The oncoming vehicle hit Ava’s car with an explosive whoomp of force, and spun them over the guardrail. Ava screamed as everything seemed to slow to one-second increments. Their bodies moved up in the seats, then sideways as the vehicle tilted and hung for a moment, before someone pressed the fast-forward button on disaster and the car crashed down onto its roof and then spun away in a furious blur of speed as it rolled over and over across the desert.

Ava’s forehead hit the steering wheel and white light burst in an explosion of pain. Everything went black and her last thought was a fervent prayer to see Zac’s face.

When Ava’s eyes opened, the smell of diesel saturated the air, and through the cracked front windscreen the last of the late afternoon sun shone serenely down on the wreckage to ironically paint the scene in beautiful Central Australian gold and yellow. Steam rose in escaping tendrils from the mashed bonnet, and the steering wheel in front of her was slimy and dripping with congealing blood. Hers.

She sat strapped upright, the car on its wheels, but as she slowly turned her head, her neck and face and shoulders sent spikes of pain along her nerve endings. Then she saw him and her own discomforts became nothing.

Zac.

Her heart thumped as she saw the way his head lolled.

‘Zac?’ His name was a croak from the depths of her throat. He didn’t move. Blood lay everywhere. His arm, his chest, his head.

She strained to see his chest rise or fall, but there was nothing. Slow tears began to drip and mix with her own blood. ‘You said you’d never leave me,’ she whispered, and she closed her eyes because it was too heartbreaking to look.

Then Ava heard him moan.

Her eyes flew open. Urgency pushed away the lethargy of shock and she fumbled for her seatbelt.

Four hours later, Ava stared out the clinic window and tried to ignore the pounding in her head. Outside the dust storm hid the night sky. So much for the help from Alice Springs she’d begged for, because Zac still hadn’t woken up.

Jill had dressed Ava’s head wound and made her shower, then she’d put a pillow and a blanket on the easychair in the corner of Zac’s curtained area because she’d refused to leave.

Ava looked back towards the bed and Zac. Unconscious Zac. The man who’d introduced her to the hidden depths of her own body, who’d caught her eye and grinned wickedly as their occasionally macabre humour clicked silently at work. The man who had been going to propose.