Page 26 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Coming out of that illicit dream, fighting against every primal urge to get in the car, drive to Perth and drag her back, to this town, to his own bed, terrified him to the point where he’d started to put his keys in Greyson’s freezer.

He’d thought she’d stay in Perth, where she’d be safe from his dreams, his sickness. But the lawsuit had changed everything. He knew she’d come back, knew no matter what. She couldn’t stay away from Bindi Bindi Cove, however much pain it caused her.

He was the problem. He was the one who had to leave.

‘How did you not know your licence was expired?’ Was she too drunk to register his erratic subject change?

‘Urghmmph.’ She headbutted the pillow again, her lower body bouncing with the force.

He dragged his eyes away from the tight curves of her black pants. ‘I still don’t know how you passed your practical test. Despite all my help, you had the coordination of a drunk Daddy Long Legs.’

‘I think Grey had something on the instructor,’ she mumbled. ‘Because I distinctly remember hitting at least three kerbs during my test. And maybe one pedestrian.’

‘You haven’t been driving on an expired licence, have you?’

‘Why? Because we can’t afford that scandal too?’

‘Because it’s illegal, because you could get hurt ...’

‘I think you’re mainly upset because even you, Car Yoda, couldn’t teach me.’

‘I just don’t understand.’ He shook his head, but he couldn’t stop the upward pull of his lips. Car Yoda. That one wasn’t going in the attic for a while. ‘You’re the smartest person I know. How was it so difficult to learn?’

‘Why did I need to learn to drive when I had you?’ She was still talking into the pillow, her words filtering through silk and hair, so he couldn’t be sure he was hearing correctly. I had you.

‘That’s a very off-brand comment for you.’

‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Guess I was just too comfortable, too spoiled and selfish and assumed you’d always be around. Besides, I don’t like to waste my time with things I’m not good at or with things that don’t like me. Or people. Which you know.’

‘I’ve never called you those things.’

The pillow smothered her sarcastic laugh. ‘But you’ve thought them.’

Why does it matter what I think?

‘Do you mean it?’ she said after a couple of beats.

‘Mean what?’ He kicked an old pair of underwear under the bed while her head was still down on the pillow. For Christ’s sake, this was his haven, the one space she couldn’t infiltrate.

She turned and flashed a feral smile. ‘That I’m the smartest person you know?’

‘That depends on whether or not you’ll remember this conversation in the morning.’

‘I’ll remember how good these sheets feel.’ She wiggled her hips deeper into the mattress.

Lord. Have. Mercy.

‘Oh my god.’ She went rigid. She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at the pillow she’d just been making out with. ‘I’m Oliver.’

‘Right.’ Definitely drunker than he’d thought.

‘He came into my bed.’ She went on, as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘Second year uni. He and Clarkson were friends with my roommate. They were playing video games or whatever, drinking. I stayed up for a few, but I went to bed early because ... well, I can’t remember anymore. You were there.’

‘I was ... What?’

‘You picked me up,’ she amended.

‘I only picked you up once from your apartment in your second year. You told me you didn’t want people thinking you were above them because you had a personal chauffeur.

You always made me meet you at the train station.

’ Even after she’d almost been locked in a stalker’s basement.

Thinking about Sally Sue dislodged another memory of Nella in the back of his car.

Was that the time she was talking about?

But she hadn’t been hurt then, had she? He only remembered that night because of what they’d talked about. ‘Except one time.’

‘Except one time.’ She found his eyes. Hers were black.

‘Do you think it’s possible for guys and girls to be friends?’ she’d asked as he’d U-turned around the cul-de-sac her share house bordered. He could have sworn the curtains moved from behind the window as he pulled away.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If one of them is gay.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I have plenty of guy friends who I’ve never felt any sort of physical attraction to.’

He pretended there was cement locking his jaw together. Not his place to point out the obvious. He just had to drive.

‘What if they’re married?’ she prompted. ‘Or in committed relationships, completely in love with other people? Can they be friends then?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but I doubt it’s a real friendship like what you have with Eliza.

Vows and promises don’t override human instinct.

You can control your actions, and some people obviously hold more value in the relationships they’ve cultivated with their spouses than others.

But no one can completely control desire. ’

She chewed her lip, something shifting in her expression. ‘I think I’ve ruined a friendship tonight.’ She stared out the window.

‘It would be pretty difficult to be your friend, Nella,’ he said without thinking.

An excruciating silence fogged the windows. ‘Are you my friend?’ she whispered eventually.

‘I work for your dad.’ His hands tightened around the wheel.

‘That’s not what I asked.’

He knew what she was asking. And it had nothing to do with friendship.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We’re friends.’

He hadn’t dared to take that memory down from its dusty shelf in the attic until now.

It made sense now – her weird questions, her worry she’d ruined a friendship.

She’d been talking about her friendship with Clarkson after whatever the hell had happened with Oliver.

Jett’s stomach turned to quicksand, he was falling, falling.

‘What the fuck did Lockridge do to you?’

‘Stand down, alpha-bot. Must – resist – primal – wiring. ’

‘Nella, you had coffee with him last Sunday ...’

‘Why do you think I made you come with me?’

Shit. It was making sense now, glass shards of a mosaic of moments glinting into an ugly, hideous shape of the truth.

The way she turned away from Oliver when he went to embrace her.

The cold, unfeeling way she dispatched her recollection of Clarkson and their uni days.

The desperation in her eyes when she’d asked Jett to stay with her.

If he’d known, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to walk into the ocean with Oliver without holding him under until his $80 reusable coffee cup bobbed, untethered, back up to the surface.

‘It wasn’t rape,’ she said, head back on the pillow. She’d turned away from him. ‘I didn’t say no.’

‘You know that means shit all.’

‘Not in a court of law.’

‘We’re not in a court of law.’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t push him away. I think I kissed him back at one point.’

The image of her soft lips on that slimy, blond prick bubbled acidly through his mind, dripping singed brain matter through his ears. ‘But you didn’t want it.’

‘No.’ Her shoulders sagged into the mattress. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Then that’s the only fact that matters.

’ He breathed out. His fingers twitched, pins and needles prickling through limbs that longed to comfort her.

It was inhuman, wasn’t it? To not comfort someone, just with a pat of a hand, a squeeze of a shoulder?

But he’d never been able to comfort Nella like that.

He didn’t touch her. Ever. Except for when he’d carried her out of the car when she’d fallen asleep on the drive back from the Sally Sue kidnapping.

He’d brushed her hair out of her face and put her faded Sleeping Beauty blanket over her.

He’d never told her he’d done that – he wasn’t sure why.

Maybe because he’d felt like he’d indulged himself in that moment, unable to stop the smell of her hair and perfume filling him with feelings he should not be feeling.

Thoughts he should not be having about the eldest Barbarani.

Did that make him as bad as Oliver?

No. He’d never even consider pushing his way into a woman’s bed without being invited.

He’d never kiss someone whose mouth was closed, who tried to turn away.

Jett knew when a woman was telling him she wanted him, but he’d been accused of ruining romantic tension by asking permission.

And he was smart enough, and self-aware enough, to know that a woman like Nella would never even entertain the thought of his lips on any part of her unless he was the only person available to administer CPR.

So maybe that meant he was smarter than Oliver.

Who he was going to murder.

‘Does anyone else know? Did Clarkson?’

‘He knew Oliver was in my room. And I told my mum once.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah.’ She matched his surprised tone. ‘Big mistake. I was drunk. You know what she said to me? You’ll love this, she said, “For goodness sake, Antonella, you always make such a drama out of everything. Every woman at one point in her life has been entered by a man when she didn’t feel like it.”’

‘I don’t love that.’

Her back rose in a shaky breath.

He couldn’t tell Nella what her words made him want to do to Oliver.

He knew that wasn’t what she needed to hear right now.

He couldn’t be the person who held her, he couldn’t be the guy she leant on.

But he could do something that didn’t involve crossing any of the invisible lines between them to show her he’d heard.

That although he couldn’t really understand, he was sorry anything like that had happened to her. To anyone, but especially her.

He pulled a thick blanket from his top dresser shelf. She didn’t look up until he’d draped the whole thing across her. It swallowed her like an avalanche, making her look small and vulnerable.

‘It’s not Sleeping Beauty,’ he whispered, as he tucked the corner by her elbow, ‘but it’s warm.’

She swivelled to face him. His head hadn’t moved from where he’d bent down, and her eyes flared wide in sharp realisation.

He left his face there for as long as he dared, too close to hers, he knew that.

He shouldn’t be able to feel her warm breath, or see the gaps between her eyelashes.

Her eyes traced his face for something. But whether she found it or not, he’d never know, because he hated the feeling of people looking at his face too long – miners trying to imagine gold below the jagged, desolate surface of the earth when none existed – and he pulled away, grabbing a book from his bedside table.

‘You smell good tonight,’ she said.

He was so caught off-guard that the paperback almost slipped out of his grasp.

‘I thought I’d better take one of my bimonthly showers,’ he said lightly, slipping the book under his elbow and moving towards the light switch at the top of the stairs.

‘Is it for her? The cologne?’

‘The guy at the shop said it would attract all women within a ten-kilometre radius or my money back.’

‘You’re avoiding the question.’

‘I always smell like this.’

‘No.’ Her voice was thick. ‘You don’t.’

His feet wouldn’t move. Just go. Walk down the stairs. One foot. Next foot. It’s not that hard.

‘Is she smart?’ Nella was facing away from him again, but it felt like she was breathing right into his ear.

‘Yes,’ was all he could manage, his throat constricting like her nails were clamped around it.

The silence throbbed. When he finally swallowed, it was as loud as the crack of a gun.

‘Is she pretty?’

He chuckled, his insides loosening slightly. Classic Nella interrogation. She would have done the same to Grey, to Luca, to Tom. It didn’t mean anything. ‘Of course,’ he said.

A beat. ‘Prettier than me?’

His throat was now the broken neck of a wine bottle. The smallest wrong movement would pierce the glass right through his skin. He didn’t know how he managed to laugh as he said, ‘Goodnight, Nella.’