SIX
Zeus
The banner for an oncoming call slides down over the top half of my screen. Fuck’s sake. I tap to answer, pissed off that the call interrupted the Insta-stalking I’m doing. I wasn’t allowed a phone in prison, even though I was minimum security, so exploring the rise of the Instagram model has been a pleasant visual treat to say the least.
“Hey, John.”
“Hope I didn’t interrupt your Friday night, mate.”
Nothing I’d share with him, anyway. “No. You’re all good.”
“I need a favour.”
“Sure thing.”
He sighs, frustrated. “I’ve been asked to stick around another hour. The guy who comes in after me is running late—some car trouble thing—and so they want me to fill the gap.”
“Yeah?” Don’t see what that has to do with me, but okay.
“I need you to pick up Belle for me.”
Fuck. Of course. “Sure. Send me the address.”
“Done.” His voice is distant, telling me he’s got me on speaker as the chime of an incoming message sounds in my ear. “Thanks, Z.”
“No sweat. I’m not doing much anyway.” Just looking at women with fuck-all clothes on. Totally ordinary Friday night.
“I told her I’d be there at midnight. It takes about fifteen to get out to the property.”
I pull the phone from my ear and check the time: eleven thirty. “Just her? Or am I taking her friends home, too?”
“Shit, yeah. Kate as well.”
“I’ll flick you a message when we get back, let you know she’s all tucked up safe and sound.”
John chuckles while I visualise his daughter in bed. So, so wrong. “Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks. Catch you when I get in.”
He ends the call while I drag a palm over my face and blow out a heavy breath. Who the fuck am I? Sitting in bed with my cock in a semihard state because of women my age on Instagram, thinking about a girl who’s closer to twenty years my junior. Jesus. Maybe it’s time I took a walk back to prison with my hands held out before me, ready for cuffs.
Fuck me. I’ve got to get my head screwed on straight.
Disgusted with what I was satisfied doing mere minutes ago, I toss my phone aside and reach for the dirty denim next to the bed. Pretty sure Belle is going to be shocked when I turn up to get her. But maybe then she’ll be relieved? Always did suck being picked up by your parents from a get-together with mates.
Especially when it was your dad dragging your sorry ass outside before he beat your nose bloody for lying to him. Good times.
I slip my phone in the back pocket, and then tug a clean T-shirt on. My eye catches the door to her bedroom as I step out into the hall to retrieve my boots from the front door. I shouldn’t, but the opportunity is there. So going to hell for this.
Her space smells like vanilla and some berry thing I can’t place. It smells like youth and innocence, only our girl is anything but innocent. At least, that’s the feeling I get. Her bed is made, although not neatly, and she has the toy elephant I remember her dragging around as a kid propped against the footboard. I step further in, casting my eye over her furniture. Books are stacked on the left side of her dresser, makeup piled in a messy heap on the right. But what catch my eye are the pictures she has jammed around the frame of the mirror. My heart jackhammers in my chest as I step closer, leaning in to take a better look—this is so wrong, a violation of her trust.
And yet, I. Want. More.
The top row is old photos taken when she was ten or eleven at most: pictures of her and John. There’s one I know contains her mother, Cerise, and yet Belle has carefully folded it to exclude her. Cold. I run my eye down the left side of the mirror, noting how she gets older in each picture. A birthday party, a day at the lake, and what steals the air from my lungs: her and me. I don’t remember the photo being taken, but I remember the day—John’s birthday. It was a month or so before I went inside. He’d been so down, so miserable, that I did what any mate would: I phoned around and got together a bunch of guys he hadn’t seen for a while and brought them around for a barbecue and drinks.
Where are they now? What kind of fair-weather friends are they?
Even worse, am I any doing any better by being here, considering it’s his daughter that my gaze fixes to? Belle stands behind me in the shot, her arms looped around my shoulders as she rests her chin on my left. Time was, I would have looked at this picture and seen the whole shot, the day for what it was: friends and family in the sun, sharing stories, making memories. Except time has passed, Belle has grown up, and the way she looks at me now has me eyeing the picture with a fresh perspective.
Her arse is high in the air, her legs straight where she stands behind my seat. The hold is innocent enough, but she rests a hand on my chest, palm flat. Her eyes aren’t on the other people in the circle, she doesn’t engage in the conversation or watch the guy who clearly speaks—she stares at the ground as a smile pulls at her lush lips. She holds me possessively as though nobody around us in that moment matters.
I swallow hard and pluck the picture from the mirror; my eyes glued to it as the revelation smacks me like a steel bat. Did she always look at me like that? Was I blind to something that was right under my nose all those years ago?
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My phone vibrates in my pocket to remind me I have an unopened message, jolting me from my thoughts. Shit. I have to get on the road to pick her up.
How the fuck am I supposed to sit in the goddamn car with her after this? Knowing she saw me as something more—whatever that is—all the way back then… it changes everything. If I didn’t see how she acted around me years ago, then what the fuck aren’t I seeing now?
Only one way to find out, and that’s by taking the bull by the horns. Fifteen minutes in the car together at least, and however many it takes us to get back home from Kate’s, alone.
What better time to ask the hard questions than when she can’t up and leave?