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I hadn’t meant to say those things, those thoughts on exactly what was going on in Julia’s twisted little mind. I’d never expected to have to say them. Tamara still sitting beside me, her lips puckered in thought, was not an outcome I’d anticipated.
“Okay, so you did do that bad thing. But if she pushed you to it—”
“What if she did?” I laughed, sharp and loud, and heard a noise elsewhere in the house. Mum was listening for trouble. “What kind of guy is such a loser he lets a girl fuck with him like that—the kind of guy who snaps so hard he kidnaps a girl eventually, right?”
“You made a mistake,” Tamara said. She looked fucking terrified but there she was, looking me between the eyes. She stood and stepped over to poor Fuzzy, and didn’t break that gaze until she had to. She knelt in front of him, scooped him up as carefully as if he were a fucking baby, and brought him back to sit on her lap. “I’m not going to try to minimise what you’ve done, Steven… but you’re paying for it right now, aren’t you? You’re paying every day.”
There were all sorts of things I didn’t want to tell her—didn’t want to say out loud to anyone, ever—but I told her anyway. “Well my footy career is definitely going nowhere, in case you didn’t guess. And Mum doesn’t have any trust for me any more. I mean she had no idea Julia even existed before, so it must have seemed bad when she first learned… but she never once asked me if I could explain, if there was anything more to it… like, I must have been pretty fucking below-average in her eyes before this, to get that sort of response. And I wasn’t fucking kidding when I said Julia just wants to keep me around. She sometimes turns up to parties she can get into, if they’re big enough she can blend in and she thinks I’ll be there. She knows she could put an end to me by making me violate that order. She knows it fucks me up, even if I don’t think she’s actually planning on using it. She just wants to keep fucking me up until I agree to get back in line, get back with her for good and without the dramas, and then she’ll drop it.”
“You could never get back with her now,” Tamara proteste
d. “Her parents must know about the restraining order… They’ll never let you anywhere near her.”
“Well that’s just it, sweetheart. By letting her completely blow up my brain the way I did, I’ve made myself into the perfect toy for her. We can never be properly together now. Even if the people around her accepted me, it’d be as that creep who abuses her. But staying away from her is fucking me up too. I’ve got this mark against my name, and no way to clear it.”
I was surprised when I realised why Tamara was shaking. She was angry—well, why wouldn’t she be? Her own father was as twisted as Julia had ever been. Her mother hadn’t even somewhat escaped.
Tamara cuddled my bear and chewed her lip and finally she said, “If you get involved in this situation with Jess more, it might be the end of your freedom. If it goes wrong.”
It was not the comment I’d expected. She was thinking about me, and not the terrible thing I’d done.
Even if it hadn’t been for Para, there was no way I could have turned away from Tamara now. I owed her this… she deserved it.
“I’m going to protect your sister,” I told her. “I’m going to protect you.”
She came forward, Fuzzy squishing between both our knees, and put her lips to mine, her eyes on mine. It was like a request, and at first I tried to push her away by holding her shoulders… then I gripped tighter. I let myself taste her. What the fuck was Julia going to do when we were behind closed doors, away from anyone?
That burst of confidence didn’t last very long. I reluctantly pushed her back, let Fuzzy tumble to the floor again.
She looked confused, maybe about to slide into hurt, and I didn’t want her to be hurt. “You don’t owe me anything for this. You don’t have to do anything.”
That fired her up again, the way I thought it might. “Maybe I want to do something. Maybe I—”
I stroked a fingertip down her lips to silence her. “You need to think about this more. When everything I’ve said sinks in, you’re going to get the idea that staying away from me is the best plan. And…” It was hard for me even to admit this part out loud with myself in the room. “Maybe it’s better if you have no idea what I’m going to do next. Because I can’t control what’s going to happen after that.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Tamara
It pissed me off at first, that he wouldn’t tell me what he had planned.
“I’m part of this too,” I told him. “I have a right to be actually involved.”
When he just shook his head, I felt my rage mounting. I raised a hand to him, not because I planned to hit him—I just wanted to make myself a little bigger while I tried to stand up to him.
Steven grabbed me by the wrist and suddenly I was flat in the tangle of his sheets, him over the top of me and slowly pressing down. I brought my eyes nervously up to his face, and it started to come together for me. I was falling for a guy who could do things I couldn’t even imagine—things that were understandable, in the circumstances he’d described, but it still scared me when I was thinking about being close to him now. Just as he’d realised it would all along.
I needed time to process this before I knew what came next. I needed to let Steven do whatever he needed to do.
I needed to be with my mother, right now.
I still put my head up and sneaked a kiss, relishing the surge of fear a little. I was really glad this man was on my side.
“Thank you for trusting me,” I whispered. “I’m going to trust you too. Please tell me it’s all going to be all right.”
Steven shook his head. “I can’t do that… the best I can give you is my promise that I will do everything I can.”
He never lied to me, so I knew just how much that promise was worth. But somehow I felt more protected by that than I had in a long time.
Mum was on top of me the instant I walked back into the house, of course. She’d been practically hysterical when I got back with Ryan and only stayed long enough to dump my schoolbag before I was off again. Usually, I would have given her time to talk me out of going anywhere.
