None of those logistic complications mattered when I first saw Chase. I fell in love with her instantly.
She, however, didn’t want a bar of me.
I was jet lagged when I first saw her. Jet lagged, sleep deprived and over-caffeinated. At the best of times I’m . . . how should I put this? Exuberant. I’ve been called a prat, a dickhead, accused of never taking anything serious, dumped more than once for that very reason, labeled a joker and – in that weird way Australians appropriate American slang – a jackass. Jackarse just doesn’t have the right sound to it, I guess.
I’m probably all of these things, truth be told, but the one I’ll gladly own is the not-taking-things-seriously label. I don’t. Not really.
Unless it’s important, and when my cousin Brendon called and told me he had an eighteen-month-old son he’d only just found out about in America, and that son had leukemia and was likely to die if a suitable bone marrow match wasn’t found . . . yeah, that falls into things-that-need-to-be-taken-seriously.
I hopped on the first flight to the US.
Almost three hours after touching down in the country and walking into Tanner’s hospital room, I met Chase. For a second I kind of forgot why I was there. She took my breath away.
When she jumped up and snatched the sock puppet out of my hands, spraying it liberally with disinfectant before giving me permission to “give it to her nephew” I was gone. Just like that.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
All over, red rover.
It wasn’t the electric-blue dreadlocks, the eyebrow piercing, the Iron Man T-shirt that did nothing to hide the fact she had a bloody awesome body that would look even more awesome wrapped around mine. All those things – and more – sank into my consciousness later.
It was the protective way she guarded her nephew. The fiery, fierce instinct to look out for someone she loved. The unabashed accusation I was fucking things up and she was going to stop me from doing so.
And before you say, Really? That’s why fell in love with her? remember the reason I was in the States to begin with: my cousin had called and told me he had a sick kid. I could hear how fucked up he was about that – and Brendon Osmond didn’t do fucked up – and I knew I had to go be there for him, regardless of cost or uni lectures or assignments due. He was family; I loved him, and he needed me, whether he said so or not.
That was me. And I saw that part of me in Chase.
That’s why I fell in love with her.
I had a lot of contact with her during the next few months. I was in the States a lot, due to a bone marrow transfer that changed everyone’s world. But even if I didn’t need to keep coming back to San Diego for Tanner and Brendon, I couldn’t have stayed away.
A little bit about me before I continue, just so you get an idea of who I am. It’s probably good that you get some backstory, because I’m pretty certain you’re going to want to hit me at some point in this tale and tell me to wake up to myself.
I’m a fourth-year student at Melbourne University studying a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, with the end goal of opening up my own clinic. As part of my degree, I’m currently working as an intern at Briny Phillips’ vet clinic. Briny Phillips is a celebrity vet with her own television show, and one of the best vets I’ve ever met. I’ve learned a lot from her, particularly how to deal with stressed pet owners. There’s an art to it, a fine line to walk. I haven’t always been able to walk that line, but I’m getting better at it, thanks to Briny.
I’m an only child, but not a spoilt one. My parents are divorced, not because they grew to despise each other, but because they were grown-up enough to recognize they just weren’t compatible, and when I was twelve they did something about it.
It was amicable. They didn’t rant and rave at each other. In fact, I never saw them get angry or slam doors and fight during the demise of their marriage. They were calm. Dad joked about it with a relaxed good nature I remember as a kid not understanding, but emulating.
If my parents were shouting at each other, if they weren’t getting angry with each other, it meant I shouldn’t either.
So as angry as I was – and I was angry – I joked. Laughed. Made fun at my own expense. Didn’t ruffle anyone’s feathers, including my own. When Dad left and never came back, I joked about the fact I needed to change my deodorant.
Laughing at life proved to be an effective way to deal with whatever life threw at me, and I’ve lived that way every since. Getting ruffled, angry doesn’t achieve anything. I’ve had girlfriends in the past, hence being dumped for not taking things seriously, but none I’ve fallen in love with. Two had the audacity to tell me to get rid of my beard.
I love my beard. Don’t ever, ever, ever tell me to shave off my beard.
I play rugby union on weekends, despite the fact I’m built more like a tennis player.
I plan to one day own a rescue mutt of indecipherable parentage and call him Puss-Cat, just to mess with people’s heads.
Every uni break, I fly to San Diego. Originally, this had been to see my cousin, who is like a brother to me, and Tanner, to see how the champion kid was doing, to be a part of his life. Trust me, if you knew Tanner, you’d want to be a part of his life as well.
That’s about it. At least, that’s all that really matters.
Which brings us to Chase.
Chase has never asked me to shave off my beard. What she has done is told me she doesn’t like it, told me to get the damn thing away from her, used it as a way of throwing me to the floor in a wrestling match that somehow got completely out of hand, spread honey through it while I was dozing after one particularly brutal red-eye flight from Melbourne, and once, during a midnight movie marathon while we were babysitting Tanner, combed her fingers through it, her breath warm on my lips as she studied my face, confusion warring with desire in her eyes.
That was the night I realized Chase felt for me what I felt for her.
It was also the night I fully accepted she was going to fight it harder than she’d fought anything in her life. And Chase Sinclair is, if nothing else, a stubborn pain in the butt when it comes to backing down.
Chase holds the world at bay. At arm’s length. She’s had a lifetime of being treated differently because of her hearing, of being dismissed by people for being dumb or rude, of being cossetted by her father in a misguided attempt to protect her from whatever he thinks might bring her pain, and unfortunately, of being disconnected from normal life by something she has no control over. The first week after meeting her, I could see it bugged the hell out of her. I could also see she hid all her anger and dejection behind a wall of snark, unlike any I’d encountered.
And there was something else. Something I couldn’t quite figure out. Like a secret in her eyes, that were filled with a pain darker than any I’d experienced.
What I wanted to do more than anything else from that very first week, was to show her she didn’t need to be defensive with me. That I got her. That I would protect her from whatever crap the world threw at her.
Not exactly an easy goal to achieve.
The closest I’d ever come was during that midnight movie marathon in Brendon’s living room almost five months ago, as Simon Pegg dealt with his zombie stepfather Bill Nighy on screen.
I caught her laughing, really laughing. Before I could stop myself, I flicked her ear so she’d look at me, see my lips, and told her she had an awesome laugh.