Page 33 of Just Say Christmas
“Never mind,” he said. “You smashed yourface?”
“I told you I did. I looked awful. I wasn’t going to let you see me like that. My nose, my mouth, mytooth?Texting was a bit hard, too. I was a little fuzzy.”
Now, she could tell how he was looking. Absolutely horrified. “And you didn’t tell me? You were hurt that badly, and I didn’t know? Why not? Even if you didn’t tell me—didn’t you tell Nyree? She’d have told me, surely.”
“Because you didn’t answer. And I didn’t want to put her in the middle. Then she’d be hurt, too. I didn’t want to make that happen. Her family life’s hard enough.” She had to swallow. The memory of that first day, that whole first week, still brought pain.
Why was emotional pain so much worse than physical pain? She made a note to research that. Useful during summing-up, when you were representing the victim, trying to put the jury or the judge into somebody else’s skin.
Physical pain passed. Afterwards, you could barely remember it. Emotional pain, though? It hung around. Something reminded you, and here it came again, just like the first time, and knocked you to your knees.
When she’d been huddled on the couch in her Dunedin hotel room, for example, a duvet around her shivering body and an ice pack on her nose and mouth, the dull thud from her aching head pulsing as she watched Kane tackle like a man possessed, over and over again, she could barely remember how her face had hurt, just that it had. She remembered, though, watching him get to the breakdown faster than you’d have thought a man that big could move, and, finally, after the Crusaders had won the turnover he’d worked so hard for, taking the ball into contact himself, barreling through tacklers like they were so many bowling pins, dragging two of them with him to the tryline, stretching the ball out in his impossibly long arms, and, in a herculean second effort that you wouldn’t have thought possible, getting it across the line. There’d been that grimace around his mouth guard, a twist to his face that wasn’t pleasure. It was pain, and it also was, it had to be, triumph.
“You were so good that night,” she tried to tell him now. “The way you looked when you got that try? I felt so fierce for you. I was so proud. I’d have jumped up and shouted if my face hadn’t hurt so much. And then you didn’t even answer me, and it was all . . . gone. It wasn’t real after all.” Which was the emotional pain, the ache that hadn’t faded nearly enough, that kept coming back.
Oh, wait. That was a fail on the don’t-be-too-honest rule once again.
Maybe he hadn’t read the rules, because he said, “Because I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told you. I looked sobad,and I wasn’t sure how I’d heal.The only broken nose I knew about was you, and . . .”
“Ah,” he said, starting to smile, for some reason. It wasn’t funny. “But they don’t all heal like mine. Depends how often you break it.”
“Oh. But besides that, I was so embarrassed about what I’d done. You play rugby, and all I did was ride a bike on the street, and I’m the one who smashed my face? In such a stupid way? I’d been nervous anyway about the whole thing. Going out with your teammates for the first time, when, let’s face it, I was nobody’s idea of a rugby WAG. Seeing your stepmum again, when I know she wasn’t that impressed with me before. Meeting your dad, although to be fair, I’m usually better with men, as long as they’re more evidence-based, not just responding to pretty girls and so forth. Also, I think my judgment may have been a bit faulty. I tried again the next week, though. I was going to tell you then. And you didn’t answer. You never answered me again.”
“Victoria,” he said, looking severe. Looking stern. “We’re going to have to work on this confidence of yours. You mean that we’ve spent the last year like this, and we didn’t have to? Do you know howIfelt? Like I was standing there alone, that’s how.” He took a breath. It should have been incongruous to watch such a big man looking that vulnerable, but it wasn’t. “It was pretty bad.”
Something was happening. It was like she was playing the cello, her heart lifting with the music. Or like she’d drunk too much, except that she hadn’t. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That I hurt you. I thought it was too much. That it was too soon. That it was all in my . . . head. What I thought we had.” She was shaky again, but not in a bad way. In a way that told her that later, when she could think about this, she’d be happy.
Possibly impossibly happy.
“If it was in your head,” he said, “it was in mine, too. From the first day. I saidthat.I know I did. Why wouldn’t you believe it? Not like I’m a smooth fella, quick with the chat and the charm. Not like you didn’t know that.”
It wasn’t this easy. It couldn’t be. Life was hard. Why wasn’t this feeling harder? “You could have trust issues yourself,” she told him. “That you let me go without even asking. Without evenknowing.”
He’d begun to smile. “I could do, yeh. Think you can forgive me for that?”
“I . . . I could.” She got that lightheaded feeling again, or still. “Maybe we were both stupid.”
He stood up, pulled her to her feet, lifted her hand and, as she watched, threaded his fingers through hers. “Could be we’ve both got some believing to do,” he told her, and he was still the same. A broad shoulder you wanted to rest your head on. A hand you wanted to hold. A battered face you wanted to see in the morning light, when sleep stripped it of the toughness he wore like a mask. A warrior who’d lost too much, but was still out there fighting, because it was all he knew how to do.
She rested her head against his shoulder now. It was right there. “Do you really not like my hair?” He had a hand on her head, his fingers in her curls. “If you touch it,” she told him, “the curl tightens. I lose the smooth effect.”
“I want to touch it anyway. I may have mentioned before, but I don’t care much about the smooth effect.”
“Do you hate it?” she asked. “Really?”
“Nah. Already getting used to it. I reckon I like you any way. Every way. I’ll get used to the makeup as well, and I’ll be happy when you wash it off and I get to see you again. I like your pretty dress. Shouldn’t matter too much what I think anyway. I’ve got a cauliflower ear, and the other one isn’t too flash.”
“You also broke your nose again.” She felt shy, and she felt exalted, like when you were playing Saint-Saens’The Swanand knowing—no,feeling,all the way to the soles of your feet—that you’d cracked it at last, that you’d got the emotion into it, not just the technique. That you could make somebody cry, but in a good way. A cleansing way.
“I did.,” he said. “You were right. Your face looks heaps better than mine.”
“I was sorry as soon as I said that.” She had to tell him so. It had been bothering her for two days. “You’re missing out on catching up with Luke, by the way.”
“Luke,” he promised, his eyes warm, his face absolutely nothing like stony, “can wait.”
“Could you kiss me?” she asked. She’d have told her heart to slow down, but there was no way. “Do you think?”
