Page 66 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

The next morning, she arrived at the street name she’d scribbled on a green sticky note, courtesy of her inhouse soon-to-be-engaged PIs, pulling up neatly next to the kerb.

There was something satisfying about following hand-written directions instead of the obnoxious voice of the phone-dwelling woman.

The more Nella drove, the more she realised how much she’d been missing.

She liked having part of her brain concentrating on the road but with the rest of her mind free to wander – a kind of tethered aimlessness.

As soon as she got out of the car, she realised how stupid this was. There was every possibility he wouldn’t still be here after all this time.

A girl with tiny black braids and a gap in her front teeth pedalled past on her bike. The glittery beads between the wheel spokes rattled like the ones Nella had hated on her own bike when she was the same age (she’d wanted a sleek black and red bike called the Red Back Spider that Tom had).

‘Excuse me?’ Nella cleared her throat. The girl watched her warily. ‘Do you know if a man named Nigel lives anywhere near here?’

The girl seemed pleased to be tasked with imparting such important information and dumped her bike across the mint green lawn.

‘He lives in the red-roof house.’ She pointed a sparkly-blue-painted finger at the modest red brick house to their right.

The lawn wasn’t as green as at number 56 but it was trimmed and lined in thick rose bushes just starting to bud with tiny white flowers.

‘Nigel is my best friend Maisie’s grandpa. ’

‘Thank you,’ Nella said. Any minute now the Neighbourhood Watch would be reporting a stranger trying to lure a little girl off her bike. Distancing herself as much as possible from an abduction accusation, Nella strode up the garden path to the fly-wire front door.

The garage was on the left, about the same width as the house, with a cream door and three vintage model cars parked down the driveway, each in various states of repair.

Her heart spluttered cold, desperate warnings through her bloodstream that this was all for nothing, that after all this time, he wouldn’t have kept it.

She ignored it and pushed the doorbell. Instinct taking over.

The sun beat down on the back of Jett’s neck as he took his first sip of water in what felt like a year. The ice-cold liquid soaked the cracked channels of his throat, bringing him back to life.

Or, at least to the half-life he’d been existing in these past six months.

It was a great job, working for Kevin. Exquisite cars, less-exquisite teenagers, but teenagers with stories and issues Jett didn’t have to fix or drive them away from.

Instead he taught them how to change brake pads, disconnect spark plug wires, and that the function of a tyre iron was to assist in changing a tyre, not as an opportunistic assault weapon.

This was the kind of place where he could settle for a year or two before getting that burning feeling of needing a change.

But it was like he’d fractured his leg and kept forgetting about it.

He’d go about his day, not putting any weight on it, not thinking about it and then one sudden movement would send him into a sickening spiral of pain.

He’d never felt that pull back to somewhere before.

To someone. But it would pass, he knew that.

The break would heal. And it was nothing compared to the pain he would have felt, staying behind, watching her marry someone else – someone suitable, who Tom and the rest of the family would embrace like a brother.

Someone they’d all be proud of. It was also nothing compared to the pain he would have caused her, dragging her away from her family, because of his own issues.

He would break his own heart again and again before he became a burden to her.

Jett crushed the water bottle in his fist and lobbed it into the yellow recycling can (Kevin was a religious recycler; Jett had witnessed him chase down the twenty-year-old graduate turned assistant manager of Kev’s Rev Shop with a wrench when he didn’t wash out his iced coffee cup before dumping it in the recycling, even though Kevin claimed he’d forgotten he was still holding the wrench).

Jett was finishing early today to drive a group of old women, including Kevin’s aunt Ingrid, to a bingo evening in the next town over.

Restless, with his evenings free and finding himself driving round aimlessly anyway, unable to sleep, Jett had become the unofficial town Uber.

The extra cash was nice. He got to drive. He didn’t think about Bindi Bindi as much when Ingrid was shouting at Laura Nottingham from the backseat about the absolute abomination that was Gertrude Smith’s pavlova. (‘Kiwi fruit and no strawberries, Laura, can you believe it?’)

‘I’m off,’ he said to Alex, the graduate who’d made the grave iced coffee mistake.

Alex nodded solemnly, probably grateful Jett wasn’t threatening him with the work tools. But they both turned at an unmistakable rumbling in the distance.

‘You expecting someone?’ Jett cupped a hand against the sun, but he couldn’t make out the car.

‘Nope. But shiiiit .’ Alex whistled as the car drew closer.

Jett’s heart stopped at the sound. V8 engine. He knew those were aluminium-silicon alloy block and aluminium cylinder heads with cast-iron wet cylinder liners. Exclusive half-wheel covers with a stainless-steel trim. That sleek, classic long front with the flat nose. The queen of cars. Rolls Royce.

The Corniche I. Classic beauty, complex and intricate workings, easily misunderstood. Only someone who truly understood the Corniche truly deserved to own her, to drive her, to love ...

Bloody hell, it was a dead ringer for the one he’d worked on with ...

No.

It wasn’t ...

But the number plate ...

Impossible. That had been years ago. Jett would have been completely erased from Nigel’s memory ...

The car door opened, and he was right. It wasn’t Nigel who stepped out of the driver’s seat.

‘Nice wheels, ma’am.’ Alex adopted an ocker, country-boy accent that snapped Jett out of his sunstroke illusion.

‘Thanks, kid,’ Nella said, the direction of her gaze impossible to determine behind her massive tortoiseshell sunglasses.

Alex deflated at the word ‘kid’ and slunk back into the shop.

Jett swallowed hard. It was just him and Nella. Two astronauts pulled by the gravity of a lone dusty planet.

‘Before you say anything,’ Jett started.

God. It was a good thing he’d had that water or he wouldn’t have been able to speak.

The afternoon breeze tugged her hair away from her face and made the fabric of her shirt cling to every curve in a torturous reminder of what he’d had, of the body his aching hands traced the ghostly outlines of every time he closed his eyes. ‘Two questions.’

She folded her arms. ‘Only two?’

‘First.’ He closed his eyes. ‘You didn’t drive here unsupervised, did you?’

‘I did.’

He opened them again, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘Second. Is that the car I think it is?’

Her face broke. ‘Yes.’

‘But how did you ... did you find it online or ...?’

‘I got it from Nigel.’

‘Nigel?’ Jett shook his head. ‘Impossible. Nigel wouldn’t even remember me. Jesus, is he even still alive? He must be almost eighty by—’

‘He’s perfectly healthy, thank you.’ Nella seemed to take personal offence to the insinuation of Nigel’s lack-of-aliveness.

‘He’s still in the same house you lived in.

Unfortunately Wendy passed away five years ago from cancer, but he wasn’t able to let the place go.

He has four grandchildren, and he’s been holding this weird-sounding car for you in his garage. But you never came back.’

Jett forced his eyes up to the sun, but the feeling was burning in his throat too.

He didn’t know when she moved, but one minute all he could smell was sweat and grease and then he was enveloped in rose musk and vanilla.

His kryptonite. His Nella. He pressed his face into her hair.

Wendy, who he’d never see again. Nigel, who’d kept the stupid car, who’d waited for him, who’d believed he’d come back, believed he wasn’t the deformed dropkick, street-rat everyone else did.

Or did they?

Had it been easier to assume that the entire world saw him like Emily’s father had? Was it like Nella had said – an easy way out? A superpower that got him out of commitment, of difficult conversations?

‘You leave a mark, Jett. Not just on me. No matter what you tell yourself, no matter how much you try, you affect people and places. You matter. Your light is too bright for anyone to not see.’

He couldn’t respond. He didn’t know how he’d ever be able to speak again. He gripped her like she was a jetty pole and the tumultuous waves were wrapping around him, tugging him out to sea.

She spoke into his ear, like the ocean whispers through a shell.

‘You are the most important thing to me. And if you want to live here, I’ll live with you, for part of the month and then I’ll go home for the other part.

I’ll be a FIFO girlfriend.’ She laughed softly.

‘We can have ten different homes. Live in twenty different countries. It doesn’t matter. Because my home is wherever you are.’

‘I don’t want you to be a FIFO girlfriend,’ he managed, his voice shaky. ‘I want to be with you, every day, back home.’

‘Home?’ She said the word slowly, like he’d mispronounced it.

‘Home. Bindi Bindi. I’ll rent something in the town, like Max ...’

‘Max won’t be living in town for much longer,’ Nella said. ‘They’re engaged. I got the call as I was driving here from Nigel’s.’

Jett let out a splutter of surprise. Max and Grey engaged? And he’d missed it? He’d missed nervous Greyson, who sweated like a hose and went through at least two T-shirts an hour? How much else had he missed?

‘I don’t want you to ruin your life for me,’ Nella said, her mouth thin with vulnerability.

Jett’s lips twitched upwards and he reached for her face, but realised his hand was coated in silvery, grey grease.

She noticed his hesitation and cupped his hand in hers, bringing it against the cool skin of her cheek anyway.

‘You ruined my life a long time ago,’ he said.

‘You ruined every date I tried to go on, every woman I tried to convince myself was attractive, every night I tried to drift off to sleep peacefully ...’

‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I knew you used to think about me naked!’

He ignored her. ‘And now you’ve ruined this car’s second chance at life by driving it unlicensed and with no concept of how—’

‘Oh yeah, about that ...’ She stuck a hand in her back pocket and produced a small plastic card. ‘It’s not fake,’ she said, as he squinted.

‘I can tell it’s real – that’s the ugliest photo of you I’ve ever seen.’

‘I know.’ She puffed her chest proudly.

‘Really, Nella, you look hideous. Did they deliberately set the camera filter on serial killer gre—?’

Her mouth stopped his last word and he felt the dry, drought-cracked ground crumble beneath them.

He tasted the coffee she’d had on the drive; he met the fierceness of her tongue with his own.

It was impossible that she’d missed this as much as him.

It was impossible that she was here now.

The groan in her throat was thunder to the storm brewing between them.

The feeling within them was stirring the black clouds of their souls.

When they pulled apart, Nella’s face was twisted with concern. ‘What will you do in Bindi Bindi?’

‘I’ll work for Clarkson’s dad’s company.

’ The answer came out of his mouth before his brain had sifted through those old records of memory.

‘He needs someone to take over the driving – he’s got no one else.

He’ll have been throwing money away these past six months.

’ Jett was rambling, a car with no tread, skidding on a gravel road.

In the back of his mind, deep in the attic, had he secretly been plotting a way to return?

A job, a life he could call his own? ‘Unless,’ he said, taking her in, ‘you’d rather I stayed and worked for you? ’

‘What use do I have for a driver when I am now a certified Lewis Hamilton?’ Nella waved him away, her eyes sparkling.

‘Nice try. What was that, the top hit for Google search: who is the most famous race car driver? ’

‘ Sports car driver, thank you. And I don’t want you to work for me. I don’t care where you work, although I think working for Mr Lieu is the most amazing choice if you do decide it’s the right thing for you. But it’s your decision. It’s still your life. I just want you to drive home to me.’

There was more she wanted to say, he knew.

There would always be more Nella Barbarani wanted to say.

And there were things he needed to tell her too – pieces of him he’d been picking up off the attic floor, unsure where to place.

But that time would come and they’d pick up the pieces together, one by one.

But it would be in the same house, in the light of the day, not in the windowless, suffocating darkness.

Because now, this , him and Nella, was home.