Why Resist a Rebel

chapter THIRTEEN



The flash of blonde hair was unmistakeable.

Dev tripped, the toe of his boot catching in the uneven dirt, and he took a moment to steady himself.

‘You right, mate?’

Dev nodded. A moment ago he’d been in the middle of a conversation with the young actor as they led their horses in readiness for their next scene. Now he had no idea what they’d been talking about.

He smiled. This was crazy.

He watched as Ruby flitted amongst the crew, as busy and efficient as always.

And, as always, not as much as one glance was thrown in his direction.

His smile dropped. Up until today it hadn’t bothered him, her obsession with keeping their relationship private. Of course he understood.

But after last night, it just didn’t sit right.

This wasn’t just some fling; he knew it.

So what was it, then?

His horse shoved his head against Dev’s side, rubbing his ears against his shoulder.

It yanked his attention back to what he should be doing—running through his lines.

Right now he needed to focus. Tonight, he’d talk to Ruby.

He ended up talking to her a lot earlier than that.

Dev opened his trailer door in response to angry hammering, and Ruby flew into the tiny space. She stalked straight past him, and then kept on pacing, not even catching his gaze.

‘I thought we were past this?’ she asked, agitation oozing from every pore.

He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

She spun about, getting right up close to him. He knew she was frustrated, but his reaction to her closeness, to the fire in her eyes, was obviously not what she’d intended.

She shoved one of his shoulders. ‘This isn’t funny!’

‘I have no idea if it’s funny or not,’ he pointed out.

Ruby took a deep breath, then one big step back.

‘The Australian Film Association Awards? Does that ring a bell?’

He nodded. ‘Sure. Paul spoke to me about them about an hour ago.’

‘And?’

‘I said I’d get back to him.’

She put her hands on her hips, and just stared at him—as if that explained everything.

Ruby sighed. ‘Do I seriously need to remind you about your contract? You walking the red carpet at the awards is all about generating early buzz for The Land.’

She then muttered something about arrogant overpaid actors under her breath.

He reached out, wrapping his hand around Ruby’s. ‘I said I’d get back to him. And I will—once I speak to you.’

She blinked, then glanced down at their joined hands. ‘What do I have to do with it?’

He squeezed her palm, but she didn’t respond. Her gaze was now wary, and he watched as she shifted her weight from foot to foot.

He grinned. ‘Normally I’d hope for more enthusiasm when I’m inviting a woman to a red-carpet event.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’

He nodded.

‘Why?’

This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected when he’d had the spur-of-the-moment idea. He’d forgotten all about the awards night, but once Paul mentioned it it seemed perfect.

‘Because I want you to come with me.’ Then, he added, before she could say what he knew was on the tip of her tongue, ‘I want people to know we’re together.’

She tugged on his hand. Hard. He let her go, but he didn’t understand why she was doing this. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to kiss her. To tell her how amazing it was to realise what he had right in front of him—what he had with her.

But she didn’t want to hear it.

Ruby wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her fingers up and down the woollen fabric of her oversized cardigan.

‘What if I don’t?’

‘Why wouldn’t you?’ he asked, slowly. Confused.

She rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t know, maybe because I don’t want people to know about...’ she threw her hands out in front of her, vaguely encompassing them both ‘...whatever this is.’

‘What do you think this is?’

She shrugged. ‘Something fun. Temporary. Private.’

He shook his head. ‘How can you believe that? I’ve spent more time with you in the past few weeks than I’ve spent with another woman ever.’

He ignored yet another eye roll, his blood starting to simmer in anger. Why was she doing this? Why would she deny what they had?

‘I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone. I’ve revealed more of myself to you—given more of myself to you—than I thought I was capable of.’

More than Estelle—or anyone—had thought him capable of.

She was staring out of the window, through a tiny crack in the curtains.

‘You’ve gone through a tough time,’ she said, as if she was choosing her words carefully. ‘I was just the girl who happened to be here. The distraction.’

‘That’s just a word,’ he said. ‘It’s meaningless, and it isn’t true when it comes to you—not any more. Not since that morning you came into my room prepared to bodily drag me onto set.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘When you go through really emotional events, it’s natural to attach yourself to someone—’

‘You’re just making this up as you go along,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She crossed the trailer, putting more space between them. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think I do. This was never supposed to be anything serious. And it isn’t.’

‘Is that the issue, Ruby? You don’t want serious, so you’re ignoring what’s happening right in front of you? I didn’t think I wanted it either, but I can’t pretend this isn’t happening. I won’t.’

Ruby just shook her head, still avoiding his gaze.

‘You told me on the beach the other week that you learnt you didn’t need anyone, years ago. I get that. I definitely get that. But I’m not like the men from your past. I won’t let you down.’

Now she turned to him, her gaze suddenly sad. ‘How, exactly, will you manage that?’

‘To not let you down?’ he repeated.

She give a sharp nod. ‘Yes. What exactly have you planned for us beyond this film, and beyond this awards night?’

He was silent. Honestly, he hadn’t thought beyond that. He just knew he wanted Ruby.

She smiled, very slowly. Dangerously. ‘Let me guess—we’d go back to Beverly Hills.’

‘I guess—’ he began. It made sense, he supposed.

‘And I would work where?’

He knew this wasn’t leading anywhere good, but found himself helpless to change the direction of the conversation. ‘I don’t know. I live in Hollywood. So—’

‘So that’s where I’d work.’

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Damn it, Ruby—I was just inviting you to the AFAs. That’s it. We don’t need to plan out every second of our future together.’

‘That wasn’t what I was asking you to do,’ Ruby said. ‘Not at all.’

She walked towards him—past him—to the trailer door.

He couldn’t let her leave, not like this, and in two strides he was in front of her, blocking her exit.

‘Ruby, I’m new to this, too. I don’t know what I’m doing.’ He managed a dry laugh. ‘Obviously. But—I just know that things feel right with you. Different right, special right. I haven’t felt this good in for ever. And don’t you dare attribute that to my dad.’ She snapped her mouth shut. ‘I can’t describe it, Ruby, but I’m not ready to let it go. I can’t let you walk away from this.’

She caught his gaze, her eyes a richer brown than he’d ever seen them. ‘Try and describe it,’ she said, so softly he leant closer to catch the words.

‘Describe it?’ he repeated, then, gradually—he understood what she was asking.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Describe what we have, what it is that you expect me to give up so much for—my privacy, my independence, the career I love, a lifestyle that suits me perfectly.’

Love.

That was what she was asking. Was this love?

His mind raced, whipping about in circles but coming to no meaningful conclusion. It was a word he rarely used, that he’d never said to anyone but a blood relative.

Was it even possible to love someone after so little time?

Little vignettes of their time together mish-mashed in his brain. At the beach, in bed, alone together on set, talking, laughing, loving.

He cleared his throat. ‘I never said I wanted you to give up anything for me.’

She twisted the door handle, and it clicked open loudly in the heavy silence.

Then, without a word, she left.

And Dev was powerless to say the words that might bring her back.

Ruby walked briskly back to the production office, deftly handling the standard peppering of questions and minor dramas that always accompanied her progress across Unit Base.

She sounded totally normal. Totally like herself.

And why wouldn’t she?

She’d known they’d reached the end of their thing. Their fling.

Fling. Yeah, that was the perfect word. Disposable.

Love.

Ruby dug her fingernails into her palms as she jogged up the steps to her office.

No, it wasn’t love.

But still, it was the word she’d been waiting for him to say.

How silly, how delusional.

Besides, she should be angry with him. Angry with him for not understanding how far she’d come, and how important—how essential—her independence was to her. She could never give up her career, or her nomadic lifestyle. Not for anything, and certainly not for anyone.

At the doorway to her office she paused. Inside, her team were working busily away. They didn’t even look up, all so used to the frantic comings and goings of the office.

Everything was just as she’d left it. As if Paul had never called her into his office, as if she’d never stormed over to Dev’s trailer, and as if she’d never so vehemently refused his invitation.

And yet everything had changed. Right in the middle of all that, right in the middle of doing what she knew she’d had to do, what she’d known had been inevitable, she’d paused. For that one moment she’d reconsidered, she’d tossed everything up in the air that she’d worked so hard for, waiting on bated breath for Dev to say the words that would...

What?

Mean that she and Dev would live happily ever after?

No way. Ruby had long ago thrown away her dreams of a knight in shining armour, of the one man that would wake up in the morning and still want her—and then again the next day and for ever.

Love was for fools, for the foolish girl she’d once been.

It wasn’t for her.

Dev brought the hire car to a stop in the familiar driveway.

There weren’t nearly as many cars as his mum’s birthday party, but there were enough to let him know he was the last to arrive. Typical—his older brothers were always early.

The front door was unlocked, so he followed the buzz of conversation and squeals of children to the back of the house. In the kitchen both his brothers stood at the granite bench, beers in hand, talking to his mum as she busily chopped something. Beside Brad stood a woman he didn’t recognise—a girlfriend perhaps. Outside was Jared’s wife who he did recognise from the wedding photos his mum had emailed him years ago. Two children raced across the paving on tricycles, shrieking with exuberant laughter that made him smile. But the smile fell as the adults’ conversations stalled—his presence had undeniably been noted.

He strode with determined confidence to his mum and kissed her on the cheek.

Once again she looked thrilled at his appearance, as if she’d expected a no-show, or a last-minute cancellation.

Neither of which were unprecedented.

He was ashamed of his behaviour. The worst had been most recently—skipping the funeral, avoiding her calls. He’d been incapable of processing his own emotions, telling himself he’d be no use to his mum, that he’d just cause more tension, more trouble, more hassle. That his dad wouldn’t have wanted him around, anyway.

Which was all total rubbish, of course.

But well before that—the decade before that—he’d neglected his mum. His visits home to Australia were limited, and always due to work, never specifically to see her. Now he suspected it was because he’d wanted to completely box away and forget his family, a family he considered unsupportive and just completely different and disassociated from him. In his family he had always felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Not that he’d done anything at all to test that theory since he was nineteen.

Or at least, not until now.

A Sunday afternoon barbecue—a simple thing, and, he hoped, a step in the right direction.

His brothers were not exactly effusive in their hellos, but they were cordial enough. Samantha, Jared’s wife, and Tracey, Brad’s girlfriend, were much more welcoming—if not a little star-struck, despite doing their best to hide it. It made him smile. In this kitchen, where he’d been forced to eat his vegetables and load the dishwasher, he didn’t feel even the slightest bit like a movie star.

They ate lunch outside, the table piled high with barbecued everything—prawn skewers, sausages, steak, fish. Dev didn’t say much, allowing the conversation to happen around him.

‘I heard you’re filming in New South Wales,’ Samantha asked, catching his eye from across the table. Beside her, Jared eyed Dev warily.

He nodded. ‘Yeah, a romantic drama, something a bit different for me.’ Dev then spent a few minutes describing Lucyville, some of his co-stars, and making generic comments about how much he was enjoying working again in Australia—which, he realised as he said it, was actually true.

Beside Sam, Jared slowly relaxed before Dev’s eyes.

What had Jared honestly expected him to do? Say something inappropriate? Grunt a response? Throw food across the table?

He realised he’d tensed his jaw, and that his back had become stiff and unyielding.

As Sam chatted away, asking questions about the film industry and about LA, Dev forced himself to relax.

He couldn’t get angry with Jared. Or Brad.

They were just protecting his mum, and had absolutely no reason to believe that today was the start of something new. That he wouldn’t let her down—let them all down—again.

If this was a movie, the script would probably call for him to dramatically jump to his feet—to declare his grief for the loss of his father and for the loss of more than a decade of time with his family. For never meeting his niece and nephew before today. He’d use words and phrases like a tragedy and regret and I can only hope you can forgive me and that type of thing, and then all would be forgiven, and the camera would pan back, and they’d all be one big happy family. The End.

But life didn’t work like that, at least not in the Cooper household.

Today was not the day for dramatic declarations, and it was not the day to expect a magic wand to be waved and for everything to be okay.

It was, and remained, simply a step in the right direction.

He needed to earn a conversation without tense undertones. And he intended to.

Ruby was the first person to tell him he was being stupid to wish the family he had away. The words had resonated more than he’d realised—when he’d been unable to sleep, when the words had been piled on top of all the other snatches of memory and guilt that filled his subconscious to the brim. Even now they still resonated, even when sleep came—mostly—much more easily.

That was a very stupid thing to say.

So to the point, so straightforward. So Ruby.

It was why he was here. She was why he was here.

‘How is Ruby?’ his mum asked from the head of the table, reading his mind.

‘The blonde from Mum’s party?’ asked Brad, and Ros nodded.

‘I liked her,’ she said.

‘Me, too,’ Dev said, without thinking. Then he cleared his throat. ‘She’s well, I think. I don’t really know—we’re just colleagues. She’s the Production Co-ordinator.’

As of three days ago, it was all true, but still the words felt just like a lie.

Three days since whatever had happened in his trailer. Even now he wasn’t sure what had really taken place—or what he could’ve done to ensure a different ending. Sometimes he was angry at her, and frustrated at the crazy assumptions she’d leapt to; how unfair it had been of her to put words into his mouth, to assume the worst of him—and to fast-forward their relationship to a point where they needed to consider anything beyond the next night, or next week.

But other times he was furious with himself. Furious for letting her walk away, for not running across Unit Base—screw what anyone thought—and saying whatever he needed to say to get her to stay. Furious for not considering how she’d react, not considering what a public relationship with him might mean to her—a woman still scarred by the gossipmongering of her past. Of course she didn’t want to open her life up to the world for a fleeting fling.

But would she do it for something more?

Because what they had couldn’t be on her terms any more—no more secrets, no more end dates.

And she hadn’t wanted to hear that, hadn’t wanted to consider it.

Until love had come into it. Out of nowhere. And love just wasn’t something he was familiar with. That he knew how to do.

The conversations around him had moved on, but he barely heard a word.

Had it been out of nowhere? Had it been so shocking, so unexpected?

Yes, he’d told himself.

But now—it was a no. An honest, raw, no.

Everything he’d told her in that trailer, about what he’d shared with her, what he’d revealed—that came from a place of trust, of intimacy, of connection.

A place he’d never gone before—that he hadn’t been capable of going to before.

A place of love.

In his mother’s back yard he was surrounded by his family, and he was here because of love. Love he’d tossed away, not appreciated, and now was hoping to win back, slowly and with absolutely no assumptions. It was going to take time.

And he was doing this because in his darkest moments, when the darkness had sucked the world away from him so that he was left isolated and so, so alone, love was what he had craved. Love from his father, but also from his family. Love and respect were all that he’d ever wanted.

In his rejection of his father, he’d tossed away a family who loved him. And they must love him, to allow him to sit here after so long.

He’d let himself believe he’d failed his father, and his family, with his chosen career.

But he’d been wrong.

His failure was in being as stubborn as his dad. For closing himself off from the possibility of love—from his family, or from anyone. He’d rejected love, because he’d been too scared to risk it—to risk failing in the eyes of someone he loved again.

Now he wanted love back in his life, regardless of the risks.

He’d wasted a huge chunk of life alone, even if he had been surrounded by people and the glitz and glamour of his career.

But enough was enough.

He wasn’t letting Ruby go without a fight.