Love Hurts: The Love Duet Read online

  Whatever it turned out to be, I was more than ready to sink my teeth into and do my very best. To say I wanted to succeed as a police officer was a severe understatement. I wanted that diploma inked with the words Police Constable so bad it drove me to fight through the mental boredom you suffered through classwork sometimes and the ache your muscles experienced after a day of running and pushing your body through pain you never wanted to feel ever again.

  Thirty-one weeks into the one hundred and sixteen-week course I kept telling myself and then once I got that piece of paper I could finally walk back into my home town and prove that the quiet Johnston twin wasn’t the odd one out any longer.

  Mum had kept me up-to-date with Deck’s achievements in his training. According to her, his basic training at Kapooka went well, as well as for the five wise-arse men.

  During my once a week half-hour call to her she made sure to tell me of his excellence and brilliance and his all-round perfection. He was somewhere doing weapons training now, and no doubt excelling at that too.

  After I ended the call, I felt that usual sting of rejection Mum made me feel every time Deck’s name came up, which was all the fucking time, I might add. He and I hadn’t seen one another since we said goodbye in our childhood bedroom. His basic training only lasted about twelve weeks so he was already a soldier, another fact Mum liked to tell me regularly along with how proud she was of him. That he was already doing something for our country, making her proud of her boy. While I was busting my arse every day to one day serve the public, all Mum could say when I told her what I did that week was ‘that’s admirable son’.

  She was never going to change, it was always the same with her, Deck was a chaser and I was a dreamer. I didn’t know why it upset me so much, it was the same shit different bucket as Dad would say. I guess maybe it was because of the upcoming graduation ceremony, Mum and Dad promised to be here although, she did tell me how hard it was going to be driving through lunchtime Melbourne traffic. Then complained about the time of the event, and the fact they had to drive back to Ballarat straight after.

  Deck got them a hotel room when they went to his March Out Parade in Wagga Wagga don’t you know.

  Growling low in my throat I tossed onto my stomach in frustration. Annoyed at myself for getting into my head and letting Mum’s innocent ramblings transporting me back to being a sullen teen. Always jealous of his twin, always wishing his mum would just see him for who he was. Me.

  All I had to do was put my head down, work hard and my achievements would have to be acknowledged by my parents.

  Surely.

  “Congratulations son, mighty proud of you mate,” Dad said, pumping my hand in a bone-crushing handshake.

  “Thanks old man, means a lot you made the drive,” I said without any sarcasm. I really meant it, them seeing me in my dress uniform and taking pictures for the mantel piece back home gave me all the feels. The stress of the last seven months had been nothing but gruelling, but I saw my way through it and here I stood with my first placement. It was nowhere near home, instead I was placed here in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. It didn’t worry me, not really. I knew Deck was heading home for leave before he left for places unknown, and though we spoke on the phone just last night for the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t really chomping at the bit to be in the same room as him until my training was complete and I was a fully qualified officer of the law.

  Our call had gone exactly the way I expected, it started with insults and ended with more of the same.

  “Any reason why you didn’t share with me your desire to be a Bronze?” Deck asked using the slang term for a cop made famous in the Mad Max film back in the late seventies.

  “Because I knew you would have something derogatory to say about my choice,” I replied dryly.

  “The academy teaching you big words, hey turd?”

  “The army taught you where your brain is located yet, shit for brains?” I retorted and just like that we were at it once again, only this time in the background groaning and complaining weren’t our parents but the booming voice of Booth.

  Out of all Deck’s mates, Booth was the one I had a lot of time for. The other guys were okay, Mannix pissed me off a bit and Steel was far too pretty to take seriously. Darth and Creed were decent, quiet types of men, but Booth saw through everyone with his intense eyes seeing the big picture behind the bullshit. Particularly mine and Deck’s.

  “You okay Jay?” Dad asked pulling me out of my head.

  “Yeah Dad, guess I am just starting to feel the realisation I am going to be a cop, ya know?” I answered him, avoiding his intense gaze. Much like Booth, my dad saw through the bullshit too. He knew where my mind went without even knowing Deck and I spoke on the phone. My father didn’t have favourites, he didn’t play one son against the other and he had a bullshit radar. And it was telling him I was full of it.

  “Jason, you know your Mum is just as proud of you as she is of your brother. They have a special bond, yes I agree, but that doesn’t mean she has more feelings for him than you,” Dad said firmly but quietly so Mum couldn’t hear from her seat a few feet away.

  She looked exhausted and hadn’t really moved since I showed her to her seat before the ceremony.

  “Is Mum okay, Dad?” I asked suddenly concerned.

  Dad looked over at the lady he married when they were only eighteen years old. Seven months after their wedding day, she fell pregnant with twins, and for a forty-year-old woman, with two twenty-one-year-old sons, she didn’t usually look a day over thirty. But today she did, her dark brown hair lacked its usual lustre and her hazel eyes weren’t sparkling as they always did.

  “Mum is fine Jay, just tired. She is working a few extra shifts at the hospital, doing nights more often than not, filling in for sick colleagues. Nothing to worry about.” I noticed as Dad spoke he watched Mum with real concern, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Dad wasn’t the only one with a bullshit radar, I had one too and it was going crazy.

  “Don’t shit me, old man, there is something wrong,” I argued, wanting to know what the hell was going on. My parents were working class, had been all my life. Both of them worked hard, Dad was a fitter and turner and Mum was a nurse. Money had always been tight and luxury items had been few and far between during our childhood. In saying that, food was always plentiful on the dinner table, and good food at that. Mum was a brilliant cook, no matter what it was, everything from roasts to desserts. Deck and I never went without, but once we both moved out, it suddenly dawned on me they were probably missing our contributions to the household budget, and that was the reason Mum was pulling longer shifts at the hospital.

  I made a mental note to put some money in Mum’s account. I didn’t make a big salary as a recruit but I had saved a fair chuck of my weekly wage since being here. Shame hit me that I never even thought about continuing to pay board to them.

  “Jason there is nothing to tell yet, when or if there is you and Deck will be the first to know. That’s the best I can offer you mate,” Dad said with a tone of finality, effectively ending any further questions I had. And I did have questions, and they were going to be answered sooner rather than later. My father was just as stubborn as I was, and when it came to his wife it multiplied ten-fold. Their love was strong and true, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, nothing he wouldn’t go through for her. So, if something was going on with Mum I knew Dad had it in hand. It didn’t lift my worry but it did ease it slightly.

  Walking over to the lady in question, I dropped into the seat beside her.

  “Hello Mother dear, did you enjoy the graduation ceremony?”

  Mum smiled at me, it was genuine and full of love, “I did Jason, you looked very handsome standing out there on the parade ground looking so much like your brother.”

  I gritted my teeth but tried not to show my annoyance at her reference to Deck, again.

  Just once, I wanted…

  Shut the fuck u
p and grow up, I scolded myself. Even to my own ears I was getting sick of listening to my own whinging and complaining. Deck was who he was and the same for me, I had to get over the competition crap and move forward. It sounded good in theory, time would tell if I managed to make it a reality.

  “Thanks Mum, how about we skip the biscuits and cheese they are offering and go find a nice restaurant? My treat.” I offered hoping to enjoy a pleasant Deck free evening with my parents. Well maybe not completely free of hearing his name, that would be a fucking miracle but one could hope. Right?

  “A quick bite would be absolutely lovely darling,” Mum said in her sweet voice getting slowly to her feet, Dad hurrying up behind her to help her.

  I didn’t miss the tiny hiss of pain she let out as she straightened, nor did I miss the stern look my father directed at me.

  Very, very soon I was going to get some answers.

  That was for certain.

  Chapter 3

  I dropped down into the office chair at my desk and sighed when the weight of my body was finally off my feet.

  Today I swore I got up close and familiar with the main streets of Richmond and many of the smaller streets too. My Academy placement gave me a station in an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, for which at the time I was very thankful. Getting on the job training at a busy station seemed far more beneficial than a small one pub town where the biggest problem was a rogue cow walking down the main drag at two-thirty in the afternoon.

  Now four weeks into a twenty-week stint as general duties police officer, that roaming cow sounded pretty good.

  In the last four weeks, I had seen some pretty crazy shit, some that scared me, and some that downright pissed me off. Then there were the sights at night when I witnessed people down on their luck by circumstances out of their control living on the cold, hard ground doing anything to keep warm. Men, women and children sleeping up against doors of businesses closed for the evening huddled under paper-thin blankets and disturbingly some even using cardboard to battle off the cold night air.

  This was the part of policing I’d rather not see; people, good people, trying to catch a break so they could find a way back to their old lives, or at least a semblance of it.

  Then there were the calls I attended with rich stuck-up wankers calling the police because someone dared to park in front of their house or calling to complain about a neighbour’s dog barking too loud. If I was at home back in Ballarat and a neighbour called in complaining like that, I would have laughed and told them to pull their heads out of their arses, and that would’ve been kind compared to what Deck would’ve done. But, as a duty police officer, I had to treat it like any other call to 000. Everyone was entitled to call the police and expect us to perform our duty for the community, no matter how pathetic I thought the complaint.

  Placement was a steep learning curve as to how I tempered myself, using my brain and not my brawn to settle disputes. I was most definitely finding a part of me that I had not used before, at home Deck and I went straight for the anger, whether it be directed at each other or at the pub around the corner from our house where a Friday night pub fight was not only the norm, it was expected of us.

  The Johnston twins had a reputation to protect; as good with their fists as they are as fast with their temper. My temper, more legendary than Deck’s, his fists more feared than mine. As a combination, however, it equalled trouble for any fuckhead that decided to take us on after a few too many amber brews.

  My restraint to hit some idiot that came up to me while walking the beat and mouthing off at me and my partner surprised me. Maybe I really was ready to grow up after all, I thought with a grin.

  “Johnston, call for you, extension four,” one of my colleagues yelled out to me. Giving him a thumbs up I reached for the phone of my desk, secretly hoping that is was not the girl I went out with the night before.

  Sara was nice enough, and very pretty. Long black hair, hazel eyes and quite a nice voice. She made all the right noises to tell me she was interested in something more; the only problem was me. No show all night from my dick, not from her fluttering lashes or her tongue running sexily over her red stained lips.

  Nada, zip, zilch. He remained still and unresponsive in my jeans.

  I could tell when I walked her to her door that she was disappointed when I declined her invite to go inside and even more after her kiss planned for my lips landed on my ear when I had turned my face at the last minute.

  I wanted a woman, and loved sex. That wasn’t the problem, finding her was the issue.

  Chasing off my sexual frustration, I picked up the receiver and punched the blinking button.

  “Johnston.”

  “Son, your Mum is in hospital.” Dad’s deep voice greeted me.

  “On my way,” I said at once then hung up, not wasting any time asking for details. Dad’s worried voice telling me all I needed to know, this was something serious.

  “So, her liver has a tumour on it?” I asked the doctor again for the fifth time since arriving back in Ballarat. The hour and a half drive from Melbourne gave me plenty of time to concoct horrendous scenarios of what was wrong with Mum in my mind. By the time I parked my Ford XY GT I had her dead and buried and was nearly a sobbing mess.

  “Yes, though the technical term for it is a Sonoma,” the doctor told my father and I.

  Dad stood stoically beside me, his arms folded across his large chest. He hadn’t said much since I found him pacing the corridor by the ER entrance, and that worried me.

  “Does this mean she has — cancer?” The dreaded C word came out choked, tasting bitter on my tongue.

  “Sonomas are usually benign growths if caught early. The scan shows this one is no more than three centimetres and has only grown one point two centimetres since it was first discovered. Which is good news for a positive outcome.”

  Since they first found it? Just how long had my parents been keeping this from me? At my graduation Mum didn’t seem well, and at tea she had barely eaten.

  Turning my head, I looked pointedly at my father, “This isn’t news to you, is it?” I worded the question more like an accusing statement.

  “She didn’t want you boys worrying. Deck is somewhere in East Timor and you have enough on your plate with weeks and weeks of placement to become a full-fledged police officer,” Dad said with a shrug.

  “Unfuckingbelievable,” I muttered, receiving a reproachful glare from the surgeon.

  “Do something useful and contact your brother. Use your police spidey senses and find him or at least get a message to him.”

  “Don’t tell me I was the first to know about this,” I replied sarcastically, pulling my mobile from my back jeans pocket. Walking off to find a quiet corner of the waiting room, I started to google places I could call to potentially get my brother on the phone.

  “Finding a fucking needle in a haystack would be easier,” I grumbled.

  Fifty-five minutes later and more cursing, I finally got hold of a person who assured me that they could get a message through to my dickhead brother.

  “Just tell him to get in contact with our father as soon as he can. Then tell him he is a wanker and be the best he can be,” I told the shocked and silent woman on the other end of the phone.

  “You want… ah… really?”

  “Yep, thanks for your help, have a good night.” I had no idea if it was night where she was, but it was for me. Hanging up for the last time, I went in search of my dad. Mum went into emergency surgery while I had been on the phone, worry for her eating at me the whole time trying to get a lockdown on Deck’s location.

  “Family of Sheila Johnston.”

  Dad and I jumped from the plastic chairs our arses had been uncomfortably moulded into for the last four hours.

  “Over here,” Dad called out.

  A tall man dressed in green scrubs and purple crocs on his feet strode over to us, he didn’t have a grim look on his face and thank fuck I couldn’t see any blood on his s
crubs. That would have been fucking horrible to see my mum’s blood.

  “Husband?” the man asked with a raised brow.

  Dad nodded and held out his hand. “Craig Johnston, my son Jason,” Dad said by way of an introduction. We all exchanged head nods and handshakes, time that could be hearing about Mum.

  “Isn’t there another son?”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake! Just tell me about my mother you over-educated dweb.

  “Deck is Jason’s twin brother, he is on training exercises in East Timor.”

  “Ah I see, well thank him for his service.”

  Jesus Christ shoot me now.

  “My wife? How is she?”

  The doctor switched modes almost immediately, seriousness replacing his casualness.

  “The operation was very successful. We did what we thought was the best option and took the whole right lobe of the liver rather than make too many cuts removing the growth. She will remain in hospital for at least a week, and even though the surgery was done mostly keyhole, she does have quite a few incision sites.”

  “And the growth, was it cancer?” I asked quickly, needing to know.

  “We won’t know that for certain until the lab results come back but to me it didn’t look cancerous, judging by its size and appearance.”

  His reassurance that he doubted the growth was cancer shot relief through my veins, I could see from my dad’s body language he was thinking the same as me. On the outside Dad didn’t show too much emotion, he hid that behind humour and cursing. Deck took after our father, while I let my emotions run me like Mum.

  “When can we see her?” my father asked.

  “Give her a little while to wake up properly, once she is on a ward we will come get you. Go grab a coffee and something to eat, you can relax now.” Giving us a warm smile, he turned and walked back through the swinging door he came out from originally.