Page 35 of Road to Rosalee

‘So, tell me, Tumbles, what event earned you the nickname?’ she asked, licking sauce and mushy peas from her fingers.

Tumbles took a long swig from his lemonade, burped, excused himself, then grinned waywardly. ‘Well, I was riding this old nag when I was about seventeen, and this big old grasshopper smacked her fair and square in the right eye. In a split second, it was on for young and old and she reared up like a bucking bronco and sent me flying through the air like a cannonball.’

‘Oh my gosh.’ She tried not to laugh but couldn’t help herself – the animated look on his face was priceless.

‘And trust me when I tell ya, Melds, that wasn’t even the worst of it,’ he added with another playful grimace, the shortening of her name a first from him. He shook his head, as though recalling the very day, tutting.

She waited for a few seconds, then a few seconds more. ‘Come on, don’t leave me hanging.’

He snapped to, sucking in a breath. ‘So, because I was trying to hang on so hard when she was bucking, I went and tore the muscles in my groin. I was hobbling around with the gait of a man who looked as though I had an entire tree trunk up my butt.’

Every man alongside Melody shuddered. ‘Oh hell, Tumbles, that would have hurt like hell.’ She winced.

‘Tell me about it. I couldn’t walk properly for almost a month.’ He nodded, his expression turning grave. ‘And to make matters even worse, I couldn’t even you-know-what with my girlfriend for almost two months. It was the worst time of my life.’

Melody couldn’t help but laugh at his expression. ‘Sorry, I really shouldn’t laugh.’

Tumbles offered her a grin. ‘Why not, Melds? It’s a funny story.’

‘And since that fateful day, Tumbles has lived up to his name with vigour,’ Zai chuckled, shaking his head.

‘Bloody oath he has,’ Slim added, laughing. ‘The number of times I’ve peeled your sorry arse off the ground, Tumbles, I’ve lost count.’

Tumbles grinned wider. ‘At least I keep on keeping on.’

This sent everyone but Hasselhoof into chuckling mirth.

Melody enjoyed the cheerful repartee – it was so nice to have a good old belly laugh. She felt Zai looking at her, and her stomach fluttered when she met his eyes, his meaningful glance heating her cheeks and sparking her insides.

She squirmed with his unwavering attention. ‘What are you staring at?’ she asked quietly once the men started talking between themselves again.

‘You should laugh more often,’ he said, softly enough for only her to hear. ‘It suits you.’

‘Thanks.’ She smiled self-consciously. ‘You guys help me to smile. Quite a lot.’

‘Glad to be of service.’ He grinned and tipped his hat. ‘I’ll make sure to do it more often.’

Melody couldn’t help basking in the warmth of this man – he was truly amazing.

Chapter

11

Halfway through her six-week stint at Rosalee Station, Melody couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly was wrong, but something didn’t feel right. She’d woken at four am, edgy and overwhelmingly emotional. The silence she had sought comfort in over the past three weeks had become oppressive, so much so that she found herself smothered by it. Like a sailboat without a mast, she felt as if she were drifting aimlessly in a stormy sea of doubt and hurt and fear and confusion. She had been so sure in the days after she’d arrived at the station, optimistic that she was on the right path, hopeful she would have an ‘aha!’ moment, one that would instantly tip her topsy-turvy world the right way up.

But old habits die hard. Her deeply ingrained trait of second-guessing everything about herself was storming to the forefront, like soldiers going to battle. Was she running away from where she was meant to be in life? Was she overdramatising what Antonio had done? Was she, like he had roared at her the day she’d left, the root cause of their marital woes? Should she be back there, try to fix things?

Hot oil spat from the pan of sizzling bacon, landing on her arm, snapping her from her incessant thoughts. Cursing, she tried to ignore the sting of the searing fat while flashes of vivid clarity – of plates smashing, of demeaning comments, of him calling her terrible names, of him being caught, red-handed, with that other woman but then blaming it on her, telling her that it was because she wasn’t doing her duty in the bedroom, forget the fact her mother was dying – permeated, stealing her breath and bringing rise to hot tears. Huffing, she fervently blinked them back. She’d cried enough over him. It was high time she faced the cold hard truth that he was all that the psychologist had warned her of. She needed to wean herself off the unrealistic fantasy of them ever being happily married, had to find a way to untangle herself from feeling like it was her job to fix him, to make him a better man, and to find a way to accept that she might also lose the café when she walked away.

Over the years of her stormy marriage, she had become a master of blotting things out, of finding consolation despite the seemingly forgotten wrongdoings of her husband. But the ghosts of her past were making themselves known – they’d been relentless in her sleep and even now, hours later, no matter how much she tried to ward them off, they were almost suffocating.

Bustling about the common kitchen, she was fighting to keep herself in the present. The wall she’d built over the years in her mind was one she didn’t dare look behind too often, for the fear of the memories which lurked there, but now, here, within Mother Nature’s embrace, without the distraction of the city and the innate need to just get though another day, she was finding herself peeking around the corners more and more, and the glimpses of what Antonio had done to her over the years were shockingly malicious, contrived and deliberate. Somewhere in her unconscious, she knew that, but it was a damn sight harder making herself truly believe it because when she did, it would mean she’d been living a lie, had been taken advantage of by a man she’d thought loved her, had been stupid enough to stay, to believe his apologies and half-hearted efforts to reel her in just enough to fool her again – day after day, year after year.

She’d been trained from very early on to push aside her gut feelings, to ignore her inner voice, to turn a blind eye to her bodily sensations, and over time had been moulded by him to believe his nasty untruths, all the while striving for his attention, starving for the occasional bursts of what she’d thought at the time to be love.

A broken man had gone and broken her. The bastard had made her his mirror.

Even though she’d accepted she had to leave the marriage, the reality of what she’d lived and survived came crashing down upon her, and she was suddenly desperate to get outside, to feel the heat of the sun, as if it would somehow scorch the hurt from her heart. Flicking the gas cooker off, she turned and, with one long stride after the other, rushed out the screen door.