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ces that could have ruined my life, how could I do something like this to her?
I grabbed Steven’s arm as he was about to open his door. “Steven, wait. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
There was a flash of annoyance on his face, and then it softened. “Because of your mum?”
I nodded. At least he got it. “I can’t betray her like this. I should never have even thought of it in the first place.”
Steven gently moved himself out of my grasp and then took both my hands in one of his, folding the other on top of them. “That is why you need to do this, Tamara. You have questions, and there’s no good way to get them out of her. If you do things this way, at least she’ll never have to be involved. You’ll both be able to get what you need without hurting one another more.”
“But is this something I even have a right to?” I asked. “It was her life; I don’t remember this guy. Am I just claiming a story that belongs to my mother to make myself feel more special, or something?”
Steven seemed to be really thinking about what I’d asked, which touched me a lot. I would never have seen him as having this much depth. Honestly if you’d asked me for one word to describe him before this past week, ‘meathead’ would have likely been the top contender. He was proving today especially that you never really knew what was inside another person.
I didn’t realise just how much I was hanging on his reply until I felt my whole body sag when he finally spoke. “No, this belongs to you too. You need it, you deserve it. Everyone’s entitled to have the truth about what really happened in a situation involving them. It just sucks when getting the truth means other people might get hurt. So… what we’re doing here is getting you your truth, without hurting anybody else.”
He was like that the whole time I was in the office, nudging me a little whenever I acted awkward, pointing out what I needed to hand over when I got flustered.
The lady on the other side of the counter seemed sympathetic, at least. “It can be very emotional to get to see these documents,” she said. Well, that gave me hope I wasn’t the only person who’d come in all but blubbering like an idiot.
I nearly went off properly at the last hurdle: her informing me that I would receive my certificate in the mail in a certain number of days.
Steven hauled me off before I could get fully into making a scene. “It’s really not a big deal. If you don’t want anyone to see, you’ve got a couple of weeks to get into the habit of being the one to bring in the mail.”
“Well, Mum is terrible at that anyway and I don’t think I ever remember Ryan doing it, so…” I was distracted by the fact that he’d put his arm over my shoulder to lead me out. “I just hate having to wait at this point, you know?”
Steven shot me this funny sideways smirk. “Yeah, waiting always sucks.”
It felt very much like something was not being said there… and it also felt like I probably shouldn’t press any further. Steven took his arm off me as we reached his car, and we got in and he drove me up to the mountain, as promised.
I started shivering a little once I was out of the car. It was beautiful up there—the whole of Hobart was revealed to us down below—but it was definitely colder. “I guess you have to run once you’re up here.”
“Have to do something to get your blood going for sure,” Steven agreed. He took my hand and led me off down a path marked as a walking track, but when he abruptly yanked me off the path about a minute in, dragging me behind a tangle of saplings and thick prickly bush that formed a screen from anyone else who might pass by… well, I realised he might not have necessarily been thinking about exercise.
“I am fucking fuming at the thought of having to wait even one more minute to fuck you,” he murmured, his hands suddenly all over me. I was scared, because my first reaction to those words wasn’t fear. “But I’m going to wait. As long as I have to. I didn’t bring you up here to force you into it.”
His hands were already up the front of my shirt, crossing the bare skin of my stomach. “But I don’t think you’re going to want to wait too long, are you?” He pushed my shirt up so it was bunched under my chin, and nuzzled the side of my neck as he squeezed my breasts. I had a sudden, vivid memory of putting on some awful bra that morning, but in the next second the bra was coming down too, and I didn’t think Steven was leaning back to stare at my underwear.
There I was, exposed to him like the city below us. I looked Steven right in his eyes which were not looking in my eyes, and I felt that awful truth right up against my skin this time: how good it might feel for a woman to stick with a dangerous man longer than was safe, if he looked at her like that even some of the time when she felt most vulnerable.
He pushed my skirt up, his fingers finding their way into my underwear to explore; I turned my head up and whimpered as he pinched my nipple hard. What with the cold up there, I felt every bit of it.
He nuzzled his face between my breasts, then pulled back. His eyes still wouldn’t meet mine. “We’d better get out of here before everything I’ve just said goes out the fucking window.”
He didn’t seem willing—or able, probably—to help me put my clothes back together, but I managed to take care of myself with only a little awkwardness. He held his hand out to me as soon as I was finished, so he was clearly paying attention. “Well, let’s go.”
Maybe I was supposed to feel dirty after that, but the main thought in my mind was that I wanted more. As soon as possible. I’d never had anything like this in my life before and now a little taste had me starving.
And if there was something wrong with me because of that—if I was a whore or stupid or a stupid whore—I would be perfectly happy to wear that.
Chapter Ten: Tamara
At least worrying about when Steven would make his move kept me from worrying about my birth certificate that was probably winging its way ever closer to me.
I wasn’t worrying about the fact of it, that was the really concerning thing. I was obsessed with the details. How would we manage to find somewhere we wouldn’t be interrupted? Would he enjoy himself with me, when I didn’t really know what I was doing? I wasn’t keen on the idea of giving myself to someone who wasn’t going to appreciate it.
Maybe all of this just meant that what my biological father had done to me all those years ago had damaged me. Here I was, so willing to jump into bed (maybe not even a bed) with a guy just because his touch felt pretty good. But I couldn’t bring myself to worry too much about that either.
I’d started hesitantly talking to Callie again, though it was incredibly awkward compared to how it had been before. Back then, we’d been on the same level, each clueless about a lot of things in the world but trying hard. Now, I felt like Callie was out there succeeding at everything, and I was such a mixed bag. Didn’t work any more. Wasn’t sure what was going on with this guy I was messing around with.
