Just For You (Escape to New Zealand), page 4
“Tell you what,” he decided. “I’ll do a bit of fishing, see if I can catch something for our tea. We’ll go back to the Domain and have a barbecue. No pressure. Just dinner and a chat.”
She smiled, and he could see the teasing light back in her eyes, her spirits rallying. “What if you don’t catch anything? Bit of a knock to the pride, eh.”
He laughed back at her. “Then I go to the shop, take the paper off, and tell you I caught it. No worries. You’ll get fish.”
“I’ll bring a salad,” she decided.
“Perfect. Walking OK, or do you want to drive?”
“Walking’s good.”
“I’ll collect you around seven, then, how’s that?”
She smiled again. “It’s a date.”
He did catch a snapper, to his relief. Whatever he’d said, it had mattered. He walked with her, ten short minutes to the Domain, their earlier journey in reverse, everything easier between them now, lighter. Tai was back to normal, she’d told him, the adults suffering far more repercussions than the boy had from his close call.
“What did you do this afternoon?” he asked her when he’d set the bags down on a picnic table near a barbecue.
“Had a rest,” she admitted. “Felt good.”
“Day off today, then?” he asked, pulling the bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc out of the bag of supplies he’d picked up at Four Square, twisting off the lid and pouring wine into the plastic glasses.
“Not the poshest,” he said, handing one to her, “but the wine should be all right.”
“Cheers.” She touched her glass to his, and he remembered their first drink of champagne together, and could tell from the arrested look in her eyes that she did, too.
“Yeh,” she said, then elaborated at his confused look. “Day off, I mean. I’m just filling in at a couple places right now, making a bit extra during the school holidays.”
“During the holidays,” he said slowly. “Are you a student, then?” He had no idea, he realized, what she did for work. He’d assumed it was the waitress thing.
“No, a teacher. A kindy teacher.” She caught his startled look and smiled. “Surprised you, didn’t I? Not how kindy teachers are meant to behave, is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, taking another sip of wine and grinning at her. “I’d say you’re exactly the kind of kindy teacher I like best. You do that here in Russell, or someplace else?”
“Here,” she said. “I teach here. I went away to Uni, but I came back, because Northland is home.”
“What did you mean,” she asked him when they were sitting backwards on the picnic bench next to each other, legs outstretched, dinner eaten, finishing off the bottle, “when you said it was different now? Different from a year ago? Because you are a bit different, aren’t you?”
He looked up at the sky, beginning to darken into dusk now, and thought about it. “Reckon I am,” he said. “Although at the time I said that, I’m not sure I knew what I meant.”
“Because at the time you said it, which was all of yesterday, you were trying it on.”
“Well, yeh.” He flashed a smile her way. “Still am, come to that. If we’re being honest here, and I think that’s the point, eh.”
“Yeh,” she said. “That’s the point.”
“But last year,” he went on, wanting to explain it to her, “it was all new. It was all…overwhelming. Being selected, calling my family to tell them. Training with the All Blacks, thinking I’d be sitting in the reserves, just getting a taste of it. And then having to go on after all, having to start, when JT pulled his hamstring at the Captain’s Run. All of a sudden, there I was, in the spotlight, against France of all people, directing the boys round the park.”
“But you did so well,” she said. “Everyone said you did so well.”
“I was nervy, though,” he admitted. “That whole end-of-year tour was a blur. Everything was so new, and so exciting. The pressure, not wanting to make a hash of it. I was good once I got on the paddock, but before, and afterwards…” He exhaled. “It was a bit hard.”
“So you consoled yourself.”
“Well, yeh, I did. Because that was new, too,” he tried to explain. “I mean, when you play footy, the girls are interested anyway, but I guess you know that.”
“I saw that,” she said. “At the wedding.”
“Because I was an All Black, then. And it felt good. It felt good for a long time, feeling like I could have whatever I wanted. Whoever I wanted.” He stopped. “Sorry. Guess that was a bit too honest.”
“No,” she said. “Hard to hear, but still good. Honest is good, and I knew that anyway, so having you say it lets me know you’re telling the truth, that’s all.”
He nodded, so grateful that he hadn’t stuffed up utterly, and kept on. “This year, though, it started being a bit different. I started getting the feeling, is it me they want? Or is it me, the footy player? Or is it even worse, just shagging an All Black, and any one would do? And I started realizing that every girl wasn’t the same. And I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he managed to say, because he knew he had to say it, “but I got caught up in it all again. I meant to, I meant to ring you straight away, but it was exciting, and we were training, and then traveling, and I…I guess I wasn’t ready to admit that it might have meant something after all, until I saw you again.”
“So you’ve changed, that what you’re telling me?” she asked, and he could see the little smile hovering around the corners of her mouth.
“Maybe. Not changed so much yet, maybe,” he said, throwing his hat fully into the ring, because it wasn’t going to work with her, he could tell, unless he really did tell her the truth. “But I think I’m ready to. I think I want to.”
“But can you?” she asked. “Can you really?”
“I can do most things I’ve tried,” he said, because that was true too. “When I want to. And I want to, with you. I want to do this. I know we didn’t start right, not that I’m sorry. I could tell you I was, but it’d be a lie, because I’m not a bit sorry. I’d only be sorry if we didn’t get to do it again. But I know we did it in the wrong order. Had the sex first, and now we need to go back and get the romance.”
“That what you want, then?” she asked, and the smile was there, but she was serious, too, he could tell. “The romance?”
“Well, I want the sex, too,” he admitted, and he was laughing back at her. “I want both. Can I get both? That an option?”
“Not tonight, it’s not,” she said. “Not with you going back to Auckland tomorrow. But you could kiss me, don’t you think?”
So he did. He scooted a bit closer to her on the wooden bench, smiled into her eyes in the soft twilight, put a gentle hand on the side of her face, felt her leaning into his palm as if she needed his touch as much as he needed hers.
He bent his head and touched his lips to hers, and the electricity was back, every nerve ending tingling as he continued to kiss her, long and slow and so sweet. His hand stroking over her cheek, his other arm going around her waist, because that was his spot, that deep indentation. That was where he was meant to hold Reka.
Her bandaged hands came up to his shoulders, and she hung on and kissed him back, faint sounds coming from the mouth he held beneath his own, sounds of desire and longing and needing. To go further, to have it all, to take everything he wanted to give her. He knew what she was feeling, because he was feeling it, too. And when he dragged his lips from her mouth and began to kiss her neck, the sounds weren’t quite so muffled, and she was squirming a little on the bench, and he wanted her so much, it was hurting now.
In the end, he was the one who pulled back. He gave her one last soft kiss on the mouth, rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes, and sighed.
“Need to stop,” he said. “If we’re only doing the romance tonight, we need to stop.”
She laughed a little, a breathy, unsteady sound that wasn’t Reka at all. “Yeh. Romance, not sex. Because you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“But I’m coming back,” he told her, not letting go of her yet, because he couldn’t.
“Are you?” she asked, and she wasn’t laughing now.
“I am. Just for you.”
He walked her home in the slowly deepening dusk of a Northland summer, held her hand—carefully, gently, because she could tell he knew it still hurt, and his care made her melt a little bit more inside. Her body was at once charged, electric with the tingling energy of being kissed and touched by Hemi, and deliciously fatigued. She wasn’t satisfied, she wasn’t even close. She was right up in the air, trembling with it. But she felt good.
“Home,” he said when they got there, and she could hear his reluctance to be there. He pulled her into the shadows at the side of the house, and it was like that first time, but so unlike it, too. He plunged both hands in her hair, cupping her head, and lifted her face to his, then bent to kiss her again.
He started out gentle, but when she had her hands on his shoulders, was pressed up against him, it changed fast. His mouth was moving over hers, his hands grasping her head with the same urgency that was sending her hands of their own accord down his arms to stroke the hard swell of bicep, the secret, velvety softness of the skin of his inner arms, and she could feel how much he liked having her touch him, having her want him.
“Aw, Reka,” he sighed, lifting his mouth from hers at last and stepping back a reluctant pace. “I want to take you to bed so badly. And you want it too, don’t you?”
“Yeh,” she said unsteadily. “I do. You know I do. But not tonight. Later. If you come back.”
“When I come back.”
He dropped his hands, then, and she gathered the final tiny shreds of self-control left to her and walked away from him, feeling his eyes on her as surely as his hands and mouth had been.
But if there were ever going to be more than sex between them, they had to see what that was, and they had to let it grow. She knew it. So she walked away.
Hemi watched her go inside, and ached for her. He thought about going back to his room, or going for a beer, and rejected both ideas.
Instead, he walked. It was nearly fully dark now, and he soon left the streetlights behind as he turned up the road, climbing the hill that rose above Tapeka Point.
It didn’t take long to reach the top, and luckily, the moon was nearly full tonight, lighting his way. He walked to the edge, looked out over the dark murmur below that was the sea, out and up to the pinpricks of light that had begun to appear, the impossible, incredible multitude of stars just starting to be visible, reminding him of home, far from the light of the cities. The land, the sky, the sea, and the stars. The North.
He stood, raised his arms slowly overhead until his hands reached toward those points of light, felt his feet rooting down, connecting to this place, and let the intention, the purpose fill him.
I’m coming back.
He told the sky above him, and he told the earth below him. He told Reka, and he told himself.
I’m coming back.
An endless two weeks later, and she was beginning to realize that this was going to be even harder than she’d thought.
He’d gone back to Auckland for a mere ten days, then had been off to Sydney for a preseason match against the Waratahs that the Blues had lost. When she’d texted him her commiserations afterwards, though, he’d told her it didn’t matter.
Preseason doesn’t count, he’d texted back. Just trying the boys out.
She guessed it made sense, because he’d played a bare fifteen minutes himself, although he told her he’d wanted more.
“I always want to be out on the park,” he said when he rang her from the airport the next morning. “All the time. Every match. Most of us do.”
“But…aren’t you worried you’ll be injured before the season even starts? That must be what the coaches are thinking about.” She curled onto the couch, held her phone to her ear and wished she were holding him, but was happy just to hear his voice.
She could almost hear the shrug. “You can always get injured. Can get injured in training, can’t you. Strain a groin muscle, kicking over and over again to get it right, and you’ve lost weeks of playing time. Besides, match time is different to training time. The pace, the pressure.”
“Thought preseason didn’t matter,” she challenged.
She got a laugh in return. “All right. It all matters. Anytime you play, anything you play, you want to win. If you don’t burn to win, you aren’t meant for this game.”
Was that all it was about, then, with her? she wondered. Winning? But they weren’t talking about her, and she bit her tongue on the question. Needy didn’t suit her.
“I’m coming to see you after this next one,” he told her as if he could read her thoughts. “What time do you get off work on Monday?”
“Four.” He was coming, and the happiness fizzed inside her like bubbles in a Coke bottle. He was coming back.
“Unless you want me sooner,” he said, and she heard the hint of laughter in his voice. “I’d get a late start, for obvious reasons, and I wouldn’t get there till late on Sunday, but I’m willing to put in the hard yards. Be able to stay up late with you then, keep you…company.”
“Monday,” she said, her smile huge. “Because I want you fit and rested for me. But don’t get your hopes up.”
“Aw, baby,” he said, “a man can always hope,” and she laughed.
The second game of the preseason, the Crusaders this time. A New Zealand derby, North versus South, and Reka was in the Duke on another Saturday night, the room buzzing once more with noise and laughter. Locals and holidaymakers both, the perfect February weather bringing no lessening of crowds here in the perpetual summer of the Bay of Islands.
She wasn’t serving tonight, though, because she wanted to watch Hemi. She waited impatiently through the first half at the big round table she’d got here early to secure, but he didn’t appear.
Everyone was here with her, as usual. Uncle Matiu, Auntie Kiri, Ana and Ella and a couple more cousins. Tamati sleeping in his carrier against the wall, Tai and the other kids busy scoffing chips and sausages, content for now. Nobody paying much attention to the game except herself and Uncle Matiu.
Reka forgot about the rest of them, though, when the adverts for DIY projects and manufactured homes, preventatives against parasites and Dry Cow Mastitis, and all the rest of the inevitable accompaniment to a New Zealand rugby match had played out, and halftime was over. Her attention was all for the big screen overhead, because Hemi was filling it, running onto the field for the kickoff in his tight blue jersey and little shorts, his hair cut close and crisp, every bit of his big body looking rock-hard and ready for action, like he couldn’t wait, and just looking at him like that made her shiver.
He gave the ball a quick bounce and sent it off his toe in a high punt aimed perfectly just the required twenty-two meters down the field and barely inside the touchline, forcing the men in red to waste time positioning themselves and allowing the Blues to sprint down and challenge for the ball, and the second half was underway.
It wasn’t all perfect, not at all. More than one pass went awry, more than one player was left grasping air as his opponent swerved out of his tackle.
“Dead sloppy,” Uncle Matiu said. “Off pace, both teams. Not clicking at all. They’ll need to get that sorted, specially the Blues, if they want to finish anywhere in the top half of the pack this year.”
Reka wasn’t listening, because the huge Crusaders lock carrying the ball had just charged at Hemi, thinking that a 10 would be a soft target, and Hemi had taken him on. She winced at the collision even as her heart swelled with pride at his courage.
The Blues’ massive No. 8, Finn Douglas, was there immediately in support, shoving against the Crusaders players who’d joined the breakdown to fight for the ball, and Drew Callahan, the Blues’ captain, was in there digging as well, going for the steal.
“Nothing wrong with their ticker, though,” Uncle Matiu said, and Reka agreed, but the next moment, she was leaping to her feet. Her eyes had never left Hemi, and it looked to her like somehow, he had the ball.
In the same instant, though, a player in a red shirt was coming across, reaching desperately to try to get it back. Hemi rolled, the arriving player’s knee caught him in the head, and Reka was still up, hands clasped at her chest, forgetting to breathe.
The referee blew his whistle to signal the change of possession and the teams set up again, a Blues player running with the ball, passing it a split-second before the arriving tackler took him down, but Reka wasn’t watching that. She was looking for Hemi.
A pan back downfield by one of the cameras, and there he was, still on the ground, the trainer bent over him with his black bag at the ready. Hemi was rolling, though, up on one knee, then getting to his feet, running back to join the play, and Reka tried to catch her breath as the camera showed a quick replay of the collision and the crowd voiced its noisy disapproval.
To no effect, because Hemi was straight back in the mix, carrying the ball now, powering forward off his muscular legs and taking a couple Crusaders with him before going down again, and Reka was sitting down and patting her chest.
“Got a hard head, hasn’t he,” Uncle Matiu said with a wheezy chuckle, and Reka turned to glare at him.
“That wasn’t right,” she said. “Kneeing him in the head.”
“That’s the game, my darling. That’s what he’d tell you. That’s the game.”
Hemi didn’t play the full forty minutes for all that, she saw with some relief. Seventy minutes in, and he was jogging to the sideline to applause from the crowd, accepting slaps on the back from his teammates on the bench—and then accepting a blue ice bag, sitting down and pressing it to his jaw, turning to his neighbor all the same for a smile and a quick word. Not fussed at all, Uncle Matiu had been right about that.
“A man who can do that,” she asked her uncle as the camera shifted back to the match, which the Blues seemed to be winning, “who can play that hard, be that fierce, get hurt like that and keep playing, that says heaps about him, doesn’t it?”
