A Jacket is Not a Shield

“I didn’t come here to belong. I came here to deliver something and leave before the wallpaper recognised me.”

The sun had long since dipped below the Derwent, leaving behind a brittle sort of darkness that clung to the edges of everything. Winter's breath lingered in the air, sharp and insistent, tracing the contours of my face like a warning. Ahead, MONA reared up from the hillside—part fortress, part modernist provocation—its silhouette jagged against the ink-black sky. It didn’t welcome; it challenged. All brutal lines and unapologetic boldness, as if daring the world to look away.

A gust of wind shouldered past me the moment I stepped out of the car, slicing clean through the fabric of my coat and making a mockery of the dress beneath. My breath came in pale ribbons, and for a moment, I simply stood there, letting the cold bite. My fingers were already stiff with numbness, though whether that was down to the temperature or the slow crawl of apprehension tightening in my chest, I couldn’t quite say.

MONA’s architecture, never one for subtlety, loomed with theatrical severity. It looked like it had been carved from shadow and glass, then set down here to frown over the river like some petulant god of irony. The museum had always been a statement—but tonight, it felt like an omen. Each steel edge and darkened pane pressed in around me, cold and absolute.

I moved towards the entrance with reluctant inertia, my heels clicking against the stone in sharp little declarations I couldn’t quite mute. The dress swayed obediently with each step, whispering a softness I didn’t feel. I was stepping onto someone else’s stage, and every fibre of me knew it.

Around me, the well-heeled and well-practised murmured in warm tones beneath amber lights, their coats tailored, their expressions curated. The low hum of social performance hung in the air—champagne laughter, the clink of bracelets, the gentle shuffle of designer shoes. It all had the gloss of ease. My presence, by contrast, felt like a smudge on glass.

Reaching the end of the short queue outside the venue, I slipped a hand into my clutch and drew out my phone—its cold surface a poor substitute for reassurance. With a thumb already half-dumb from the chill, I dialled the last number I had for Leigh, clinging, absurdly, to the hope that maybe this time he'd answer. That maybe there’d be a lifeline on the other end of the line.

Instead, the familiar, sterile voice cut clean through the murmur of the crowd: "Your call could not be connected."

The message rang out with clinical detachment, brutal in its efficiency. No explanation. No preamble. Just severance. Around me, laughter lifted on the breeze and drifted away, but the voice echoed in my ear like a door closing.

Again.

Despite the chill that wrapped the night air around me like damp gauze, a traitorous warmth bloomed in my palms—a low-grade panic simmering just beneath the skin. Anxiety, it seemed, had no interest in temperature. Moisture gathered against the cool surface of my phone, slick and clammy, as if my body couldn’t quite decide which threat to prioritise: the freezing air, or Leigh’s now familiar disappearing act.

This wasn’t the first time he’d ghosted with the elegance of a dropped curtain, changing numbers as easily as most people changed socks. But still—the timing. As always, immaculate in its inconvenience. No breadcrumbs, no trail. Just another bloody vanishing trick.

I exhaled sharply, watching the breath plume before me like steam from a cracked kettle. Right. Time to compartmentalise. Leigh’s Houdini tendencies would have to wait. I had a charity function to endure, a package to deliver to a stranger named Charlie, and a rapidly intensifying desire to make a swift and preferably undramatic exit. Preferably before my social battery staged a walkout.

Goosebumps broke across my forearms, stark against the skin, each one a tiny surrender to the cold that seeped through the delicate weave of my dress. It wasn’t just the air—it was the Tasmanian winter in full performance, spiteful and sharp, slipping its fingers through every seam and stitching. The bodice, once so carefully chosen for its dignity and symbolism, now felt thin and foolish—armour in name only.

The box I carried—small, heavy, and vaguely accusatory—rendered any attempt at warmth useless. I couldn’t even fold my arms against myself without it awkwardly jutting between me and comfort. It wasn’t just a parcel. It was a tether. A silent, rectangular chaperone. Every step I took, it seemed to grow heavier—not physically, but in implication. I didn’t know what was in it. But I knew enough to be uneasy.

I glanced skyward, half-expecting the stars to look smug. They didn’t. Just distant and indifferent. Still, I cursed myself beneath my breath—for the vanity, the stubbornness, the blind insistence that style could be wrestled from substance. My jacket—the one that might’ve made all of this marginally more bearable—was currently draped over the back of a desk chair at home, abandoned in the blur of rushing and self-delusion.

Of course it was.

A frown tightened across my brow, the cold biting sharper now, as if it had taken my regret personally.

"You look a bit cold there," echoed a deep, familiar voice—cutting clean through the murmuring crowd and the brittle silence I’d been holding in my chest. It landed with a precision that only certain voices could manage: part warmth, part challenge. My breath caught, just for a beat. Not entirely from the cold.

The reaction in my body was instantaneous—a subtle tightening of the spine, the kind you get when instinct and memory collide. I turned on my heel, the swish of my dress oddly theatrical, and there he was.

"Jarod," I said, his name falling from my lips like the answer to a question I hadn’t realised I’d been asking. My voice sounded steadier than it had any right to be, stitched hastily together with scraps of composure. Relief bloomed in my chest, complicated and unwelcome.

He stood tall—taller than I remembered, or perhaps the years had only added height to his myth. Six foot and change of deliberate charm, wrapped tonight in a midnight suit so sharp it might have had its own legal disclaimer. Jarod James had always possessed that infuriating talent for occupying space without seeming to try. Even now, just standing still, he seemed to draw the air toward him, as though gravity itself was mildly impressed.

"What a surprise to see you here tonight," I added, though the surprise had already etched itself into the lines around my mouth.

He smiled in that way only Jarod could—equal parts mischief and polish. The glint of freshly bleached teeth caught in the low amber light, absurdly luminous against the backdrop of winter shadows.

"I think it is I who should be more surprised to see you. And at a black-tie event no less," he said, voice laced with gentle incredulity, his tone dancing lightly between admiration and amusement.

I offered him a smile in return, the corners of my mouth tugging upward with the reluctant elasticity of someone remembering how to be social. It felt awkward, thin—a polite lie stitched into the fabric of the evening. Not for the first time, I wondered how much of me was genuine tonight, and how much was just costume. We were already slipping into the old rhythms: the sidelong glances, the rehearsed inflections. It was the sort of banter that used to feel effortless. Now, it felt like a pantomime. And I, apparently, had been cast without consent.

The masks were firmly in place. And I wasn’t the only one wearing one.

"Here," Jarod said, his voice cutting cleanly through the lacquered surface of our pleasantries. With a single, fluid motion, he shrugged off his black suit jacket—a gesture so effortlessly elegant it felt rehearsed, though I knew it wasn’t. There was muscle memory in it. Politeness etched into his bones, or perhaps instinct. "Take mine."

The offer hovered in the air between us, simple and sincere. Yet it carried weight. Not just warmth, but memory. The unspoken kind, pressed into the folds of fabric and time.

I accepted it with a nod—measured, composed—my hands moving with the grace of someone determined not to look too grateful. He stepped forward, and with a practised gentleness that somehow avoided theatricality, Jarod draped the jacket over my shoulders. His fingers brushed the line of my upper arms in the process—deliberately casual, maddeningly precise.

The warmth that followed was instant. Not just from the jacket, but from him. The lining, still imprinted with the shape of his frame, settled against me like a second skin. I could feel the residual heat of his body threaded through every fibre, as if the fabric itself had remembered his pulse.

And then there was the scent—inevitable and unmistakable. Creed Aventus. Equal parts luxury and ego, it curled around me like a memory with teeth. Familiar. Intrusive. Comforting, damn him. I’d spent years pretending it didn’t affect me, even while my traitorous lungs memorised it.

"Thank you," I murmured, voice low and almost too quiet, the words slipping out on a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. It was genuine, that thanks—but I kept my eyes trained slightly off-centre, gaze slipping past his with the studied precision of someone who knew what she was avoiding. His eyes had always been sharp—dark, deliberate, endlessly reading. And I wasn’t ready to be read just yet.

He was watching me. I felt it. The way one feels heat from an open flame even without looking. Jarod always had a way of standing too near without crossing a line. A proximity that was never quite possession, but close enough to stir the memory of it.

Wrapped in his jacket, cocooned in an intimacy that was entirely disproportionate to the moment, I found myself pulled backward—just a little—into the strange gravity of our history. This wasn’t the first time I’d been cloaked in his warmth. Nor the first time I’d let him believe it helped.

You haven’t changed a single bit, Jarod James.

The thought came unbidden, sharp and quiet as a pinprick. An observation, yes—but also a question I knew better than to ask aloud. Because in truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

"Which charity are you supporting tonight?" Jarod’s voice cut neatly through the low hum of polite laughter and the tinkling of crystal.

The question came without warning, catching me mid-thought—somewhere between wondering if I could make a discreet escape and whether the canapés were worth the social trauma.

"Oh," I said, faltering slightly. The single syllable slipped out like a step missed in the dark. I blinked, reeling my attention back from wherever it had wandered—somewhere colder, quieter, and far less adorned. "Bonorong," I answered, faster than I’d meant to. The word landed with an odd clarity, like a coin dropped in a well. My own voice startled me, threaded with a flicker of surprise—as if I were hearing my choice at the same moment he was. Which, of course, I was.

"Bonorong?" he repeated, and I watched it register. His brow lifted, that maddening little arch of intrigue that suggested I’d just become more interesting than the rest of the gathering’s curated glitter. "I didn't realise Wildlife Parks were charities."

He was baiting gently, of course. Not unkindly—but still. The kind of nudge that tested the corners of a story, just to see if they held.

I felt his gaze linger, warm and precise, and my chest tightened in response—an invisible fist closing around my ribs. I straightened a little, resisting the urge to fidget with the lapels of his jacket still snug around my shoulders.

"There’s always a few exceptions," I replied, casual as a shrug. The words tumbled out with the breezy cadence of someone who didn’t care to elaborate. I even managed to tilt my head, just so, as if I’d meant it all along.

But the lie sat poorly—thin and unfinished—its weight immediately apparent. Too specific to be idle, too vague to be convincing. My brain had betrayed me, tossing out a name without clearance from the rest of me. Bonorong, of all things. Saints preserve me.

Behind my carefully neutral expression, my thoughts scrambled. I wasn’t here for Bonorong. I wasn’t here for any cause, noble or otherwise. I was here to deliver a box to a stranger and leave before anyone made the mistake of thinking I belonged. And yet, in one ill-timed syllable, I’d chained myself to a premise I hadn’t rehearsed.

A tangle was forming—and I’d tied the first knot myself.

Before Jarod could press further—no doubt ready to prod at the fraying seams of my hastily spun lie—a welcome interruption swept in like a gust of oxygen through a room gone stale. Mrs Enid Pennicott, resplendent in midnight blue silk and confidence, materialised from the ambient murk of the crowd with all the subtlety of a brass band.

"Jarod! It's so lovely to see you again," she exclaimed, her voice carrying with the well-honed ease of someone accustomed to being heard, regardless of setting. She leaned in to kiss his cheek, one gloved hand perched lightly on his arm, the gesture as polished as her pearls.

Internally, I exhaled. Thank God for that. The thought rose unbidden, not so much a prayer as a reflexive chant of reprieve. Enid Pennicott—formidable, unflappable, and unknowingly divine in her timing—had just provided me the cleanest exit I was likely to get all night.

I rolled my eyes skyward—half in theatrical thanks, half in exasperation—and took the opportunity to step away. A neat little pivot. Distance reasserted. Jarod’s presence, always charged with too much history and too little resolution, receded slightly into the background noise of chatter and designer perfume.

That man has only ever caused me trouble. The thought rang clear and bitter, its truth well worn.

Since Brody’s death, I’d carved out a life shaped by avoidance. A quiet, unglamorous exile from the people and places that had once tethered me to something resembling a future. Jarod was part of that old constellation—brilliant, unpredictable, and too closely tied to everything that had come undone. Keeping my distance had been the only way to survive with the sharp edges still intact.

"Oh well," I muttered under my breath, more resignation than resolve, the words slipping out as I pulled Jarod’s jacket tighter around my frame. It hung heavier now, not just with warmth, but with memory. A borrowed shield against the cold—both atmospheric and otherwise.

The package in my arms jostled slightly as I moved, its presence reasserting itself with silent authority. The damned thing had weight—not just physical, but psychological. It had the air of something loaded, something final. A puzzle box with a name I still didn’t recognise scrawled across it in permanent ink and implied consequence.

The queue inched forward, purposeful and polite, like lemmings in eveningwear. Every step was a soft betrayal of instinct, nudging me deeper into a world I had once navigated effortlessly but now found foreign, unwelcoming in its polish. The laughter ahead was brittle, the air perfumed and too cold.

I clutched the box closer. The jacket tightened around my shoulders. And I readied myself—because whatever waited at the end of this line, it wasn’t just canapés and curated conversations.

It was a reckoning. And I was walking straight into it.

"You're not going to ask about mine?" Jarod’s voice slipped through the ambient noise like a thread pulled tight. His sudden reappearance at my side yanked me from the solitary eddy of my thoughts. The space he'd so conveniently vacated moments ago was now occupied once more—warm, persistent, and smugly amused.

"I wasn’t going to," I said, turning my head to face him, my tone edged with cool defiance. It wasn’t sharp enough to draw blood, but there was steel beneath it—just enough to make a point. "I'm sure you're about to tell me anyway." The sarcasm clung to the words like perfume you didn’t ask for—faint, but unmistakable. I watched his lips part, ready to launch into whatever elaborate fiction or half-truth he’d preloaded for the occasion. The man rarely resisted a spotlight when it was offered. Or even when it wasn’t.

"Umm, no. As a matter of fact, I'm going to keep you in suspense about it," he said, his voice light, the grin audible even without looking. That playful edge—calculated, deliberate—only made the effort more conspicuous. He was poking at me again, the way you might test the surface of ice you already know is too thin.

"I think there needs to be a bit of interest before there can be suspense," I shot back, dry as bone-dust. The delivery rode the line between flirtation and disdain—a line Jarod had long ago learned to navigate with irritating grace. My smile didn’t reach my eyes, but it was there, carefully sculpted. A coy tease, underpinned with a truth I didn’t bother to conceal.

Because truthfully, I didn’t care.

Whatever cause Jarod had chosen to claim tonight—if he’d chosen one at all—was likely just another convenient pawn in the endless social chess match he played so deftly. His moves always looked generous, even when they were built on quiet calculation. And if the crowd saw a philanthropist, that was merely good theatre. He knew how to be useful. Even his charity work, I imagined, had a profit margin.

I glanced at him sidelong. Too clean, too polished. People like him didn’t show up to fundraisers—they orchestrated their entrance.

Mrs Pennicott’s laughter burst through the static, a bright and hearty sound that broke the moment like a dropped glass. "Oh, Beatrix, you always were a funny one," she said, her white-gloved hand fluttering through the air in that wonderfully theatrical way older women seemed to master—a dismissive wave that somehow also managed to convey deep fondness.

Her attention turned to me properly now, the sparkle in her eyes softening. "How are you doing, my dear?"

For a moment, the question hung there—gentle, genuine. It took me slightly off-guard. The chill in the air didn’t seem quite so sharp.

"Fine, thank you, Enid," I replied, tone smooth, effortless, as if I’d been born with politeness baked into my marrow.

"And your parents?" she continued, her voice warm but lightly probing, as if asking after wallpaper she remembered fondly from an old house.

"They’re fine too," I said, tight but courteous. The kind of answer that gently closed the door without slamming it.

Some questions weren’t meant to be opened, not really. Just aired out, like linen.

"Next, please," called the young woman at the arrival desk, her voice slicing cleanly through the low murmur of idle conversation and the faint swish of expensive fabrics in motion. Her tone had the crispness of someone used to being obeyed, even if only for the duration of a clipboard’s authority.

I offered Enid a polite nod—equal parts farewell and escape—and detached myself from the conversation like a thread being quietly snipped.

Approaching the desk, I slipped the invitation from my clutch and handed it over with the kind of grace that only comes from years of pretending to feel less than you do. My fingers brushed the edge of the paper—a tactile reminder of just how formal the next few moments threatened to become.

"Your name?" the woman asked, her attention drifting from the card in my hand to the alphabetical fortress of names before her. Her eyes flicked between the two with all the warmth of a traffic camera.

"Beatrix Cramer," I replied, my voice calm, composed—everything my insides were not.

She repeated it under her breath—"Cramer, Beatrix"—as though incanting it might summon legitimacy. Her manicured index finger slid down the list before halting with a small, satisfied tick. "Yes," she said, giving a nod so faint it barely qualified as movement.

That tiny mark next to my name—barely visible—landed with surprising force. A box ticked, a gate opened, a persona accepted.

"And your charity of support?" she asked, without so much as a glance upward. The question hung in the air like a spotlight, sudden and accusatory.

For fuck’s sake.

My smile tightened, teeth showing just enough to pass as gracious. The question jabbed at my ribs with more irritation than it had any right to. As if the whole evening wasn’t already steeped in pretence, now I had to justify my existence on moral grounds too?

"Bonorong," I replied, pitching the name with manufactured confidence and a tilt of the head that I hoped looked natural rather than defensive.

"Bonorong," she echoed, her brow furrowing slightly as she turned to consult a second list—a sacred text, apparently, more definitive than the first. Her eyes scanned it, then stalled. The silence that followed wasn’t long, but it stretched, taut and uncomfortable, like a thread about to snap.

"I'm sorry," she said at last, her gaze lifting to meet mine, expression unreadable but not unkind. "Bonorong doesn't appear to be on the approved list."

The box beneath my arm pressed more firmly into my side, suddenly too present, too real. Its weight became a pointed reminder that I wasn’t here for causes or cocktails—I was here to deliver something, and ideally not get caught out in the act.

I met her eyes, forced warmth into my smile, and leaned into the bluff with the ease of someone who’d once lied about her age to buy a taxidermy jackal. "Just add them to the bottom of the list. Charlie will take care of it from there."

Charlie. The name left my lips with a flourish, the verbal equivalent of sliding a wildcard across a poker table. I didn’t know if it would land. But I said it like it should.

The woman blinked once, then again. Perhaps it was the confidence, or perhaps she'd already been warned that things tonight might not be entirely by the book. "Of course," she said, pen poised. A few quick strokes, and the fiction was made fact.

She handed me a receipt—thin, glossy, bureaucratic. A slip of paper granting entry into whatever strange theatre lay beyond.

I slipped it into my clutch like it was something I’d earned.

As I was motioned forward, the two young men stationed at the grand glass doors rose into view like theatre ushers to the underworld—immaculately groomed, glossy as their tuxedos, and radiating the solemn importance of people who had been told they mattered for the evening. Behind them, the double doors loomed—all glass and grandeur—reflecting the world behind me in slick, distorted fragments. They might as well have been a portal.

I approached the threshold with careful steps, each one echoing faintly against the polished stone, and felt myself slipping into the choreographed machinery of the event. A waltz of curated expressions, social calculus, and the ritual exchange of empty compliments. The light here was too forgiving, the smiles too bright. Everything gleamed a little too much.

And I? I was a splinter tucked into the grain. An outlier smuggled past the veneer.

The package tucked under my arm remained unmoved, but its weight shifted somehow—denser, more present. Now stamped with false legitimacy and charity gloss, it had become an accomplice to my quiet trespass. Every passing guest, every sequined shoulder and lifted glass, reminded me just how little this place had to do with truth. But the box—blunt, brown, unassuming—had everything to do with it.

I moved with measured poise, my chin held just high enough to avoid scrutiny. But the warmth against my shoulders—it no longer comforted. Jarod’s jacket, once welcome, had begun to feel like something else entirely. A tether. A reminder of him lingering behind me like a shadow I hadn’t shaken.

Without ceremony, I slid it from my shoulders. I turned slightly, just enough to extend it back to him, my fingers still curled tightly around the package in my other arm.

I don't need to give him a reason to follow.

The thought was firm, unblinking. Returning the jacket wasn’t rudeness. It was boundary. A polite push backward. A subtle, silent no further.

"You don't want to keep it?" Jarod’s voice reached me, low but clear, threaded with surprise—and something else I couldn’t quite name. Nostalgia? Disappointment? Calculation? His tone always carried more than one thing at a time.

I didn’t turn around. Instead, I continued forward, eyes fixed on the path ahead as he drifted toward the check-in desk where his own name would soon be transformed into a lanyard and a nod.

"Events like these are always too hot inside," I called over my shoulder, the lie polished from years of similar evasions. My hand—still gripping my clutch—lifted in a quick wave, breezy and final. A full stop with no follow-up.

The jacket was gone. The weight remained.

As I approached the entrance, the two young men posted like statues at either side of the grand glass doors moved in perfect synchrony, pulling them open with a choreography honed through repetition. Their expressions remained composed—polite, impassive—the professional blankness of people trained to notice nothing while noticing everything.

The lobby unfolded before me like a stage mid-performance: wide, gleaming, and humming with the low-frequency thrum of cultivated voices. Clusters of attendees gathered beneath spotlit art installations and sculptural arrangements meant more to impress than inspire. The air was thick with expensive perfume and gentle anticipation, a mood carefully constructed, like everything else in this place.

That gamble paid off, I thought, the words curling at the edges of my mind with a wry satisfaction. A smirk—small, private—tugged briefly at the corners of my mouth as I stepped over the threshold into the plush, curated warmth of the space. It was the kind of heat designed not to comfort, but to flatter skin and melt resistance.

Charlie’s name—whoever he was—had opened the door without question. A shot in the dark, lobbed with confidence and blind luck, and it had landed cleanly. No fanfare, no fuss. Just a tick of a pen and the quiet assumption that I belonged.

Whoever this Charlie guy is, he must wield some significant influence.

The thought lingered, not quite reassurance, but close. I didn’t like relying on the unknown—but sometimes, the unknown was all you had. And tonight, it was proving useful.

The acceptance of Bonorong—despite its omission from the sacred guest list—said everything I needed to know about this crowd. Names were currency here. And Charlie, it seemed, was flush.

It reminded me that the true architecture of places like this wasn’t built from walls and staircases—it was built from leverage. Quiet, unspoken, carefully traded leverage.

And tonight, I intended to trade in full.

The package under my arm shifted slightly, its presence anchoring me. This was no longer about mingling or making nice. This was a mission wrapped in silk and deception, and I was already halfway through the door.