Her Favorite Rival (32 page)

She’d believed in him. In them. And it had all been a mirage. A lovely fantasy that existed only in her mind.

She teetered on the brink of control. Then her pride kicked in. She’d bared her soul to this man once. She wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—do it again.

“I guess we both know where we stand, then. And I guess it’s better that we had this conversation sooner rather than later.” She searched for her overnight bag.

“Audrey. Come on.”

He moved into the room as she started stuffing her things into her bag—her purse, yesterday’s shoes, the earrings and necklace she’d left on the bedside table. She was about to stuff her skirt inside when he tugged both it and the bag from her hands.

“You can’t go. I don’t want you to go home.”

She fought desperately to stop herself from breaking down. She was absolutely determined to preserve that last, small shred of her dignity.

“I don’t think there’s much point in me staying.”

“None of this changes how I feel about you. Audrey, I love you.”

How she would have loved to hear those words from him a couple of hours ago. Now they made her feel incredibly sad and empty. What sort of relationship did he imagine they had when he only allowed her to know the parts of himself he considered acceptable for public consumption?

“Zach—” She pressed her fingers to her lips to stop them from trembling. “Zach, I think you’re a wonderful man, I really do. But what sort of future can we have together when you cut me out of part of your life? How could that possibly work?”

They were standing so close she could feel the turmoil inside him, the battle that was taking place behind his stormy blue eyes.

Hope flared. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he wanted to trust her. He’d obviously been holding on for a long time. No wonder it was hard to let go.

But she couldn’t pry the truth from him. He had to want to share it with her. He had to trust her. Otherwise, they were doomed.

I don’t want to lose this man
.

But it was possible she’d never had him, not in the sense that she’d once believed she had.

“Whatever it is, Zach, it’s not going to change the way I feel about you. It’s not going to change us.”

She willed him to say the words she needed to hear. Willed him to put his faith in her the way she had in him.

“Then why make a big deal out of it?” There was no heat behind his words, no conviction. He’d already made his decision. He would let her go rather than invite her into his life. She could see it in his face.

“Because I want all of you, Zach. Not just the great lover and the smart business guy and the goofy crossword addict. I want the sad and the mad, too. I want the hard stuff, because I trust you with my hard stuff. I trust you to want to be there in the morning, to hang in there even when I’m maybe not making sense or being fair. I need you to trust me in the same way. I need you to let me love all of you, Zach.”

His chin jerked as though she’d landed a punch. He looked so bewildered, so blindsided, as though he couldn’t quite grasp how quickly things had shifted.

He wasn’t alone.

Her chest aching, she flung her arms around him. She squeezed him tight, resting her cheek alongside his. Because this was a tragedy. This was the greatest, most painful could-have-been of her life.

Then she stepped away and grabbed her bag and strode for the door.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
UDREY
MADE
IT
to her car before she started to sob, the sadness welling up from deep inside her. Not only for herself, but also for Zach. She’d always sensed a loneliness inside him. An apartness. It made sense now—how could he ever truly connect with people if he was always holding a part of himself back?

It made her feel so heartbroken that he felt it had to be that way. She didn’t even want to think about what might motivate a man like him to partition his life so meticulously, so thoroughly.

What happened to you, Zach?

It was possible she would never know.

Her car didn’t unlock the first time and she hit the remote button several times before she heard the click. She gave the door pillar a frustrated thump before sliding in and slamming the door behind her.

She started driving, but she was barely five minutes up the road before dizzying anxiety gripped her, so powerful she had to pull over to the curb.

This felt wrong. Driving away from Zach wrenched at something inside her. She kept picturing his face, the turmoil behind his eyes. He had been utterly torn. She’d
felt
it, felt the battle he was waging with himself.

He can’t help being the way he is. Something happened to make him this way, and he’s done what he had to do to cope. Who are you to judge what that is? Who are you to try to take away the walls he’s built to protect himself without knowing all the facts?

After all, no one knew more than her how important walls could be. Sometimes they were absolutely essential to surviving and functioning and staying sane. She took a deep breath, hiccupped, then used her sleeve to wipe her face.

Before you do this, make sure you know exactly what you’re opening yourself up to. He may never be the man you want him to be. He may never be able to share himself with you fully. Are you that desperate for some love in your life that you’re prepared to accept half a loaf?

There was only one answer: she loved him. If she could make him happy, give him some comfort... That would be enough. She would make it enough.

Another swipe with her sleeve, then she performed a highly illegal U-turn across oncoming traffic.

Zach’s front door was unlocked and she let herself in without knocking, too impatient to wait. She heard the shower running. She didn’t hesitate, walking down the hall and into the bathroom. Zach raised his head as she entered, but she didn’t stop, pulling the door open and walking straight into the enclosure with him, clothes, shoes and all.

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her head to his chest, holding him as tightly as her puny girl muscles would allow. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing. If it’s that hard for you, that painful, it’s okay. We’ll work around it. And if you ever decide you want to invite me in, that’s okay, too. Whatever you need, okay? Whatever you need.”

“Jesus.”

His arms came around her like steel bands, his grip so strong and tight she couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. She could feel how much this meant to him, how much he loved her—that was all that mattered.

He kissed her forehead, the bridge of her nose, her cheekbone, and finally her mouth, each contact fervent and almost violent, as though he couldn’t quite contain his feelings.

“How did I get by without you?” he said against her skin. “How did I even wake up in the morning?”

She kissed him with everything in her. “I love you, Zach. I love you so much.”

“Audrey. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to stuff this up.”

“I know. It’s okay. I know.”

They held each other close until the water started to cool, needing the contact, the reassurance.

“I think we’ve sucked the water tank dry,” he said.

They spent a couple of minutes wrangling her out of the soaked, clinging clothes and shoes, leaving them in the shower, before toweling each other dry.

“Let’s go back to bed,” she said.

They lay skin to skin, kissing occasionally, looking into each other’s eyes, letting all the adrenaline and emotion drain away.

Audrey very deliberately didn’t think about the future, about how this issue might manifest itself next. She loved Zach, and she knew he loved her. As she had said, they would work around it.

He was worth it. They were worth it.

She was starting to doze off, lulled by the warmth of the bed and his breath on her cheek and the calm after the storm, when he stirred beside her.

“Is your bag in the car?” he asked.

She opened her eyes. “Yes. Why?”

“You’re going to need dry clothes.”

He didn’t say anything more, slipping from the bed and pulling on jeans before leaving the room. She heard him in the bathroom—taking her car keys from her wet jeans, no doubt—then she heard his tread in the hall and the sound of the front door closing. He was back in minutes, her bag in hand.

She didn’t ask where they were going. There was a grim set to his face that told her all she needed to know. She wasn’t going to make this any harder for him than it already appeared to be.

He went into the kitchen to make a quick phone call, then they managed to cobble together an outfit out of yesterday’s work clothes and a few loaner items from his wardrobe—a dress shirt and one of his jackets with the sleeves rolled up. It didn’t quite go with her skirt and high heels, but that was probably something she should have thought about before she’d stepped fully clothed into his shower.

“Ready?” he asked when she’d finished tying her hair into a ponytail.

“Yes. But we don’t have to do this now if you don’t want to.” She meant it. Whatever he was about to show or tell her, she could wait until he was ready.

“It’s not going to get any better. Let’s go.”

They took his car, driving into the city and then out again until they were entering the inner west. Greenery became more sparse; the parked cars were older. A sign above a store announced they were in Footscray, where Zach had grown up. He kept his gaze on the road, but she could feel his tension.

“Whatever I’m about to see, Zach, it won’t change how I feel about you.”

He glanced at her, then refocused on the road. She had no idea what was going through his mind.

He turned off the main road, wending his way through quiet residential streets until he stopped in front of a neat weatherboard house with a cracked concrete driveway and trim lawn. Zach glanced at the house, then fixed his gaze on the street. His chest rose and fell with a breath.

“My mum is a heroin addict. Has been since I was about eight or nine. Mostly she’s functional, meaning she’s got a part-time job and manages to work it around her habit. I found this place for her about six years ago. I pay the rent, make sure she gets food once a week, and she shoots her income up her arm.”

He said it as though he was reciting his grocery list, his tone flat and dead.

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. She looked from him to the house and then back again as his words sunk in.

She’d hung out with junkies when she’d run away from home. She’d even been offered heroin on more than one occasion. But she’d seen what it did to people, how desperate it made them. It hadn’t appealed to her one iota.

Zach had grown up with that kind of single-minded desperation, though.

“When did your father die?” she asked.

“About the same time Mum started using heavily. They were both casual users. They loved to party together. Then he came off his motorbike one night and that was it. I guess him dying tipped her over the edge. There’s a saying junkies have—heroin abhors a vacuum. She went from using socially to having a habit in the space of a few weeks. Then it was pretty much all over.”

He looked at her for the first time, and she saw a sort of watchful wariness in his eyes, as though he was waiting for her to do or say something.

Recoil in horror?

Judge him and his mother?

Then it hit her like a blow that he was ashamed, that the reason he’d been so damned reluctant to share his story was because he’d been worried what she would think of him, that she’d pity him or paint him as a victim or think less of him because of who his mother was and where he’d come from.

Zach was a strong guy, a determined guy. He wasn’t a victim. He was a fighter. A survivor. He would hate being pitied. He would
despise
it, but she bet Zach had been exposed to hundreds of card-carrying professional pitiers over the years. Social workers and police and teachers and medical staff and the kindly, good-intentioned parents of school friends. She bet Zach had had it up to his back teeth with people who wanted to bleed for him.

So even though she wanted to throw her arms around him and say she could not imagine what his childhood had looked like and the sorts of nightmares he must have had to stare down, she didn’t.

He didn’t need her pity or sympathy. He needed her understanding and support. He needed her to help him shoulder this burden, because that’s what it was. A son looking after his mother. Doing the right thing, because that’s who he was, down to his bones.

So instead of cradling his head in her hands and saying she wanted to weep for him, she studied the house, the neighborhood. “Is she expecting us?”

“I told her we might drop by.”

“Okay, then.” She climbed out and waited until he’d followed suit before slipping her hand into his. She could feel him watching her but she kept her expression impassive as they crossed the road and walked up the path to the front door.

Zach knocked, and she could feel his unease as he waited for his mother to answer. She turned her head to look at him and waited until he met her eyes.

“It’s okay, Zach.”

He nodded, and his hand relaxed around hers a notch. The lock rattled and then a split second later the door swung open.

“Zach. You came. So good to see you, sweetheart.”

The woman in the doorway had gray-streaked dark hair pulled back into a loose bun on the back of her head. Her eyes were the same navy-gray as Zach’s, but any other resemblance there might have been was muddied by the fact that she was clearly underweight, her cheekbones and collarbones pushing at her skin.

She wore jeans and a fluffy blue sweater, and she smiled slowly as she looked at Audrey.

“Let me guess—you’re Audrey. Great to meet you.” She held out her hand and Audrey shook it.

“Nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Black.”

“Get out of here—I’m Judy. Come in. I’ll make you some coffee. Or tea, if you prefer.”

She reached out to touch Zach’s arm. “Good to see you, kiddo.”

“You, too, Mum.”

“Liar.” She laughed faintly, the sound more sad than amused. “Coffee’s this way.”