Chapter Ten
Whatever Helps You Sleep at Night
Rod
Multiple mind-bending orgasms later, I wake up to unceremonious scratching at my bedroom door.
Jordan is still fast asleep, her head still to my chest, sheets all clutched up around her like she’s in the movies.
She is straight from the movies. The light hits her just right, shining against her sleek black hair, fanned out on the pillow.
Her eyelashes flutter, but she doesn’t stir.
I just crack an eye open when I hear the scratching again, but I close it soon enough, drawing her closer to me with a sigh.
The scratching escalates. Then an insistent bark.
‘Scout,’ I groan, my voice still fraught with sleep.
I flail an arm off to my left as if the dog’s actively somewhere in the room.
It’s definitely Scout. Boo doesn’t do this shit the same way as Scout does.
Boo will be content in front of the fireplace whether I’m giving him direct attention or not.
Scout, the greedy (not so) little sucker, will come right up to me and demand he be given his berth.
‘Hmm,’ Jordan murmurs, her hand moving to my shoulder, bright pink nails tickling my neck. She’s going to wake up, I swear. She’s gonna wake up and my nutty dog will be ready to fly through that door.
Gently, I disentangle myself from Jordan.
My teeth are gritted as I slide a pillow beneath her head around a prayer that she doesn’t wake up.
She does not, in fact. She must be the soundest sleeper, because my dog is actually thumping at the door.
He does this thing where he literally smacks his ass against things to get my attention.
Sometimes it’s the door. Sometimes it’s coffee tables with breakable centrepieces.
I tug on my clothes, at least the lower half of things, as I stumble to the door, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
I open the door with my arms half braced in front of me for Scout to fully jump right at me, but he just sits there, all wary.
Probably caught someone else’s scent and doesn’t know what to do with it.
Behind him, Boo lounges on the rug lazily, as if waiting for his brother to fix his attitude.
They may be obviously related by huge, furry Great Pyrenees genes, but their temperaments couldn’t be farther apart.
‘Are you serious? What’re you waiting for, dude?’ I crouch down to Scout-level and give him a hefty scratch behind the ears. He just barks at me, like Move.
‘Okay, dog. Go on.’ I scoot aside, and Scout takes the opening. He immediately bounds through the door, sniffing about at the floor before jumping – fuck – right up on the bed, right up onto Jordan.
Boo ambles more calmly into the room, nuzzling his wet nose into my arm. I wrap my arms around the big dog, ruffle his fur, before turning back to the horror scene that’s about to be Scout scaring the shit out of Jordan.
She’s definitely awake now, but she’s also definitely not scared.
With eyes still fighting sleep, she grins at the dumb dog with his paws all up on the blankets.
‘Stop it,’ she laughs when he presses his nose to her cheeks.
‘Oh, sweet boy. Come here.’ She pushes herself to sitting up, sheets still wrapped round her, and strokes his fur with a scratch here and there that has Scout’s tail wagging like a power fan.
Boo is more apprehensive, but snakes out from under my arms to join his brother, eager to cash in on this new experience.
It’s really hard to ignore how perfect it all is as I haul myself to my feet, and I can’t help but smile. Jordan and the dogs, natural best friends, just like that. Her hair falls across her cheek as she cuddles Scout and Boo, beaming at me with a happy, ‘You have beautiful dogs.’
There’s just the one important part of the equation I have yet to factor in, and it hits me all at once as the word ‘dogs’ escapes her lips.
If the dogs are here, so is Genny.
The smile disappears from my face. ‘Shit. My sister. Holy … I think my sister’s here.’
‘Your—’ Jordan’s expression changes similarly, and she freezes mid-pet. ‘She’s not. Rod—’
The ring of my doorbell downstairs says otherwise. ‘ROOOOD!’ Genny’s voice rings out. ‘I can’t take the doggy door in, you know!’
And if Genny’s here …
‘Tali. Oh, fuck.’ The same word pounds its way through my head: reckless.
I’m not saying this wasn’t a good decision.
It was an incredible decision, actually.
But it was reckless. As good as this was for me, as good as all this feels, even right now, I swore off complicating Tali’s life the second that Charlotte left.
And this? This is suddenly the definition of complicated. ‘Jordan, you—’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m on it. Do you have a back door?
’ she huffs as she hooks on her bra before going for her jeans, grabbing them off the lamp they somehow ended up on.
The lamp, which is definitely askew. A photo frame is crooked.
That lighthouse painting hanging in the left corner of the room is now on the floor.
I stare out the door, where the trail of clothing lies all the way down the stairs.
‘Rod.’ Jordan is already fully clothed, save for her tank top, which she darts around me to grab out of the hallway. She pauses mid-grab. ‘Do not worry about me. I swear. I will have disappeared in one minute, and I will take all of the evidence with me. Put on a shirt.’
I snap out of my delirium with that last bit, and grab the shirt from where it lies not far from the site of Jordan’s.
She’s already hustling down the stairs, picking up her jacket and boots as she makes for the back patio, and I shout a dazed ‘Coming!’ at the front door as I actively struggle to get my shirt on.
The dogs aren’t far behind, even normally languid Boo, who’s suddenly developed pace.
I scoop up my vest, toss it on the banister, and open the door a second later.
‘Hey,’ I manage.
‘God. What dumpster fire did you jump in?’ Genny, arms crossed, eyebrows raised, looks me up and down like she can see the signs of one-night stand written all over me.
She’s remarkably put together for whatever time in the morning it is, already in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, with her brown hair up in a claw clip.
‘Tali’s still back at the farmhouse. The kids went down hard after Friday Sundaes. Don’t expect her to be up till ten.’
‘Thank you.’ I quite literally press my hands together. ‘Genny, you’re—’
‘Your house smells like woman.’ Genny invites herself in, as big sisters tend to do.
She grins at the dogs before returning immediately to her investigation, eyes sliding over every surface of my house.
‘Maybe you erased the rest of the evidence. But,’ she smirks, ‘I know it, Roddy, a woman was here, wasn’t she? ’
‘You’d better not say a damn word, Gen.’
‘Safe with me,’ she practically snickers as she hops up into a chair at the island. The dogs scramble over at the mere implication of some sort of food. ‘Your dogs are hungry. Again.’
‘They’re big dogs!’ I retort. I head to grab the bags and make their bowls, though.
Great Pyrenees are the epitome of gentle giants.
We adopted ours from the shelter as brothers, intent on keeping them together, and we’ve had them for the last two years.
Scout and Boo shed everywhere, have increasingly stubborn tantrums (all Scout, actually), and drool on anything that looks remotely ruglike, but we have a special kind of adoration for them.
‘Come on.’ I look up at my sister knowingly. ‘They’re lovable.’
‘Fine,’ she admits, but her gaze does soften as she watches the dogs chow down. ‘Anyways, back to the moment at hand. What in the world happened to the house? All your photo frames are fuckin’ sideways.’
I know Genny has to be teasing me now, because her eyes glitter with satisfied amusement. ‘That concludes this conversation,’ I declare, running a hand through my mussed hair.
‘Alright, baby bro,’ Genny chirps. She’s still got a sly look on her face. ‘Just thought I’d try and help you figure your shit out. You know, before Bia comes down—’
‘Bia’s coming?’
I think my jaw is about to hit the floor. No way. Bia’s always swamped over the summer. There’s no way she’s got time for a summer holiday.
‘Oh, yeah. Must have forgotten to mention.’ Now Genny’s just enjoying the torture she’s inflicting on me.
If I thought Genny saw right through me, Bia will have me diced up into pieces and buried in the backyard.
Genevieve provides a glass of wine and a joke about your poor decisions.
Bianca provides a good kick in the ass and a reminder that you need to lock the fuck in.
‘Forgotten?’ The eldest Wilson sister is anything but forgettable. Genny’s been waiting for the perfect moment to use this ammo. ‘How the hell did she get a holiday from the restaurant?’
‘Found someone she trusts enough to hold the joint up for a week,’ says Genny, checking her nails all absentmindedly, like she hasn’t just dropped an enormous bomb on me. ‘She’ll want to hear about this, you know.’
‘She won’t hear about this,’ I insist, maybe a little too vehemently. But it’s true. She can’t. If Bia finds out, it’s going to be another intervention about my life outside of my daughter’s life. And I can’t do that. I made this decision with Jordan knowing I can’t do that.
‘I don’t know. Maybe she needs to.’ Genny raises an eyebrow as she slides down from the chair, pushing it in. ‘Clearly you haven’t listened to me when I’ve tried to tell you it’s okay to—’
‘Not to me, it’s not,’ I finish before she can give me the spiel. I’ve heard it before. ‘I let Tali down last time, Gen. I just can’t do that again. I can’t screw up and cave and let someone in again just for everything to fall to pieces around my kid. Does that make sense?’
‘It kind of doesn’t.’ My sister smiles sadly, the snark and sarcasm in her eyes replaced by sincerity. ‘Not everyone is your ex, you know. But it’s whatever helps you sleep at night, Rod.’
Genny and I exchange our ‘love yous’ and ‘see yous’, and she’s out the door, on her way to tend to the horses, leaving me alone for the first time in … When is the last time I was alone in my own house?
I hate the fact that the first thing my brain does with that situation is fills my mind with bits and pieces from last night.
I won’t lie. It’s not my proudest fun fact, but I’ve had a couple of one-night stands that didn’t amount to much else after Charlotte. I never stuck around long enough to care for more.
Jordan doesn’t work like that. Her skin flush with mine, the sparkle in her eyes when she realized she had me in the palm of her hand, the cold metal of her jewellery against my cheek. And the feeling that filled my entire fucking body when I felt her tense around me like that, pulse after pulse.
I exhale slowly and shakily as I grab my vest off the banister. I don’t know what this is. All I know is that once won’t be enough this time.