Enjoy Your Stay (26 page)

“I’m just gonna go have a look. It’s not like him to run off, and it’s definitely not like Snickers not to come when he’s called.”

“I’m coming with you,” I say, and waddle over to the door.

“No you’re not. I’ll be quicker without you.”

I square my jaw, and say in all seriousness, “Then I’ll run.”

Jack knows better than to argue with me. He nods. “Whatever. Just hurry the hell up, woman.”

The road cuts through field upon field of burning cane. Ordinarily they burn just one field at a time, and there are always men on hand to make sure it doesn’t get out of control. From the looks of it, though, the wind has picked up more than they’d expected, because almost every field is burning. They’ve called in fire trucks from Sugartown’s surrounding areas.

Ana and Elijah are riding the bike, and they overtake us at break-neck speed and fly through the straight in order to get closer to the trucks. I have this terrible sinking feeling in my gut, and my legs start jittering side to side.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I mutter half-heartedly. “I know it’s not exactly kosher to belt the life out of small children, but when we find that kid I’m gonna beat the living shit out of him for scaring us all like this.”

Jack stays completely quiet as he speeds up, and that worries me more than the burning sensation churning in my gut. “Would you say something please?”

“Hols, my six-year-old cousin is missing, and the cane fields are on fire. I don’t have a whole lotta words right now.”

“He’s gotta be okay,” I mutter and cover my mouth to keep the bile from coming up. “Fucking kids. They need to be kept on a goddamn leash their entire lives.”

Jack slows the car, and draws us to a stop near the fire engines; their lights are near blinding in the darkness. He rushes over to where Ana and Elijah are talking heatedly to a fireman.

“You gotta put out the flames.” Elijah demands.

“We’re trying. You need to step back and let us do our job.”

“You need to try harder, mate. You’re talking about the possibility of a six-year-old kid being incinerated in that, and you want me to step back and let you do your job? Do your fucking job better!”

The fireman scurries off, yelling orders to his team. They all look like they’re running around in circles as they collect the hose from the truck and spread out. “They’re taking too long,” Ana says, and leans over with her hand covering her mouth. Elijah rubs her back and then clasps his hands behind his head.

“This is bullshit,” he says. “Jack, you coming?”

“Yeah,” Jack says as he walks over to Elijah.

“What?” I ask in a panic. The last thing we need is more of our family going missing. “Where are you going?”

“To get Sammy back.”

C
ADE AND
I run like madmen through the field, skirting the heat from the fire. The flames from the first two fields, the ones Sammy’s most likely wondered into if he’s here at all, are out, but the heat smouldering off them is so intense it burns just as badly. We had to wait until they put the fire out, of course, but even before they’d cleared it, the two of us just took off into the burnt cane, calling out for Sammy and Snickers.

The girls were a little hysterical, but it didn’t matter. When a kid’s life is in danger, how the hell do the lives of two men matter?

Elijah and I run. We split up and scream until our throats are hoarse, clogged with smoke and the sweet, black after-burn of cane that coats your lungs like molasses. A short time later I’m standing in the burnt field, trying to get my bearings, when there’s a muffled cry. It’s dark as fuck out here, but I strain my eyes in the direction of the sound and about fifty metres from where I stand, a dark lump shifts against the smoking ground.

“Cade!” I yell, as I run toward it. Elijah comes bolting through from the opposite side of the field. There, curled up against the embankment and covered in ash and soot, is Sammy. His tiny body is wrapped around Snickers, and his wailing makes my heart wrench and my stomach turn. Cade bends down beside him, and starts trying to rouse the kid from his crying. Sammy’s hysterical. He didn’t even cry like this when Belle’s Pies exploded.

“Is he okay?” I ask, frantic.

Elijah begins checking him over, diligently inspecting his arms, legs and face. His mop of blonde curls looks a little singed, and his skin is black from the smoke, but he looks fine. A little shaken, but fine.

Elijah nods. “Doesn’t have a scratch on him.”

He scoops him up, and begins carrying him back through the field. Snickers whines. He has next to no fur left down the front of his legs, and his little caramel nose is burnt black, his muzzle completely singed. He lets out a howling cry when he sees me, and then drops his head back down on the ground. I don’t even know what to do here. Tears sting my eyes, and I swipe a hand over my face. It’s hard to know whether it’d be kinder to wring his neck and put him out of his misery, or whether I should scoop him up in my arms. I decide I can’t live with the first option, so I scoop him up as gently as I can, and whisper how much of a good dog he is, and then I walk through the field toward the others.

Holly’s wringing her hands and staring at the ground when I emerge from the burned field. There’s an ambulance on hand, and for the second time in a few short months I’m looking at my cousin Sammy laid out on a stretcher after narrowly missing being burnt alive. He appears to be doing okay, though, because he laughs at something Elijah says and gives him a thumbs up. I look back at Holly. She seems so small leaning against my truck, she glances up at me, and her eyes fall on the dog in my arms. Her dog. No.
Our
dog. She lets out a sobbing cry, and shakes her head.

“We gotta get him to a vet.”

“No, Snickers, no.” she wails.

“Holly, get the door,” I say above her cries. She snaps to, long enough to open the passenger-side door, and hops in. I lay a shaking, whimpering Snickers on her lap, and then I fly around to my side of the truck and shove it into reverse.

“What happened to him? Where were they?”

“Curled up on the embankment. I think he might’ve been protecting Sammy, because this whole side of his body is burnt.” She’s sobbing, and her belly is pushing into the dog’s back. His eyes are rolling back in his head, and he’s making this keening, whimpering sound that’s tearing my heart out. “Come on, Hols. He’s gonna be okay. We’ll get him to the vet, and they’ll shoot him full of drugs, and he’ll recover from this.”

I fly down the Sugartown straight toward the vet clinic in the middle of town. We’re about five minutes away. Snickers’ tongue is lolling out to the side as he pants, and even that is blistery-red. He whines, and then stands up on shaky legs. He leans over the centre console, licks my face, and falls down, dead. I slam on the breaks. Holly cries out and pounds her tiny fist against the dash as she screams.

“Hols, Hols, calm down.” I say, but she slams her hand against the dash again and throws her head back with a howl. “Come on, darlin’. That shit’s not good for the baby.” I place my hand over her belly, grab her chin and pull her wet face to mine, kissing her forehead, “He was protecting, Sammy. You know how much he loved that kid. He did what dogs are supposed to do.”

“He was ours,” she sobs, leaning into my embrace. Snickers looks like he’s sleeping on her lap. He’s so badly burnt that I can smell the char and singed fur. I close my eyes and swallow the lump in my throat. I know Holly doesn’t mean just that the dog belonged to the both of us, but that he was
ours
. Just like the baby in her womb is theirs, Coop and Holly’s. As much as I wanted to say to hell with it and just make her mine once and for all, show her that this kid could be
ours
despite me not having any input into its DNA, I can’t. Just like the dog lying on her lap that we shared, this is where I get off.

“I know, darlin’. I know,” I say, as I hold her to me. I let myself cry alongside her, and then I let her go, and I throw the Ute in reverse and drive us home. While she goes to bed, I bury our dog in the yard, along with any hope of making her mine forever.

C
OOP HAD
promised me dinner and a movie, but I got a third of the way through dinner before my pants were too tight and my ankles started hurting from my stupid shoes that were too small for my prego, Sasquatch feet. I needed to pee, everything but ice cream tasted like arse and I hated my poofy frizzed-out hair. Coop was pretty good at realising when grumpy, pregnant Holly needed to go home and be put to bed.

He’d returned from Sydney the day after Snickers died, and had let me ruin his pretty city clothes by sobbing into them all day. I don’t know if he knew it wasn’t just our dog I was mourning.

If I’d thought he and Jack could co-exist for more than a five-minute period I would have insisted he just stay at the house, but as it was, getting the two of them together in the same room was explosive enough to bring the roof down on top of us, so he’d rented one of the dingy apartments from Dave the Publican above the Sugartown pub.

Coop had offered to take me back to that apartment tonight, but I refused because the bed was lumpy and kinda smelled like cats. We pull up to the drive. Coop shuts off the lights and zips around to my side of the car to open my door. The zipping is kinda unnecessary though, because these days, even moving a fraction of an inch takes me a gazillion years.

He uses my key to open the front door, and we step inside and come face to face with Jackson, fucking some red-headed bitch on the lounge room floor. She’s skinny as a crack whore, and riding him with a bony arse that looks like it could grind stone. His hands grip her tiny hips, digging into her flesh as he slams himself inside her. She sounds like a fucking banshee. I wanna rip out her vocal cords and wrap them around his arsehole neck.

I think I let out an audible gasp because Coop starts hurrying me forward. I allow him to push me through the room, moving like I’m on autopilot because I can’t look away.

“Take it to your fucking room next time, mate,” Coop snaps.

The crack whore, Sherry-Lyn Brown—a thirty-something single mother of two, and resident barfly at the Sugartown Pub—is fucking Jack,
my Jack
, on
my
lounge room floor. She throws her hands up above her head and continues to ride him like a damn mechanical bull. Jack grunts and his hands fly to her arse, slamming her down harder, faster, pushing them both closer to release. My heart gives a hard squeeze and shatters inside my chest. He looks right at me as that bitch takes him over the edge. His eyes glaze over, and he digs his hands into her hips as he spills into her.

Jackson hadn’t brought a woman home to this house ever. He went to them, or he fucked them in his car, or theirs, but he never brought women home. And he never fucked them in front of me, until now. This was a message and it was
received loud and clear. Loud and fucking clear.

I let Coop draw me into my room, and the fact that he doesn’t say anything about the state I’m in—but instead just wraps me in his arms—makes me sob harder than I think I ever have. I hate Jack for this. I hate him so much that I can’t feel anything but rage twisting the centre of my gut, can’t see anything but my grief, can’t feel anything but pain and loss and heartache.

Coop drags me over to the bed and lays me down, and then he slowly coaxes me back from my rage by holding me, and talking about all his hopes and dreams for our baby. I don’t deserve someone like him. I don’t deserve him because he knows that I love another man. He knows I’ll probably never love him the way I love Jack, and yet he stays with me anyway, because he loves me. He stays with me because he knows how much I need him, even if it means I’ll never be able to love him the way he loves me.