Colour Series Box Set (100 page)

“Let’s go.” He opens the passenger door for me, all gentleman like. I know you really aren’t that guy. “This is Jameson, he farts and barks,” he says slipping into the driver’s side and petting the dog that has its head stuck between us. I laugh and pet the dog that just looks at me with weary eyes.

“Hi, Jameson.” I watch my car and essentially my life in the rear view mirror. He’s giving me an out, but for the first time, I fear what this out will bring. My self-preservation and own brain scream that this is a horribly bad idea. The reason I choose to follow, the thrill. I start to think about it and panic, I look at the locked door and the dog and the fear starts to claw from my belly up my throat. I feel the sweat on my palms and the cold feverish feeling spreading over my body. I try to open the window and it won’t go at first. I see him unlock it and I open it all the way down letting the wind take my breath from me. Jameson dives on top of me from the back seat giving me a fright. He just wants to stick his head out like me. I let him sit on me and we breathe together, he is heavier than I imagined a dog to be.

CLARENS IS BEAUTIFUL,
like take your breath away beautiful, and old and quaint and really small. We’re staying on his patient’s property a small way outside of town, two small houses and nothing but acres and acres of open nothingness in front of us and a mountain looms behind us. It’s cold here and the winter has turned everything to shades of yellow and brown. The news predicted snow in the surrounding mountains so I know it’s only going to get worse. In my silly head, I got into his car and we were driving off into the sunset to be a happy couple somewhere but in truth it has been very different. He never said much on the thirteen hour drive to get here, only where we were staying and that he would be here six months to a year. Jameson was better company then Mathew. As we drove, the dog sat on me and comforted my inner demons trying to escape. When we arrived, Mathew went on with his new patient and left me alone in this little house isolated from the outside world and didn’t so much as open the car door for me. The cold indifference bothered me but I never said a word, he made no promises only asked if I wanted to go with him. I’m an idiot.

Jameson and I walk every morning along the edge of where the mountain touches the small lake and in the shadows and freezing cold air, I begin to examine myself on the inside. Self-reflection is something I’ve never really done. Sitting on a rock looking at the open space, I remember another space one that was so small.

“Your ransom will be very high.” Eiran’s voice taunted me as he sat in front of the chair I’d been taped to. “I can pay you the ransom money now if you let me go.” I spit answers back at him, because I know they want money and I doubt Callum will notice I’m gone never mind pay it. And my father is out of the country killing someone. I can take care of myself though. I have been taught that from the time I was born. “We will see you are a pretty girl aren’t you.” He leant down and kissed me, not like the cold peck on the cheek from Callum every morning. There was a fire in his kiss and it felt so warm and so good. His lips were on mine and I felt his tongue inside my mouth and I didn’t want him to stop. “Hmm.” He looked at me with eyes that told me how to win this fight and get out of here alive but I would have to give him a part of me.

Jameson barking like a mad fool draws me back and the morning is becoming brighter around me. I see the mist begining to clear, the dog doesn’t like the wildlife and he is having a standoff with a duck of sorts. “Come, Jameson.” I call him as I jump off the rock and start the walk back to the small stone house. I have been here two weeks, I left my phone in my car so I have no idea what’s happening in the world I’ve run from and as lonely as this one is, it is still not the desolate hate and I had been living in for so long. When I get back, it’s one of the rare mornings where Mathew or Not Mathew as I call him, is now home, something in me snaps when I see him in the small kitchen with coffee in his hand and walk straight up to him. I came with him for a reason and to be ignored and walk the dog was not that reason. I step into his personal space and take his mug in my hand, I put it on the counter behind him, and there’s a smile on his face. His dark eyes are shining and he licks that lip. He shaved off his beard and his clean smooth face makes him look younger, less intimidating. He just stands there, so I get closer again, my body is against his and I kiss him, I need to feel something and he made me feel before. I don’t know how else to get the feeling I need so desperately to save myself from imploding. Mathew kisses me back, his hands pulling me closer still, our tongues touching and this time it is something more than before. His mouth on mine makes me want to cry, scream and kill him, but worse it makes me want more, more of him than just a kiss.

He pulls me away by the hair and I struggle for air from the sharp pain. “I was waiting for that, what took so long?” He’s smiling like he’s relieved and yet there is a deep hunger in his eyes. I feel like I have found the thing that has always been missing from my life. For the first time since the day Callum returned to our lives I feel everything, sadness, fear, pain, and even if it is only from the dog I feel love. I feel wanted for me and not for the purpose I serve. “Why were you waiting?” I ask leaning against his chest.

Time does not heal everything

but acceptance will heal everything.

I HAVE THIS UNSTOPPABLE
need to save people, even when that means helping them die or saving them from themselves. Avery needs to be saved from herself, had I left and never seen her again it wouldn’t have bothered me as much, but I saw when they buried Callum. Something in me wouldn’t let me leave.When I saw her standing there, not shedding even a single tear, I knew what I’d already suspected that night was true. That girl was going to kill herself if no one saved her. The crowd of soulless, merciless monsters around her certainly were not going to. I didn’t interfere. Callum’s threat a few days before he passed was stuck in my head, I left just like I had planned to, well around a week later than planned. Jameson and I climbed into my car and drove off towards the Eastern Free State where my next patient was waiting on me, she is an old lady that lives on a large piece of land out there, no children, no family just her. Those are the saddest ones, the ones where literally no one cares if they live or die, the cancer usually takes them faster than those who have family to fight for. At least the dog will like it where we are going plenty of space to run around and animals to chase, the spaniel belonged to a patient and when the old pigeon hunting man passed on, I somehow got stuck with the dog. I don’t hunt so Jameson is now a bored lazy dog that gets into trouble often. At Beaufort West, I need to stop so both him and I can both take a piss and refuel.

While I walk him on the small ‘pet’ lawn at the 1-stop service station, I see a familiar little red sports car buzz past us and scream to a halt in the parking area. I can’t stop my heart from skipping as Avery slips out of the car, she looks lost. Her long hair isn’t sleek and groomed. It’s loose and matted, her mascara is smudged and in place of patent heels, she has on simple flats. She looks so beautifully broken, she looks like I was meant to save her. I put Jameson back in the car, he isn’t allowed in the building because he is most certainly not a guide dog, he’s a menace. “Stay boy,” I say to the head sticking out of the open window searching for something to bark incessantly at and I go inside. My eyes scan the place for her, but I can’t see her and nature is calling in the worst way so I go to the men’s room as quickly as I can. Not a fan of public displays of penises, I slip into a stall and do my thing. Hoping she hasn’t left already, although she looked tired and in need of coffee. Exiting the stall, I get the view of her behind retreating from the men’s room, sneaky little minx. I get the feeling that no one has ever bothered to set rules for her and having no boundaries has made her weak. We all have to have a set of rules we live by but that girl is on the path to self-destruct because she has never had any. I walk a little faster to catch up to her, I’m drawn to her because she needs to be saved. I can save her, or at least I can try. Flashbacks of her pinned to my bed as I fucked her into submission, make me walk even faster. She’s running away and I’m going to make her run to me.

She was so easily swayed, so unbelievably stupid and naive for someone so versed in being a criminal. She just left it all and came with me. I know that in her fractured mind—where reality was so warped it didn’t exist—she was coming with me for the love story, the happy ever after that never ever comes. As much as I want to be with her again, it is not how this is going to work, she needs to find herself in there. I see her watching me each day, waiting for me to touch her, kiss her, come to her, but I don’t. I go to work and I come home, I sleep in the other room and I let her be. She walks a lot, Jameson the betrayer follows her everywhere, sleeps next to her bed at night and sits with her on the couch where she loses herself in books. I don’t want her to lose herself. I need her to find herself, she will come to me when she is ready to let go of the control. My new patient is a crabby old bitch. I’m almost in a hurry for her to be done with life because her bitter negativity is sucking my soul dry. Today she was particularly bitchy so I drugged her and came back to our little stone house on the hillside, it’s like a page from a picture book here. The winter colours and the golden sunlight that sets them alight as I walk back up the hill, the small house is surrounded by a wall of trees keeping it hidden. When I get inside, Avery is still out walking Jameson, so I make a cup of coffee and stand in the little kitchen contemplating her and how she’s changing. She’s becoming the young twenty-something woman she should be, but beneath it all she is still a killer. Her soul bleeds because she wants this but cannot let go of that, and I have no doubt that she will still need the murderer but she desperately needs to find the person too.

When they burst through the door she is something to behold, beautiful windswept and alive. I know she’s starting to feel things and that means she’s going to want to feel them with me. This is why I waited. This kiss. This touch, this wall that she is climbing over to get to me. Now we can set the rules and tame the uncontrollable girl that lives inside her. Starting now she has rules, my rules.

“I waited for you to be ready to come to me, you were not ready for what I have to give you. I need to be the one in charge, Avery and you need to let me be.” Her eyes mist over and she cries against my chest. I want so desperately for her to be the one I save out here. “You don’t know how to follow rules or take instructions, you make your own and that is an awful responsibility to have on your shoulders, you have to let some of it go.”

If I’m not in control of the people in my life I cannot keep them safe, I cannot save them.
Just like the one I wished I had saved more than any other.
We all have secrets and secretly, I want her to stop the insanity, give up, follow the rules and live. I feel more than I should for this deadly woman, and I have to keep that secret or it will get me killed.