‘She was right, you know.’
I turn at the sound of Javier’s voice. He’s leaning against the frame of the door that leads back out to the waiting room. He’s looking at me and his eyes see far too much. I refocus on the little dog in the cage, making sure there’s enough fluid in his IV. ‘Who?’
‘Callie. Everything she said about you selling yourself short.’
I’m trying not to think about what Callie said. Her accusation that I’m taking the easy path stung. ‘Listening in on my conversations now, are you?’
‘Hard to miss when you’re using my surgery to pick up girls.’
My head snaps up. ‘I wasn’t.’
He stares me down for a long moment. Then the corner of his mouth curves.
Damn it. Normally I don’t fall for his teasing, but Callie has my mind all over the place.
I straighten and move to the sink to wash my hands. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
He waits for me to finish up and checks the surgery is secure. We cut across the gravel lot behind the surgery and through the side gate into his yard but he stops at the three steps leading up to the back porch. ‘You have a talent,’ he says softly.
‘For getting myself in trouble.’
His hand is heavy on my shoulder; it forces me to look at him. ‘Stop the smart-arse routine for five seconds and listen. You get good marks without time to study. You’re great with the animals. You care, but you’re not some bleeding heart.’
I squirm and try to look away. He doesn’t let me.
‘I don’t have any interest in flattering your ego. Great is great. You shouldn’t waste that. Tell me, how did it feel to be in charge in an emergency?’
There’s movement in the kitchen. Scarlett’s figure flits past the window, but she’s too far away to hear us. I kick at the neatly trimmed grass.
Good. It felt really good. The knowledge that I was able to help Callie’s dog before Javier arrived, that everything I’d seen my boss do over the last few years had sunk in, that I was useful and needed for my skills, was a rush completely different to anything I’ve ever felt before.
Sure, Ma and Scarlett need me. But it’s to help pay the rent. Or to kill a spider or change a light bulb. Most of the time, I could be anyone.
But when I helped Lion …
I shrug. ‘I was too busy to think about it.’
‘Bullshit.’ As usual Javier sees straight through me.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway. Vet students don’t earn enough money to look after a family.’
‘You’re still a kid. What about your dreams?’
My laugh is hollow. ‘I gave up on fairytales a long time ago.’
Javier lowers himself to the top step and looks at me expectantly until I sit down beside him. ‘You don’t have to sacrifice everything for them. You don’t have to do this alone.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. Alone is the only way.’
‘Really?’ He quirks a brow. ‘That’s why you’re pining after a girl from the other side of the creek?’
‘I’m not pining,’ I mutter.
He ignores my lie, nudging me with his elbow. ‘If you wanted to be a vet—or anything else for that matter—I’d be willing to help you work out a way.’
For a second, there on Javier’s perfectly polished back steps, overlooking his neat, well-kept garden, I let myself imagine.
Studying at uni, doing something just for me. Being free of the weight of Scarlett and Ma. Maybe there’s a course at wherever Callie is going to study medicine. I picture us meeting between classes, her seeing me as an equal. Having the right to touch her and hold her and be with her.
In my mind, I see us graduating. Ma’s sitting in the front row, her eyes shining with pride. I’m ten feet freaking tall as I stride across the stage. It’s brilliant.
It’s impossible.
The ache of what is never going to be slices between my ribs to the softness inside. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘Why? I want to help you.’
He means it, for now, but how do I know he’ll still want to help next month, next year? If he pulled the rug out, we’d all be screwed. As nice as this place is, it isn’t ours and I can’t let myself pretend we’re home—no matter how much I might want to. ‘I can’t owe someone that kind of debt.’
‘You wouldn’t owe me anything.’
It’s too tempting. Too painfully fantasyland for me to stand here talking about it. And why is he being so nice anyway? I remember Scarlett’s comment about Javier using us to atone for something from his past.
I try to keep my tone light. ‘You say that now, but you’d work out soon enough that helping us isn’t going to make up for whatever is on your conscience.’
He flinches. ‘Who says I’ve got anything on my conscience?’
‘You’re asking me to trust you with my family but you can’t even be honest with me.’
‘I’ve never lied.’
‘Remember where we met? I know why I was there, but you’ve been pretty quiet on the subject.’ I’m speaking as I think, all the nagging questions of the last few years. ‘No-one goes to anger counselling if they don’t have to. You did something terrible and now you don’t have your family. It doesn’t take a genius to work it out.’
The skin on Javier’s cheeks seems to tighten as the colour drains away. This man has been my only true friend, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
‘What happened to them? It must have been pretty bad.’
He shrinks before my eyes, drawing in on himself, but he still doesn’t speak. He doesn’t tell me to shut up.
So I don’t. ‘You can’t use my family to make up for your mistakes. You’ll work that out sometime and then what happens? Maybe it feels good right now to treat us as your personal charity, but one day we’ll be a burden and then I’ll be worse off than I am now, all because I chased some stupid dream.’ I’m standing by the time I finish, arms crossed, mad that he’s even suggested something so brilliantly impossible.
But Javier hasn’t moved. He takes blow after blow and doesn’t hit back.
My anger fades with each breath. And the guilt returns in its place, heavier than before.
As the sun sinks in the sky and the light turns pink, part of me wants him to explode. He’d pound me, but any pain from a fight would be better than the agony currently ripping through me as I realise what I’ve done and who I’ve done it to.
Javier is the only one I can count on.
At least, he was, before he dared show me hope.
The last of the fire leaves my gut and I’m weak and sorry, so, so sorry.
He’s silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ I try.
Javier’s like stone.
‘Say something,’ I beg.
He doesn’t. I pace the grass, needing to move. Regret makes my fists curl, but the only person I want to strike is myself.
Each time I pass the gate, I think of running. From Javier and my latest mistake. But his very stillness keeps me here. I’m afraid I’ve broken him.
I’m on the third pass when Javier exhales at last. ‘I lost it all because I lost my temper.’ His voice is so soft I should have to strain to hear it, but somehow it carries. ‘Again. It wasn’t the first time.’ His mouth twists into a crooked smile, but I’ve never seen anything sadder. ‘The pressure of finishing my degree and trying to keep my wife and child fed were fuel added to a problem I’d ignored since childhood. I was angry. All the time.’
I open my mouth to say I understand, but he holds his hand up, cutting me off.
He still doesn’t look my way. Instead, his gaze is fixed on the far white wall of the surgery. Staring into the past. ‘It was late on a Wednesday night. I’d had a few beers to relax after finishing work as a cleaner. I still had a paper to write and a test to study for. My body ached, my brain was fried. I’d had enough of it all. My little girl was already in her cot when I got home and I was so stressed and tired from my shitty day I hadn’t even got around to checking on her. I collapsed on the couch and opened another beer while shovelling a bowl of cold stew into my gob.’ His eyes close, he gulps a breath. ‘My wife showed me a letter. Debt collectors had come by that day and she didn’t know what to do, so she gave them the last of our money. Money that was supposed to pay our rent. The pressure of it all felt inescapable, and I screamed at her. Took out all my frustration on the woman I loved with all my heart, and I couldn’t stop … I couldn’t stop …’
He trails off.
I want to know the rest, but he’s given me so much over the last few years. I don’t know why I’ve demanded this of him too. ‘You don’t have to—’
‘No.’ His eyes open and I can hardly bear to hold his gaze, there’s so much pain there. ‘You’re right. You deserve to know this if I’m asking you to trust your family to my care.’
I drop to my haunches in front of him ‘It’s okay. I don’t need to know.’
His eyes are shining with tears, pink in the setting sun. ‘But I need to tell you.’
Seeing tears in Javier’s eyes just about brings them to mine. He’s the strongest person I know, but now that he’s showing me his weakness, I only admire him more. He was there for me when I spilled my past and I want to be here for him now. I can’t lift him up from the floor, but I sense I won’t have to.
And I can listen. ‘Go on.’
‘She took it all. The abuse. The blame. The stupid rant I didn’t even really mean. Tears were streaming down her face but she didn’t bow her head. Not once. God, I loved that woman.’
He’s crying now. Silent tears that he doesn’t wipe away. ‘She and my baby, together they were my world. They were the reason I was working so damn hard. I wanted to give them the best and instead …’ His voice chokes up. ‘When I ran out of breath my beautiful wife didn’t yell back. She said I was tired and she loved me and I should rest. Then she headed upstairs to where our baby slept. But the anger wouldn’t quit.’ His hands grip the edge of the wooden porch like it’s a lifeline. ‘I drank more. And more. Then I smashed the bottles because the sound matched my mood. At some point, I must have passed out.’
He pauses, and I’m hoping that’s the end.
But I’m terrified it’s not.
Listening to Javier hurts like it’s my own pain. I see too easily how he must have felt. I understand too well the anger that drove him. Stupidly, I want a happy ending to this story, although I know there’s no such thing.
‘The next thing I knew, a fireman was trying to wake me on the road outside my burning home. He’d carried me out, unconscious. He asked me whether there was anyone else inside.’ Javier’s head is in his hands. ‘I couldn’t help them. I was still so drunk my stupid legs wouldn’t work so I crawled along the garden and up the front steps but I was too late.’
For the first time since I’ve known him, I’m the one to offer Javier a shoulder. And he takes it briefly, resting his head against me before straightening.
He sucks in a lungful of air and is back in control. ‘They said it was an accident, an electrical fault or something, but I know better. I killed them as sure as if I’d lit a match. So, yeah. If I can save you from making the same mistakes, I will. If I can help … your family, I will. I’m under no illusion that it will bring back my wife or my child, but it’s something.’
‘It is.’ It makes a strange kind of sense. I feel like the dumbest of dumb kids for having questioned his motives. ‘But why us? Why me?’
‘Because you’re like me.’ The side of his mouth lifts. ‘Not as good-looking, obviously, but you’re decent and angry and good with animals. I want to help you. The offer is there if you want it.’
It’s the answer I kind of expected but hearing it loosens the permanent clamp of worry around my chest for the first time I can remember. Do I have a chance? Possibility opens up in front of me. ‘If I agreed to your offer, what would happen?’
‘You still need to get the right marks and we’d look into academic scholarships, but you’d have a loan from me to help. There’d be someone back here you can count on to watch out for your sister.’ He hesitates. ‘And your mum, while you’re away at school.’
The imminent parole hearing is a cloud over my family. ‘Even if Dad comes around?’
‘It won’t be a problem. I’ll take care of them.’
The tenderness in his tone when he mentions Ma reminds me of Scarlett’s theory. I fold my arms. ‘Are you planning to make a move on my mum?’
He considers the question. As far as I know, Javier has never lied to me. If he starts now, all bets are off.
The memories of his wife are raw in the lines of grief near his eyes. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. If I do, I’ll talk to you about it first.’
‘Fair enough.’
Javier holds out his hand. ‘Do we have a deal?’
I lift mine to shake, then pause before dropping it back to my side. I can’t forget the little dog asleep in the cage back at the surgery. If Callie’s right and Jonny did this as a warning not to tell, it will change everything.
It was hard enough to believe she’d rat out her brother for me. I don’t know if she’ll risk another ‘warning’ like that.
The dream of uni and a future flickers in my chest. I want it. I want it so bad. Javier looks at me quizzically, but I can’t explain.
I shove my hands in my pockets. ‘Ask me tomorrow.’