Authors: Ainslie Paton
“What part of you don’t get to tell me what I want and we had a deal do you not get?”
“You lost me last night when you wanted to bolt.”
“Well, I don’t want to bolt anymore. I was kind of freaked out. What would you have done?”
“I’d have been dust.” He made a show of looking at his watch; an ugly chunky military style affair he’d never have to wear again. “Which is what you need to be in the next fifteen minutes.”
“No. I don’t want to go. I have nothing to go back to. Last night I didn’t know if you were a good guy or a bad guy. I only wanted to get away.”
“So a fruit salad and four hours driving makes me a good guy.”
“No, just a guy who isn’t interested in hurting me. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I can toss you. But I’m okay with that.”
He stepped forward and got in her face. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” She didn’t flinch, she didn’t step back either. She smelled like oranges, sweet and tart. He’d noticed it last night but thought he’d imagined it.
“Everything you’ve done, you did to protect me.”
He breathed in deep. “Yeah, like making you a target in the first place.”
“I didn’t say you were a genius.” She pushed past him and opened the back door. “Now get in the car. We’re driving to Leeton.”
He stood there looking at her, holding the door open for him. He’d shouted at her, attracted attention; not that it mattered anymore, but still, they were having a domestic in the middle of downtown Tumut. He got in the car.
He could ditch her in Leeton.
Her bikie slumped in the back seat like all the stuffing had been ripped out of him. Whatever got said on the other end of that phone call had a big impact on him. He was in a foul mood. He’d shouted at her on the street. He’d never raised his voice before. He’d never lost his cool with her, and he’d certainly been under enough pressure and pain to do so.
But he could be in a ‘bite heads off chickens’ mood and he still wouldn’t get to tell her what to do. She was driving to Perth. If he wanted to hire his own car and race her there he was welcome to.
He was looking out the window as she pulled back onto the highway. “Driver, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
She checked the rear-view. Still slumped. “That’s okay. You’re having a tough day.”
“Hah. You think this is a tough day. This is a shit easy day. I…”
She looked up again. He’d lapsed into a silence she wasn’t going to tease out. According to the rules she didn’t have to. But he was so odd like this. All the cheek, all the fun, all the steel resolve and energy plucked out of him.
Eyes up again. “I’m a good listener if you want to talk.”
His head came around. “Just drive.”
She drove. He sat, unmoving. About an hour later he said, “Find one of those rest stops and pull in.”
It took another thirty minutes of driving before she sighted a Driver Reviver stop. She slowed to the shoulder of the road and pulled in, the tires crunching on the soft gravel. He got out and went to the back of the car, tapped the boot lid. She opened it and he rumbled about inside, taking out a plastic bag.
She got out and retreated to a picnic table, sat on it and swung her legs. They had the place to themselves which was good because he took his vest and t-shirt off. His bandage was blood-spotted. She sighed. She was an awful person. She never used to be an awful person. She hadn’t asked about his arm and she should’ve offered to change his bandage. She would. As soon as he stopped doing whatever it was he was doing.
There was an old rusty oil drum with a grate set over it functioning as a fireplace. He pushed the grate aside and dumped the stuff he’d taken from the boot in the drum. He pulled off his boots and socks and tossed them in as well.
God
, she hoped he kept his new jeans on.
Lordy
, he was well built. Every muscle defined; every line of his body honed and workshopped to perfection. There was no way not to watch him. He took off his chunky watch and tossed it in the drum. It would be a kind of crime against humanity not to watch him and visually worship his physical state. Her mouth was as dry as a sandpit. His hands went to his zip.
Sweet Jesus
. He was losing the jeans.
Caitlyn heard her own quick exhale. Fetch would’ve heard it too. But he didn’t react. She could not look away from him. He pushed the denim off his legs and scooped the pants up, tossing them in the drum, silver skull belt and all. He was completely naked.
God in heaven
. He stole her breath away. Her whole body got hot and her hands tingled. She was aware of the hard plank of wood she sat on, she was aware of a tight knot of want in her chest. She was more shocked at the feelings spiralling through her than she was at his behaviour. She clenched her fists. She was becoming liquid need, but he was oblivious. He went to the boot and rumbled about. She couldn’t see him now over the car, but she could hear him moving things around. He emerged seconds later in last night’s black trackpants, shirtless with an Athlete’s Foot shoebox in his hands.
He came across to the picnic set and sat on the seat, by her right side. They both faced the car. Caitlyn’s tongue had dissolved like her sense of decorum, her respect for privacy, her professionalism. Even if she could’ve put more than two syllables together, what was she supposed to say? He rolled a sock on his foot and took one of the shoes from the box.
“I need to run.”
Nothing like what she expected him to say. Did he mean run away? What now?
“I’m not…” He laced a shoe. “I’m not coping. I need to get my head together. Give me an hour and come get me. Watch the fire.”
He had the other shoe on and her brain was still on slow motion,
what fire? H
er tongue was chalk. She managed to shape the words, “Are you okay?”
“I just stripped in front of you. I think we can agree I’m not okay.” He stood now, both runners on. He stepped in front of her. “I’m sorry. But you should’ve gone home from Tumut.”
“What fire?”
“Give me your phone.”
“What fire?”
He held his hand out.
“We’re still doing this?”
“You’re scared of something other than me. You tell me.”
“It’s in the car.”
She pushed off the table, thinking he’d step back. He didn’t. She was between him and the solid frame of the picnic set. He caught her arms and held her. “I’m sorry. You go home first thing tomorrow.”
She put her hands to his chest, over the bar of the cross and pushed him. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.” He was rock still. Both their heads dropped, both their eyes went to where their bodies touched. Caitlyn held her breath. Fetch gave way, shifting back a little so her hands lifted from him. They came away alive, electric with the feel of hot skin. She stepped around him and went to the car, the thudding of her heart surely as fast, faster, than the cars speeding past.
He followed. He took her phone, fished his own from the back seat and turned away. He sent a text, something quick, and then tossed both phones into the drum. She should’ve expected the fire, felt stupid about how shocked she was when he set the drum alight. He had a look of satisfaction on his face as he watched it take. Whatever he was burning was more than clothes and plastic technology. There can’t have been anything terribly offensive about a pair of jeans and a t-shirt he’d bought less than a day ago.
He watched the fire and ponytailed his hair. She watched him, fascinated by whatever emotion was gripping him. Something between anger and pain, between loss and release.
She was still watching him when he turned to her. “One hour. Straight down the highway.”
He took off, his feet spraying the loose dirt and gravel up. He wasn’t jogging, he was sprinting. She moved to the side of the road behind him so she could test that theory. He ran like he was made of wind along the shoulder of the road, cars shooting past him in the 120km zone. It wasn’t safe; he could get run over by some idiot. Caitlyn’s instinct was to get in the car and follow him at a crawl to protect him from another vehicle ploughing him down. But he’d hate that. If he’d wanted it, he’d have asked for it. He wasn’t reticent to say what he meant, even when he knew she wouldn’t like it.
She watched the fire in the drum. She listened to birds call lyrically, soft shifting bush sounds, and the hard whir of traffic on the highway. She went back to the picnic table and sat. She closed her eyes and thought about touching Fetch’s chest, about how seeing him strip off made her feel—like she was the one stripped naked emotionally. About how his lack of embarrassment was as much of a turn-on as the way he looked at her, as the way he was constructed: the power in his legs, the strength in his arms, the depth of his chest.
She felt her breath quicken. She was alone, but surrounded by the sense of him. He was a liar, but he had a sense of humour. He was a thief, but he had grace. He was a criminal, but he had good manners—most of the time. He was an actor, but he wasn’t looking for an audience. A manipulator, but he was happy to admit it. There was a kind of bastard honour about him. For a crook he was too moral, for a cop he was too sly.
He was the most untrustworthy man she’d ever met. But she was beginning to trust him completely.
Unlike Justin, he wasn’t going to lead her on and break her heart. Unlike Justin, whatever Fetch was going to do, surprising as it might be, he’d do with ruthless efficiency. It’d be over and done with, a breathless brutality that’d knock her sideways so quick she’d rattle, and leave her no alternative but to stare at the truth of it.
Wasn’t that better? Better than the slow worm of deceit, the insidious drip of uncertainty and the cloaking, choking blind of illusions built with compliance and stolen away by stealth one tiny confidence at a time.
Justin’s treachery was the deeply practised kind, layered with nuance, built with time and care. He nurtured collaboration. He fostered collusion. He made the thing a shared desire. He’d turned the mirror back on her so she’d tricked herself; became her own victim.
He was the ultimate long con. The serial killer no one in the office picked, the terrorist people would defend rather than believe capable of horror. The guy next door who borrowed your lawn mower, returned it with a six pack, and had an abducted child in his garage for fourteen years.
But Fetch.
There was an honesty to the deceit of a man like Fetch. He’d do the deed and take the blame. He’d own up to it. Threaten you with it. Warn you to stand back from the sparks, and then laugh if you walked into it with open eyes.
He was the perfect man to choose to rip a bandaid off. It’d sting, sharp, but it’d be quick, and it would be a relief. That was an odd thought. She guessed it came from thinking about changing his bandage. Came from knowing she’d been wearing one herself since Justin.
Fetch’s bandage was made from fine gauge cotton gauze, held to his skin with flexible tape. It would keep him free of infection, help him heal. Hers was made from sterner stuff. From shame and humiliation, burnt pride and collapsed surety. All held together by fear.
Fetch’s bandage didn’t restrain him, he barely noticed it was there, but hers chaffed. It rubbed away at her sense of self, it battered against her confidence, and made her feel stiff and distrustful. It made her choose naphthalene and hiding herself. And she was tired of it. It wasn’t healing. It wasn’t freedom. It was festering. It was suffocation.
The hour killed itself surprisingly quickly. Caitlyn went back to the car, opened the boot. She’d get him a towel, the one from her gym bag and a bottle of water from the chiller. He’d moved things around and there, front and centre, was the cake tin. She had to move it to get to the zip of her bag. She pushed it aside. It had weight to it. She picked it up and held it in both hands. If it was full of money then odds on he was a dirty cop and that could be useful to know. She had no idea how heavy an old-fashioned cake tin would be if it was full of money. It was his property and she had no business opening it. She balanced it on the edge of the bumper; he’d said it was cake. She put her fingers to the rim of the lid. It opened with a soft metallic thud, the slight drag of a vacuum seal and the smell of alcohol and fruit. Her bikie, her cop was a liar, but an unpredictable one. She closed the lid, put the tin back in the boot, got in the driver’s seat and started the car.
If Fetch continued running full pelt like he’d started out, he’d be wasted. How far would he have run? She pulled out onto the highway but stayed in the outside lane, keeping watch. He appeared as symmetry in motion. He was deep in the rhythm of his run, in that headspace where nothing hurt and everything connected. She knew it. She did it too. She’d understood his need to run off, run in whatever it was that was upsetting him. She drew up behind him and slowed to a nothing pace. She’d let him come back to her when he was ready, a slight twist of his head told her he knew she was there. He kept on. He was a hot, wet mess. His hair was drenched and plastered to his skull, his ponytail, thinned and dripping. His back was slick with sweat, glistening, his trackpants skinned to his backside like liquorice lotion.
He slowed, his stride shortening, the pace falling off him till he stopped, bent forward holding his knees and heaved lungful’s of air. Caitlyn stopped too, braking, putting the car in park. He straightened up and turned to walk back. She got out of the car and held out the towel and water. He handed her his sunglasses, took the water already opened and tipped it over his head, sighing with pleasure as it flowed over his face and shoulders. He took the towel and rubbed himself down. He looked scoured clean. He’d lost the agitation and prickly anger, the cold resolve.
“Thank you. I feel better.”
She held out his glasses. “No problem. You look better.”
He took them. “You’re still going home tomorrow.”
“You’re still trying to tell me what I want.”
He grinned. “Watch me,” and slid the glasses home.
He walked around to the boot and she got in the car and hit the button on the inside driver’s door to open it for him. He rummaged and came up with a t-shirt, and pulled it on. He slammed the boot lid. Caitlyn belted up. He came to the passenger-side front door and opened it. He draped the towel over the seat and got in. He buckled up. He watched her the whole time, and she watched him.