Just for You (11 page)

He’d flung the words out, and he’d seen her wince at them, and he hated that he’d said it, but what was he supposed to say? It was the truth.

“You think I don’t know that, how easy it is for you?” she said, rallying, because there was nobody tougher than Reka. No matter how much his hands fisted, no matter how angry she could see him getting, she wasn’t backing down. “I know that. That’s the point.”

“You think you know. And you’re dead wrong. It’s pretty obvious that you think I don’t know the difference between sex and…love.” There. He’d said it. What more could he do? What more could he say?

“No,” she said. “I think you do know the difference. I think you know exactly, and you separate them, and you think that makes it all right. Because it’s ‘just sex,’ and it doesn’t matter to you, so it shouldn’t matter to me. That’s what I think.”

“Well, no,” he said, the Maori in him rising fast. “Actually, you’re dead wrong, not that I think you’ll believe me, because it’s pretty clear you don’t. Yeh, I want to have sex with you. And yeh, I want to have sex, period. Course I do. I’m a
man
, and I’m not a monk. But here I am, drove all this way on my one day off, willing to take you for a swim, out to dinner, kiss you and hold your hand, if that’s what I get right now, if that’s what it takes, and drive straight back home again. I’m willing to do all that, and it still isn’t enough. What would be? What would be enough for you? I’ll tell you. Nothing. And if nothing’s going to be enough, then forget it. Forget this. I don’t need this, and I don’t need you. Not if you don’t want me. I’m not going to beg.”

“Fine,” she said, her eyes flashing temper. “You don’t need me? I don’t need you either. Got along fine without you, haven’t I. And I’ll keep on getting along.”

“Fine,” he said back. “Fine. I’m going.” He flung the front door open and strode down the footpath to his car, forcing himself not to look back, opened the car door with a jerk that just about took it off, slammed it with enough force to shake him, and took off. He didn’t squeal the tires. He was damned if he was going to give her the satisfaction.

Driving to the ferry landing, trying not to speed, and failing, because the anger had to go somewhere, and it was going straight into his right foot, pushing the car too fast around the curves until the screech of tires told him he was too close to the edge and he forced his foot up again, eased off.

How could she say that? How could she think it? When he’d done nothing wrong, nothing at all, nothing but say no, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t been tempted. Because it had been Lexi, Lexi and a girlfriend, and six months ago…Bloody hell,
three
months ago, he’d have been all over that. All over both of them, and thinking what a lucky bugger he was. Didn’t she know that? Couldn’t she see?

On the car ferry, getting out for the brief journey because there was no way he could sit still. Staring over the rail at the deep green of the bush dotted by the emerald flash of fern trees, the islands of the Bay to either side, all of it receding, because he was leaving it—and Reka—behind.

Those girls. His knuckles shone white on the rail. What would have happened if
he’d
done that? If he and a mate had crawled into bed with a girl who’d been sleeping it off, not in any shape to say no? He’d have been up before a magistrate before you could say Bob’s your uncle, that’s what, and sent down to play provincial rugby just about that fast, at the very least, his All Black career a thing of the past.

Not that he would have, and why? Because there was a word for that, and he knew what it was. Why was it all right for girls to do it, then? And how could that have been his fault? It was wrong, that was what it was, and if anybody had the right to feel hard done by, it was him.

Back in the car, headed down 12, through Kawakawa and merging onto the motorway towards Auckland, and this wasn’t how tonight had been meant to go.

All right, then. Him. He’d known it would be like that. Not like he’d never been to one of Aaron’s parties before. He could have done it like Drew, kept himself to a couple beers so he could have left when things started to get out of hand. Drew had never put a foot wrong yet, not in three years in Super Rugby and, yes, three years with the All Blacks as well, selected after exactly one Super match at the ripe old age of twenty-one, and every time since. If he didn’t end up as skipper of the ABs this year, Hemi missed his guess, and why? Because he kept his cool head, on the paddock and off it. Because he did it right, because he practiced as hard as he played, because he fronted every single time, every single week, because he was consistent, because he was the definition of steady.

And Hemi was too, he knew he was. He could go all the way, he was dead sure of it. When he laced up his boots, he knew exactly what he was meant to do, what he was going to do, and he went out there and did it, played his game. With flashes of inspiration and improvisation, of course, because that was what a first-five did, but all of it grounded in rock-solid fundamentals, in training and a vision of the game, a knowledge of what was happening around him that you could only have when it was in your bones, when your blood flowed for rugby, when you’d been passing and catching and kicking the ball since you were three, until it felt like an extension of your body when it came into your hands and flicked off your fingertips again, exactly where it was meant to go.

So, yeh. He had that, he knew he did. The bush rolled past him, all the shades of green that were New Zealand, that were Northland, and he realized with a jolt that it was
the same thing with Reka. Exactly the same thing. It was the difference between doing it for fun, and doing it for real.

Playing rugby for fun…just about every Kiwi boy did that. But playing it at the level he did was something else. If you didn’t have what it took, not just physically but mentally, you’d find out soon enough. If you didn’t have the fire, if you didn’t have the commitment and the discipline. Body, mind, and soul.

Whangarei had long since receded in the rear-view mirror, Auckland was ever-closer ahead, the day was fading into dusk, and he’d been in the car for half of it, and he was going to be there for longer, because he was exiting the motorway, going through the roundabout, and heading north again.

S
he’d done a little crying, but after that she’d put herself into the shower, and then her nightdress, trying for briskness even as the unease grew. Had this just been another dream, based on nothing firmer than the shifting sands of Russell Harbour? Or had Hemi been telling the truth? She didn’t know, not anymore, but one thing was sure, he’d left. He was gone.

She got tired of trying to sort it out and went to bed, even though it was only nine-thirty. Nothing to stay awake for, after all. No swimming and touching and kissing with Hemi, because who wanted to be just another notch in his bedpost? Not her, not again. And anyway, he was gone.

She heard the rattle against her window and woke from the doze she’d finally managed to fall into. What? A storm?

What came next wasn’t a rattle. It was a
crack
, sharp, loud, and unmistakable. She bolted upright and was out of bed in a heartbeat, and headed for the window.

“Ow.”
She cut the wail off fast, because Sonya would be asleep downstairs. She limped to the door, turned on the light, and stared at the stone on which she’d banged her toe. And the shards of glass surrounding it.

She skirted the winking splinters carefully, fuming. Tonight, of all night. Kids, larking about, or worse. She grabbed jandals from her closet, shoved them on her feet, then crunched her way to the window and looked out, cautious of the jagged hole in the pane, and belatedly realizing she was wearing only a short, sleeveless white nightdress. Well, bugger it. That might keep their attention while she gave them the earbashing they deserved.

It wasn’t kids down there, though. It was Hemi, and the softest hands in New Zealand rugby had just thrown a bloody great stone through her window.

“Sorry,” he said, and that was about the lamest thing she’d ever heard. “You all right? Don’t cut yourself. There’s glass.”

“Yeh,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down. “Noticed there was glass, didn’t I. Why are you here? What are you
doing?”

“Reka?” It was Auntie Kiri, pulling her dressing gown closed, coming down the steps onto the drive between the houses, pulling up short at the sight of Hemi. “What’s happened? Everything all right?”

“Oh, everything’s fine,” Reka said. “Some fool just threw a stone through my window, that’s all.”

“That would be me,” Hemi said. “Accident. Sorry.”

“What’s an accident?” Now Uncle Matiu was there, feeling his way down the steps in the dark, clutching at the banister, and Hemi hurried to help him, and this was nothing but ridiculous.

“Hemi’s broken Reka’s window,” Auntie Kiri said. “Broken her heart, too, hasn’t he. That’s what he calls romance, I guess. That’s his idea of love.”

“Oh, is
that
what it is,” Reka said.

“Yeh,” Hemi said, his upturned face shadowy in the dim light shining out of the open door of Auntie Kiri’s house. “It is. And if you’ll come down, I’ll tell you about it. Please.”

“Going to fix her window?” Uncle Matiu demanded.

“Never mind her window,” Auntie Kiri said. “What else are you going to do, and not do? You’ve done wrong, boy, and you’d better be here trying to make it right, and I wouldn’t call breaking a window a good start. You saved my grandson, and I never thought I’d say this after the debt I owe you for that, but you’ve shamed your family with what you’ve done, and you’ve shamed Reka.”

“What?” Uncle Matiu demanded. “What did he do?”

“Been a dickhead,” Auntie Kiri said, and Reka could see Hemi’s mouth drop open, the protest beginning. “Been sleeping around, thinking she wouldn’t know, just like before.”

“Aw, mate,” Uncle Matiu said sorrowfully. “That’s no good. What would your mum and dad say about that?”

“They wouldn’t say anything,” Hemi said. “Sir,” he added hastily. “Because I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything.”

“Didn’t, eh,” Uncle Matiu said, his hooded tortoise eyes blinking slowly at Hemi. “Then why does she think you did?”

“That’s what I want to tell her,” Hemi said, the frustration clear. “If she’d just come down.”

“You did break her window, though,” Auntie Kiri said, her tone still suspicious, because she wasn’t convinced, Reka could tell.

“What window?”

Reka heard the new voice, tried to see, but she didn’t dare get closer to the jagged shards of glass still stuck to the window frame, and her landlady must be standing in the doorway, and she was out of Reka’s view. The sharp voice rang out clearly through the quiet Russell night. “Who’s broken a window? What’s happening?”

“Hemi here,” Uncle Matiu said before Hemi could answer, “seems to’ve thrown a stone through Reka’s window.”

“Through
my
window, you mean,” Sonya said, and she’d come forward far enough that Reka could see her rounding on Hemi. “What d’you mean to do about that, young man? Window glass isn’t cheap, and why ever would you do such a thing in the first place? Can’t tell me that’s accidental. On the first floor? I don’t think so.”

Her excitable landlady was working herself up into a state, and Hemi had his hands out in front of him, his posture so ridiculously defensive that Reka was having a hard time not laughing.

“Nah,” he said. “Not an accident. That is, breaking it was an accident. I was just trying to wake her up, without waking you.”

A snort from below. “Pretty good fist you made of that, then, didn’t you? Woke the whole neighborhood, and broken glass to boot. Who are you, anyway? Do I know you? Who’s your family?”

“Hemi Ranapia,” he said. “Not from here. My family’s in Ahipara.”

“The All Black,” Auntie Kiri put in before Hemi could bow to the pressure and begin reciting his entire whakapapa.

“An All Black, and you behave like that?” Sonya asked, her voice rising even further. “That’s disgraceful.”

“An accident,” Hemi said again. He cast a hunted glance upwards. “Reka, come on, baby. Please, come down and talk to me.” He was trying a smile. “This is the worst thing I’ve done, I promise, other than running out on you tonight. Let me tell you. Please.”