Page 56 of Just Say (Hell) No
You’d be a liar. And he’s going to know it.
All right. That one made it. She dragged her lips away from his, rested her face against the strong column of his neck, and breathed.
One more minute. Just one, to feel those arms around her and all that hardness pressed up against her. One minute to smell his spice and leather, and to believe in that sheltering strength. Just for a minute.
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t stop holding her, either. Finally, she said, “Bad… idea.”
“Oh?” he said. “Doesn’t feel like it.” His hand stroked over her back. He wanted to slide that hand inside her jumper. She knew it. She wanted that, too. You could call it “desperately.”
“I know. But we both know it is.” She’d been so clear, earlier. Moving in had been an impulsive decision that had been nothing but selfishness, or some kind of twisted revenge on rugby for a humiliation she needed to put behind her, because hanging onto it was never going to help her or anybody else. No matter how she felt about Ella, no matter how she felt about Marko—sometimes, the Fool was just the Fool. And then there had been twins, and his mother, and Ella’s mother, and this…heat.All of it jumbled together, a tangle of colors and emotions and mistakes and aching desire. Past and present.
He set her down, and she took a step back, shoved her hair away from her face, and said, “I need to… I didn’t mean to do that.”
“No,” he said. “But I did.” His hand was in her hair again, smoothing it this time, then touching her cheek. “Whatever the problem is, maybe you could tell me, eh. Could be as easy as that.”
The black water was closing over her head.Mistake. Danger. Back off.“Let’s get Ella taken care of," she said. “Two weeks before you’re back again. And it’s a long way until September.”
She didn’t have to look at him to see the frustration. “Fine,” he said.
“See?” she said, and tried to laugh. “Awkward already. Like I said.”
He didn’t look like he wanted to kiss her anymore. Not exactly. He looked like he wanted to dosomething,though. “You want to try to make this about Ella, or about me,” he said. “I’m not so sure it is, or not all of it. All I know is, I can’t tell what’s a green light and what’s a red. I don’t walk on a red light. I’m not enjoying the thought that I just did.”
“You didn’t. But I think… I’m sure it should go back to red. Anything else is a mistake.”
“Fine,” he said again, his voice absolutely controlled. “Stay with Ella. I’ll say thank you. Right now, though, I’m going to bed.”
So that was wonderful.
When her phone rang on Monday morning, Nyreedidn’tswear.
Well, maybe she swore a little. She’d seized the chance of her day off and Marko being home with Ella—whohadn’tgone home to Tekapo—to come to the garage and do some work. Marko’s house had been much too full of emotion and energy yesterday, with Jakinda and Olivia still there. Commenting on Ella’s new decor, Jakinda asking why Marko couldn’t have bought something “actuallynice,darling, because this is Op Shop all the way, and God knows he needs the furniture and can pay for it, if he bought this house,” and Olivia saying, “What a clever idea this desk was. Who thought of that?” Both of them going through the few maternity clothes Ella had bought so far off TradeMe, and Jakinda saying, “You aren’t going to want to show off every line of your bump like that, surely, not when you get huge,” and Olivia being relentlessly cheerful. They’d finally taken Ella shopping for new bras and undies, and when they’d come home again, Ella had crawled straight into bed in the middle of the day and gone to sleep. Marko, meanwhile, had gone off to play golf for four hours. Both, probably, out of desperation.
Nyree had headed to work at Bevvy with the same emotions, had come back at ten o’clock last night to the hypnotic sound of Marko’s guitar on the deck, and had gone out to sit with him. Just for a few minutes, she’d promised herself. He’d looked at her, then out into the night again, and had played for both of them, wrapping her in his music until she’d felt the calm all the way into her bones, until she could feel it resetting her brain waves. She’d known he would play as long as she needed him to, and the deck had felt like the safest place in the world.
When she’d finally left him, she’d wanted to sketch. Wanted towork.Being in the midst of that maelstrom the last couple days, not to mention her own tangled emotions about Marko, could have driven the need away, but it hadn’t. It had only intensified it. She’d only managed an hour, though, before her eyes had blurred and her hand had slowed.
Not being able to work for over a week now was driving her mad. She hadn’t had the physical space, and she hadn’t had the mental space. So this morning, when Ella had gone off to school and Marko had left to take his mum and aunt to the airport, she’d escaped. It was barely nine o’clock, and she was in her garage again, in her colors again, with the whole day stretching before her. Victoria was safely at work, and Nyree’s music was playing, a mix of Maori, world music, and some newly added classical guitar. All of it let the back of her mind loose, the place where the pictures lived. After six flipped sketchpad pages, she could feel, through her increasing frustration, that she was nearly there. And then—theidea.The big one. The starburst.
Which was when her phone rang.
She ignored it. It rang again. The thought finally made it through.Ella.She put down the sketchpad and charcoal and started looking for the phone. Not easy, because her coffee table was at Marko’s, which gave her no place to put anything.
The phone wasn’t ringing any more, of course, which made it harder. Finally, she found it. In the sink. Made sense.
The call hadn’t been from Ella. Her concentration was broken anyway, though. She hit redial.
“Morning, love,” her mum said. “Good time to talk?”
“For a minute, sure,” Nyree said.
“At work?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. Drawing.” She looked at her sketchpad again. If she switched the perspective…
“Oh, good. I’m glad I didn’t catch you at work,” her mum said, and Nyree tried not to grind her teeth. “I wanted to ask whether you want to go to Fiji at the end of September with Grant and Kiri and me once the season’s over. We’re doing eighteen days, almost the entire school holidays. A real getaway at last. You know how Grant is about taking time off, but he’s agreed to it, and I’d love you to come as well.”
“Thanks,” Nyree said. “Really. But I’ll be working.”
