Page 114 of Toy Boy

“Thank you, Tania.”

“For what?”

“For saving me.”

She laughs quietly, her fingers curling around mine. “The great Scott Warren, saved by a woman.”

I look down at our joined hands, at her bright red nail varnish, her slim, tanned fingers, and as I look deeper into her eyes I feel a comforting warmth start to flood through me. It’s not something I’ve ever felt before, and I like it. A lot.

“I love you, too.”

Her face breaks into a slow smile, and she leans forward and kisses me, and I just want to pull her close and hold her tight but right now that would hurt like hell. My ribs couldn’t take it, so instead I squeeze her hand and kiss her back and I let myself feel the happiest I’ve felt in a long time. Without Megan.

“I’ll go get those discharge papers. The sooner we get them signed the sooner we can get out of here.”

I let her go, watch her leave, and I lie back against the pillows and stare at the ceiling, I’ve got the biggest smile on my face. A feeling of calm washes over me, a funny kind of freedom, it’s nice. I came home to Beachcastle Bay to start over. And I think I’m finally about to do that…

21

Xander

Throwing my bag onto the back seat of the hire car, I start the engine and drive away, without looking back. A couple of hours surfing really cleared my head, and after contacting Ray, and waiting for his cousin to come and take over the shop until he’s back, I’m finally getting out of Beachcastle Bay. I still haven’t bought my ticket back to Brisbane yet, but I can do that anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi signal. I think I just need to leave here, and start to put as much distance as I can between me and the mistakes I’ve made.

Is that really what Megan was?

A mistake…?

I’m heading to an airport hotel, so that once I’ve finally bought my ticket I can just get on that plane and start my journey home, because this was never a place I’d intended to stay for longer than a few weeks. This was never going to be home.

But at times it had started to feel like that…

Beachcastle Bay is behind me now. Literally. I’m driving farther and farther away from it, and it’s an almost cathartic feeling that’s taking over now. I had to do something, or I’d have let what happened with my mom continue to eat away at me for Christ knows how long. Yeah, I made mistakes, but something had to give. Scott Warren had to know how I felt. How what he did affected people, and he knows. Now. I need to be happy with that, and leave it there.

WAZE is telling me I’m about an hour and a half from my destination. I needed to be based at a larger airport, with more flight choices, but I won’t be able to check-in to the hotel until midday. It’s currently two-thirty in the morning, I didn’t want to leave in daylight, when there was a chance people could see me. I wanted to – yeah, sneak away, there’s no other way of describing what I’m doing. I’m sneaking away, because I don’t want to face anyone. Cowardly? Call it what you like, I’m doing what’s best forme. Because that’s all I have in this world now. Just me. But I’m okay with that. And I won’t be alone forever, I’ll find someone, eventually. Someone smart and beautiful and funny… I’ll find her…

Megan

The phone ringing jolts me out of my sleep, and I squint as I sit up and look at the time. And I’m suddenly filled with a sense of sheer panic, I mean, phone calls at three in the morning are never good, right? Jesus Christ, please don’t let anything have happened to Josh…

Despite my panic, though, I still wait another moment before I answer the call, my hand shaking as I pick up the phone, and as I look down at the screen I frown. Why’s Tania calling me? At three 0’clock in the morning…?

“Tania…?”

“Megan? You have to come over here, it’s Scott.”

I can barely understand her, because her voice is filled with the same kind of panic I’d felt just seconds earlier. “Tania, slow down…”

“I can’t wake him up, Megan.”

It’s three in the morning, why is she trying to wake him up? And then the panic returns, and dread takes over. A dark, terrifying realisation…

“What’s happened, Tania? I need you to tell me what’s happened.”

I’m already out of bed, already pulling on clothes and boots and heading downstairs.

“I woke up… I was having this dream, this horrible dream, and when I looked at Scott he was sleeping. He looked like he was sleeping, but that dream, it scared me, and I wanted to know he was okay so I tried to wake him… I couldn’t. I couldn’t wake him…”

She’s crying, which is making it even harder for me to understand her, but I’m all too aware of what she’s trying to tell me. And that terrifying realisation swamps me, so much I have to take a second to catch my breath.

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