February Or Forever (29 page)

She stayed close to the wall and crept along, Drew's voice becoming louder. She couldn't understand exactly what he was saying, but he was angry. Briefly, she thought of turning around and getting out of there. What if what she'd known of Drew was just for show? What if he really did have anger problems and he was about to make them known? No, she
had
to find out what was going on.

Cool air nipped at her face when she slid through the open French doors. She edged to the right along the patio, in the direction of the voices beyond the wall that shielded her presence from them. When she got to the corner she tilted her head slightly, her view partly filtered by a tall potted fern. Her eyes focused on Drew, barefooted and in trackpants and a t-shirt, and the other person, a woman, with long blonde hair. It was her! The woman from the newspaper. Jolene. What on earth was she doing here, in Australia, in Tarrin's Bay, at the perimeter of private property? The answer became obvious.

‘Why won't you come back with me?' she asked. ‘I came all this way for you.'

‘Because we're over, Jolene. Do you really think I'd want you back after what you did to me?' His voice was firm and strong, he sounded completely different.

Without thinking, Chrissie held up the phone in her hand and pressed the camera button, sliding it onto the video function.

‘But I only did it to get your attention. Please, Drewy, come back. Things will be so much better this time.'

‘Don't call me Drewy, and don't even think I'm going back with you.'

Jolene's demeanour changed, like she had transformed from a needy, desperate young woman to a vicious, evil witch. Her posture straightened, her face hardened, and she gripped the metal of the fence like she had the strength to rip it to shreds. ‘Then I'll make things worse. I'll make your life hell. You'll wish you did what I wanted.'

‘Pretty soon the media is going to get sick of you clamouring for attention.'

‘Not when I tell them you hurt me again. They believed me the first time, they'll believe me again. I'll tell them I came here to try and help you and you attacked me.' She picked up a stray branch, held out the underside of her forearm, and scratched it fiercely.

Chrissie covered a silent gasp with her free hand. The woman was crazy.

‘Jolene, stop it!' Drew tried to take the stick from her through the small holes in the fence, then realising she probably wanted him to touch it for evidence, backed away. ‘Look, you need help. You need to go home, and get some help, okay? I can't help you anymore.' His hands flailed to the side in frustration. ‘Just go, Jolene.'

Chrissie gulped and stepped out from behind the wall. ‘You should do as he says.'

Drew spun around and Jolene's eyes bulged.

‘Chrissie, what are you doing here?' Drew held up his hands.

‘Chrissie? Is she your new girlfriend?' Jolene's voice had the tone of an overdramatic teenager scorned. ‘Look, girly, he'll do the same to you. He'll hurt you like he did to me. He'll act all sweet and perfect, and then — bam!' She slapped her palms together. ‘The real Drew Williams will emerge. What do you think about that?' She crossed her arms.

‘I think you're talking a load of crap.' Chrissie stepped to the side of Drew in an act of alliance. ‘And I have proof.' She held up her phone and clicked play.

Jolene cowered behind the fence, rubbing the sides of her arms. ‘No, no, give it to me!' She lunged forward and the fence rattled, her fingers trying to reach through to get the phone.

‘You're going to retract all allegations publically, tell everyone you made it up, or this goes to the press, and the police.' She'd still send it to the police anyway, but wanted to make sure Drew's name could be cleared publically, and she was sure this aspiring actress would not want her reputation tarnished with a video such as this, showing how messed up and desperate she really was.

‘You bitch,' she seethed.

‘Leave, Jolene,' Drew said. ‘Here, call a cab to the airport.' He shoved some money through the fence and she picked it up.

Jolene narrowed her eyes at Drew, then Chrissie, and said, ‘Fine. I'll go. But you'll regret leaving me, Drew.'

‘I seriously doubt it.' He crossed his arms. ‘If you don't leave right now, you can forget about a cab, I'll have the police come get you instead.'

‘I'm going, I'm going,' she said, flinging her hand towards him and turning away to trek through the bushes.

Drew shook his head as she disappeared through the trees, her voice as she booked a cab over her phone sounding like nothing had even happened.

‘How did she track you down?' Chrissie asked. ‘I can't believe she just turned up here.'

‘She's resourceful, and it was leaked all over social media that I was in Tarrin's Bay, which wasn't helped by the local newspaper story. She called up Serendipity asking if the V.I.P. room was available, and when they said it wasn't, she put two and two together that I was probably a guest here.'

Chrissie ran her hand through her hair. ‘Oh man.'

‘You really filmed all of that?' He pointed to her phone.

‘Yep, I'll send it to you.' She pressed the screen and delivered it to Drew. It was probably best if he passed it onto his lawyers, though they might want to speak to her as well, but that was okay.

‘Thanks, Chrissie.' He attempted a smile but it faltered. ‘What were you doing here anyway?'

‘I left my phone in the staff lounge. Came to pick it up and heard some commotion outside. I'm sorry for sneaking in like that, but I don't know, must have been the journalist in me.'

‘I thought you said that part of your life was history.'

‘It is. It's just…something made me come in here to see what was going on. I was curious.'

Drew put his hands on his hips and turned his head away. ‘If you'd just asked me,
trusted
me, you would have found out what was going on.'

‘I know, and I'm sorry. I don't know what happened, I read the article and that was the first I'd heard of the drama with your ex. I didn't know what to think.'

‘But you did think. You thought the worst. You believed that I was capable of doing something like that. How could you?' Disappointment creased his face.

A pang of guilt pinched Chrissie inside, and she wanted desperately to see his happy demeanour return. What had she done? Once again, people around her were getting hurt. ‘Drew, I'm so sorry. I didn't really believe it, not deep down inside, I just got scared. My mind was trying to give me excuses not to see you again, not to risk getting hurt, and since your stay was almost up I thought it was a sign that it was best to leave things as they were.'

‘But for a moment at least, you believed it was possible, that I'd hurt this woman, that I might even do it to you. I thought you knew me and trusted me.'

‘Well we haven't exactly known each other for long, it's a bit of an ask to expect me to trust you when I barely know you!' The higher volume of her own voice surprised Chrissie.

‘What do you think we've been doing these last few weeks, chatting about the weather?' He raised his hands in a questioning way. ‘No, we've been getting to know each other! Or did our time together mean nothing? Maybe the journalist in you just wanted the inside scoop on the Tarrin's Bay “golden boy”.' He emphasised the nickname with finger quotes. ‘Maybe you've been feeding information through to your journo friend, and next week I'll be front page news again!'

‘No! It wasn't like that! I would never do that.' Frustration tensed the muscles all over her body.

‘But how would I know if I can trust you? I barely know you,' he mocked her statement from before.

Chrissie turned away, heat burning through her veins. ‘I'm not like that, and I'm not a journalist anymore,' she said softly.

‘Yet you barged in here without asking, camera at the ready.'

‘I saved your ass, didn't I? And it was just a one-off situation; you can't blame me for wanting to know what the arguing was about in my place of work.'

‘Once a journo…' he muttered, not needing to add the next part of the sentence as it echoed in her mind…
always a journo.

Chrissie clamped her mouth shut, then it burst open. ‘You think all journos are evil people out to make celebrities' lives hell?'

‘In my experience, about eighty percent are, yes. They take photos without asking, they write things we never even said,' he struck off each statement on his fingers as though counting, ‘and they mix up all the facts and take them out of context!'

‘Well I'm sorry you've had such a hard time. What a tough life you've had, if media hype is all you've got to worry about.' She shook her head.

‘You don't know what it's like. How would you cope with having your every move documented, photographed, written about for the public to read? Especially when they don't even get it right.'

‘I'd stop worrying about what's going on outside my life and start focusing on what's going on
inside
my life,' Chrissie said. ‘You let them get to you, Drew. Life's too short to care what people say about you.' Chrissie turned away, tired and fed up with fighting, then turned back. ‘And just so you know — not that you'll necessarily believe me — but when I was a journalist, I was one of the twenty percent who had decency and integrity and did things right,' Chrissie blurted, turning on her heel and marching out of the V.I.P. quarters, and quite possibly, out of his life.

* * *

Drew stayed in the shower for well over twenty minutes that night, the hot water reddening his skin, not wanting to leave its comfort. How did things go so pear-shaped? This month had been going so well, and as soon as the media found out where he was, all hell broke loose, mostly in the form of Jolene. He would have been happy to stay in his happy bubble at Serendipity a lot longer, away from the prying eyes and gossip. He barely had a chance to get any privacy, and even when he did, this happened.

‘You let them get to you,'
Chrissie had said. She was right. He had. Too many years of putting up with their lies, and it had all compounded into a big clump of irritation. How did he get to this point? If the yoga classes had taught him one thing, it was that no matter what was going on in the world, you could choose to be in peace any moment you wanted. The bad stuff would still be out there, but what was the point in letting it get to you? It didn't change anything. Jolene was gone. His name wouldn't be tarnished. Why should he let what had been and gone affect him now?

Sure, it had hurt that Chrissie had doubted him, but it sort of made sense that it was her mind's way of giving her an excuse to bail out on their relationship. She was, first and foremost, Kai's mother, and children needed a stable home life. Tonight's goings on were far from stable.

He thought back to what he'd said to her, the way he'd taken his anger and frustration at Jolene's unexpected appearance out on her, bashing her former profession. It wasn't fair, and he hated the way he was with her tonight. If only the day could rewind so he could start over. He thought of Chrissie's beautiful face the first day they'd met, and then her face tonight, creased and annoyed and sad…

Drew thumped his fist on the shower tiles.
He
did that to her. He'd allowed things to get to him and she'd become collateral damage. He buried his face in his hand, squeezing his eyes shut, as regret seeped through his fingers and hot water scorched his back.

Chrissie didn't think she'd get a minute of sleep on Friday night, but surprisingly, she slept like someone who'd just run a marathon. In a way she had, an emotional marathon, and she had yet to make it to the finish line, if there even was one.

Without Kai at home to take care of this weekend, breakfast merged into brunch, and Chrissie could barely move from the dining table. As she often did when overwhelmed, she wrote down lists and plans, giving her a sense of control about her life. She knew she had to get help again for the panic attacks and water phobia, and get Kai into swimming lessons; it was unfair for her issues to become his. One thing that no lists or plans could help her deal with, though, was Drew. And she couldn't even talk to anyone about it, that was what made it so hard. When her love life got rocky, she could always turn to a friend like Melinda and talk it through.

Chrissie tapped her pen on the table, then remembered that Drew's presence in town had already been discovered. And anyway, he was leaving in less than forty-eight hours. She'd done her bit, kept quiet, but it wasn't really relevant anymore.

Stuff it!
She picked up her phone and did what she'd been dying to do all month.

‘Chrissie, how are you hun?' Melinda's voice was welcoming as always.

‘Do you have a bit of time?'

‘I have kids wandering around and being noisy but I can talk. What's up?'

Where to begin?

‘Um, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about all month, but I've been sworn to secrecy. I don't think it matters now, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you.'

Melinda sucked in an anticipatory breath. ‘Ooh, do tell! You're not pregnant are you? Or getting back with Victor?'

‘No, no, nothing like that,' Chrissie replied. ‘Oh, but firstly, I want to apologise for lying to you last Saturday.'

‘You lied to me? What about?'

‘I didn't really need any milk, when you came to visit. At least, not until I tipped out the milk I had left so you wouldn't get suspicious.'

‘Milk? Why would you need to lie about milk? What's that got to do with…hang on, did you have something there that you didn't want me to see and needed to hide? A present perhaps?' Her voice was laced with curious hopefulness. Bless her.