Page 129 of Last Breath

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.