‘I want to punch his lights out. I want to strangle the guy,’ Jake said.
‘He’s not worth it.’
She stared at her tea. Cold, lifeless, bleak-coloured tea. Jake was quiet, thinking. Then he scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, and pushed to his feet.
‘I’m knackered, Ella. You’re out on your feet. Can I stay on your couch tonight? I can run you into Mount Barker tomorrow morning to the hospital if you want, for the X-rays. We can go first thing.’
‘You don’t have to stay. I’ll be okay.’
‘I’m happy to come with you,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to do it all alone.’
She picked up the teacup and emptied the dregs into the sink, and she caught Jake’s gaze as she turned around. He pulled her in a hug, strong as an ox, and she took comfort in his strength, in his faith. He’d heard her story, every sordid detail, and he didn’t hate her.
‘Thank you.’ She stood on tiptoe and their lips met, briefly, both of them too strung out and numb from the events of the night to do much else. ‘I’ll get you a blanket. I’ll be back in a second.’
She left Jake sitting on the couch, pulling off his boots.
* * *
It was 4:13 am by her bedside clock when Ella snapped awake because she heard Sam yell. She was out of bed in a microsecond, grabbing for her dressing gown slung on a hook on the door.
She rushed from her bedroom and almost collided with Jake in her kitchen before she could reach the light.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I heard Sam call.’
‘Me too. I’ll go.’ Ella flicked on the kitchen light, and moved straight from there to the pantry where she kept the Pain Stop and the band-aids and whatever else she had in the first-aid kit. She filled the plastic syringe with the correct dose of pain medicine.
Jake kept out of her way.
Ella put the hall light on, but didn’t flick the switch in Sam’s bedroom. No point waking him completely.
‘Are you okay, mate?’ she said, moving in and checking where his arm lay on the sheet so she didn’t sit on it and hurt him.
‘My arm hurts,’ he said, with a little hiccup that usually meant he was trying to be brave and not cry.
‘I know, Sammy. You broke your arm, mate. That’s no little thing. You’re being so brave.’ She helped him sit up. ‘Here, mate. This is the special syrup. It won’t work straight away but it won’t take long.’
She put the syringe in his mouth and pressed the plunger and when he’d finished, Sam laid back down.
‘It still really hurts, Mum.’
‘You’ve got to give it longer than that.’
His eyes shone in the muted dark. ‘Can you wait till I fall asleep?’
Ella leaned over his body, careful with his arm, and kissed his hair. ‘Of course.’
It didn’t take long for the medicine to kick in, and Sam’s eyes drifted closed. Ella left his bedroom door open a crack so she would hear him if he called out, and left him to sleep.
In the kitchen, she rinsed the syringe and put it on the sink to dry.
‘Is he okay?’ Jake queried her from the couch.
‘Yes. He’s sore, though. That’s what woke him up.’
‘Have you got any sleep yourself?’
‘A bit. I keep waking up.’
‘I didn’t know if he’d let you give him that stuff, you know. He was so angry in the car.’
Ella’s heart ached. ‘I know. He’s half asleep, though. I don’t think he remembered how much he hates me. He will in the morning.’
Jake swung his feet off the couch so they were flat on the floor and sat straight, and Ella registered that his chest was bare, and that he’d slept in his jeans. He looked so smoking hot, and she’d been standing there staring at him, screwing the lid on the bottle of Pain Stop for at least twenty seconds without getting the thread connection right.
‘Do you need a cuddle, Ella?’
‘I think I do. If you don’t mind.’ She gave up on the lid and put the bottle on the counter.
He stood up, and Ella walked all the way around the kitchen counter, past the bar stools and Jake’s boots, and she let him wrap his arms around her and hold her tight, crushing her into a chest that felt as big as a mountain.
‘I want to say something, but it’s probably going to upset you. But I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Jake said. ‘But I can just hold you instead and ask you in the morning. It’s not a nice question.’
‘Go on. I’ll only lie awake adding that to all the other stuff I’m thinking about.’
‘What Marshall did to you, the way you describe it—’ Ella felt the tension in the arms holding her tight, ‘Ella, that’s rape. Every way you look at it, he raped you.’
She went stiff in shock, not at the words but that he was bold enough to come out and say it. Then she shook her head.
He pressed the point, and the words came out on a growl. ‘If a girl is drunk and unconscious, and a bloke puts his penis in her for his own pleasure … Ella, it’s rape. Every day of the week.’
Ella met his eyes in the dim light and tried to explain. ‘I can’t think of it like that, Jake. That would make my beautiful boy the product of a rape, and he can never know that. I don’t want him to think that. I never want him to think he was conceived causing me pain, or hurting me. I love him too much.’
He didn’t argue after that, just tucked her head into his collarbone and smoothed her hair, over and over and over again.
CHAPTER
32
‘I don’t want to go with
