Chapter 38 The Biggest Idiots Known to Man
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The Biggest Idiots Known to Man
IRINA
“Gah!” I growled at my reflection. My face was still swollen from my night of shitty sleep and panic sobbing into my pillow. I’d given up on trying to sleep and had taken the world’s longest shower. Not even that could save me—I still didn’t look even close to presentable.
It had been bad enough that just asking Henry to chase up my visa had brought on a fresh round of tears.
I probably was premenstrual. That would explain my ridiculous emotions.
My cycle had never gotten into any sort of routine after I got the IUD, so I could never quite tell when or if it was going to make an appearance.
The walls felt like they were closing in on me, all the way from Romania. I scowled down at the open box on my bed and thrust the hated string of coins back inside, slamming the lid shut and picking the whole thing up to shove in the bottom of the wardrobe.
But out of sight didn’t mean out of mind. And Stefan’s messages had brought that into stark, terrifying reality last night.
Kat had warned me that there was a risk my family would discover the Tickle account, but I’d really thought the geo-lock I’d set up on my account would be enough to prevent it. With hindsight, that was a stupid mistake
I managed a choked laugh. If I’d told Henry everything, he would probably have set up a spreadsheet to weigh up the risks involved in everything I’d done since deciding not to go home.
Or he would have run screaming rather than get involved with me and the extreme fucked-upness of all the secrets I was still keeping from him.
I was well and truly screwed now. I’d set my Tickle account to private, and I was teetering on the edge of pulling the plug and deleting it entirely. I shuddered, bile rising in my throat as I pictured Stefan … my uncle … him … watching my content.
I sucked in breath after breath, but it felt like I was never getting enough air. I couldn’t stay in this tiny room. Wrenching open the door, I stumbled out into the hallway. It still felt claustrophobic, so I made my way towards the living room. The large, light-filled space might be helpful.
As I emerged, the first thing I noticed was a familiar theme song playing on the television. The Rileys of Emu Grove, and their smiling faces gleamed on the screen. The parents, Simone and David, and then River and his sister, Tallulah, both in their early teens. This was an older episode.
It was then I saw Henry’s curly head and shoulders on the lounge. And something loosened in me, enough to let me take a proper breath.
He must have heard my sigh because he turned, eyes inscrutable behind his glasses.
“Hey, Hubby,” I mumbled, waving idiotically. A smile ghosted around the edges of his mouth, and he patted the space beside him.
“Come watch with me. I think we both need to switch off for a bit.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. Sidling around the lounge, I dropped down beside him. He didn’t speak again, and I turned my attention to the TV, where Simone Riley, River’s mum, was installing a composting toilet into one of their glamping tents.
“His parents are not at all what I imagined,” Henry said thoughtfully.
I glanced at him. His hands were linked behind his head, and a curl had fallen across his forehead.
I itched to brush it away. To trail my fingers down that chiselled cheekbone, over those full lips. Maybe follow that path with my mouth …
“What did you imagine?” I asked instead, cursing myself for these aching feelings.
“River’s savvy, and driven. And they seem …”
“Flaky?” I finished for him. His mouth tilted upwards.
“That’s a succinct way to describe them.”
I huffed out a laugh. “They’re very passionate about their little ecolodge, but they’re completely clueless about reality.
It’s part of the fun of watching their journey.
I do have a confession, though …” I leaned closer.
“Weet-Bix the Wombat is my favourite character. There’s an episode where River’s mum was trying to plant a new veggie patch, only to get to the end of the row to find Weet-Bix had ‘helped’ by digging up every seedling she’d just planted … I think I almost wet myself laughing!”
Henry chuckled. “We might have to locate that episode.” He returned to the channel screen, scrolling through countless thumbnails. “They’ve really figured out a formula for success—they’re worth multiple millions of dollars now, and it’s not the lodge that made them the money. It’s their content.”
“The power of social media. It can be very lucrative for some.” I fell silent, my mind straying to my own, up-until-now lucrative social media account.
And the reasons I’d had to shut it down.
My chest started to get tight again. I closed my eyes, hoping Henry wouldn’t notice as I struggled to breathe.
But he noticed everything.
Warm arms enveloped me, his chin resting on my head. “You don’t have to talk about it. But let’s breathe together.”
He inhaled deeply, his chest rising against my head. I copied, my breaths shaky at first, but evening out as I focused on the sound of air moving in and out of his lungs where my ear pressed to his sternum.
“Would you like to use my vape?” he asked tentatively. I shook my head, nuzzling my face against his T-shirt. It smelt so nice, I could just sit there and sniff him all day.
“I just need a hit of Henry,” I mumbled. He stilled, and too late I realised all the dirty ways that could be interpreted.
“No, not … not that, I just meant that taking a nice big deep breath of your smell is enough for me—all that fresh linen fabric softener and warm man-skin!” My face burned, and I chanced a glance up at him. He was as red as I felt, but his eyes met mine, searching.
I took a very exaggerated sniff of his shirt then pasted a smile on my face. “All better now!”
Pizd?, had I ever been less sexy? What was wrong with me? Was this the best I could come up with? Where had my flirting game gone?
Flirting is easy when it’s just physical … but it’s so much more than that with him, isn’t it?
The colour deepened in Henry’s cheeks. I wondered if he was feeling second-hand embarrassment for me, and I wished the lounge cushion would just swallow me whole.
“That’s a coincidence, because I find the smell of you calms me too.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it, my heart vibrating in my chest, and butterflies rioting in my stomach. Did he not realise how these little things he said affected me? He could fluster me more with one earnest sentence than I ever had been able to fluster him with flirty innuendo.
“Did you have a chance to call about my visa?” I asked, needing something less fraught with fuzzy emotions to focus on.
“I did,” he replied stiffly, and I wondered if I’d messed up by changing the subject. “Your application is still waiting to be assessed.” His fingers found his knee, and he squeezed. “We just have to be patient, Catnip.”
“Ah, patience. One of my best qualities,” I joked, forcing back that all-too-familiar rising panic. I didn’t have time to be patient.
“We will make it happen, Ri,” Henry rasped, his lips brushing my temple.
“We will fix this for you.” I shivered when he straightened and removed his arms from around me.
He stood and left the room, and I hopped up, watching him retreat to his bedroom and wondering what on earth had just happened to make him want to escape me like that.
But then he returned, an envelope in his hand. He passed it to me, and I noticed the Births, Deaths and Marriages logo on the front.
“I think it would be smart for you to carry this with you. Just in case. It at least gives you some form of proof that you have a right to be here.”
I pulled the marriage certificate from the envelope, scanning the document. Irina Daciana Rusnac—my full name—listed at the top, right above …
“Henry Céline Baxter?” I teased, quirking an eyebrow in his direction. I knew our names had been said in full during our wedding ceremony, but I’d been floating in a cloud of disbelief for most of it and barely remembered a word that was spoken. “As in … Céline Dion?”
Henry’s lips pursed. “As in Céline Genevieve Baxter. My mother.” He came to stand beside me, staring down at the paper. “She died three days after I was born—complications related to childbirth.”
My heart dropped into my feet. “Oh, Henry. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“There’s no need to apologise, Catnip. You couldn’t have known, and it is a very unusual name for a man. Warren, in his grief, gave me her name. And then blamed me at every opportunity for her death. Especially once he realised that I was … different.”
Henry sighed, gripping the back of the lounge with white knuckles. “He used to tell me that he wished the doctors had saved her instead of me. Said that I was too retarded to amount to anything, that I was a waste of oxygen.”
“What a despicable thing to say to a child!” I raged, covering his hand with my own, applying the pressure I knew he preferred.
Henry laughed mirthlessly. “Well, joke’s on him now, isn’t it? Because I did amount to something, despite his complete lack of support, and he will never get a single cent of my money.”
“Who did support you?” I asked, curling my fingers through his. “Growing up, I mean?”
“Lucian was always there for me, and his mother—my aunt—she was the one who recognised what was wrong with me and got me assessed.” He snorted. “Not that Warren would acknowledge the diagnosis, but at least it made school a bit easier, because I was able to get extra support.”
I swallowed through the lump in my throat and turned to face him. “Firstly, there is nothing ‘wrong’ with you! Don’t you ever use those words again, Henry Céline Baxter!”
A ghost of a smile flitted around the edges of his lips. “Noted. And … is there a secondly?”