Chapter 20 #2
“I’m going to go get them tonight,” Missy was saying in his ear. “They’ve already done one night on those fold-up cots and Mum says her back is killing her.” Steen had slipped a disc a few years ago and hadn’t fully recovered. She barely slept through the night in her own bed.
“Okay.” Justin nodded. “Want me to come with you?”
“Nah, there won’t be enough room in the car. I’ll go, and then… Well, I figured they could stay with us. At our place, I mean. I’d go to Beth’s to free up a bed. And since the couch isn’t really big enough to sleep on, is there somewhere you can go?”
“Um…” Justin thought. Ricky and Matty shared a small flat in Redfern, and he could crash on their couch.
But god, his entire body was aching for a bed right now.
He couldn’t impose on Marcus and Heather, not when they had a baby to deal with.
Alice and Izzy’s place would be empty. Perhaps he could get a hold of Alice and ask if she had a spare key stashed somewhere?
Had she become that kind of friend on this tour?
He must have been silent for a little too long, because Missy gave an impatient sigh. “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Just trying to think.” But thinking was so hard right now.
His brain felt waterlogged, overloaded by fatigue and fear.
He itched to get up and pace the aisle of the plane, but they were all the way back in row 53, and besides, after all these hours scrunched in a plane seat, his legs felt almost too stiff to carry him.
“Okay, let me know when you’ve figured something out,” Missy replied briskly. “I’m going to grab some stuff from the flat and then get on the road. I’ll be there in a few hours and we’ll call when we’re on our way back to the city. Sound good?”
Justin ran his hand through his hair again. “Sounds good. Drive safe. I’ll… figure something out.”
The call dropped, and Justin put the phone back in his lap.
“What’s going on?” Ivy asked.
“Their houses. Gone.”
“Oh, god. I’m so sorry.”
He nodded in acknowledgement, but he couldn’t accept her sympathy at the moment.
He felt as though, if he took it in, if he really held on to it, he’d break down right here on the plane.
“My parents and my aunt are going to stay at our place until they can go home. I’m trying to figure out a place to sleep.
I’m going to try to get a hold of Alice,” he went on vaguely, but he stopped when he saw the way Ivy was looking at him, her face awash with warmth and tenderness.
He’d seen that look before, when he’d ventured cautiously through the adjoining door and told her the truth about why he’d refused to apologize to a bully.
It had been the moment he’d truly understood that Poison Ivy, the woman he’d thought was cold and pitiless, was more compassionate and protective than he could have fathomed.
She looked up at him—looked into him, it felt like.
As though she could see all his guilt, and his fear, and his desperate need to know that his home was safe, and his equally strong desire to never set foot in the place ever again.
“Stay with me,” she said. The words were quiet, but matter of fact.
“What?” Around them, their colleagues were packing up their stuff, eager to stand and deplane, but he kept his voice low in case someone heard them.
“Stay with me,” she said more quietly, and with less certainty this time.
She raised her eyebrows in insistence, or perhaps in self-doubt.
“If you want to, I mean. If you don’t have anywhere else to go.
We can even stop by your place and get you some clean clothes and whatever else you need.
And obviously we’re tired and you’re upset and we don’t need to…
do anything.” He didn’t say anything, and she kept talking, sounding less and less sure of herself as more and more words spilled out of her.
She must have been tired, too, because she was not her usual certain, incontrovertible self.
“It wouldn’t have to be for a long time, I mean, your parents won’t have to stay at your place forever, will they? ”
Justin managed a small smile. He had to put her out of her misery. “I have somewhere else I can go,” he said, voice still low. And it was true, he did.
She gave a little nod of assent. “Right. Of course you do, I just thought I’d offer, in case—”
“But I want to come home with you.”
Ivy shouldn’t feel strange about having Justin Winters in her home.
He’d been here before, after all, she told herself, as she dug her keys from the bottom of her bag and unlocked the front door.
They pulled their suitcases in behind them, the silence between them awkward and heavy as the humid March air that had greeted them as soon as they’d left the terminal and headed for the cab rank.
But this time was different. When he’d come here a few weeks ago to all but beg for her help, he’d been her enemy.
Or at best, a grudging colleague who barely tolerated her.
Now he was… what was he, exactly? What was it that they’d agreed to that final night in New York City, tangled up in hotel sheets and each other?
Ivy didn’t know for sure. All she knew was that on the plane this morning, when he’d gotten off the phone from his cousin, Justin had looked lost. And that the sight of him afraid and at loose ends had made her heart twist in her chest. There was nothing she could do about the fires that had engulfed his hometown and left his family without a place to live.
But if crashing at her place—and they truly would be crashing, because good lord, she was so, so tired—could make him feel a little less lost, then of course he should come home with her.
In the cab on the way back to her place, he’d told her what they knew so far.
The town had been hit hard and lots of structures hadn’t survived.
His family and many of their friends were in a shelter in a mountain town, with their pets and whatever belongings they’d managed to fit into their go bags and shove into their vehicles before fleeing.
The fire had swept through after nightfall, so they’d had to evacuate in the dark.
For some reason, Ivy had shuddered when he’d told her that.
Something about fleeing your own home under cover of darkness, because it was too dangerous to wait for morning, made something cold and prickly skitter down the back of Ivy’s neck.
She’d thought of her grandfather, as she had so often lately.
He’d never told her about the day he’d fled his childhood home in Vienna—or had it been at night?
She didn’t know. He’d only ever said that the train spirited him out of the country, like it did for so many other children.
His story always began there, with the train.
Perhaps he didn’t remember the details of leaving his home for the last time.
Perhaps he remembered them and couldn’t bear to talk about them.
However it had happened—daytime, nighttime—Ivy knew he must have been terrified.
“Shower and nap,” she groaned, abandoning her suitcase in the living room and flopping down onto the couch.
“Shower and nap,” he agreed. He didn’t join her on the couch, just stood next to his suitcase, a little stiff despite his obvious fatigue, and looked around the room.
Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who felt it was a little weird having him here.
But this was what I want more of you meant, wasn’t it?
Or maybe he’d meant “let’s go on more dates” and not “I’ll basically move in with you the second we land”?
“Any preference on the order?” she asked.
“Shower first, I think,” he said on a yawn. “The trick with coming back from tour is to stay awake all day if you can and go to bed at a normal bedtime, to kick the jetlag.”
“There’s no way I’m”—Justin’s yawn was contagious—“staying awake until a normal bedtime.”
“Mmm,” he said distractedly, pulling his phone from his back pocket and checking it for the hundredth time since they’d gotten off the plane.
Ivy felt awful all of a sudden. Of course he wouldn’t be able to sleep when he and his family were still waiting on news about their home, their neighbours, their town.
“Spare towels are on the shelf over the toilet,” she said. “I’m going to go lie down.”
He nodded, and once he’d disappeared into the bathroom, she pulled off her boots, heaved herself on the couch, and fell into bed.
When she woke up, it took a few minutes to remember where she was.
Home in bed, the midday summer light sharp and bright even with the blinds closed.
She lay there, eyes closed, and listened as a bus trundled by on its way to Coogee Beach.
She’d missed that light, and the relative quiet of this place.
As thrilling as New York City had been, perhaps Justin was right that it was a bit too much to handle for more than a week or two at a time.
It was true that the city seemed to pulse with a unique, exhilarating energy.
But in return, it seemed to have sapped all of hers.
She rolled over, realizing as she did that she hadn’t even made it under the covers before passing out, and she was still in the clothes she’d worn on the plane.
Yawning, she opened her eyes, and froze.
Justin was lying on top of the covers next to her, back propped against the headboard, his bare feet crossed at the ankles and his phone held loosely in his hand.
His hair was damp and tousled, as though he’d rubbed the towel over his head when he got out of the shower and not bothered to go digging in his bag for a comb to marshal it into order.
He was also looking directly at her. No, watching her. Had he been watching her sleep? She put a hand to her mouth quickly. Had she been drooling? It had definitely felt like one of those deep, drooly sleeps.
“Hi,” she croaked, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, a soft smile warming his gaze and wrapping around the word.
“Any news?” She gestured at his phone.
“Everyone’s safe and accounted for. A few more of them showed up at the evacuation centre just as Mum and Shane and Steen were leaving with Missy.”
“Thank god,” Ivy sighed.
“Yeah. Still no word on the fire. They might have it under control by now, but it could also be worse if the winds shifted again. Still no answers about when they can go back. But they got to our place about an hour ago and Missy’s getting them settled in.”
Ivy looked up at him, eyes wide. “Why are you still here? Don’t you want to go see them?”
Justin gave her another one of those soft, warm smiles. “I do. I will. But I didn’t want to leave while you were sleeping. And I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked so peaceful.”
Ivy scoffed. “You mean I looked so zonked?” But hopefully not drooly. Please, god.
Justin chuckled. “Okay, yeah. Zonked. But in a peaceful sort of way.”
Ivy swiped her fingers around her mouth again, just to be sure.
“Anyway, I do want to head over there now.”
“Of course. I’ll get you a spare key so you can let yourself in whenever you get back.”
“Sounds good. But first, could I…” He trailed off, and she looked up at him questioningly. “Could I, um, hold you?”
His voice was low and hopeful, and Ivy’s stomach swooped at the sound of it.
He looked at her, his eyes a dark mottled blue in the light that had snuck in around the blinds.
Puffy and a little bloodshot, but beautiful.
And full of a vulnerability she wouldn’t have imagined possible all those weeks ago when all she knew about him was that he had perfect, eloquent feet and a penchant for expressing himself with his fists.
They’d never simply held each other in New York, not without having sex first. As far as Ivy could remember, no man had ever wanted this—and only this—from her.
She nodded, and he shifted down the bed until he was lying next to her.
Silently, she started to turn her body, planning to give him her back so he could spoon her.
But he put his hand on her ribcage to stop her from turning over, and instead, pulled himself towards her until her feet met his.
Then he ran his hand up the centre of her back and pulled her closer, wrapping his forearm around her shoulders until her head rested against his chest. She could feel his heart thudding beneath her ear and the muscles of his chest expanding with his breaths.
She nestled in further still, and he answered the movement with a contented little huff, something between a hum and a sigh.
I want more of this, she thought, allowing her hand to drift to the middle of his back.
She traced her fingers up and down the deep, muscular channel of his spine, slow and steady movements that, without her meaning to, fell into step with the rhythm of his pulse.
They’d never danced together, not even at the cocktail party that final night in New York, when there’d been a band and a dance floor.
And of course, Ivy was too far removed from her ballet training to imagine that attempting a pas de deux with him would be anything other than abject humiliation.
But no matter how long it had been since she last lined up at the barre, Ivy was a dancer first. And here, in her bed, with Justin’s head on her pillow, and hers on his chest, she had a steady beat to move to.
So she moved, sliding her fingers over the fabric of his T-shirt.
A small part of her wanted to slide her palm beneath it and stroke his skin, but she knew that what he’d asked for wasn’t sexual.
He made that hum-sigh sound again, adding something of a melody over the rhythm of his pulse.
He’d sounded so vulnerable when he’d asked to hold her, and now she realized he hadn’t managed to ask out loud for what it was he truly wanted.
His body gave him away, though. He’d wanted her to hold him.
She started awake to the sound of a phone ringing, and a second later felt Justin’s body jolt beneath her. Rolling away from him, she saw him fumbling for his phone and a second later the ringing stopped.
“Sorry,” he said groggily into the phone as soon as he answered it. “I’m coming right home. Yeah, now. I fell asleep.”
She looked up at him and gave him an apologetic little smile, but she wasn’t all that sorry. They’d fallen asleep holding each other, and she knew—a knowledge that was already carved into her, like the lyrics of her favourite showtunes—that it wouldn’t be the last time.