33. Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

A week went by and then two.

Lara put one foot in front of the other. She got her child out of bed and off to school. She put clothes on, did her hair, applied eyeliner with careful precision. She opened the store, made small talk with tourists, restocked the shelves. She kept going, just like she always had.

She was brittle though, so focussed on holding her own shit together that for once she had no time to take care of anyone else’s nightmares. Chloe kept calling her, over and over and Lara found that she couldn’t make herself pick up. She had nothing left. Not even for sweet, traumatised Chloe having another anxiety meltdown. She texted Esme instead, asking her to check in on Chloe. And then Esme started calling her. Lara didn’t answer her either. She just needed five goddamn minutes to herself and the world just wouldn’t let up.

Tilly was still furious with her, showing a truly advanced level of grudge holding for her age. Lara had kissed Ollie Gabrielli goodbye for the last time and stepped shakily back into her house to find her daughter glaring at her, small hands fisted at her sides.

“I hate you!” she’d screamed and ran into her room, slamming the door behind her. Lara had followed in confused misery, wishing like she’d wished a thousand times before, that single parenthood came with a pause button you could hit when your life was crumbling down around your ears.

“Honey.” She’d opened her daughter’s door to find her hugging her knees on the bed, tear-stained and angry. “What’s-”

“She wanted to stay!” Tilly had accused her. “You didn’t let her!”

“Oh, baby.” Lara’s voice cracked. “That wasn’t a conversation for you to-”

“Why not?” Tilly had demanded. “Me and Frankie had a plan. Sadie would marry Nico and you would marry Ollie and we would be sisters and Aria would be our cousin and we’d get to keep Rocco and be a family and you ruined it. ”

“Sweetheart.” Lara’s heart started to break for her child. If there was one desperately sore spot in her life as a single mother of an only child it was this. “Oh, love… ”

“I hate you,” Tilly cried again. “Leave me alone.”

Lara had dropped a kiss on her child’s soft silky hair, told her she loved her, that everything would be okay, and then she made herself leave. She’d sat outside her daughter’s door, her arms wrapped around her middle, trying to hold herself together. Something vital had sprung a leak somewhere inside her, spilling out feelings everywhere that she didn’t fully comprehend, and wanted to even less.

Two weeks later she still felt that way. Sadie was almost as mad at her as Tilly was, although somewhat more mature about it. Lara lay awake at night, trying not to think about the emptiness of her bed, of the arms that weren’t holding her, the kiss that wasn’t driving her insane. She’d gone a long time without any of it. She would go without it again and be just fine. The feeling was kind of like a drug withdrawal, she figured; she just had to wait it out until Ollie Gabrielli was out of her bloodstream.

Ollie was truly gone now, so Lara didn’t have much choice in the matter. For all Ollie had said about her family, in the end she’d gotten on her flight. Sadie had told her, even though Lara hadn’t asked. It only made it even clearer to Lara that she had, without a doubt, made the right call. Ollie had thought Lara was worth staying for and Lara had proven she was wrong before she’d gone and made some crazy decision like staying in fucking Ribbonwood forever. Thank god Ollie had seen the light. Back to Melbourne, back to her real life.

Lara wanted nothing more than for Ollie to be happy. She could see her so clearly in the big city, living a sophisticated, cultured existence, the brief fling with a woman from her little country home town already a cute footnote to what would be a long and fulfilling life.

As for Lara, she’d be alright eventually. She’d known from the very beginning that this pain was coming; even one night of Ollie Gabrielli in her bed had been a lot. The problem was that the pain she’d been anticipating had been the pain of a tough goodbye, Ollie getting on a plane and leaving her behind, contact maybe cut, maybe slowly drifting out, Lara left staring up at her bedroom ceiling and missing her, but knowing everything was as it should be.

Instead, the pain that had arrived in the end was an entirely different beast to contend with. The shock of Ollie actually prepared to want more, the sick feeling of being the one to put that devastated look on her face. The knowledge that Ollie was walking around out there thinking Lara had rejected her when the truth was so much more complicated than that. It wasn’t something she could put into words, not in a way that would make sense to someone like Ollie Gabrielli with her huge loving family, her big expansive life and her past romantic heartbreaks that were all cute little things like a girl cheated on me this one time.

Even Sadie hadn’t gotten it when she’d sat Lara down and demanded to know what the actual fuck Lara thought she was doing?

“I’m never going to marry anyone ever again,” Lara told her. “I’m never having another kid. I don’t want to be someone’s wife, or to have to answer to someone else. I don’t want to live in some little claustrophobic bubble, cooped up in a house together. I want to be myself . ”

Sadie had stared at her.

“Does Ollie want to get married?” she asked. “Did she say she wants kids?”

“Of course she does.” Lara rolled her eyes. “Look at her family.”

“Literally, did you ask her?”

“Are you hearing me though? I’m not ever going through that again, and I won’t put Tilly through it either.”

“Lars.” Sadie grabbed her forearm. Lara stared. They weren’t really the touchy-feely kind of friends, not unless Sadie thought things were really dire. “Can we keep in mind here that the last time you were in a relationship it was because you were coerced into marrying your abuser?”

“It wasn’t that black and white,” Lara said automatically.

“It really pretty much was though,” Sadie said matter of factly. “Did you ever consider that maybe your parameters to measure this shit by might be way fucking off? I mean think about it, how does Ollie make you feel?”

Lara swallowed hard. She wasn’t going to go there.

“Like she’s someone I would end up reliant on,” she said flatly. “If I let her. And I don’t want that. What if it fails?” She stared at Sadie. “I don’t want to model that for Tilly either. I want her to be able to be self-reliant, so that she’s never in the position I was in.”

“Self-reliant,” Sadie said softly. “Is that what you call it? Don’t you think there should be a little room in there, to not have to be so alone?”

“We’re all alone,” Lara told her with a frown, “when it comes down to it. Better to accept that than to find yourself relying on someone else and have your whole life fall to pieces. People let you down, Sadie, it’s just human nature.”

Sadie had stared at her for a long time.

“Fuck babe,” she said eventually. “That outlook is seriously bleak.”

Was it? Lara hadn’t been trying to be bleak, just brutally honest.

She didn’t think Ollie was out to trap her or would treat her badly; it was abundantly clear who Ollie was. Ollie was a good, kind, deeply beautiful person, who was far too inclined to overlook Lara’s pitfalls. A life with Lara Bennett - the town outcast - with a reputation, a salty mouth and a wagon full of baggage? In Ribbonwood? Was she insane?

Lara could see exactly how it would play out. Sexual attraction, even the over-the-top fiery kind they shared, had its limits. Eventually Ollie’s sex-hued glasses would come off and she’d see Lara for who she really was, outside of a pair of admittedly excellent tits. Lara might also be solidly influenced by Ollie’s attractiveness but she knew full well, that if she let herself dream for even a minute that Ollie was really hers, there’d be no coming back from it. To love Ollie and watch it become unrequited would wreck her. And Lara refused to be wrecked. Not after she’d already survived so much.

The store bell chimed distantly in Lara’s ears. She was so lost in her thoughts she didn’t even notice who it was who’d entered, until they were standing right there in front of her.

Ollie was wearing a jacket. It was the first time in almost three months that she’d needed anything warmer than a light shirt. For fuck’s sake Melbourne; it was December for crying out loud. Probably in a fortnight it would be forty degrees and the entire town would be suffering heat stroke, but right now, as she turned into Sydney Road, the wind sliced through her like a blade of ice.

Out of curiosity she pulled out her phone and checked the temperature. She snorted at herself. It was twenty degrees. Shit, she really had acclimatised to Queensland. She tried to blame the wind chill factor but that was a stretch .

This part of Sydney Road was ridiculously busy at just after five-thirty in the afternoon. The traffic was at a standstill and the footpath heaved with people heading home, to after-work drinks or early dinner. It felt overwhelming to her - the noise and busyness of it all - though she’d only been home a couple of days. Home? Well, that felt complicated to claim, on several levels.

She was on her way for a belated catch up with her friend Chelsea, finally having called her from the departure lounge, desperate for the distraction and the patient ear of someone who knew her well, yet was somewhat objective about everyone else involved in Ollie’s story. She’d given her the outline, but now Ollie was going to meet her for dinner, to wallow in the details that were keeping her up at night.

She was half a block from the bar when her phone vibrated in her back pocket. She frowned. It was Nico. They weren’t really the phone catch-up kind of siblings.

“Hey,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“Ol,” he said. “Something has happened.”

“What?” Every single one of Ollie’s senses prickled. She stood stock still in the middle of the footpath, people huffing and flowing around her. Nico took in a deep breath.

“They found a body, out the back of Chloe Perkins’ place. Reckon it’s her old boyfriend, Dale Winchester.”

“Shit,” said Ollie. She wasn’t really sure why Nico was telling her this. She’d only met Chloe a couple of times and Dale never.

“Ol,” he said again, his voice sounding strange. A sick feeling hit her, before he even said the words. “They reckon Lara did it. She’s been arrested.”