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“My height, my shape, that comes from my grandfather, Mum’s dad.” His brain, his intelligence, came from his father, but morphed, twisted into a capacity to do harm.
“Is your dad still alive?”
Probably. He shrugged.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“No.” He never wanted to see his father again, knowing the horror they’d both unlocked was still in the world, still doing harm.
“I’m sure he must worry about you.”
“He wanted me gone.”
Foley’s fingers stilled. “Gone?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
Foley’s breath snagged. “Tell me something else. Tell me your favourite childhood memory.”
He brought his knees up, feet flat to the rock ledge. She asked because she thought he’d been abused. “I can’t name one. I had a good childhood. I had two sets of grandparents. I was well looked after, wanted for nothing.”
“What were you like as a boy?”
“Loud, argumentative. No stop button. I liked building things, experiments. My childhood has nothing to do with why I’m here. No one hurt me.” He hadn’t learned the capacity for inflicting pain from anyone else, no excuses.
She sat up, her booted feet coming down beside him. “You can’t blame me for wondering.”
He put a hand over her instep. There was no one to blame.
She bent forward so her face was close to his. “Where are the people who loved you, who miss you?”
He knew her eyes were amber, this close he’d see the flecks of black and gold. Her voice was bell clear and close to his ear. The rolled woolly brim of her beanie bumped against his temple. She smelled of mothballs and smoke. He squeezed her foot to stop from wrapping his arm around her leg and turning his face to hers, feeling smooth skin instead of scratchy yarn.
She ruffled his hair. “Why are you so alone?”
Because alone was safest. Because the people who loved him betrayed him and he’d had to be his own judge and jury and jailor. “It’s better this way.”
She took a good handful of his hair and gripped and he pressed his other fist into the rock at his side, knuckles grinding in the hard packed rock.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but you are not an unattractive man. There is no way you’ve been alone all your life. You have heartbreaker stamped all over you.”
Her voice was full of humour but heartbreaker was too mild a description for what he’d done. “I wasn’t always alone.”
“Were you, are you married? Did you have—”
“No.” Foley’s intake of breath was a hard little gasp and she let go his hair, so he gave her more of what she wanted, more of the truth of him. “I was engaged once, briefly. It was a whim. Her name was Anna. She preferred me to be serious. I preferred to play the field.”
“Oh.”
There was surprise and disapproval in the sound she made but she was still curled close. He sighed. “You keep expecting me to be a better man. I keep disappointing you.” He would do it again. “I was a player. Deep pockets, fast women, lots of amusements. Believe me, alone is better.”
She should’ve recoiled. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you enjoy being alone—with me.”
He turned his head, his nose grazing her jaw, his lungs squeezing. If it was physically possible to split into two people he’d do that now. One of him would get as far away from Foley as he was capable of being and still know she was alive and thriving; the other would press himself to her as close as breath would allow, feel her lithe body in his hands and her pulse under his lips. But all he was able to do was lower his forehead to her knee and wrap his arm around her denim-clad leg.
She stroked his hair and they stayed that way and he knew he was contaminating her, bleeding greed on her, but the will to move away deserted him.
This jail he’d created for himself was hard and remote, this sentence, harsh and endless. With her wit and sense of fun, her stubborn insistence on his innate goodness, she’d cracked his resolve. Her sunny face was his reprieve, her raw energy his salvation. He felt sick at his own deceit, but still he rested against her and accepted her gentle touch.
