“Why didn’t you, Oliver?”
“Because I hoped you had met someone else, even though I knew he wouldn’t love you the way I did.” A wave of nausea took over my stomach. All the dormant butterflies were beginning to stretch their wings for this man and I couldn’t let that happen. I needed air and I couldn’t get it with Oliver standing in front of me, touching me, looking like he wanted to devour me.
“No. You don’t get to know these things. You left and everything after that is none of your damn business.” My voice almost betrays me before I can snatch my hands back and rush away from him. I no longer wanted to forgive him. His calling my name doesn’t halt my retreat. Finally, it was my turn to leave him behind.
7
oLIVER
* * *
If she hadn’t slapped me I would’ve almost believed she didn’t feel anything at all. I knew well enough after years of training, how to read people. I’d wanted so bad to kiss her to force some sort of reaction before I had felt her small delicate hand make contact with my cheek.
I ignore my ringing phone until Daisy is out of sight. The caller ID shows the call is from Trent. I still hadn’t called him back, sliding the green icon I brace myself for the lecture.
“Ollie? About fucking time. I’ve been calling for days.”
“Yeah, I know, man. I’m sorry.”
“Something wrong, Ollie?” Where did I begin?
“No, why do you ask?”
“Oliver Coxen never apologises. Remorse gets in the way of kicking arse, remember?” I laugh, I remembered, I had said that exact thing to Trent after our first case together, it had gone bad when the suspects teenage daughter had gotten involved in the takedown, she’d screamed and yelled at him, professed her father’s innocence even after he’d pulled a gun on my team. Trent had scored a bloody nose from the girls flailing arms that resulted in a heinous pair of black eyes and her subsequent arrest.
Shots rang out when he was trying to remove her from the scene, she’d witnessed her father falling and the halo of blood that swam around his head, face down on the dusty cement floor.
Even though it wasn’t Trent that pulled the trigger he felt responsible for not getting that girl out of the room sooner.
“I hear you’re going to be back in the city early week, want to get some dinner or something with a few of the guys?”
“Yeah, sure. Sounds good.” As soon as the words crossed my lips I knew they were a lie and I would be thinking of a reason to bail on him. I had no desire to see anyone from work at the moment, I didn’t want their looks of pity or the blame that was inevitable for Ginny’s death. I couldn’t handle the questions that had been left unsaid since the morning of her funeral. I didn’t want to have to explain why I couldn’t be there as they lowered my partner’s body into the ground. I couldn’t be there to see the heartbreak written all over her families faces. I couldn’t be there knowing I was the reason for their tears.
“How are you really, Ollie?”
“I’m fine.” I answer through gritted teeth. I was sick of that question, the answer was becoming stock standard.
“Bullshit. I know you’re not. You’re human, Ollie, like the rest of us. There is no fucking way you are fine. But okay if you’re not ready to talk about it.”
“Thanks, but I am fine.”
“We both know Ginny wouldn’t let you get away with pulling this shit, Ollie. It’s okay that you’re not fine.” Hearing her name was like another knife to the chest. Trent was right, though, she’d pester the shit out of me at every chance, forcing the conversation. But that is the exact reason I wasn’t fine, she wasn’t here to force the conversation, she was the cause of needing the conversation forced.
“I’ll see you Tuesday.” I end the call without a goodbye, cursing that it was another clear sign I wasn’t fine. The storm cloud followed me back to the car, I wasn’t ready to go home yet, I needed something to distract me from my own thoughts, and I wanted Daisy to be that distraction. It would be easy to turn up at her house and wait for her to come out of the house to tell me to leave. I enjoyed seeing the flush on her cheeks, the flush I put there by pushing her buttons. It was okay if she thought she hated me because the line between love and hate was thin.
* * *
I steer the car in the opposite direction of which will take me home, I couldn’t go home yet, not while I was feeling jarred after my phone call with Trent. I should’ve continued to ignore his calls, at least then I stood a chance of pushing Ginny to the back of my mind instead of front and centre where she had returned to. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to think of her, I just didn’t want to remember her in the same context of the last time I saw her. The wound was still fresh and given the chance it would burst open and gush.
I find myself pulling into the car park at the river, the sound of my tyres crunching over the gravel stirring up so many memories from when I had lived in Fosford. The summer before I had left for the academy, Daisy and I had spent hours on inflated tyres floating on this river. Being here now I felt like I was seeing her all over again dressed in her purple and white polka dot bikini wading out of to the cold water with the sun glistening on her wet skin.
I had never seen anything more beautiful in my entire life. When she’d reached me on the river bed she’d shaken her wet hair all over me before I had grabbed her, pulling her down on me. I remember the wide-eyed innocent look she’d given me when she’d realised how turned on I’d been by the whole scene. That night we’d made love for the first time. Even through the failing light, my mind replayed the images vividly in my mind as if it were all happening for the first time in front of me.
I don’t know how long I sat there at the river for, the darkness had closed in on the car before I had even realised. Sighing, I turn the key and fire up the car. The clock illuminates the time as I roll on the headlights. 8:23PM. I’d missed dinner and I hadn’t called. Mum was going to be pissed. Even being in my late twenties and a grown arse man, I still knew the wrath of my mother and knew to fear it.
* * *
Pulling into the driveway, I shut the engine off and look up at the house I had grown up in. My entire childhood was wrapped up in those walls. I’d had my first kiss on those steps, Danika Turner, she’d been in my third-grade class and used to live next door. She’d had a crush on my best friend Eddie Bates and wanted to ask him out but she’d never kissed anyone before, I’d been her practice dummy and the dummy I was fell for her, just from that single kiss. She’d been completely blasé about it, telling me it was an okay kiss and the next day she’d asked Eddie to be her boyfriend. Eddie had told her no, he didn’t want a girlfriend because he was too busy with becoming the next AFL superstar.
Countless times I had been grounded for fighting at school, Drew was the main reason I’d get into fights, he’d started more than his fair share of school ground fights and I thought I was being a good brother for having his back. My parents failed to see it that way, he was the little brother and it was my duty to make sure he didn’t get into trouble. I was pretty sure the smug little bastard used to pick the biggest kids at school to fight with knowing I would be there for him.