Thank God you’re okay! It’s been two months! We’ve all been worried sick!
Where are you?
My forehead fell against the door, and I sighed into the wood. This was my own fault. I’d sent a message letting my parentsknow my new phone number, washed up the breakfast dishes, headed for the door, and—ding!—there was my mother.
Two calls from Mum had gone unanswered. The text—I couldn’t decline. Despite her accusations, Ididlove her, but she’d asked me the one question I couldn’t answer: Where was I?
A thousand miles from where I should be. Exactly where I wanted to be. Safe.
I’d never wanted my family to worry, but I couldn’t risk telling them the truth. Not this time.
Chris was intelligent. Driven.Relentless. Those traits made him a formidable lawyer, but his perfect shell was fragile, cracked in ways I didn’t understand. No amount of my love patched him up. A lesson learned the hard way. I also knew I couldn’t risk him finding me. The day I’d fled Sydney, I’d deleted every trace of my existence from my old phone, dumped it in a bin under the flashing neon sign of a greasy takeout place, and disappeared.
I had to. Four failed attempts. Chris had always found me.
My parents would have to wait.
Lola
I’m okay, Mum. I’ll try to call you tonight. Love you xxoo
I wouldn’t call.
After slipping my phone into my bag, I sucked in a breath deep enough to conquer the world and turned the knob. The door cracked open. Sunlight poured in a gap just wide enough for me to peek outside. If I scrunched into the corner and angled myself just right, I could see a sliver of my front garden.
Yolanda often hovered near the gate…
My next-door neighbour loved to chat. The day I’d moved in, she’d announced that her roses were the best in town, and Iquickly realised her prize-winning blooms needed an awful lot of extra love around the time I left for work each morning.
I squeezed the doorknob tighter to stop the tremor in my fingers. This wasn’t the morning for one of Yolanda’s chats. Anxiety left my nerves dog-eared and worn, the battered pages of a story I’d read too many times. I thought I’d have longer before the reality of my old life collided with the fantasy I was creating in my new one.
I inched the door open a little wider. I glanced left. Right.
All clear.
Diving outside, I pulled the door shut, checked the lock twice, and raced for the gate.
“Morning, pet.”
Balls.
I plastered on a smile before I turned my head. The wafer-thin skin around Yolanda’s eyes crinkled when she smiled back. Her hair was a puff of steel-wool curls, and after she popped the cigarette in her mouth, her hands were free to cinch the belt of her purple bathrobe tighter around her waist. The tips of bunny ear slippers peeked from underneath.
“I couldn’t help noticing you had a visitor yesterday,” Yolanda said, a grey eyebrow arching as she took a drag of her cigarette.
No doubt she’d seen plenty when she’d hung out her front window gawking as Aiden’s black beast of a truck pulled up out front. Yolanda made it her business to know everything that happened on our street.
“Aiden, um… just… you know…” My laugh was a mess of noise plagued by more nerves. “He gave me a ride home.”
Yolanda blew a thin line of smoke into the air. “Did he?”
The surprise in her voice only fuelled the flutter in my chest. “It was nothing,” I said.
To most people, it would have been nothing. Five minutes of silence. Me, biting the inside of my cheek, unsure what tosay. And still, the memory of sitting next to Aiden left my face burning. A well-read copy ofTheCount of Monte Cristohad sat on his dashboard. I’d ached to ask him about it. What was his favourite part? Who was his favourite character? Did he love reading too? And when I’d ducked my head, sneaking a peek at his strong profile, I’d stopped myself from blurting out, “Why do you smellsogood?”
Thankfully.
I’d embarrassed myself enough for one afternoon.
