Page 4

Abby

Leetham, Western Australia

Three months later

“ G ive us a couple of cans, would you, love?”

“Sure.” I slip two beers into foam coolers and slide them over the bar.

It’s forty-five degrees outside, which is over a hundred Fahrenheit.

Inside the Leetham Exchange it’s much cooler, dim and air conditioned.

Given that the population for the entire district is less than four hundred, however, it’s little surprise that there are fewer than ten people currently drinking here.

It’s a far cry from the long, brutal shifts back in Malaga, when I’d run hard for fifteen hours with barely a break, serving fussy tourists. The most challenging drink I get asked for here is a rum and coke, and even then, it’s usually served in a premixed can.

“Hey.” The guy who ordered the cans gives me a curious look from beneath a sweat-stained, battered felt hat. “Aren’t you the Chalmers’ girl?”

“Abby. Yep.” I force a smile. I know the guy’s face from childhood, though I couldn’t tell you what he does. Something to do with cattle, like everyone else around here.

“Yeah, right.” He nods with the satisfaction of someone who is happy to have put a name to a face. “Haven’t seen you around for while, hey?”

Not for the best part of a decade, mate, no, you haven’t.

“No.” I suppress a smile. “Not for a while.”

“But you’re back now.”

I nod as if he’s asked an actual question.

“Bet Pete and Suze are happy to have their girl back, hey?”

Oh, I wouldn’t bet on that at all, if I were you.

My parents weren’t known for their smiles before I left. If anything, my prolonged absence has only managed to turn their expressions permanently grim. I can’t tell if the grimness is reserved for me or if it’s a general thing.

I never could.

Which is one of the reasons I left in the first place.

Beer can guy nods again, in answer to his own question.

“Well, you won’t be single out here for long, not with legs like that.

” He lifts his hat and scratches his hair, sending a shower of red dirt onto the bar.

“We’re all pretty desperate round this joint, love.

” Lifting his can, he grins and wanders off.

Whoever is writing Australian rural romance has definitely never spent time in rural Australia.

Because if they had, and definitely if they’d spent any time in outback Western Australia, they’d be more inclined to dystopian horror than romance of any kind whatsoever.

Beer can guy aside, there are a couple of gray nomads, their huge camper vans parked out front, stretching the one beer their daily budget allows and savoring the free air con while they can get it.

A small cluster of backpackers, in from one of the outlying stations on their day off and equally happy about the air con, are playing pool in the corner.

They’ll buy a cheap carton of boxed wine soon and take it down to the river, where they’ll get great Instagram shots of themselves swimming with the freshwater crocodiles.

Finally, there are two lone drinkers, both battered old men, who greet me every morning at eleven when I open and help me close every night. The pub is basically their home.

I polish a glass, despite the fact that everyone around here drinks straight from the can. Lately, I do anything that distracts me from my phone. Reaching for my phone.

Stalking people on my phone.

Not that Dimitry is on social media. Bratva soldiers don’t tend to put their occupation up with a profile pic.

I told him in my letter that I was taking three months to think.

Three months of no contact.

Three months of living back at my parents’ isolated farm.

Of being the daughter of Pete and Suze Chalmers, and the topic of every local conversation for weeks: “You remember Abby... Ran off overseas a few years back. Nearly sent poor Suze gray, not that she’d ever let on, of course.

Didn’t work out, of course. They all come back, eventually. ..”

Nobody bothers to whisper. In a town as small as Leetham, there’s not much point.

I knew what I was in for. I grew up here, after all.

The only surprising thing was how quickly their interest faded.

Somehow I always assumed my return would be some kind of major scandal.

But in the time since I left, there have been other scandals.

Pregnancies, divorces, affairs, even a drug bust or two.

Here’s the thing about rural Australia: if you’re a local, you’re always a local.

Doesn’t really matter where you go, what you do, or how much you screw up.

Sooner or later, the scandal fades, and everyone just goes back to saying Hey, did you see the cattle prices?

And how about that lightning last night?

Everyone except my parents, that is.

They haven’t even got around to looking me straight in the eye, let alone talking about the weather. They definitely haven’t asked where I’ve been for the past six years.

Part of me is glad I don’t have to lie.

And part of me hates the wary sidestepping we all have to do, the carefully chosen topics of conversation that can’t possibly veer into dangerous territory.

But I chose this. I wanted it. I needed to know if I had a real chance at a normal life, or if I was doomed to live forever in the shadows, sheltered among Dimitry’s world of bratva or on the run from my own mistakes.

Running from the South American drug cartel who want me alive, and an even more dangerous man who wants me dead.

I shudder, pushing the darkness away.

My three months of space from Dimitry is up in one day. And I still have no answers at all.

I’m starting to wonder if I was asking the right questions in the first place.

I’d managed to convince myself that I could return to some kind of normal life .

And ever since a series of really bad decisions took me into the shadows years ago, a normal life has taken on an almost mystical significance. So much so that I forgot what it actually feels like to live it.

I forgot why I left Leetham in the first place.

The fact is that although I love Australia’s wide, wild open skies, the smell of home, and the comfort of familiarity, Leetham has never truly felt like my place.

I never really felt like myself here, and I still don’t.

Not like I did when I stood in front of my easel in Spain, covered in paint, creating my internal world in color and inhaling the sweet, exotic Spanish air.

Or how I felt waking up next to Dimitry.

Or laughing with Darya . . .

Pain hits me in a sudden, vicious rush.

Time away has made those memories vivid, whereas Leetham is just exactly as I always remembered it. Exactly as it was when I left, neither more nor less.

In the years since I left, I’d almost forgotten about the last argument I had with my parents, the catalyst that made me leave in the first place. They’d wanted me to study something practical. Teaching. Agricultural science. Business. Something a farm girl could use in a country town.

All I wanted was to travel and paint. And neither of those looked anything like a life plan to my parents.

They refused to pay for art college, and if I’m honest, I didn’t really expect them to.

They didn’t see the point in me setting off to travel with no clear plan of what I wanted to do afterward, and I didn’t have the words to explain to them how I felt.

All I knew back then was that the world beyond Australia felt like an endless palette of vivid color, while staying in Leetham was like choosing to sketch in gray pencil for the rest of my life.

My parents’ home felt stifling, a trap I needed to leave immediately or submit to forever.

The need to escape it was urgent, visceral.

And despite all the disasters which followed my decision to leave home, the world beyond Leetham really was far bigger than even I could have imagined.

It altered my perspective. The years away painted my internal landscape in new colors, created a portrait of a much different Abby.

The years changed me so much that I began to wonder if perhaps my problem with Leetham had been one of perspective, rather than Leetham itself .

Maybe, I’d thought, if I went back to normal life, I would become the masterpiece I went away to find in the first place.

Now that I’m back, I’ve realized that the normal life I’d begun to idealize is no more my life now than it ever was. It provided a foundation I will always be grateful for. But it’s like a sketch, only the bare outlines of who I am.

After three months of being home I still don’t know what my masterpiece is supposed to look like. I don’t know what to leave in my self-portrait and what to leave behind. And I don’t know who belongs in the picture with me.

I have to give Dimitry an answer, and I have no fucking idea what to tell him.

The bar door swings open, bringing a gust of hot, dry wind in with it. I look up and feel the sudden, icy rush of fear that I thought I’d left behind long ago.

Two of the three bikers walking toward the bar are huge, bearded, and covered in tattoos. The third one is a good decade younger than the other two, with a narrow face and hard eyes. All wear black leather jackets emblazoned with the word Banderos , in red on a white background.

It isn’t just their riding leathers that give them away as bikers. I know who they are because it’s the third day they’ve come here.

One night, I can understand. Two, if they had a mechanical issue or needed a rest.

But three nights in Leetham, with no good reason, makes me nervous.

I force a smile as they approach the bar. “Hey, boys. What can I get for you?”

“Three rum and cokes, thanks, love.”

Is his smile a little too friendly? Are his eyes a bit too sharp?

I mix the drinks with my back turned, keeping a close eye on them in the mirror.

Are they staring at me or just at the bottles on the bar ?