Chapter 25

Polly

A part from ferns, cricket, me and my sister … and probably my mum, there was nothing my dad loved more than Joni Mitchell. Her husky tones were the soundtrack of my childhood. I’d always quite liked her, too, and knew the words to all her songs. But as I sat in my parents’ car, listening to her warble on about not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone, I honestly wanted to punch her in the face.

For the days, I’d acted like a naughty, horny teen who foolishly believed tomorrow would never come. Sneaking out my bedroom window as soon as my parents went to bed. Meeting a hot boy on the beach. Talking. Laughing. Fucking our absolute brains out. We’d enjoyed a risky quickie in a restaurant bathroom while Evie, Nate, Teddy and Asher sat at a table just meters away. Hooked up beneath the timber stairs at Fisherman’s Lookout. Fell asleep in each other’s arms in the back of my car.

Each time had been declared the last time. Each time I’d come back.

But yesterday, courtesy of express shipping I would be paying off until I was ninety-five, I made the biggest mistake of all.

Donning Luca’s #13 jersey, a kinky smile, and nothing else, I met up with him for one final goodbye. The awe on his face when he saw me, the hunger and possessive glint in his eyes as he railed me into the sand on the water’s edge, cursing ‘mine, mine, mine,’ as he came inside me again and again sealed my fate.

Despite my best intentions, I, Polly Hart, the biggest, most heartless, shameless slut Byron had ever bred, had gone and caught feelings.

Luca D’Cruz was kind and sweet. Non-judgmental and protective. He saw me, not my past, or my reputation. Most importantly, the boy dished out orgasms like the pope did blessings. He held my heart in his giant, capable hands. Had me like no other. Was a man like no other. Never would I have imagined I could fall so hard and fast. But I had.

Did I share this revelation with the man himself? Did I tell him I thought of nothing but him? That when he touched me, a joy I had never experienced ignited within me. That his dimpled smile was the final thing I thought of when I fell asleep at night, and the first I woke?

No, I did not. Instead, I did what I always did. With my stomach in a twist and my heart in my throat, I’d acted like a cold bitch. Nonchalantly kissing his cheek, wishing him well, then running. Like a fucking coward, I left that sweet, beautiful man on the beach, alone, bordering on tears and calling out my name. I don’t think I had ever hated myself so much, and that was really saying something.

When I got home to my bed, I cried so loud and so hard I woke my mum, who, without knowing the depths of my betrayal, held me in her arms and rocked me to sleep in a way I yearned for her to do so many times, confessions fizzing and tingling the tip of my tongue the whole time. I wanted her advice, her guidance. I needed to purge. To admit it out loud, to fully feel it. I spent hours pondering my next move. Perhaps if she saw I was capable of such human-like emotions, that I could in-fact find a man, she’d let the Elias thing drop? Or would that revelation, and my lack of judgement have her dragging me down the aisle with renewed vigor.

Uncertainty over her reaction pressing against my chest like a weighted blanket felt worse, so in the end, I stayed quiet. And really, what was the point, anyway? At any moment, Luca was due to fly out of Byron, and out of my life. Forever.

On a spring morning far too bright and cheerful for my liking, she woke me early, hand-delivering eggs and bacon with a side-dish of interrogation. A few snide jibes over the amount of food she herself cooked and force fed me, a lecture about being nicer to Elias, and a final quip about my imminent weight gain later, she told me to pretty myself up and be downstairs in twenty minutes.

“A bit of shopping will do you good, Plop,” she insisted as she waddled me out the door. “We can get all your special ingredients, and then you can come home and cook your man a feast. Just think how impressed he will be.”

With Mum smiling at me like a freak over her shoulder, and Elias doing the same beside me, we drove to the damn farmer’s market to gather supplies. Declaring his continued good fortune, Dad parked his AWD in his favourite spot beneath Moreton Bay figs, its shadows casting further doom over my heart as Joni finally shut the hell up.

“We have markets just like this on Naxos,” Elias smiled as I followed him out of the back seat and into the first crowded aisle. Along with Joni, Naxos—the Greek island Elias heralded from—was another thing I could happily never hear about again. “Farmers from all over the island sell their produce by day, then stay and drink and eat the night away at the local restaurants. Hey, maybe I can take you there on our honeymoon?”

“Ohh, that sounds nice,” crooned Mum, who was becoming increasingly annoyed by my lack of Elias-based enthusiasm. “Doesn’t it Polly?”

“Yeah. Sounds great.” It didn’t sound great. It sounded like hell. As did everything else the three of them crapped on about as we wandered the never-ending rows of tents and stalls. A merry old time was had by all as they compared the size of Australian and Greek figs, grapes, and fucking pumpkins while I was holding the hand of a stranger I was set to spend the rest of my life with, and wishing he’d magically turn into the only man who could make me consider such a ridiculous notion.

For the four hundredth time that morning, tears began to well. Crying again in front of Mum would only cause further suspicion, so I excused myself to find a public bathroom and slipped away. I’d not made it more than a few meters away when a familiar voice turned blood to ice in my veins.

“Looking good, Polly Waffle. Looking good.” The hands belonging to that voice once clenched around my throat, pinned me down. I felt it, felt his nails dig into my flesh, his breath ghost my ear. One sleazy sentence brought me back to an unforgettable night, nearly causing me to collapse. The same instinct I’d ignored all those years ago, the one that told me to run as fast as I could, kicked in as the sickening rumble of his laugh twisted my stomach. I took two shaken steps, but his cold hand gripping my hips stopped me in my tracks.

Smile, Polly. Don’t let him see your fear. I swallowed the bile in my throat, plastered on the mask. “Luke. I didn’t see you. How are you doing?”

Predatory, shark-like eyes skated over me, up and down and back again, settling on my tits. “Better now I’ve seen your pretty face.”

Shrinking into myself, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Those aren’t my face, Luke.”

Again he chuckled, then pulled me closer to run his index finger down my arm. “I’m back in town for my brother’s wedding. We should go out for a drink. Catch up on old times.”

“That sounds great,” I said, leaning away as subtly as I could. “But I don’t think I’ll have time. I’m working at the pub while Mum recovers from surgery, and we have a close family friend from Greece staying with us. Maybe next time.” Giving me no choice in whether I followed or not, Luke scoffed and dragged me along beside him like a dog on a shirt leash.

“You should remember that I never take no for an answer, Polly. C’mon. It will be fun. Maybe we can even get your mate, Evie, to join us.”

I reared back, an odd need to protect Evie as much as myself hitting me with surprising force. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen, Luke.” I replied, my eyes set to the ground. “Haven’t you heard? Evie and I aren’t friends anymore. In fact, I’m pretty certain you could call us enemies.”

“Ha. You’re kidding me, aren’t you? Of course, I know about the naughty little games you played, Polly. Especially the ones where you were naked while propositioning Evie for a threesome with Nate. The whole town—–fuck, half of New South Wales—knows about that.”

It was then, as the shame of my past was weaponized, that I realized seventeen-year-old me was gone. I wasn’t the same girl. Thirty-two-year-old Polly had lived and lost and learned. She had rebuilt her life, had claws, had someone wonderful, a beacon of light to so many, that saw something in her that no one else, including herself, had seen before. Luca’s dimpled grin flashed before me and in the blink of the eye I switched from fight to flight.

“Again, I don’t think that’s going to happen, Luke. Most of the things you’ve heard about me from your creepy little friends aren’t true, and I don’t have the slightest inclination to waste my breath telling you which ones are. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like you to get your ape-like hands off me and go rot in fucking hell.” My adrenalin fueled bravado lasted only a beat before the dark side of Luke, the side I feared more than I hated, appeared.

“I forgot what an absolute bitch you are. Someone needs to bring you down a peg or two. Lucky for you, it’s me.”