Chapter 21

Hayden

I sat in my car outside of Jamie's place and looked at the stairs that led up to her front door. You can do this , I told myself over and over. I looked across to the driver's seat to the bunch of flowers wrapped in cellophane, then grabbed them.

I'd rehearsed this moment so many times in my mind, so it felt like there were dozens of me walking up her stairs. A Hayden that was taking her on their first date, second, fifth. A version of me that had been up and down them more times than he could count, leaving, but always coming back to her. One where I knocked on the door and entered her home, not leaving until the next day. It felt like both an imagined history and a possible future followed me up to her door.

The cellophane crinkled as I knocked with my free hand, my focus brought to the here and now. I could hear muffled sounds behind the door, then footsteps, as my heart pounded in my chest. This was like paddling out to face a massive wave, part of you not even sure if you'd survive if you managed to catch it, but you had to try. Surfers saw a mad wave as a mountain we had to climb, and in some ways the energy pumping through my veins was the same right now.

Until she opened the door.

My heart wasn't pounding hard, it went perfectly still as I took Jamie in. I was frozen to the spot, mouth hanging open, about to say hello when I took in the dress. Jamie was beautiful in whatever she wore, but damn… I almost let out a pathetic little whine, like some kind of dog. It took effort to close my mouth, but I forced myself to, swallowing hard and then blinking as Millie came into view.

"Struck dumb?" She nodded. "Yeah, that's not a bad reaction."

"Bad reaction?" Jamie spun around and hissed at Millie.

Say something , dickhead , I told myself. Say something!

"He hates it obviously. I never should?—"

"You look beautiful." God, the words were torn from my throat. I coughed and struggled to clear it, my mouth bone dry. "So beautiful. I mean, you always do. It's not just the dress…" Millie's smile widened in a way that I was all too familiar with. My baby sister always snickered when I stuffed up. "But shit, Jamie… you look amazing."

I drifted closer because I couldn't keep away, taking in the way every one of those curves I'd tried to map with my eyes were now displayed in that dress. She looked pretty and feminine, but also like her. Her spirit would never be obscured by smoky eyeshadow and red lips.

"Anyway, these are for you."

I thrust the flowers into her arms, cursing myself for not getting some fancier ones. I knew she liked irises, so I'd gotten a simple bouquet of them, but right now she deserved ten dozen long-stemmed roses, or exotic orchids or something.

"Irises…" She looked up at me and smiled. "You remembered."

Yeah, I fucking did. I'd squirrelled away every bit of information I could glean from her conversations just in case this happened.

"These are bearded irises," I said, trying to recall the details the florist had shared with me. "They're like double the flower. They have this thing…" I gestured hopelessly to the bouquet, not remembering anything else.

"They're beautiful." Her eyes stared into mine, and suddenly all the tension leached from my body. If she just kept looking at me like that, everything would be OK. "Let me just put them in some water."

When she disappeared back into her apartment, I followed along blindly.

"And where's my thanks?" Millie asked me in a low voice.

"This was all you?" My eyes flicked from Jamie bustling around in the kitchen then back to my sister. "Remind me to set you up with a clothing allowance. Jamie looks hot in whatever she wears, but this…"

There was no mistaking her for anything other than a woman as she pulled out a vase and then filled it, removing the flowers from the cellophane and then arranging them.

"Just make sure the dress doesn't get ripped or damaged throwing axes," Millie said. "I promised Hunt she'd make it to their date in one piece."

One piece? Yeah, I could promise that, but at the reminder my brother would be taking her out for dinner afterwards, I stood taller. Would Jamie want to leave, though? That was my focus for the night. Make sure she was still thinking of me when she went to that restaurant.

"Ready?" I asked, holding out an arm as Jamie returned.

"To throw sharp objects around for fun?" she asked. "Damn straight."

"So how does this work?" Jamie asked me as I carried our axes and score card over to the bay I'd hired for the session. We walked past couples who were already tossing axes further down, and a flurry of shrieks announced that there was a hen's night going on right down the other end.

"So there's a target," I nodded to the wooden circle down the end of our lane. "You get points for each throw. Closer to the bullseye gets you more points."

"So this is a competition?" Her eyes narrowed as she grinned. "Care to make things interesting?"

"We are not betting money," I told her. I'd brought her here for a reason, because I'd had a few sessions of axe throwing with some of the guys I worked with. I figured I could show her how to do it, snuggle in close, and?—

"Nope, but…" She tapped her chin. "You could come to family barbecue when Mum and Dad arrive. Shit, if you could run interference, that'd be amazing! Like talk vaguely about a future with a home and 2.5 kids, but never really commit to anything." I'd have done that for her anyway, something she didn't understand, but I agreed to her terms. "OK, so what do you want if you manage to beat me?"

She didn't want to ask me that. I moved closer, knowing exactly what I wanted for my prize. I'd thought about it all too often, the curve of her lips as she smiled and chatted at my family's dining table, watching her laugh with Millie. I wanted to kiss Jamie and I was willing to win a bet to get that chance, but when my mouth opened to answer her, that's not what came out.

"A favour," I replied, wincing at that, but I'd already screwed things up, so all I could do was forge on. "Just a little one."

"I don't usually gamble on unspecified rewards, but…" She snatched up an axe and marched over to the end of the lane. "I've thrown a million spanners at Clinton, so how hard can this be?"

"Did you hit him?"

She grinned. "Every time, then he complained to Brock…" Her smile faded when she mentioned my brother. Her eyes slid down to her drink, running her finger through the condensation forming on the glass. "He made me promise not to do it anymore as it was an OHS issue."

When her eyes met mine, I knew what was going on. She was waiting for me to make a fuss about mentioning Brock's name, but that wasn't what tonight was about. Right now I wanted her to forget he even existed.

"OK, you have the basic idea." I grabbed one of the axes we'd hired and hefted it in my hand, feeling the weight, its balance. "So you need to?—"

"Throw it at the target?"

My arms crossed my chest as she stepped up to the line at the end of the lane and then just lobbed the thing at the wall. It was not going to hit the target, I knew that as soon as I saw it leave her hand. No momentum behind it, yet thrown way too hard, it spun and spun, her face lighting up, right until the back of the axe struck the wall and it bounced off and onto the ground.

"Something like that," I replied, grabbing my axe, and in a fluid motion, I stepped up to the line at the end of the lane and then let it fly. It spun through the air and then struck home, a bee's dick away from the bull's eye.

"Oh, so that's how it's going to be?" She was wearing a beautiful dress, but as her hands went to her hips, I saw the same scrappy kid that was always at our house and it made me smile. "You know how to do this."

"It's a date," I told her. "I figured I could teach you how?—"

"And what?" She stepped closer with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "Show the poor, weak female how it's done." I watched her retrieve both axes, shoving the handle of mine into my hand. "No, I'll work it out."

And that was all Jamie. Her dad didn't seem to know what to do with a daughter, so he just treated her the same as his sons. No, worse. Her mum thought she knew exactly what to do with Jamie, treating her daughter like a bonsai plant, trying to brutally cut back all her branches to shape her into a form satisfactory to Majorie. But my girl? She forged her own path, learning when no one else would take the time to teach her, and that's what she did now. The cogs of her mind whirred as she frowned slightly, imitating my process, my form, before letting the axe fly. The blade lodged itself into the bottom edge of the target and she turned to me in triumph.

"Yes!"

She threw her arms up in the air.

"Well done," I replied. "So should we start scoring from the next round?"

"No way. You can count that round because I got the axe onto the target."

"But not in the rings, so you get a zero and I get a twenty." I heard her little growl as I scribbled that down. "OK, my turn."

Her eyes upon me, watching my every move even if it was just to work out how I was doing it, I liked it a whole lot. I may or may not have flexed a little as I threw the axe. It landed right in the bullseye this time, but when I turned around, I was met by a pair of narrowed eyes.

"How the hell are you doing that?"

"I can show you…" I said, moving closer, but she took a step backwards. "Or you can work it out yourself. One bit of advice. Don't throw it so hard. The target isn't Clinton. It hasn't been making sleazy comments all day. You want the axe to spin about three times before it hits, no more."

"Three times. Got it."

I watched her approach the lane with a look of determination, but then she stumbled when her skirts got tangled around her ankles.

"Stupid dress…" I was about to say something when she laid the axe down on the table and then hitched the skirts up into her underwear. I felt like some Victorian rake in a period romance, staring at her ankles in rapt fascination, but before I could inspect them thoroughly, she moved. Using her momentum rather than the strength of her arm, I knew this would be a good throw, and sure enough, it spun through the air and landed inside the lines of the target.

"Whoo!" When she cheered, I did too. "So now what's the score?"

"Twenty to five," I replied, trying not to smile.

"Five? Five! I get five for that?" When she studied the target, she saw why. Her axe had buried itself into the outer ring.

"How about I give you a hand?" I asked. Offering to help Jamie was always a bit of a fraught thing, so I watched her warily now. "I can show you?—"

"Fine."

Not quite the teaching experience I'd hoped for, but I accepted her resigned expression and moved in behind her. My axe was pressed into her hand and she turned to look at me.

"But this is your go."

"I'll give you a free shot for being a newbie," I replied, right as my body slotted in against hers. Fuck. It was a fight to keep my mind on the job at hand at the feel of her.

"You're throwing it a bit too hard. Lemme show you." I grabbed her wrist, moving it back and forth until her joints started to loosen. "It's tricky because you can't force it. You just have to keep your body loose and let it go, rather than smash it at the target."

"OK, Master Yoda."

But as soon as she went to throw, I felt the tension in her body. My hand clamped down, stopping her from throwing, something she fought for a second before I spoke.

"Take a breath."

"Is this where you get me visualising dolphins swimming through the sea or something?" she snarked, but that had me smiling.

"In a way. Surfing and axe throwing, they have some similarities. You can't force the sea to give you the kind of waves you want. Instead, you have to sit out there on your board and wait for them to come, then be ready when they do. There's no fighting the ocean. It's a whole lot bigger and completely disinterested in you. Instead…"

I was telling her to relax, but I felt anything but as my hands went from her wrist to her shoulders, making tiny corrections to her stance, then resting my hands at her waist.

"Let your breath out."

She didn't want to, I could feel that tension there, but biology determined that she would. The tension went out of her body, her shoulders dropping down, and that's when I gave the order.

"Now."

She wanted to ask questions, interrogate that further, but something inside her responded to me and she took a step forward and let the axe fly. I followed its path while being keenly aware of the warmth of her body underneath the thin silk of her dress, my fingers squeezing until I saw the axe bury itself in the bulls' eye.

"Yes!" She spun around, eyes flashing before her hands locked around my neck. "I did it!"

"You did."

I was hugging her the same way I had countless times before, that's what I told myself. It was to congratulate her, build her confidence, but my body had whole other ideas. The smell of her perfume, the usual floral now spicy and sultry, the fabric of her dress so thin I could feel her body move beneath it, and her, pressed against me, in my arms. Mine tightened without thought, trying to hold on forever. This, this was what I needed, and that selfish thought throbbed through me as I pulled back.

Her smile faded, and for a second I thought I'd done something wrong. The little frown that followed confirmed it, but then her eyes dropped down, her lips parting as she traced the shape of mine. She stared and stared for far too long and that's when I moved forward. I wanted to claim her mouth, make it mine, over and over until she was gasping.

Which she seemed to sense.

She jerked back and then smiled hastily, her eyes everywhere but on me.

"OK, so, if that was your turn, then it's my turn now?"

The cheeky little shit, she was trying to win this bet via nefarious means, but she didn't know that by the end of this, we'd both win. I'd promise to attend whatever family events she had planned, and I'd… I'd kiss my girl before we left this place.