Page 37 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Jett

A montage of blurry images streamed through his brain.

Her eyes, black and wild, pulling him towards her.

Her tongue twisting hungrily, searching, wanting in his mouth.

His hand gripping her upper thigh, pulling her closer. But she’d never be close enough.

The warmth of her skin. All the curves he’d felt and the ones he hadn’t. Those haunted him. Was it just human instinct to want what you can’t have? Some sort of evolutionary survival imperative? Or was it just her?

He was hard just at the thought of her. This wasn’t good.

But he’d dealt with this before. He’d become an expert at blocking her out.

Pushing it down. Before that night after Giovanni’s funeral, he’d never thought of her.

Not in the shower, not with someone else, not with his eyes closed.

Never. Because like a drug, once was enough to make him an addict for life.

But now he was going mad. The scent of her lingered in his imagination, strangling every other thought and memory from existence.

Vanilla, pink gin, berries. No matter which way he twisted in his sheets, how many showers he took, her smell continued to haunt him.

Maybe this was his penance for having these thoughts.

Thoughts he’d thrown safely in his attic whenever they’d arrived before.

He’d never thought too much about them. He was straight; she was .

.. impossible to look away from. A blinding, fucking meteorite falling down to earth, no one able to tell until it hit the ground whether it was world-ending or not.

Well, Jett knew now which one it was.

Was it just because of the kiss? Or was it because of what he’d told her before the kiss?

Telling her about Emily and Nigel had been dangerous.

Two parts of his life that were never meant to meet.

He shouldn’t be creating links like that.

He needed to go. Screw Vittoria and her contract, he should have left the second he’d finished that bloody shower after the funeral.

He should have left after one year, like he always did.

He inhaled deeply. And that’s when he realised.

His pillow. His sheets.

He wasn’t going mad. He wasn’t being haunted. He hadn’t washed the covers since Nella had splayed herself across his bed on Friday night.

Relief swamped him as he stripped the bed and tossed the sheets into the washing machine. He was about to dump a scoop of blue powder over the top when he put the cup down, opened the lid and grabbed the linen back out, ignoring Razor’s confused whine as he kicked the garage door open.

Jett opened the red lid of the waste bin and stuffed his bed linen into its depths.

Sleep was a higher-order function only those insufferable work-life balancers could achieve. Jett had been off-balance ever since that day on the balcony, but now he felt like he’d tilted to a point from which he might never be able to right himself.

Matteo had Luca.

But even the fear about what Matteo could be planning by using the youngest Barbarani as collateral could not push Nella from his mind.

Only one thing could.

Jett had been born an addict. Literally.

Although he’d been weaned off heroin in his first few months of life and he’d managed so far not to fall into the same cycle as his parents and so many other adults he’d grown up around – drugs, alcohol, gambling – he was still an addict. But his drug of choice was adrenaline.

It was about trust, a free-climbing mate from two jobs ago had told him – extreme sports, adrenaline chasing. It was the ultimate trust – with nature. Jett didn’t know if that was true. To him, it was chasing a high. And he was fucking desperate for a fix.

Because Nella Barbarani was the one drug he could never take. The one adrenaline high he’d never have. So he needed to chase another one.

Devil’s Pool was a favourite spot for cliff jumpers.

It was a deep chasm between the enormous limestone cliffs shielding the pristine white beach from the waves.

On the windiest side of Bindi Bindi, its wild conditions made it perfect for experienced surfers and other varieties of adrenaline junkies.

Most cliff jumpers headed to the flat head of limestone halfway up the cliff.

This was a decent drop, but it didn’t carry the same threat as Devil’s Pool, which was a reef hole.

You had to time your drop exactly when the tide was right so it wasn’t too shallow but not so deep you couldn’t see the outline of the small hole.

This wildness, the unpredictable and sometimes volatile nature of it, was why he loved Bindi Bindi Cove. It was a thrill seeker’s dream, the dark forests, the feral ocean. A small sliver of the earth, untamed, unmanicured.

He really was going to miss it.

The promise of dawn breathed over the horizon but the sky and water were still black as Jett ignored the signs diagrammatically detailing all the possible ways he could die as he headed to the top of the cliff. The conditions this early, with no light, were not ideal for Devil’s Pool.

In fact, they were dangerous. Stupidly so.

But this was what addiction was. He’d had a taste of his forbidden drug and he should have known it would only make him want more. Need more. So he couldn’t wait for sunrise.

Everything came back as he stood over the dark, swirling water. The light-headedness, the hyperawareness of every part of his body, the thumping of his heart like a warning beep on a new car when you came too close to crashing into something.

It was exactly how his body had felt as Nella pulled him towards her in Clarkson’s office.

And that was the last thought he had before he jumped.

‘Is there something I should know, Randall?’

The voice was familiar but Jett couldn’t place it. He’d finally fallen asleep. Had he?

Why was he wet? Not wet. Saturated.

He blinked, eyelids crusted together with salt and sand. A gull squawked nearby.

Morning? The sky was purple and gold. Just after dawn. How long had he been ...

‘Don’t sit up!’ The voice belonged to Noah Avery, he realised, who was standing above him in jogging gear, blue wireless headphones around his neck, blocking the buttery yellow sunrise.

‘You might have hit your head. I thought you were a bloody dead body. Be just my luck, wouldn’t it, on my day off? ’

Jett started to ask what happened, but as the smells of seaweed and dried bird poo wafted around him and he took in where he was – on a sandy part of Bindi Beach near Devil’s Pool – everything came back.

Jett touched the back of his head. ‘I can’t feel anything. Are you sure I hit it?’

Avery raised his black wrap-around sunnies into his dark red hair and squinted at him.

‘Dunno, man. One of the surfers said they saw you staggering out, then you collapsed here. I was jogging – she flagged me down. Obviously still look like a cop even out of uniform. Or maybe I’m a magnet for disaster.

’ Something in Avery’s frown dislodged the uncomfortable memories of Friday night.

‘Is your fiancée all right? Nella said they took her to Bunbury.’

‘Yeah. She’s doing better, no real damage, just ...’ Avery blinked. ‘You sure you’re all right? You were lying here passed out by the time I got here, and the surfer reckons she saw you hit your head after you jumped. I’ve called the ambos.’

‘Shit.’ Shame and panic congealed in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t stand the smell of ambulances. ‘Cancel it. I’m fine. I, uh ... probably just fell asleep.’

It often happened like that.

‘Why did you jump, Randall?’ Avery looked at him suspiciously. ‘Do I need to take you for a psych eval?’

‘No. God. I swear, it was just a jump – I do it all the time. I timed it badly, I realise that.’

Avery didn’t seem convinced.

‘If I wanted to kill myself, I’d do it in my car.’

‘Well, now I really have to take you for an evaluation.’ But Avery’s face had softened. ‘You swear to me, Randall? You’re okay?’

‘I am now.’ And it was true – he’d drained her from his system with the jump. For now.

‘Blokes need to talk more,’ Avery said, turning to watch a gull dive into the water. ‘You have someone you can talk to?’

‘Yep, sure do.’ Razor. Because dogs don’t ask follow-up questions.

The cop showed no signs of leaving him alone.

Shit, what was the time anyway? Jett didn’t anticipate Ariana La Marca being the type to try to slit their throats on the way to the hangar, but he couldn’t take any chances.

Luca being collateral wasn’t going to stop her from trying to undermine Nella’s attempt to get the proof from the La Marca Lake Orta house.

He could feel the restless energy sparking off Avery like an oily pan spitting on a stove. ‘Is there, uh, something you need to talk about, Avery?’

Avery wiped a massive freckled paw over his brow, not looking at Jett. ‘I’m good, man.’

‘And your girlfriend ...’

‘Hazel.’

‘Hazel. You sure she’s all right?’

Avery’s pursed lips told him he’d poked the right spot.

Reading other people’s emotions was a skill Jett had sharpened through years of bouncing around foster homes.

You needed to be on high alert at all times – like a meteorologist knows all the weather patterns, but in this case the warning signs for anger, boredom, pain.

Because if you missed them, it was often too late.

He touched his scar, scraping sand and crusted salt from the smooth ripples of healed skin.

‘She’s saying some odd things,’ Avery eventually said. ‘It’s probably nothing. The doctors reckon I should chalk it up to her concussion.’

Jett frowned. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘Just that ...’ Avery paused, running his eyes over Jett like he was checking to make sure he wasn’t an imposter. ‘I dunno, man, she’s saying someone pushed her.’