Detained (40 page)

His mouth was drawn, but he was amused and working not to show it. He deserved another stud for that. She popped it. There weren’t that many left on the shirt, only one more.

“Why were you living here with Pete?”

“No choice. I had nowhere else to go.”

She opened her legs wider and his eyes drifted down. They had heat ray powers.

“Couldn’t you leave? Get help to leave?”

“I couldn’t leave Pete behind. I was scared his father, Norman, might hit him hard enough to kill him.”

A shocking answer, a new window to Will’s psyche opened. She parted her knees further and pulled the shirt higher up her thighs.

“Did Norman hit you?”

“Yes.”

Darcy thought that was going to be all she’d get, and it was enough; she moved her hand to the last stud, but he went on.

“He’d start on me. I could wear him out so he didn’t have so much left in him for Pete.”

She closed her eyes against the matter of factness in his voice, against the idea that choosing to be beaten to make it easier for someone else was business as usual. She popped the last stud, pulled the shirt open so her sternum and belly were undressed, like all of her emotions. Will was watching her intently, but there was a faraway quality to his expression.

“How did you get the scar on your chin?” They’d remade half his face but he’d chosen to keep this scar. It meant something to him.

His hand came up, he ran a finger under his chin. “Norman’s belt buckle. Pete has a scar on his shoulder from the same night. It was the first time he’d used anything other than his fists. It was the night I decided it had to stop.”

No more studs and she was running out of leg length to hoist the shirt up.

“He broke your nose too.”

“Twice.”

He inclined his head when she didn’t move to reveal more skin.

“That was a statement, not a question. My question is what happened to Norman?”

Will hesitated a beat; he suppressed a shudder. His expression darkened. “He drowned.”

“In the creek?”

He nodded.

She opened the shirt up so her breasts were bared.

His eyes flared back to life. “Ask me where I was, Darcy.”

“Where were you? Where was Peter?”

“Pete was in the tent. Norman hurt him badly that night. I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.”

Oh God.
“Where were you, Will?”

“On the bank.” Will pushed off the bench and came towards her. “I watched the bastard drown.” He stopped an arm’s length away. “Ask me if I could’ve saved him.”

She gulped. This is what Will was running from, why taken a new name, but she didn’t need to know this. “No.”

“Ask me.”

She was virtually naked and this wasn’t a game anymore. She understood now, it never had been. Will was locked on her eyes, and she couldn’t take hers off him, off the tight clench of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. His body vibrated with muscle memory of that awful night. She didn’t want to ask this question, but he needed it.

“Could you have saved him?” Her voice was a whisper and goose bumps rippled over her body, making her shiver.

“Yes.” He spat the word with toxin in his voice. He held up his plastered hand, rotated it in front of her face. “With one hand.” Will was standing so close if he straightened his elbow he’d be touching her. “Now ask me if he was worth saving.”

She gripped the edges of the shirt, she wanted to pull it back on, snap the studs, clothe herself from his bitterness, and the waves of dread, and regret coming off him. “He might’ve killed you, killed Peter. You were abused. You were what, fifteen, sixteen? You’re not to blame. It was self-defence.”

Unwinding fast like a pinned wire spring, he had his hand in her hair, holding her tight so she couldn’t escape his ugly truth. “Ask me.”

Darcy gasped a breath. She wasn’t frightened, despite the core of black anger in him or how hard he pulled her hair, but Will was. He was terrified.

“Was he worth saving?”

“He was a drunk, a con artist, a liar, a thief, and a cheat. He was violent and cruel, and he made me a killer. But he was a human being, and I had no right to let him die.”

As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he let her go, turning away, his chest heaving.

Darcy could barely breathe from the horror of what he was saying. He’d been a boy, abused, battered, alone, protecting Peter. And he was consumed by guilt.

This was why Will could believe he’d killed Feng Kee, because he believed he’d killed Norman.

“He wasn’t worth saving, Will.”

“That’s not a question.”

The game was all out of sequence, the information coming so fast, but she didn’t want him to shut down. She shrugged out of the shirt.

“Look at me, Will.” He turned back to her, but his eyes slid away. “Do you regret not saving him?”

“No.” The word punched out of him, and he refocused on her.

She had no clothing left to give him. She brushed her thumbs across her nipples, already raised, tight, drawing his gaze. “How did he drown?”

Will gripped the bench again. “That’s enough.”

She moved her hand to her sternum, hand arrowed down, skimmed her body until she touched herself.

He hissed.

“You need to tell me.”

“No. You don’t need to hear it.”

She was so tense, so sensitised to Will’s pain, the profound damage he’d suffered. She jerked as her fingers found wetness, as his breath quickened.

“Darcy.” His voice was cut into ribbons of bright coloured emotion. Red for pain, yellow for fear, orange for shame, green for guilt, pink for desire. He seized the bench so hard, every muscle in his torso stood out in relief.

She couldn’t give him absolution. Her forgiveness meant nothing to him. That’s why he was here, to find it for himself. But she could give him amnesty, safe haven, release.

She lay back on the table, knees bent up, displayed to him. She closed her eyes as waves of shocking, unexpected pleasure trilled though her body. The wrongness of it, the astonishing response.

He ground out a, “Stop,” like the sting of a whiplash, and her ribs vaulted off the table.

“Not your fault, Will.”

His hands were on her ankles, sliding around her calves. He hooked a chair with his foot and pulled her down the table.

“Not your fault.”

He sat, placed her feet on his shoulders, and his mouth where her fingers had been. And with his tongue and his hands and his body, he exorcised his demons on her.

“Study the past if you would define the future.” — Confucius

When Will remembered who he was again, he was on the floor. Darcy was above him draped across the table, her hair a golden waterfall over the edge, one arm dangling limp.

His body was steaming, wet, worked through. But the rage he’d felt, for Norman, the intensity towards Darcy for pushing him to remember, to talk about it, had retreated. He knew he could find it again, it wasn’t lost, but it was exhausted for the moment. He felt oddly clean.

He reached for her fingers and she grasped his hand. She was a lifeline, pulling him out of that last fucking crippling memory. He tugged her arm and she rolled over to look down at him. “Wow.”

He caressed her hand with his thumb. “You started it. Come down here with me.”

“You come up here with me.”

He pushed a chair with his foot. The only chair still standing upright. “We tried that. It was crowded.”

She laughed. “You didn’t seem to mind crowding me.”

He tugged her arm again. The crowding—getting lost in her had been insanely good, but it was the talking, telling her things only Pete knew that’d been powerful—powerful and freeing. She was studying him over the edge of the table like a damage assessor.

“Did I freak you out, Lois?” If she’d run screaming naked to her car and taken off, he could hardly have been surprised; the fury had poured out of him. A close relation to the fury he’d felt that night when he found Pete cowering in a corner of the container and Norman beating him with a piece of broken fence paling.

“Only in a good way.”

He let go her hand and sat up. “Hell, what does that mean?”

She swung her legs over the table edge and came down to the floor beside him. He caught her chin and turned her head to face him. “What do you mean in a good way?”

She peeled his hand away but held onto it. “You need to talk this out, Will. And I’m good at listening.”

“You heard enough. That’s the heart of it.”

“That was the beginning of it. Show me where it happened.”

“I’d rather feed you.” He stood. “Do you like being this skinny?”

“You’d rather avoid me. And it’s virtually in my contract.”

He looked around for his jeans, handed Darcy his old flanny. “I don’t see me getting away with much avoidance. And that’s a crappy job condition.”

“Hey. I had to work hard to get that much attention from you. And I agree with you about the condition. Who’d have guessed being skinny would be a key factor in how well I can read a script?”

He shook his head at her sarcasm, what a piece of madness. He stretched a hand down to help her stand. “I’m not sure which one of these conversations I’m enjoying least, my avoidance or the insanity of your industry.”

She came easily into his arms and he tried to smooth her hair back; it was tossed and knotted, sweaty and wild. He wanted to shower with her and wash it for her, comb the tangles out. He’d never wanted to do that for any woman. It was unsettling.

“You need to talk to me, or if not me, someone you trust, Will.”

She was right, of course she was. “I’m going to feed you.” He couldn’t find his jeans. He nabbed a towel out of the bathroom and skirted it around his waist then went across to the fridge and opened it.

“Because that will make it all better?”

He sighed against her sarcasm, leaned in to look at Bo’s food parcels. “Stop giving me a hard time. I need to work up to it.”

“You’ve had fifteen years to work up to it.”

He straightened up, “Fuck you,” but he said it on a laugh. It was funny, ironic even, and she knew it.

She grinned and shook her head. “You think you’re so smart, Will Parker. You’re named after the only cartoon character in the pantheon of superheroes who had real-life problems that weren’t about catching the next bad guy. Spidey had to work for a living. He had trouble paying the rent. He had a terrible identity problem; an inferiority complex. He was antisocial, scared of women and accident prone.”

“Exactly Pete’s reasoning. He didn’t know about Miss Fredrick at the time. And you forgot Spidey’s arch nemesis and worst enemy was Norman Osborn.” Will shut the fridge door, took up his post leaning on the bench; this time he didn’t need the cheap laminate to hold onto to stop from walking away. “Spidey was an orphan too.”

“Spidey’s sole motivation was guilt.”

“And your point is, Lois?”

“You and Spidey are a little too similar.”

“Spidey and every teenage boy are similar. That’s what makes him so popular; he’s easy to identify with.”

She crossed her legs and folded her arms. He’d always liked that shirt and now it had been used to such dramatic effect, and was currently doing nothing to disguise acres of smooth thigh, he liked it even more.

“Do you practice being so glib or does it come naturally?”

He considered: winding her up. He tapped a finger on his new nose. “Hmm, it’s an innate skill.”

“I’m not saying you were the only two boys on the planet to identify with Spiderman but Will, you have to admit the guilt thing, that’s why you’re here. You think it’s sheer luck you didn’t kill Feng Kee because you believe you’re responsible for Norman’s death.”

“How about chicken and vegetables? I know how to microwave rice.”

“William Brown!”

God she was pushing it
. Wonderful, painful, clever, irritating woman. He threw up a hand. “And you wonder why I preferred mistresses.” He turned away to get the chicken. When he closed the fridge door she was standing behind him.

She ran a finger over his shoulder blade, tracing his tattoo. “Why this tree? Why this creek? Why this scene forever on your skin?”

He shifted his weight slightly pressing into her hand as she flattened it over his spine. “For memory.”

“I think you did it as punishment.” She moved into him and rested her face on his back, her hair tickled.

“Enlighten me.”

“I don’t know what happened to you before you washed up in Tara, before you had no choice but to live here, but it can’t have been good. And it’s obvious why you wouldn’t want to come back. But you choose to mark yourself with a scene that scarred you in so many ways. Most people get tattoos to rebel, be a nonconformist, or because their mates did. You choose to commemorate pain and fear.”

“You’re wrong.” He turned so he could see her face, the look in her big wide pale eyes. “This was where I was reborn. This is where a kid with no prospects took control of his life and swore to make something of himself. This wasn’t about punishment; this was about honouring the beginning.”

She smiled. “I’m happy to be wrong, Will.”

He kissed her forehead. She was wrong about the tattoo, but right about so much else. He abandoned the idea of food. He took her hand and led her out to the verandah. He held the edge of the big hammock suspended across the deck. “With great power there must also come great responsibility.”

She sat on the edge and swung her legs up. “Confucius circa a long time ago?”

“Spiderman early sixties.”

She laughed. “What are you trying to tell me?”

He made a scoot motion and she shifted over so he could climb on, making the hammock swing wildly as he settled and pulled her into his arms. He wanted to be close to Darcy while he did this. He hoped the awkwardness of the hammock, the threat of pitching her out, might stop him from simply walking away when it got too much.

He started, “Norman was drunk, more than usual,” and she went coma-still on his chest. “When I pulled him off Pete he came after me with a branch from the fire.”

“The burn scar on your ribs.”

He nodded and the hammock swayed. “He burnt his hand so he went to the creek. I followed him to the bank. I wasn’t going to let him get near Pete or me again, though I don’t know what I was going to do to prevent him, I was hurt pretty bad. He tripped and fell in, just in the shallows. He could’ve stood up if he wasn’t so tanked, but he started laughing, stumbling about in wet clothes and went in deeper.