TWENTY-TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-EIGHT
By the time we make it back to the house, the sky is one giant oil painting made up of smears of pink and orange and soft blue that stretch across the horizon. Everything smells of dust and cattle as the sun lowers.
Luke heads towards the stables to feed the horses and dogs while I make a beeline for the shower then pull on the comfiest clothes I can find – loose track shorts and my last clean t-shirt that says ‘Mediocre at Best’ across the chest.
When I shuffle into the kitchen, I find a tray of pre-made lasagne in the freezer and slide it into the oven. While it starts to heat, I toss together a salad with the enthusiasm of someone who would rather be making cocktails but who is trying to be a functioning adult.
Outside, I hear Luke whistling while the dogs bark and the world turns amber and quiet.
I glance at my phone.
Big mistake.
Twelve missed calls.
Three from my sister. Six from Abbey. One from my hairdresser, weirdly. And the rest? Probably an unpaid phone bill, or the universe reminding me that city life is still sitting there, pouting, waiting for me to come back.
Then come the texts.
Abbey:
Bitch, wtf?
Ella told me everything. You better give me all the juicy
details when you get back
Are you coming back?
Alright, if you don’t answer me then I’m breaking into your
apartment and taking back that retinol serum I gave you
I huff a laugh and text back:
Joke’s on you, I brought the retinol with me
I’ll call you later x
Then one from Ella, sweet and cautious.
Hope everything’s ok?
I reply with a simple:
Yes mum.
After that, I make the mistake of swiping down and opening my inbox.
Seventy-three unread emails.
Most of them from work. A few flagged URGENT. I don’t open them. I don’t even skim. I go full nuclear and fire off a message to my boss, telling him that I’m taking a few more days off before I mute the entire app.
A Tinder notification pops up next – some guy holding a fish. Of course.
I swipe it away and open Safari instead. I’m not even sure why. My fingers move before I can overthink it, typing in a series of search terms.
Australian farming grants 2025
Drought co-ops rural NT
Weather forecast Northern Territory
The links load slowly. The pages blur together – jargon, application forms, PDFs with tables and charts. I keep scrolling.
Then my phone vibrates with another text.
Dylan.
I blink. Didn’t expect that.
Hey!
Most of our hemp comes from Tassie, but we’re definitely looking for more farmers to join the supply side.
NT’s actually a great climate for hemp – long growing season, loads of sun.
We’ve got someone up there right now going through the licence process.
If Luke wants to talk to them, I can send over the guy’s details?
I chew my lip, staring at the screen. Part of me feels a pinch of guilt – as if he’s clocked that I’m still hanging around the guy he found me hooking up with in a kitchen.
Yet there’s no bitterness in the message.
It’s just Dylan being … perfect. Earnest. Helpful.
Maybe relieved that my chaos is now at arm’s length.
I type back quickly, before I can spiral.
Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.
Then a shadow falls across my shoulder.
I jolt, looking up to find Luke leaning in the doorway, damp hair curling slightly around his ears, clean shirt clinging to his collarbone.
He’s holding a VB. His face is all sunshine and playful smugness.
‘What’re you looking at, Wikipedia?’
I slam my phone face down on the counter as if it’s contraband. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
I nod.
He sips his beer. ‘You trying to start a farm?’
‘No.’
‘You looking up if it’s legal to marry a cow?’
I throw a tea towel at him. It smacks him square in the chest before he catches it lazily, grinning.
‘Domestic and violent,’ he says. ‘I’m into it.’
I roll my eyes, but it’s half hearted. My chest feels warm in a way that’s starting to concern me. The kitchen smells of garlic and melted cheese.
Luke leans against the counter. ‘Smells good.’
‘I hope you love lasagne.’
‘I do.’
There’s a comfortable pause. He finishes his beer and tosses the can into the bin from across the room.
Of course he makes it.
I go back to slicing cucumber for the salad. My fingers move automatically. My mind … doesn’t.
Don’t fall for this.
Not the scenery. Not the shirtless mornings and golden sunsets and the way his voice goes soft when he talks to the horse.
Not the homemade lasagne. Not the smell of eucalyptus. Not the way this – this domesticity – feels almost natural.
It’s not real. It’s just a fantasy. But it’s also … kind of perfect.
Luke glances over at me, brows raised. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, too quickly.
It’s not technically a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either.
Because as the oven timer dings and the light catches the edges of his jaw, I feel something slow and unfamiliar blooming behind my ribs.
Something dangerously close to contentment.
The next morning I wake up to the sound of boots and the scent of eucalyptus soap and man. Luke is dressed, moving around the room with the quiet efficiency of someone who knows exactly where everything is and doesn’t need the lights on to find it.
I’m somewhere between dreaming and dying when I feel him lean over, pressing a kiss to my temple.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he murmurs, voice scratchy with early morning disuse. ‘Just checking the cattle. I’ll be back for breakfast.’
I make a vague noise of protest that translates to ‘Take me with you’, but my body is a sandbag and the sheets are warm and I’m not that much of a hero.
So, I let him go.
When I wake again, it’s lighter. Still early, the kind of early that smells of fresh dirt and dry grass. I throw on shorts and one of Luke’s t-shirts and wander outside with the vague intent of pretending I belong here.
Cutlet is waiting for me, snorting dramatically as if I’m late for our breakfast date. I grab the bottle, mix the formula and let her latch on, clumsy and eager. She’s got milk foam on her face and zero respect for personal space.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I whisper fondly. ‘And maybe my favourite.’
Once she’s fed and licking my arm, I turn to head back inside – only to spot the chicken coop. It stares at me. A dare.
I stare back.
Five minutes later, I’m swearing under my breath, bent over in a sea of straw, trying to collect warm eggs from beneath hens who are considering murder. One pecks me on the hand. Another flaps at my face.
‘I am trying to get out as fast as possible,’ I hiss. ‘Respect the effort.’
By the time I escape with six slightly cracked eggs and a bruised ego, I look up to see Luke standing by the fence, arms folded, grinning. Arsehole.
‘You made that look complicated.’
‘It was complicated. Your chickens are fucked.’
He’s still smiling when I stomp past him, mumbling something about scrambled eggs and tetanus.
We cook together in that not-cooking-together way. I scramble the eggs. He butters toast. We bump elbows and insult each other and he steals a bite of my eggs and I pretend to be outraged.
‘What’s on the schedule today?’ I ask through a mouthful of toast.
‘Water run. Check the troughs. Make sure everything’s working.’
‘And after that?’
‘Fix the tractor.’
‘You sound so casual about that.’
He shrugs. ‘Have I turned you off yet?’
‘Not yet,’ I admit with a smile. ‘There’s still time.’
He takes a final bite of toast, chews, swallows, then eyes me over his coffee mug.
‘Are you wearing my shirt?’
I glance down. The soft, oversized t-shirt I threw on earlier hanging off one shoulder. ‘Yep.’
Luke raises an eyebrow. ‘Bold.’
‘I’m out of clean tops,’ I say, like it’s no big deal. Like wearing his clothes doesn’t feel dangerously … intimate.
He nods once, easy. ‘I’ll chuck some washing on before we head out.’ Just like that.
I’ll chuck some washing on.
Like we’ve been living together for years. Like he knows my laundry schedule. Like this – toast, teasing, his shirt on my body – isn’t some temporary glitch in our separate lives, but a rhythm we’ve always known.
It hits me sideways.
That one sentence. So offhand. So domestic. So ordinary.
And suddenly, my chest tightens in that slow, suffocating way that makes it hard to breathe properly.
Because this is how it starts, isn’t it?
The comfort. The softness. The illusion that someone might stick around.
I’ve seen it before. My father used to make promises with that same easy tone, that same careless confidence – as if reliability was as simple as saying you’d be there.
But then he wouldn’t be. Over and over. He never had to shout or storm out to break us.
He just forgot about us. Drifted. Always chose something else.
And I watched my mother spiral through the aftermath of that forgetting – until I learnt, somewhere along the way, that it’s safer to expect the exit. To assume that things will end. Because they always do.
They don’t stay.
Not for me.
Not really.
I stare at Luke’s back as he stands, collects both our plates and moves to the sink.
Calm. Oblivious. Kind. He doesn’t know he’s stepped on a tripwire I didn’t even realise was still there.
He loads the dishwasher as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Just a man cleaning up after breakfast. In his kitchen. With me.
My whole body wants to bolt.
I press my nails into my thigh, subtly. Grounding myself. Silencing my instinct. I shove the voice in my head – run, run, RUN – down as far as it will go. Now is not the time to be irrational. It’s just laundry, for Christ’s sake.
I blink away the thought and follow him out the back door into the hard, bright sun. I force myself to breathe as if I’m not quietly unravelling, as if this isn’t dangerously close to something real.
We’ve got water to check.
And something I don’t dare name is pressing behind my ribs – something starting to feel too close to wanting.