Page 105 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘You know,’ she said conversationally. ‘I hate you.’
‘What?’
‘It’s true. You made me feel small, Tom, and I’m done with feeling small.’
She had a determined look on her face that had his intuition tingling worse than the compromised nerves running down his left leg. ‘And, actually, I’m a hero now. Sergeant King told me so, just this evening, so you don’t get to tell me what I want, or what’s good for me, or how I feel or don’t feel.’
‘I never—’
‘I’m not finished.’
He rested his fingers on the glass of wine he’d poured for himself, ran them along the ridge of cut crystal.
‘Riding up that mountain was bloody difficult.’
‘I’m sure it was.’
‘It was dark and scary and I nearly lost my nerve when I had to get off and drag Skipjack through a foot-deep torrent of water.’
The cut crystal felt warm suddenly, soft and smooth, and when he looked down he realised his hand had moved from the glass and found her fingers.No touching, he reminded himself. No future, no hope, no Hannah. He dragged his hand back to the glass and lifted it to take a deep, numbing sip.
‘You know what else is bloody difficult?’
He knew plenty about difficult, but Hannah was on a roll. ‘What?’
‘Feelings. They are messy and complicated, and one day you think you know what you feel and then suddenly it’s totally different. Like when I was happy spending time with you, but then you decided to ditch our friendship and it hurt. And then, when I tried to be honest with you about my feelings, you brushed me off again. That hurt even worse. You know why?’
Tom swallowed. He knew, all right.
‘Because my heart was broken, Tom.’
Maybe she’d tell him that now she thought he was a coward—a cop-out—that hate was all she felt for him now. She’d tell him she was over him. She was moving on.
This was good. This was what he wanted for her. He looked into the fire and wished it didn’t tear him up into incy-wincy pieces to hear it.
‘But the thing I’ve learned about feelings is that they are resilient. Which is why,’ she said, ‘not only do I hate you …’
He looked up. Oh, heck. Hannah’s eyes were watering and he’d have put it down to the heat of the curry if it weren’t for the light shining in them. The tremble to her mouth. The wide-eyed look of hope and longing and vulnerability, all of which he understood, because wasn’t that the secret he was hiding in his own heart?
Oh, god. Not now, not to him.
‘… I love you, Tom.’
CHAPTER
39
There, she’d said it.
She’d heard that adrenalin did weird things to people and now she knew that was true.
It had made her brave.
She was a warrior princess from history who’d never had to bother with pesky trivialities like social media trolls, she’d ridden up a mountain through the blackest, stormiest of nights and she was claiming her man.
But then she saw the look on Tom’s face, and her thoughts stumbled. Or had adrenalin just made her stupid?
Why was he looking so horrified? Why was he sosurprised, damn it? She looked at the pool of wine spreading across the table. Oh, he’d snapped the stem of his glass—why wasn’t he picking the two-inch splinter of glass from his palm?
