He chuckled, his insides loosening slightly. Classic Nella interrogation. She would have done the same to Grey, to Luca, to Tom. It didn’t mean anything. ‘Of course,’ he said.
A beat. ‘Prettier than me?’
His throat was now the broken neck of a wine bottle. The smallest wrong movement would pierce the glass right through his skin. He didn’t know how he managed to laugh as he said, ‘Goodnight, Nella.’
15
Nella
Feverish regret seethed beneath Nella’s skin the entire day. It was an itch she couldn’t get rid of, an invisible rash crawling over her.
There was the entire debacle with Avery and his girlfriend. Not exactly her fault. A few prickles of humiliation.
Then Avery’s fiancée getting ... run over? Nella wasn’t sure she’d remembered that correctly, but she’d woken to texts from Eliza, who’d somehow found out the blonde was in a stable condition at Bunbury Hospital. Couldn’t have been that bad if they didn’t airlift her to Perth.
Then Jett.
She pounded harder against the pavement, thigh muscles screaming for her to stop.
She hadn’t run like this in six months. She’d done the occasional spin class in Perth, but any form of regular exercise had pretty much lapsed in favour of happy hours and hungover sleep-ins. But this was the only way she knew to pull these thoughts from her mind. She’d started exercising vigorously at thirteen after realising her hips and boobs were different to those of the flat-chested Kate Moss look-alikes at school. And after Sally Sue, it had become not about punishing her body, but about strength – and silencing the noise in her mind.
But it wasn’t working this time.
Jett had left his date. Hisdate.Because of a juvenile prank Eliza thought would help push Nella further towards self-actualisation. Jett didn’t respond to games. His whole driving teacher philosophy was to follow your instincts, and he applied that to the rest of his life. But instincts didn’t work for Nella, which was maybe why she’d always been such a terrible driver. She’d followed her instincts with Sally Sue, and look where that got her. She’d followed her instincts at the gala, had literally followed the killer to what she’d thought was safety, and it had ended in bloodshed. Maybe her uncalibrated instincts were why she’d developed her challenges to survive. But Jett hated them.
And this was worse than normal. She’d flung herself onto his bed and basically humped the mattress to see how much bounce it had. To see how much noise it would make if he and his date had made their way up the spiral staircase last night. Would she have been able to hear them if she’d stuck an ear to the wall of the garage? Her family’s garage. She had the right to know, didn’t she? If some strange woman was up here, on her property, bouncing on a mattress?
But that wasn’t even the worst part.
Sweat and sunscreen stung her eyes as she detoured from the red running path and pounded up the sandy, snake-infested trail that wound up the cliff side. Spiky bushes stabbed her ankles as she pushed on and the wind scraped her face. The late afternoon was warm but overcast, the sea silvery blue and wild, matching her insides. She tasted salt as she pushed for that final spurt, her throat burning, lungs collapsing, legs shaking.
She’d told him. She’d told him what she’d barely told herself. For crying out loud, that night with Oliver hadn’t been a big deal at all. Jett must have thought she was such an attention-seeking cry-baby. She hadn’t actually been raped. And why had she chosen that moment to tell him? She’d probably made him so uncomfortable. That must be why he’d avoided her the whole day.
There wasn’t enough path left for her to punish herself for the next part. She reached the top of the cliff, legs barely able to keep her upright. She took a shaky breath, her chest stabbing in pain. The water below was frothing like a jug of overturned milk. Waves smacked the rocks and violent spray ricocheted like bullet casings. Something rustled in the bushes behind her but when she turned, there was nothing there. A lizard maybe, or a bird.
She used to run with Grey or Jett. Their longer legs and better stamina pushed her just how she liked to be pushed, their steady breath next to her as she matched their rhythm. She liked how she never got honked at or cat-called when they were there. But then Giovanni had seen her and Jett rounding up the driveway after a run and he’d pulled her aside, goading her about how she was so independent she didn’t need him and his money but she was too scared to go for a run by herself.
Scared little girl.
She’d told Jett she couldn’t run with him anymore. He’d never asked why. Why did he never ask?
He’d slept downstairs on his couch, leaving her upstairs in his bed. She’d seen him as she snuck out that morning, his arm bent over his head. His long body looked ridiculous slung over the tiny couch. He must have been sore when he woke up.
She gulped the angry air, the first real breath her lungs had managed since she’d torn off down the driveway. She’d missed this. The ocean had a way of humbling you – bringing you back. It would smash anyone’s head against those rocks; it didn’t care if your surname was Barbarani or Brown. Being the heir to a wine dynasty didn’t stop you getting caught in a rip. Nature didn’t give a shit.
It didn’t matter if she’d made a fool of herself last night or not – the ocean wasn’t going to take her into its arms. She’d have to jump, if she really wanted that feeling of letting go.
She shuffled her green and white Hoka trainers closer to the edge, just for the feeling, the feeling she used to get at the top of a rollercoaster or on ecstasy or ...
When Jett bent down to put the blanket on me and my face was an inch from his ...
Shit. There it was. The splinter that had been burrowing into her brain all day. But she wasn’t going to interrogate that now. She checked the time. She’d need to keep up the same brutal pace on the way back if she was going to have time to shower and dress before they had to leave for the fundraiser. As she jogged back down the sandy path, she had the strangest feeling she was being watched, but whenever she twisted her head back, there was nothing but cliff, shrub and rock behind her.
The office of Lieu & Lockridge was in a boutique, river-view part of South Perth that Clarkson would have called ‘middle-class lite’ back when they were at uni. Oliver, as far as Nella knew, had been raised in a South Perth mansion and he hadn’t left that particular golden nest.
They were already running late. Fire warnings were pinging across the towns surrounding Bindi Bindi – a blaze was moving south-east, towards Nannup – so even though Bindi Bindi was still in the ‘Be aware but don’t panic yet’ category, the road out of town had been clogged with aware and panicked evacuees.
‘We can’t spend too long making small talk.’ Nella bounced her leg up and down as Tom checked and re-checked his phone. ‘We need to be downstairs long enough for people to remember us if they’re questioned later, but we need to get to that safe as soon as possible.’
