Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

years of freedom were the best of her life, even though they were still so imperfect. I avenged her every day, manipulating my father and learning to despise how easy he was to play. I had him in the palm of my hand and absolutely no inclination to take care with what I had. Everything bad I learned about human nature I learned from him, one way or another. As education went, it was powerful.’

      So were his words, confessed to the night and suddenly so close to her ear. A tremor skittered down her flesh.

      ‘She died about the same time you started coming to my house?’

      ‘Registering for your mother’s class was the best thing I ever did. Without her, I would have assumed all people were like my father. But I did it because I thought she was someone else I could play. A great brain I could challenge and best. A whole class full of students to be smarter than. That’s who I was.’

      She pressed her lips harder together in the shadows.

      ‘Except she saw immediately who I was and she never let me best her. She was always a step ahead, in a way that lifted me up to her level. It challenged me to be better, not smarter.’

      Would he admire his mentor so much if he knew what she’d done rather than face her own flaws?

      ‘I’m hurting you, Shirley, and I can’t forgive myself for that.’

      ‘Because I am her daughter?’ she whispered.

      He stroked her hair. ‘Because you are you. But I can’t be who you want me to be, I can’t turn myself into someone who can do forever. Not even for you.’

      She wanted to rail, to point out that she hadn’t asked him to. But this was goodbye; fighting it wouldn’t change it.

      ‘And I would hurt you again, eventually. I would take what I know about you and your feelings for me and use them against you. Because that’s what I do as automatically as breathing. I exploit people’s natures. You are so much better off far away from me.’

      She smiled into the tent wall. Hollow and empty.

      ‘“If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.’” This time it was his turn for silence. ‘Mother Theresa,’ she finished weakly.

      ‘You don’t love me, Shirley,’ he breathed after a long nothing. Tight. Uncertain.

      She forced a smile to her lips, even though he couldn’t see it. ‘Do I get any points for not meaning for it to happen?’

      A slight crack on the last word betrayed the tears that had started to roll in the darkness.

      ‘Shirley …’ He scooted forwards, pressed hard up against her. ‘Please don’t cry. Please.’

      ‘I’m not crying—’ she laughed ‘—I’m leaking.’

      ‘I am so not worth your tears.’

      ‘You have a very low opinion of yourself,’ she whispered when she had control of her voice again. ‘Or a very high one of my tears.’

      He pressed his lips to the back of her ear. ‘They’re diamonds to me.’

      The diamonds tumbled free like a spilled bag of gems, then. And Hayden held her as they fell. Hours passed that way, a lifetime. Or maybe only minutes. But, when she next opened her eyes, early fingers of light stole through the fabric of their tent and he was still there, curled into an S behind her. Still awake, breathing steadily into her hair. Stroking her.

      ‘Open your cocoon,’ she murmured. ‘I need a skin memory.’

      He did, silently. She pulled off her shirt. He stripped off his. And she squirrelled back into his embrace, his hot, hard chest against her back, his arms draped securely across her. They lay there like that until the camp started to rouse around them. She tucked his arms more firmly around her, so he could never leave. He pressed his lips to her shoulder and they’d warmed back up to his usual blazing-hot furnace.

      ‘I love you,’ she whispered to the morning.

      Admitting it felt like the healthiest thing she’d ever done in her life.

      He kissed her neck. Stalled. Then said gently, ‘You deserve to have that love returned.’

      Ache coiled up into a serpent in her belly. He found her lips and pressed his there, hard and desperate. She clung to them, far beyond caring what he might think or what that might say about her. Or how much it would hurt later.

      This was their last kiss.

      Deep inside, her heart tore away from the sheath holding it suspended in her chest cavity and it split open as it tumbled down to lie, askew, against her diaphragm. She pushed out of his arms and wobbled to her feet, clutching her shirt to her bare chest, unwilling to be as physically vulnerable as she was emotionally.

      She stumbled across the tent. ‘I have to finish packing.’

      Hayden let her go. Watched her silently as she dressed and then stuffed some final items into her bag. Her pain reached out to him and twisted around his gut in eloquent agony. But, no matter how much she hurt now, this was still better than what he might do to her if he stayed. What he’d done to his father. How he’d twisted him up in psychiatric knots. Until the day he’d walked out of the front door of the family home he would never see again, leaving his father cowed and intellectually broken.

      Every woman he’d been stronger than, he’d controlled. He tied them up emotionally too, to keep them away. Just because he could. Because that was what he knew.

      He’d gone on to ruin his monster of a father a hundred different ways through the clients he took on. To continue besting a man who could cause him and his mother no more pain. He greedily hoarded the fantasy that his finance clients would be foreclosing on Trevor Tennant, the insurance companies he consulted for would tie the monster up in loopholes, and the pharmaceutical company would have his father desperate and reliant on their products.

      That fantasy made everything he’d done doable.

      But it hadn’t stopped him becoming the creature he’d fought. Controlling. A monster. Just like his father. Just in a better suit.

      Behind him, Shirley spoke. Her voice was still hoarse from her tears. It rasped on his conscience like sandpaper. ‘You’re not packing?’

      ‘I’ll pack while you’re at breakfast,’ he lied. Hating himself just one more bit. Just when he thought there was nothing new left to despise.

      She nodded sadly. Combed her hair. Left.

      He let his head drop back against the mattress, let himself drown in her fast-fading smell on the pillow. The sweet, innocent smell of honesty.

      No one had ever given him their love. Despite—desperately—not wanting to love him, she still did. One long-buried part of him held that to his gnarled chest like something precious.

       He was loved.

      Surely that was only a heartbeat removed from being able to love himself? Somehow? Some time? But letting her go now was emotional euthanasia. So much kinder in the long run, rather than prolonging her suffering.

      Maybe it was something good he could finally do for someone.

      Even if it felt bad.

      Really, really bad.

      ‘Hayden? The truck’s warming up.’

      Two vehicles were going back to the city that morning and two were staying to carry on the dig—the ones for whom being out here digging was their day job. Shirley’s bags and equipment were loaded up in the first vehicle.

      But their tent was still up. Surely Hayden wasn’t going to just leave it for someone else to take down? She poked her head through the entrance.

      He was back in his corner chair. Hands pressed to his thighs, waiting. The inside of the tent was otherwise exactly as she’d