Chapter 16
Zinnia
Some rules were made to be broken. After making their dramatic exit, they headed straight for the bungalow. Mabel, unsurprisingly, was already there and waiting.
Zinnia closed the front door after Jordan came inside, ignoring Mabel’s intense dead-eyed stare. That look—the disappointed showrunner special—meant they were going to pay for denying Zaffre Hours access to the conversation about to happen.
Well. She’d worry about that bridge once it was burning.
Zinnia had been caught off guard, but anger rolled off Jordan like a rockslide. She pressed her back against the door to give him space as he headed for the sunroom.
Defending him had seemed like a good idea at the time. Personally, she was willing to put up with a lot. She had put up with a lot and would take even more, but nothing stopped her from protecting her family. Not fear. Not rules. Nothing. That had always been different for her.
She’d held back what she truly wanted to say, as a Sweetheart should, but at the end of the day that was his little sister. Jordan might be mad at Zinnia for stepping in.
He was a thoughtful, attentive, and loving man, but he was still a man. Who was bigger than her. Whom she’d married on the inside of a week. And even though he’d never done anything to make her feel afraid, other men had already put in that work.
Zinnia opened the group chat on her phone and stared at the screen. She took several deep breaths to push past her fear and put all her lingering doubts to rest. This would be okay. She set her phone down on the kitchen counter and headed outside alone.
Jordan was standing with his head bowed, arms crossed, and shoulders hunched as if he were trying to cave in on himself.
“Can I join you or do you need some space?” she asked, clutching the door handle with uncharacteristically sweaty palms.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “I don’t like this,” he said, voice hoarse. “I hate it.”
Her heart, currently pressing against her damn windpipe, ached for him.
“I thought I’d be fine competing with storylines designed to hurt me, but coming from Lulie?
Talking about you like that? And I don’t understand how living like this isn’t killing them.
” He turned around. “By dinner, everything will go back to the status quo like it never happened. Two months from now, they’ll rip open all this drama again for the interviews and relive everything.
When people watch it, they’ll have to do it again.
It festers inside them like a wound that will never heal. ”
Zinnia worried at her hands, unsure what to do other than stand there listening to him.
“Lulie isn’t—” He paused to breathe. “That wasn’t about us. I don’t understand how they can watch her yell and be so cruel like that, and not be affected by it. It’s just Monday.” He laughed incredulously. “Sadie says she’s fine, but what if she’s not? I don’t know how to help her.”
“Jordan—”
“I don’t want this to infect our life,” he said fiercely. “But that’s my family. I just got them back.” He all but collapsed in the chair behind him, sitting with his elbows on his knees and head in his hands.
Zinnia crossed the sunroom and knelt in front of him. “I do this thing with my friends where we check in before we talk to make sure I’m responding the way they need,” she said calmly. “Would you like solutions or support? Because they’re not always the same.”
“I don’t know.” The utter misery in his eyes almost sent her spiraling.
“Would you like me to be serious or make jokes?”
His brow furrowed. “Both. I guess.”
“Okay.”
“But not if you’re gonna talk shit about my family. I don’t want to hear that.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she promised. “I think you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself to solve all your family’s problems because you feel guilty.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah. I missed so much of the twins growing up and my parents are getting older. I thought being here could change things. Help them see outside of the bubble they’re trapped in.”
“See, that’s the thing. They’re not trapped. You can’t save them from something they want to do. The most you can do is give your family options and let them choose. Lulie made a choice today. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept that it happened. Scoot over.”
She stood up, squeezed onto the chair beside him, and rested her head on his shoulder. He intertwined their fingers, kissed the back of her hand, and pressed it against his chest.
That was the first time he’d done that inside the bungalow. Kisses of any kind were strictly game behavior. She forced herself not to react to FEELING JORDAN’S HEARTBEAT.
She was fine.
“No one comes in here except us,” she said. “How did Lulie find out?”
“Housekeeper gossip. Why else would they need to make up two beds?” His short, derisive laugh was mostly air. “I really have been away too long. We walked right into that setup.”
“Slept right into that setup, actually.” She’d promised jokes. He’d given her a kiss. An idea was formed. She gazed up at him. “So, should we start sleeping together? Or would that be too obvious?”
Jordan’s left eyebrow twitched. “That’s an option.” He spoke slowly, focused on her face. “Or we could come up with an explanation that fits into our storylines.”
“We could say I hate the way you snore. It keeps me up at night and I’m a monster when I’m sleep-deprived, which is true. It’d be very modern Newlyweds of us.”
“Brilliant idea.” He tapped her nose. “Let’s use that as the punch line when we explain this in our sit-down interview. The setup should be spicier.”
“Mmm,” she agreed. He had a point. Not sleeping in the same bed didn’t mean they weren’t having sex, which was the underlying accusation. “What are you thinking?”
“We sleep apart because we’re testing our relationship. We want to prove to each other that what we have is real by giving up sex.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Did you come up with that just now? On the spot?”
“I’ve had this change in mind for a while,” he admitted with a shrug.
“Abstaining from sex could recontextualize why you were so jumpy in the beginning. Touching each other, even a little bit, was too overwhelming. It took us some time to be okay with basic affection, which is where we are now, and it’s noticeably escalating, which we agreed is best.”
“Oh, and I’ve been replacing sex with exercise. I struggle-run for almost an hour on workdays to help me stay calm.”
He gave her an appreciative look. “That’s good. Not the needing to, just the staying calm part. I’m sorry,” he added quickly.
“It’s okay. I’m terrible at it and I hate it, but it does wear me out most days. Do you think that will be enough?”
“I think they’ll be so shocked that I’m willing to talk about our marriage on camera that they’ll take whatever we give them. They ask me about you all the time.”
“Why? What are they hoping for?”
“Questions to answers I’ll never give them.” He held her gaze. “I sold my image. Not my soul. Not my secrets. I won’t let them have everything that’s important to us. We have to keep some things for ourselves.”
Zinnia nearly swooned. Even while drowning in artifice and nurturing their storylines, he still made it a priority to put their marriage first. It made her heart sing, trilling for so long she felt lightheaded.
“I think we should sleep together.”
He blinked. “I think I need you to stop saying that.”
“Why? I agree with you—we can’t let them have everything important to us, but they’re going to keep trying to take it. If we start sleeping together now, on our terms, we’ll be ready when they try to set us up like that again.”
Jordan ended his silent, staring contemplation by muttering, “You mean sleeping in the same bed. Yeah. You’re right.” He leaned back and threw his free arm over his eyes.
Of course that was what she’d meant. She wouldn’t have asked about sex like that. Did he even know her at all? Yeah. He did. Sharing a bed with him would’ve been impossible otherwise. “But I also want to do it for me,” she added.
He partially lifted his arm. She hoped there’d never come a time when she was too nervous to look him in the eye and ask for what she wanted.
“You have a tattoo. I’ve never seen it. I know almost nothing about your body.”
“Except my entire medical history,” he deadpanned.
“Will you please let that go?”
“Never.” He hid his eyes again. Always as dramatic as he was stubborn. She secretly loved that about him.
“It’s not just you, you know. I have birthmarks and scars and other things the police will ask you about if I ever go missing, they find my corpse, and it still has identifiable fleshy bits.”
“Counterpoint,” he said, dropping his arm and slowly turning his doleful pout in her direction. “You could also just stay alive. Forever.”
“My point is I want you to know about them. We could sit here and tell each other everything or”—she glanced at the hallway leading to their rooms inside the bungalow—“we can sleep together. Two obstacles, one bridge.”
They spent a few more minutes finalizing their storyline alterations before Zinnia trekked back to the front door alone. Mabel was still there waiting, not a camera pod in sight. “Hello,” she greeted through the cracked door. “Would you like to come in? We would love to have you.”
Mabel silently, ominously, stood up and followed her inside. Jordan led the pitching session—apparently, they’d already had a few of these—and negotiated through the adjustments they wanted. It was her job to share their ideas with the network and editors.
On her way out, Mabel turned back and said, “This is the last time I will tolerate you two hiding. Do it again and you’re on your own. Get in the spirit or get the fuck out of my segment.”
“Captain, my captain.” Zinnia saluted her. “Love the bangs, by the way. They really complement your eyes.”
She stared at Zinnia, ever long, ever cranky. “Save the flirting for the cameras, okay?”