chapter Twenty-Two
Dex watched as Honey paused to gather her thoughts. Without his jacket, the cool evening air caused goose bumps to rise on his flesh beneath his shirt and the rough rock behind him dug painfully into his back. But he didn’t care. He would have sat there for a thousand years if it meant he had a chance of getting Honey back.
He’d never felt anything like the relief that had flooded him when he’d found her sitting there. Surprisingly, Cam had not been worried to find she’d escaped out of the bathroom window. He’d just sighed and said, “She’ll come back, when she’s ready.” When Dex had protested, Cam had reminded him, “She’s twenty-five, not fifteen. She’s a grown woman, and if she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, that’s her right. She knows where we are, when she’s ready to talk.”
But Dex couldn’t bear the thought of her sitting in the dark on her own somewhere, trying to deal with God knew what horrors Cathryn had thrown at her. He would have combed the bush all night to find her.
She unscrewed the bottle top and took another tiny sip of the whiskey, following it with the delicate wince that amused him every time before passing him the bottle. He took a mouthful, reminding himself that if he carried on like this he wouldn’t be able to drive home, and passed it back to her. She screwed the top on carefully. The moonlight that coated the bush around them, turning it into real silver fern, painted her nose and the apples of her cheeks with pure silvery-white. She looked like a Greek statue, ethereal and sad, and it made him catch his breath.
“Marriage is for an awfully long time,” she said finally. “I mean, I know you can get divorced if it doesn’t work out, but it doesn’t seem great to go into it thinking like that. ‘Till death parts us,’ is what we’ll have to say, and it seems to me you have to be pretty certain of each other to make that commitment.”
“I’m certain,” he said, but she waved the words away.
“You proposed to me very soon after we’d met. And I said yes. And since then the outcome hasn’t been in question. But I don’t think either of us has really sat down and thought about what it means, and if we’re right for each other.”
“I’m certain,” he said again, meaning it.
She gave him an exasperated look. “I’m serious, Dex. I’m not looking for false flattery or glibness here. This isn’t Regency England—it’s not an arranged marriage. A little compatibility is sought for before couples get together now. And we didn’t know a thing about each other at the beginning. We made the decision based on a kind of desperation, a hope that things couldn’t possibly be as bad as they had been for both of us in the past. For me, certainly, I saw you—a policeman with a strong sense of justice—as a kind of hero. I put you on a pedestal—I know that.”
“I like being someone’s hero,” he said.
Her lips curved wryly. “And you saw me as some sort of innocent angel who’d wash away your sins. Don’t deny it, Dex—I know it’s true.”
“I’m not denying it. It is true. And I still believe it.”
“I’m not an angel—nowhere near it.” Frustration furrowed her brow. “I’m very much an ordinary mortal with tons of foibles and weaknesses.”
“I guess that makes two of us then.”
“Dex… Do you see what I’m saying? Being with me doesn’t make you into a different person, any more than being with you makes me different. Our past doesn’t dissolve when we’re together—we just paper over the cracks.”
“You’re wrong,” he said simply. “I am a different person when I’m with you. And I like who I am when we’re together. It’s not a case of forgetting the past or trying to change. It’s that you bring out the best in me.”
“I’m not perfect.”
“I think you are.”
“Dex! I slapped Cathryn, for God’s sake.”
That made him raise his eyebrows and stare at her. She gave an involuntary giggle at the look on his face.
“Honeysuckle Summers, I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m not ready to laugh yet.”
“Why did you slap her? Other than the obvious—because she was there.”
“She provoked me.”
“I’m sure she did. Still, I find it difficult to believe she riled you up that much.” He frowned. He’d never seen Honey irritated, let alone angry. She was always so calm and unflappable, so patient and kind. Cathryn must have really upset her to drive her to semi-violence. “What the hell did she say?”
Honey met his gaze, then dropped hers to examine her hands. “She talked about your sex life.”
F*ck. “Like what?”
She looked up. The humour had faded from her eyes, and now they looked black in the moonlight. “You really want to know?”
“I want to know exactly what it was that upset you so much.”
“She told me how many different positions you had sex in. How you liked playing with sex toys. That she enjoyed going down on you.”
“Oh jeez.”
“And she told me to buy some lube, because—and I think her exact words were—‘He likes to f*ck a girl hard every which way, including—” She blinked. “That’s where I slapped her, because I couldn’t bear to hear...” She looked down at her hands again.
Hatred welled inside him for the spiteful woman who’d tried to wound the gentle girl sitting next to him, just to punish him because he didn’t love her anymore.
Honey unscrewed the bottle again, took a mouthful, winced and passed it to him. She glanced up at him briefly, and for the first time tears glistened in her eyes.
He took a long swig of the whiskey, swallowed, coughed, wiped the top and passed it back to her. Then he thought carefully.
There was no point in saying anything more about what Cathryn had told her. Talking any further about his sex life with his ex couldn’t possibly be constructive. And Honey didn’t want platitudes or flowery declarations of love. She didn’t want him to lie and deny everything, nor sweet it under the carpet and pretend it hadn’t happened.
So what should he say? The only thing left was the truth.
He leaned his head back on the rock and looked up, through the leafy canopy to the glittering stars above their heads. “When I became a police office, I tried to put my miscreant youth behind me and move on, but—as you said—our past doesn’t disappear overnight. I always felt the old me lay beneath the surface. My father and brothers repeatedly told me that you can’t change who you are, and every time that I slipped up— saw my old mates, got drunk, smoked weed—I felt that was the real me, and I was just fooling myself. Cathryn was a part of that—a woman that I felt I…deserved, I suppose. She appealed to the young man who thought himself a degenerate. There was nothing loving or beautiful about our relationship. It was harsh and physical, because that’s all that young man knew.”
He sighed. “I don’t know how to describe my upbringing to you, Honey. At the time I didn’t know any different, but watching the relationship you girls have with Cam, and especially seeing how he and Koru interact, makes me realise how twisted and dark my relationship with my father and brothers was, and of course that spilled over into my social life. Issues were always solved physically, never by talking. It was very much survival of the fittest. Our home was dark, filthy and unhappy. I was often hungry, my clothes were never clean, I always had bruises, and I was frightened of my own shadow half the time, until I grew tall and strong enough to defend myself.”
He looked across at her. She sat quietly, listening, picking at the label on the bottle. Was he making things worse? Making it all about him? It didn’t matter—it was too late to go back now. “Your home is so beautiful. Everywhere you look there’s beauty—not just in you girls, but in everything around you. Beautiful clothes, colourful furnishings. Handmade cushions and throws, Lily’s paintings on the wall. Even the wonderful cooking you all do. Do you know that you always smell sweet? Just like your name?”
She smiled shyly and shook her head.
“Well, you do. I noticed that the first time we went out. Everyone I’d ever known in my youth smelled of alcohol, smoke, weed or B.O. But you girls all smell of flowers and perfume and cakes. Even Koru smells of cookies, along with his aftershave. Light surrounds you all, but especially you, Honey.”
He caught her gaze and held it. “You know why I think I kissed Cathryn? Because I wanted to see if she still had any power over me. It’s not an excuse and I’m ashamed of it, but seeing her there standing outside the school, I didn’t feel pleasure or excitement, just dread. And she gave me a similar talk to what she gave you, about sex and how good it had been, and part of me remembered how she’d had this hold over me, and I suppose I wanted to see if any of that still remained. So when she kissed me, for a brief second I didn’t pull away. But I didn’t feel happy or turned on. I felt disgusted and dirty, and terribly, terribly unhappy that I’d done something that might have hurt you. It lasted seconds and I walked off and left her there, which made me feel a bit guilty at first, but now, knowing what she said to you, I wish I’d driven her to Cape Reinga and let her walk home.”
Honey swallowed and finally dropped her gaze.
“I’m not trying to make excuses,” he whispered. “Or to say what I did was justified. Or to say that there’s an evil demon inside of me and it’s all his fault—although that’s what it feels like sometimes. All I can say is that I regret what I did deeply, and I hate her for coming to see you and for making you feel bad. But I don’t want to think about her. I love you, Honey Summers, and I want to marry you and carry on loving you every day for the rest of your life. I know you’re not perfect, any more than I am. But you’re sweet, gentle, kind and loving. You’d be a wonderful mother to my children, and if you became my wife, I’d want to grab a loudspeaker and shout it to the world.”
She started to cry, and he gave into his urge to take her in his arms. She curled up against him, pulling his jacket close around her, and sobbed into his shirt, and he let her, holding her securely, kissing the top of her head and murmuring soft words of comfort until she finally quieted.
“Can I take you home now?” he asked her.
She nodded, wiping her face on his sleeve, so he stood and pulled her up with him, kept a tight arm around her and started to lead her back to the house.
Once they’d cleared the bush and started up the paddocks to Stormwind, she began to lean more heavily on him, and when he looked down he saw she was nearly asleep. The emotion had worn her out, and the whiskey was finally taking its toll.
Bending and slipping an arm under her legs, he lifted her into his arms and carried her the short distance to the house.
As he neared the large glass sliding doors at the back, they slid open and Cam and Koru came out, concern on their faces.
“She’s okay,” Dex said. “Just tired. Shall I take her to her room?”
Cam nodded, and Dex carried her through the living room, noting that all the girls save Daisy were there, watching him cautiously as he passed by. He didn’t say anything but took her through to the west wing of the house, hearing Cam behind him talking to the girls.
He walked along the corridor to her room, pushed open the door and carried her to the bed. The moonlight streamed through the curtains and fell across the cover in a sheet of silver.
He bent and pulled back the duvet and laid her carefully on the mattress, removing his jacket from her shoulders, and covered her over. Then he kissed her cheek.
She opened her eyes. “Don’t go.”
He studied her for a moment. “You want me to sleep next door?” Daisy’s room lay empty unless she came back for a visit.
“Here,” Honey said.
For the first time that evening, emotion overwhelmed Dex and he had to swallow down the lump in his throat. He nodded and toed off his shoes, took off his tie and hung the jacket over the chair in front of the dressing table. Then he climbed onto the bed—on top of the duvet—and lay next to her. He lifted his arm and she curled up beside him, and he laid his arm around her and pulled her tightly to him.
She was asleep in seconds.
He looked across the room to the window, seeing the moon hanging in the sky like a wheel of cheese with a chunk sliced off the end. A small noise brought his attention back to the door, and he looked over to see Cam standing there.
Cam met his gaze, nodded, gave a small smile and backed out, closing the door behind him.
Dex kissed the top of Honey’s head, enjoying her warmth and hoping it wouldn’t be the last time he would hold her in bed like this.
Would she ever forgive him? He hoped he’d pleaded his case well, and so far the signs were good and she hadn’t thrown him out. There was one final thing he could do to try and make sure the wedding went ahead on Saturday, and he lay there in the dark, planning how to go about it.
It was some time before he finally fell asleep.