Page 109 of Kiwi Sin
“I’m not sure Daisy knows. It was dark, and she was in front. I haven’t wanted to tell her. Should I not have told you?”
“No,” Gabriel said, “you should’ve told me.”
“Let’s walk,” I said, and we did. The wind loosened the strands of my hair from its knot, and I put a hand up and tugged out the pins, dropping them into my pocket and letting the wild wind take my hair.
A loose woman,I thought,with bare arms and waxed legs and her hair blowing everywhere.I said, “Gray probably knows. When we got across the fence, Daisy pulled up the stakes, and the fence caught her under the arms. I don’t know how many times she was shocked, but I had to half-carry her and Frankie to Gray’s ute. When I looked back, Gray was holding up a shovel by the handle. Threatening them, obviously. He’d just met Daisy that night, and he did all that. But your dad … he knew who Gray was when he met him again. He had to have known. Why did he go to work for him? Do you think … you don’t think it’s like Valor, do you?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “That’s not who Dad is. I think he …” He stopped and looked out to sea before he continued. “I think maybe he ran with your dad because that’s how he was raised. And I think he must have regretted it, because afterward, hedidhelp Daisy.”
“He helped her before, though,” I said. “He’s the one who told her Frankie was in trouble, so she came to get us that night. You don’t think—” I stopped.
“What?” Gabriel asked.
“That he was with my dadbecauseof that? That he was sort of … watching out for Frankie?”
“It makes sense,” Gabriel said. “Especially since he doesn’t like your dad, even though they’re brothers.”
“Wow,” I said.“Wow.He was like the Resistance. We learnt about that in school last year. The people who helped fight against the Nazis during World War II. They had to be undercover, because it was so dangerous.”
“If he was doing that,” Gabriel reminded me.
“Are you going to ask?”
He thought about that a minute. “Yeh. I am. And then I’m going to go my own way. Maybe he can only go so far, after forty-eight years in Mount Zion. That doesn’t mean I can’t go further. Maybe he’ll move along the road some more, and maybe he won’t, especially after everything comes out that I think is going to come out. Same with Mum. They aren’t going to cast me off, though, and even if they did …”
My heart was beating so hard now, it was a wonder I couldn’t hear it, even over the sound of the waves and the wind.
“Even if they did,” Gabriel said, “I’d still choose you. You’re everything I want to come home to.”
* * *
I hadschool the next day, of course, because I always had school. On and on and on. In Food and Nutrition, the teacher was talking about the nutrients in different vegetables, and what they did for your body. I took notes like always, and tried not to think about Gabriel yesterday, after we’d taken off our shoes and he’d rolled up his trouser legs. How we’d run into the sea together, and then how he’d picked me up, spun me around in the water, and carried me out of it. How he’d kissed me, there on the shore, with the thunder of the waves in my bones and my hair flying around us both. How he’d held my head in his two hands and kissed me like it was all he wanted to do, and then lifted me under my bum so he could kiss me better. And how we’d touched each other in his ute when he’d taken me home.
Parked behind the shed, where he’d parked when he’d worked on the house, but not getting out. Our tongues dancing together, and the cold of the window glass against my head, until he’d put his hand there to cushion it. His hand on my thigh, under my dress, cold against my heated skin, then sliding higher as he kissed my neck, dragging his cheek across my skin. The nearly unbearable thrill of that kiss, and his thumb stroking up my inner thigh, toward that place I’d only touched myself under the blankets, in the dark, when I hadn’t been able not to anymore. My darkest sin, and my deepest desire, swirling me down into its depths until I’d be gasping, trying not to cry out, biting my lip to keep quiet so Priya wouldn’t hear and know.
When he did it … I wasn’t going to be able to keep quiet.
I had my own hands on his shoulders, his back, and I wanted to feel him, but I wanted to feel this more. He was pulling me up higher against the glass, and his hand was at the fastening of my dress now. He said, his breath hot and quick in my ear, “I want to unbutton this. I want to touch you. I want to kiss you here.”
I shuddered. Hot, deep, and convulsive. It felt like I had my hand on myself, even though I didn’t. I said, “Yes.”
The feeling when he worked that first button through the buttonhole, like there was no going back. And then the second one, and his hand sliding inside my bra. My skirt was nearly up to my hips, and his forearm muscles were tight under my hand when I grabbed him there. My other hand was around his neck, feeling that roughness of late-afternoon scruff, and then he freed my breast and bent his head to it.
I practically levitated off the seat.
When his hand left my breast, shoved up under my skirt again, and touched me outside my undies, where I was wet, where I wassoaked—my hips started to move, and I was calling out. He wasn’t saying anything, because his mouth was busy, and so was his hand. Rubbing me, then sliding under my waistband, and his fingers found me.
Oh.
I didn’t realize I was saying it until he said, “Tell me if you don’t … ahh … want me to do it.” Not sounding like deliberate, careful Gabriel at all. Sounding like he couldn’t stand it. Like he couldn’tbearit.
I couldn’t answer. I grabbed his head and pulled it to my breast again, he started sliding his hand over me, and …
And it happened. The way it had in bed, under the covers, and so much more.
So.
Much.
