By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

to!’ he screamed, running across the room, lashing out at his father, young fists flying, and earning that raised fist across his jaw as his reward, but not giving up. He couldn’t stop, he had to try to make him stop hurting his mother.

      He struck out again lashing at his father, but it was his mother who cried out and it made no sense, nor the thump of a body hitting the floor and then a baby screamed somewhere, and he blinked into consciousness, shaking and wet with perspiration, and waking to his own personal nightmare.

      She was lying on the floor, looking dazed, tears springing from her eyes and her hand over her mouth where he must have hit her. And Sam screaming from the next room.

      And he wanted to help. He knew he should help. He should do something.

      But the walls caved in around him, his muscles remained frozen. Because, oh god, he was back in his past. He was back in that mean kitchen, his father shouting, his mother screaming and a child that saw too much.

      And he wanted to put his hands over his ears and block it all out.

      Oh god.

      What had he done?

       What had he done?

       CHAPTER TWELVE

      SHE blnked up at him warily, testing her aching jaw. ‘I have to get Sam,’ she said, wondering why he just sat there like a statue, wondering if that wild look in his eyes signalled that he was still sleeping, still lost in whatever nightmare had possessed him.

      ‘I hit you,’ he said at last, his voice a mere rasp, his skin grey in the moonlight.

      ‘You didn’t mean to,’ she said, climbing to her feet. ‘You were asleep. You were tossing and—’

      ‘I hurt you.’

      He had, but right now she was more concerned with the hurt in his eyes. With the raw, savage pain she saw there. And with reassuring her son, whose cries were escalating. ‘It was an accident. You didn’t mean it.’

      ‘I warned you!’

      ‘I have to see to Sam. Excuse me.’ She rushed around the bed to the dressing room and her distraught child, his tear streaked face giving licence for her own tears to fall. ‘Oh Sam,’ she whispered, kissing his tear stained cheek, pushing back the damp hair from his brow and clutching him tightly to her as she rocked him against her body. ‘It’s all right, baby,’ she soothed, trying to believe it. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

      She heard movement outside, things bumping and drawers being opened, but she dared not look, not until she felt her son’s body relax against her, his whimpers slowly steadying. She waited a while, just to be sure, and then she kissed his brow and laid him back down in his cot.

      And then she stood there a while longer, looking down at her child, his cheek softly illuminated in the moonlight, while she wondered what to do.

      What did you do when your heart was breaking for a man who didn’t want family? Who didn’t want your love?

      What could you do?

      ‘What are you doing?’ she asked when she emerged, watching Leo stashing clothes in a bag.

      ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this to you.’

      ‘You can’t do what to me?’

      ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

      ‘Leo, you were in the midst of a nightmare. I got too close. You didn’t know I was there.’

      He pulled open another drawer, extracted its contents. ‘No. I know who I am. I know what I am. Pack your things, we’re leaving.’

      ‘No. I’m not going anywhere. Not before you tell me what’s going on.’

      ‘I can’t do this,’ he said in his frenzied state, ‘to you and Sam.’

      She sat on the bed and put a hand to her forehead, stunned, while he opened another drawer, threw out more clothes. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

      ‘It makes perfect sense!’

      ‘No! It makes no sense at all! Why are you doing this? Because of a nightmare, because you accidentally lashed out and struck me?’

      He walked stiffly up the bed, his chest heaving. ‘Don’t you understand, Evelyn, or Eve, or whoever you are, if I can do that to you asleep, how much more damage can I do when I am awake?’

      And despite the cold chill in his words, she stood up and faced him, because she knew him well enough by now to know he was wrong. ‘You wouldn’t hit me.’

      ‘You don’t know that!’ he cried, ‘Nobody can know that,’ giving her yet another hint of the anguish assailing him.

      And Eve knew what she had to say; knew what she had to do; knew that she had to be brave. She moved closer, slowly, stopping before she reached him, but wanting to be close enough that he could see the truth of her words reflected on her face in the moonlight, close enough that she could pick up his hand and hold it to her chest so that he might feel her heart telling him the same message.

      ‘I know it, because I’ve been with you Leo. I’ve spent nights filled with passion in your bed. I’ve spent days when you made me feel more alive than I have in my entire life. And I’ve seen the way you pulled my child from the sea when you saw him fall into the surf before I did. I know you would never harm him.’

      She shook her head, amazed that she was about to confess something so very, very new; so very, very precious and tender, before she had even time to pull it out and examine it for all its flaws and weaknesses in private herself.

      ‘Don’t you see? I know it, Leo, because—’ She sucked in air, praying for strength in order to confess her foolishness. Because hadn’t he warned her not to get involved? Hadn’t he told her enough times nothing could come of their liaison? But how else could she reach him? How else could she make him understand? ‘Damn it, I know it because I love you.’

      He looked down at her, his bleak eyes filled with some kind of terror before he shut them down, and she wondered what kind of hell she would see when he opened them again.

      ‘Don’t say that. You mustn’t say that.’ His words squeezed through his teeth, a cold, hard stiletto of pain that tore at her psyche, ripping into the fabric of her soul. But while it terrified her, at the same time she felt empowered. After all, what did she have left to lose? She’d already admitted the worst, she’d already laid her cards on the table. There was nothing left but to fight for this fledgling love, to defend it, and to defend her right to it.

      ‘Why can’t I say it, when it’s the truth? And I know it’s futile and pointless but it’s there. I love you, Leo. Get used to it.’

      ‘No! Saying I love you doesn’t make everything all right. Saying I love you doesn’t make it okay to beat someone.’

      But he hadn’t—

      And suddenly a rush of cold drenching fear flooded down her spine along with the realisation that he wasn’t talking about what had just taken place in this room. And whatever he had witnessed, it was violent and brutal and had scarred him deeply. ‘What happened to you to make you believe yourself capable of these things? What horrors were you subjected to that won’t let you rest at night?’

      ‘The nightmares are a warning,’ he said. ‘A warning not to let this happen, and I won’t. Not if it means hurting you and Sam.’

      ‘But Leo—’

      ‘Pack your things,’ he said simply, sounding defeated. ‘I’m taking you home.’

      Melbourne was doing what it knew best, she thought as they touched down, offering up a bit of everything, the runway still damp from the latest shower,