks, “I knew she was suspicious.”
“Of us sleeping together?”
“I don’t know, but I’m certain she at least suspects we both like each other.”
“I do like you,” I tell her as we pull through the cemetery gates. Normally, this place has me feeling weighed down with chains, but having Isabelle here, talking to her, they don’t feel quite as heavy.
“I like you too.”
I stop my ute on the side of the road closest to August, and quickly hop out of the car to get to Isabelle’s door. She’s already jumping down from the cab when I get there.
“Hey.” I cage her against the door. “Next time, let me get the door, okay?” I tuck her curls behind her ear, loving the feel of them over my fingers.
“You planning on getting my door often?” she sasses, resting her hands against my chest. Can she feel how fast and hard my heart is beating against her palms?
“If you’ll let me.”
She nods, and I pick up her hands, kiss her fingers, then guide us over to where August rests. Jesus, it’s like I can’t stop touching her now that she’s letting me.
I drop down to the grass, and she follows.
“August was my first real friend. My brothers are my best friends, but in school, other kids either didn’t like me because they assumed I was some stuck-up rich kid, or they were trying to get something out of me.
It was hard to determine who was a real friend, so I stopped trying.
He was the first person to start calling me Gage.
I walked into the library at lunch and sat down.
A few minutes later, he dropped into the chair opposite me and said, ‘Dude, you good?’”
I chuckle. “I guess I’ve always come across as a bit of a grump.”
Isabelle squeezes my bicep, looking up at me with a sweet smile, giving me the strength to continue.
“I gave him a nod and nothing else, so he started telling me about the book he was reading, and took up the whole lunch time. When the bell rang, he said, ‘I’m August Benedict Carlisle, the third.’ I thought it was a bit weird, but I copied him and said, ‘I’m Henry Gage Heart.
’ And he was my best friend ever since.”
My fingers run over the lines of the rose tattoo on top of my hand as my eyes flick up to where his name is etched into the stone.
“I’ve been going to therapy since it happened.
Trying all sorts of things to move past my guilt.
Volunteering. Helping keep people safe. Keeping myself busy and in control has helped.
But I guess I don’t really smile and count myself lucky that I’m still here like I should.
” I run a hand down my face, blowing out a frustrated breath.
“It’s just that every time I do, I feel guilty that I’m here and August isn’t. ”
“But it was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.” Isabelle’s words are full of fight and determination.
My eyes well up as the words slam into me. “I know. I do. I’ve heard it so many different ways over the years, and little by little, the words become more true. But it’s always felt like the last hurdle—I keep trying to get over, but I stumble right at the finish line.”
“Just because he’s not here doesn’t mean you can’t remember him with happiness.”
“I’ve just felt so undeserving of good things, and scared that I wouldn’t be able to protect the next person I loved. It was like a compulsion—I had to protect them. I had to keep them safe.”
“It’s not your job, Gage. Some things just happen. It can’t stop you from living your life.”
I look over at her and rest a hand on her cheek. “Meeting you is the first time I’ve felt excited about life in a long time.”
She melts against my palm, then leans in and kisses me softly before laying her head against my shoulder. “Tell me more about him.”
So I do. I tell her everything about him.
The way he would drop random facts into conversations.
The way he got so worked up over pulp in orange juice.
I don’t think anything else in life made him so mad.
Not even his dad’s absence. He just hated the way it pissed off his mum and stopped her from being able to move on.
I told Isabelle about the effortless way he would flit in and out of conversations with people. He was a social butterfly, but he kept his loyalty and heart for those he was closest to.
Isabelle laughs until her stomach hurts when I tell her the story of when August and I made pot brownies and his mum accidentally ate one. I still don’t think she knows what happened.
Then there was the time August was trying to impress a girl at school who said her favourite smell was lavender.
Turns out, August was allergic to lavender, something he found out after using scented soap on his face.
He turned up at school with red splotches over his cheeks, and one puffed-up eye.
Even I laughed recounting the story of him running up to me in a panic, asking if there was something in his eye, cos it had been itching since he left home.
The guy looked like he had the worst case of pink eye.
Safe to say, he never hooked up with that girl.
It’s the first time I’ve been able to talk about August with any semblance of happiness. And with every story I tell, I can feel the darkness fading, lending itself to the light. The light that Isabelle brings.
Now that I’ve had it, I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to go back to the darkness. I want to keep living in her light. That’s where she is. That’s where August is. It feels like I can have a home here, too.