again.
‘This whole conversation is only reinforcing my decision to end things now,’ she said as she started stuffing her belongings into her two backpacks.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Packing. I’m not staying here.’ With you.
‘Where exactly do you plan on going? We’re in the middle of the desert.’
He had a point. She hardly knew the museum crew well enough to crawl in with one of them. The back seat of the troop carrier was looking pretty good at this moment. ‘Not your problem.’
‘Shirley—’
She spun around on him. ‘I found a dinosaur fossil.’ Or close enough. ‘So the achievable list is now complete.’ She flat-lined her hands in front of her. ‘We’re done.’
‘You’ll freeze out there.’ His voice dropped. ‘You can’t leave.’
Damn him for being right. Her hand stopped, mid-stuff. ‘I can’t stay.’
‘Why?’
Her chest rose and fell with alarming regularity. Why couldn’t she be more like the women in his past? Why couldn’t she just enjoy a good physical send-off? Why did she want tomorrow to never come?
‘Because it feels wrong,’ she whispered.
‘You offered a no-strings, casual relationship, Shirley. I just took you up on it.’
Yeah, well … that was before her feelings had changed. Although … maybe they hadn’t changed at all. Maybe she’d had them all along and just saw them clearly now. Because even though she had all the reason in the world to despise him right now, she couldn’t help but be drawn to his sheer presence, still. It was galling.
Lord. Had she fallen for him that very first day? Or had she just never got him out of her system from when she was fourteen?
She lifted her chin. Tired of subterfuge. ‘Are you really that much of a machine, Hayden? You have no other feelings complicating things at all?’
His face became a mask. ‘That’s not what we were about.’
‘And so you won’t miss me? You won’t wonder what might have been?’
He didn’t answer. But he looked like he wanted the answer to be nope.
‘And will you still be doing that in twenty years? Thirty?’ she prodded, desperate to even up the emotional score. ‘Is that how you plan to end your days? Alone?’
His tan turned slightly sallow under the lamplight. ‘If I play my cards right.’
‘You don’t want that.’ Surely?
‘Not everyone wants the picket fence.’
‘Or do you imagine you don’t have to worry about forever?’ she persisted. ‘Do you truly think that you’ll exit this world early in a blaze of glory? Like Leonidas? Or will you just avoid any kind of emotional connection until the end?’
‘That’s the plan.’
She stared at him, utterly lost. Heartsick. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s what I want.’
No one wanted to be alone. Not really. Then a thought popped into her mind. ‘You said you knew why you went underground a few years ago. Is it connected?’
‘I said I knew. I didn’t say I was planning on sharing.’
Her confidence shrivelled. She could have argued that, Lord knew she wanted to. But she was too tired. Tired of thinking about him. Tired of hurting. Her soul ached.
She went back to stuffing her bag.
‘Shirley. We’re adults. I’m sure we can share a bed without mauling each other.’
‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’ She’d take his arm off if he made a move on her. ‘Given how I feel right now, I can’t promise not to suffocate you in my sleep.’
He laughed. He actually laughed.
Maybe he was a machine.
Her badly packed belongings weren’t fitting in as they had on the journey out. She kept shoving them down into unseen air pockets. Jerky and strong.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You stay here and I’ll go sleep in the truck.’
She turned heavy eyes up to him. ‘You think your freezing point is lower than mine?’
‘Oh, there are people who would assure you that I’m already sub-arctic.’
‘Here. You’ll need this,’ she grunted, and tossed a sleeping bag at him. He stumbled backwards half out of the tent to catch it like a marked football and then lifted bemused eyes. Had he not expected her to agree? She lifted her chin. ‘Unless that was just lip service?’
A curious expression crossed his face and he backed fully out into the cold. ‘Thanks.’
‘See you in the morning, then.’ She smiled brightly and then zipped the tent closed in his face.
And then sagged down onto the air mattress.
He was right. They were as damaged as each other.
To please a woman who’s been dead for a decade.
Harsh, ugly words. But were they true? Was that what she was doing? Pleasing her mother? She thought back on how desperate she’d been to cling to something stable in the awful, disruptive weeks right after the funeral. The list had been like an anchor then, giving her something tangible to focus on. As though as long as the list endured so did her mother.
Then, as she’d crossed from child into young woman, as she’d trained for the gruelling marathon, she’d realised that it was more about honouring her—just as Hayden had pledged all those months before. The list wasn’t going to bring her, or Shirley’s old life, back. It was just something she could do. And had continued to do to completion on principle.
At least she’d believed it was principle.
To please a woman …
She’d certainly spent the better part of her childhood pleasing her mother. Studying hard, doing all her chores without reminder, keeping out of the way when she had students around. Making sure her mother never had cause for complaint. Because she held enough things against her daughter as it was: her father’s departure, her failure to find someone else in her life—
Shirley frowned.
—her inability to apply for exciting jobs overseas, her inability to move to a more upmarket district outside Shirley’s school zone. Now that she thought about it. She’d cried-poor Shirley’s whole life, despite having a crowded wardrobe and the best magazine subscriptions. She’d rarely gone
