Once a Rebel... Read Online Free PDF

days teaching and her nights assessing your work and her Saturday afternoons giving her star pupils extra credit.’
    ‘Instead of being with you? Is that what you mean?’
    She shook her head. But she also flushed. ‘She gave you everything, Hayden. But when she died you just … shrugged and moved on?’
    He hadn’t worked at the top of his field without learning a thing or two about subtext. This wasn’t really about him … He just wasn’t sure yet exactly what it was about.
    ‘Every square next to your name is empty. Others have made progress, or at least a start. They’ve made an effort.’
    She was going to ride the denial train right to the end of the line.
    ‘Shouldn’t you have let it go by now?’ he asked.
    She blew air out from between dark lips. ‘Yes, I should have.’
    The moment of honesty took them both by surprise. She frowned. ‘If you told me that you’d been busy building orphanages in Cambodia for the last decade I think I could accept that. But you haven’t. You have no excuse.’
    He swallowed back what he really wanted to say. ‘I don’t need an excuse, Shirley. I’m not answerable to you.’
    She clutched the towel closer to her pale skin. Her eyes flicked away and back again. ‘I just thought you might …’
    She didn’t want him to do it because she’d make him feel guilty. She wanted him to do it because he was an all-round great guy deep inside. Secretly. ‘Hate to disappoint you further, Shirley.’
    Her shoulders rose and fell just once as she filled her lungs and moderated her exhalation. Just like her mother used to do before starting a tutorial. Her piled-up hair swung around her face in surf-dampened strands like Medusa’s serpentine locks. ‘At least take your name off the list. If you’re not going to do any.’
    So that the world didn’t have to look at his disinterest? ‘Why don’t you add yours? To balance out my lousy effort. Show everyone how it should be done.’
    ‘Maybe I will.’ She turned to go, disappointment at his sarcasm patent in the drop of her shoulders.
    Honey, I’ve done a lot worse in my life than let down someone who’s been dead for a decade. Your silent judgement can just get in line.
    Then she spun back around. ‘Molon Labe.’
    That threw him. ‘What?’
    ‘Your business name. Your tattoo. Why Molon Labe?’
    He shrugged. ‘Military defiance. When the outnumbered Spartans were called to surrender arms they said Molon labe— “Come and take them”.’
    ‘I know. I saw the movie. But
why
that phrase?’
    His entire body tightened. ‘Because I have a thing for the Spartans. Their courage.’ Their defiance in the face of death.
    ‘You don’t find the irony exquisite?’
    The breath thickened in his lungs. ‘What irony?’
    ‘You named your business after it. You branded your body with the Greek letters. Yet, in life, youlaid down arms at the first hurdle. You dropped totally off the radar.’
    She turned and walked towards the changing rooms. Away from him. Away from the disappointment. Away from the crater her verbal detonation had caused.
    He forced his lungs to suck in air and his fingers to open and close again. Forced himself to remember she had absolutely no idea what she was dismissing.
    How could she?
    But he had enough fight left in him not to let that go unchallenged.
    ‘Shirley,’ he called.
    She stopped. She turned. She looked ridiculously natural standing there, dripping wet and defiant. But also so very young.
    ‘I understand deflection better than most,’ he said without raising his voice across the space between them. Knowing she heard him. ‘Attacking me takes the focus off you. But given there’s only the two of us here and you clearly don’t give a rat’s what I think or feel—’
    Her extraordinary eyes flickered.
    ‘—you might want to ask yourself what you’re trying to take the focus off. And for whose benefit.’
    ‘
Cos it sure as hell wasn’t his.
    Her gaze widened and then dropped to