They stopped and idled and Ben set out the food they had grabbed on a quick stop at the deli. In the distance, Melbourne glittered gold in the setting sun. Willow was coming home tomorrow and all was surely right in the world—even if it felt otherwise at times.
‘Scared about tomorrow?’ Ben asked.
‘Scared but ready,’ Celeste admitted.
‘You’re going to be a great mum,’ Ben said.
‘I’d better be...’ Celeste smiled. ‘She’ll be home in a matter of hours.’
He unpacked tarragon chicken in mayonnaise, which tasted as good as they first time they’d shared it, washed down with sparkling mineral water. For Celeste it was bliss to just pause, to escape before life changed yet again tomorrow.
‘You’ve got transport and everything sorted?’ Ben checked.
‘Dad and Mum are coming,’ Celeste informed him. ‘Come over in the afternoon if you like—I’ve got some friends coming round and we’re going to have a little barbeque...’
‘Shouldn’t you take it easy the first few days?’ Ben asked dubiously.
‘That’s the plan,’ Celeste said with a flash of her old cheek. ‘I’ll get them all in and out in one hit!’
They could have headed home then, except they didn’t. Ben was playing sailor while Celeste lay in the bottom of the little boat, her feet up on the edge, and listened to the dreamy lap, lap of the water. She couldn’t remember being this relaxed since Willow’s birth, since before Willow was born, since for ever, really...
When she opened her eyes to tell him so, she suddenly wasn’t relaxed any more.
Because he was watching her, just sitting quietly watching her. When Celeste’s eyes opened, he didn’t look away, he just stared, and she stared right back at those contrary green eyes that both reached for her and resisted her. They stared in silence, reliving their one and only kiss in their minds, and all it did was confuse her, because in that second she was sure that without Willow there would be love between them.
Without Willow.
It was an impossible place and one she never wanted to visit. She could see a flash in his eyes and it could have been the breeze or the sun glare, or it might have been tears, because there was regret etched on his features, and regret laced with anger in hers.
Because without Willow, they’d be mere colleagues now.
Without Willow she’d never have been living opposite him.
There could be no without Willow and there could be no them.
‘Rotten timing, huh?’ She wasn’t making a joke, and she wasn’t making a stab in the dark as to how he was feeling—because out on the water, when it was just the two of them, with no past, no future, just this moment in time, there was no question of either of them denying it.
‘It is,’ Ben said, and he didn’t have to elaborate—he’d stated his case from the very beginning.
‘So I’m not going mad and imagining things, then?’
‘You’re not going mad...’ He touched her hair, just holding one heavy curl in his fingers, and how he wanted to tell her, to explain, but how? Heath’s warning was ringing in his ears. This was her day off from worrying and he didn’t want to darken it with his grief, couldn’t burden this very new mum with his fears for her, for her child.
‘I just can’t do it.’ Ben settled for that.
‘I know.’
‘I said so from the beginning.’
‘You did.’
‘Can we still be friends?’ Ben asked, and her answer was the same as the one ringing inside his own head.
‘I don’t know.’
Maybe this was their last kiss but it was the sweetest she had ever tasted.
He bent her head and brushed her lips and if real men didn’t cry, that excluded Ben, because she felt the brush of damp eyelashes on her cheeks as his mouth met hers. It was the most fleeting of kisses but it was so mingled with regret and love that it would stay with her for ever.
She didn’t have to tell him to take her home afterwards, he just started up the engine, Ben driving, Celeste pulling on massive sunglasses and trying not to cry.
The whole journey home was neither pleasant nor wretched, yet contained no more kisses.
‘Do you want to come in?’ she offered when he pulled up at her gates. She knew exactly what she was offering, knew because the air was so thick with want, there could be no doubt in either of their minds.
‘Celeste...’ His knuckles were white where he gripped the steering-wheel. ‘Go inside.’
‘Just for tonight,’ she pleaded. She wanted a proper kiss goodbye, was greedy for more, and was trying to convince herself she could handle the morning after. Rejection was surely her forte—except she loathed it now.
‘’Night, Celeste,’ he replied.
CHAPTER TEN
HE PROBABLY SHOULD have popped over.
Set the tone.
Resumed being nothing but friends.
Only it was too late for that now.
Autumn was coming. Every night the wind stripped a few more petals from the sunflowers. Heading for home from work nearly a week later and sick of the constant reminders, Ben pulled out the gangly stalks and went to shove them on the compost. About a hundred seeds scattered in the garden while he did it and Ben gritted his teeth. So much for forgetting! If he didn’t get the seeds up he’d need a scythe next year just to get to the front door!
She was everywhere.
In his head, in his dreams, and as he walked into the house, he headed upstairs to change and his eyes moved straight to the beach, to where he’d first seen Celeste, instead of to the picture of Jen on his bedside table.
‘What do I do?’ He picked up the silver frame and stared into his wife’s clear eyes and wished for just two minutes of her time.
Two minutes of her logical, practical advice, which was a stupid thing to wish for—as if he should even be asking Jen about Celeste!
He wanted her to tell him, just a sign, one little sign, only he didn’t even know what he was asking for.
And then he looked at the whole picture, not just at Jen.
He ran a finger over the swell of her stomach to where their baby lay, touched her only through glass, touched what he’d never, not even once got to hold.
But there wasn’t time to wallow. He had visitors that evening, which proved difficult, and then he was called into hospital to deal with an emergency at around 10 p.m. He could hear the pounding music from Celeste’s neighbours as he drove past her unit and despite his best intentions, it was difficult to ignore. However, he determinedly drove on, hoping the party would wind down early, or that she’d taken Willow and gone to her parents’. Surely a wild party next door was the last thing a new mum needed only a few days after bring her babe home.
Still, it wasn’t his problem now.
‘Sorry!’ Belinda looked up from a packed Resus as Ben made his way over. ‘You’re about to get a page saying we don’t need you after all.’
‘Sure about that?’ Ben checked, because the place was steaming.
‘We were alerted for two multi-traumas,’ Belinda explained, ‘and on top of this amount of patients, I thought we should call in some extras, even though you’re not rostered on.’
‘Where are the trauma victims?’
‘One died en route and one’s not too seriously injured. I’m just about to ring the parents—who’d have teenagers, huh? Perhaps I should have waited to call you.’
‘Better not to wait and see.’ Ben really didn’t mind being called in, it was part of his job. ‘I’ll give you a hand now that I’m here.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Belinda contradicted as she looked at some X-rays on the computer. ‘Go and get some sleep—this is just a usual Friday night.’
‘I really don’t mind,’ he persisted.
‘Well, I do,’ Belinda said. ‘You’re covering for me tomorrow, remember.’
‘Ah, yes!’
‘And I’m rather hoping that you won’t be calling me in.’ She winked at him.
‘Going somewhere nice?’ he asked.
‘To a fabulous hotel in the City.’ Belinda smiled. ‘A million miles away from here.’
‘You and Paul still going strong, then?’
‘Absolutely. You know you really shouldn’t knock the internet.’
Ben just groaned—she never let up! ‘Okay, then, I’ll head home. Just buzz if you do need help, though.’
He would actually have preferred to be working—wished that Belinda had handed him a pile of patient cards and asked him to wade his way through them, because as he turned into his street, instead of slowing down he speeded up a touch and turned up the car radio. Really, whatever was going on at the flats wasn’t his problem. There were parties there every other night, and he couldn’t forever be checking that Celeste was okay...