Insecure (Love Triumphs 1)

Buster would’ve been so excited for him. Cinta certainly was. He came home exhausted every night to paint and turps smells but decent food and soft music, and he talked it all through with her. This was much more her world than his now and she had insights that helped clarify what Summers-Denby wanted from them.

But tonight was their last night together. He flew out in the morning so he had no intention of staying late or taking

work home. Anderson was talking about cash burn rates and Dillon was taking notes. He was free to think about what he had to achieve in the next two weeks, think about the night ahead.

He no longer felt worried about being with Cinta, about reminding her of the man who’d threatened her, hit her. Time together had rebuilt his trust. He’d watched her so closely, looking for the things he’d missed that might’ve warned him to be more careful.

He’d known from the beginning she’d been hurt, but he’d been so wrapped in her strength he’d discounted the impact of that violent assault. But she had no secrets from him. She wasn’t hiding her fears or scared of him in any way. It was one bad moment and it was over and he’d relaxed and enjoyed being with her again without monitoring himself.

She’d loosened up too. It was as though she’d needed that explosion in the studio to finally clear her head of Wentworth, her fucked up stepfamily, and her concerns about getting her career restarted. She no longer fretted about not working and she poured her time into art school, the new friends she’d made there and her painting.

He’d met part of her family as well: Bryan, Kath and Brianna, a night of amusement at his expense about what Malcolm might make of him, especially when he told them the story of how he’d quit. It was only then they worked out he and Cinta had quit the same day. He’d not met Tom, but Cinta was in touch with him again, if cautiously.

They’d had the art school crowd for dinner. A loud night with Chinese food and lots of dope, which gave him a headache and made Cinta giggle like a little kid. He’d liked the giggle, it made her seem young and finally carefree. He liked the art school crowd, although he could do without Alfie.

Alfie was a good-looking dude. He had a little Johnny Depp about him. He was apparently talented but also articulate in a way Mace found both admirable and deserving of a good punch in the mouth. Alfie had a lot of opinions, and for the most part they were interesting. He was the uncrowned prince of the group, laying his arguments down only to those of their teacher Margaret, and Cinta, and that made Mace grind his teeth. Not because Alfie was a suck-up who knew when he was beaten, but because he looked at Cinta as though she was a prize to be won.

Later that night of the first art school party, when everyone had stumbled off, both of them lazy and languid, warmed by the food and company and the last of the summer on the night air, they’d made love on the balcony with the sunrise for a witness. They were so full of each other they were like ripe fruit, lush, tasty, moreish. They were stronger together now than they had been and familiarity hadn’t dulled the edge of experience. Cinta excited him, she enthralled him like nothing else. She gave him her truths and her passions with abandon and sealed herself to him with a ferocity that could make him shake at the same time as it made him feel safe.

So Alfie with his poetry and painting could wait in line. It was going to be a long wait.

The meeting broke up. Dillon made for Anderson; he had questions, things to learn. Mace retreated to his desk and spent the rest of the morning so focused it was later than he’d planned when he looked up. One leg had gone to sleep and was full of prickly pins and needles. He’d bypassed lunch by hours and had already eaten into his early mark. He spent the next thirty minutes checking he had what he needed for India and shut down.

“You can’t go.” Dillon in the doorway, probably his tenth coffee for the day in his hand.

“I’m going.”

“You can’t. We have to work on our projection timeline.”

“Again.”

“There’s a hole. Actually it’s not a hole, it’s an undersea cavern. We’re sunk if we don’t fix this.”

He groaned. “I fly out in the morning.”

“Which means we do this now. Call her. She’ll get it.”

She did. Telling him she’d wait up for him. It burned not to be able to eat with her, rest with her. It was after midnight before they’d dug their way out of the hole in the timeline. He was on a 6am flight. He had enough time to go home and curl up beside Cinta for a few hours before he had to leave for the airport.

There was a BLT on the table. It was wilted but he scarfed it down, given the last thing he’d eaten was an apple midmorning. The bedside lamp was on in the bedroom and a canvas stood on an easel in the doorway. She’d painted a suitcase, an alarm clock, a passport and a lipstick kiss with the words wake me.

She was curled on her side breathing easily, her dark hair, longer now, streaming over her pillow. She looked too peaceful to wake. He took a quick shower and managed not to disturb her. He set the alarm on his phone and slid in beside her.

It was heaven to lie down but he was wired from the long day, from the knowledge he was only hours from leaving and he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He really shouldn’t wake her. He played a strand of her hair through his fingers and watched the sky outside lighten. He thought about the impossible deadlines in their timetable and how the hole Dillon found could’ve easily become their grave.

She woke when his alarm sounded and climbed on top of him. She scratched her short nails over his chest. “You didn’t wake me. I painted you a picture specifically instructing you to.”

He shut her complaints up with a long slow kiss that got serious quickly, but he had to get up, finish packing, go. She made him coffee and toast while he got ready. He told her about the timeline problem. And she gave him her news.

“The gallery invited me to have a show.”

He jammed his shaving gear in the bag. He was travelling with carry-on only and it was a squeeze. “What does that mean?”

“An opportunity to fill the space with my work, to have an event and sell what I can.”

The zipper would not shift. He checked his watch. Cab would be here in ten. “That’s great, right?”

She pressed her hands on the top of the bag to help with the zipper. “It’s amazing.”