Page 84 of Just Watch Me
“What?” he asked. And when she didn’t answer, “Telling could make it easier. Want me to go first?”
“Yes.” Another sigh. He was sowarm.“Please. And I know men think they’re not allowed to be scared, but is anyone so tough that they’re actuallynotscared at a time like that?”
“If anybody is,” he said, “it’s not me. Going up that hill, trying to get everybody else out of there with us … I’m not likely to forget that anytime soon.”
“You were able to save the people around you, then.”
“Yes. No.” He was the one sighing now. “We were able to get everybody who was right there, because there were dozens of us. We didn’t feel like we had time even to run around the corner, though. When a few of us ran down the motorway to the CBD in the dark, later, we saw wrecked cars down the slope, as if they’d been washed down there. We saw the news, too, because the electric didn’t go out where I was. We knew what had happened.”
She paused a moment, then said, “What did the news say?” She wanted to know, and she didn’t.
“That people were washed away. That people were trapped in buildings, or crushed. What you’d expect. Bad enough to hear, but not knowing where you and the kids were … that was the worst. When I was really scared? Running to find you. The longer it took, the worse it got.”
“I was so glad.” The tears were right there, welling up on cue. “When you told me you were coming. That was …” She had to take a breath, and the lump in her throat was huge. “I can’t even describe that. And then there was the aftershock, and I didn’t know— I wasn’t— I couldn’t?—”
The tears were here, and she couldn’t stop them. She was glad for the darkness, because she was sobbing now as she hadn’t let herself before, because she’d had to focus on the kids. She’d thought,Later. Later, you can fall apart. Right now, you have to focus. You have to do this.But later, eating dinner,having a quick shower, in bed with Jade, she hadn’t felt able to cry. Not if the kids would see. Not if Jade would see. And now, there was no holding back the wave.
He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t pull away. He just held her through the storm, and when she was shuddering in its aftermath, he was still holding her. “One sec,” he said, as she was trying to wipe her face. He took his arm away, and she thought,Don’t leave me. Even to get a towel, or whatever you’re doing. Please, stay. Stay and hold me.
He didn’t leave. He pulled off his T-shirt and handed it to her. “Wipe your face on this.” Matter-of-fact. Sensible.
She did it, and that was better. “I’ve wrecked your shirt, though,” she said, still sniffling a bit. “You won’t have a spare, because you don’t have any of your things.”
“Nah. I’ll borrow one from Dad in the morning.” His arm was around her again, and she curled up under the throw and let herself be held. “I’m thinking there’s more than that, though. More than being alone on the street with the kids. Not that that’s not enough to be going on with, but I think there’s more. You went down and collected those people on the waterfront, brought them back up. Something like that doesn’t leave easily. Stays in your mind, eh.”
“Yes.” It was all she could say for a minute. “That’s what … that’s the thing I keep seeing when I close my eyes. Not what could have happened. Whatdidhappen.”
“Tell me.”
She did, or she tried to. The frantic urgency of shepherding the scattered, terrified crowd to the museum doors, shouting the one word again and again. “Tsunami! Tsunami!” Their faces blank, then filled with horror. The sight of them hurrying along the pavement, up the stairs, and the kids and old people who couldn’t hurry fast enough. And her coming along behind, knowing the tsunami was out there, dreading that icy grip. When she’d know she was dying and wouldn’t beable to do anything about it. The terror of that. The helplessness.
“The worst, though,” she said. “The worst is …”
“You can say,” he said. “It won’t leave until you let it out.”
“It’s the—” Another breath. “The ones I didn’t get. There was a family. A little girl in a pink jacket. She was about Georgia’s age. Olive had a jacket like that when she was little. There were other people, too. There must have been twenty, two dozen, something like that, but they were too far away. Just … just too far. If I’d yelled louder, though. If I’d run just a bit farther. I close my eyes, and I see that pink jacket. I see that family facing the wave, holding each other, maybe grabbing a post and trying to hold on, and being ripped away anyway. I see that mum trying desperately to save her baby. And all the others, too, all the people I couldn’t get. Even though I didn’t actually see it at all, because I was climbing the stairs, trying to hold up this old man, to help him go faster. I see that, and I see the wave coming, but mostly, I see all those people. All those people I didn’t save.”
Her chest and throat hurt like there were jagged stones in there. She wanted to cry again, but this was too big for tears.
Zane’s arm tightened around her, and he was smoothing her hair back with his other hand and kissing her forehead, his lips gentle. “I know,” he said. “I know. I was carrying an old man, myself. I wasn’t able to see the others, the ones we left behind, thank God. And you had to save yourself, too. Sounds like you barely managed it as it was. You were brave to go out there. Brave to stay out there and get them. Brave to come last, holding up the weakest one.”
“I had no choice,” she said. “Or it didn’t feel like it. I had to try.”
“Because that’s who you are,” he said. “That’s the kind of mana you have. I don’t know what you do about the rest of it. Let yourself grieve for the ones who died, I guess.”
“I know life isn’t fair,” she said. “You know it, too. But sometimes …”
“Sometimes,” he said, “it’s even less fair. Sometimes it’s terrible. But you coped. You did more than that. You helped. You did everything you could.”
He didn’t know what else to say, so he kissed her. On her forehead again, and when she turned into him, on her cheek, and then the other one. His hand on her face, her skin so soft, and he was kissing her mouth. The way he’d done before, and nothing like that, because the tenderness was an ache in his body.
Her hands on his face now, her lips moving under his, and he wasn’t thinking anymore. He was kissing her deeper, kissing her better, pulling her closer until she was splayed over him. He was falling back onto the couch, and she was going with him, on top of him. Her hand on his chest, and her mouth over his now, taking over.
Feverish. Ravenous. His hand under her PJ top, sliding up to touch a full breast, and the way she gasped into his mouth when he did it. Pulling that top up and over her head, trying to roll with her. Trying to get over her.
He fell straight onto the floor, and she fell right on top of him.
“Bugger,” he said. “OK?” Trying to feel for any injury.
