Enjoy Your Stay (24 page)

“He can lay claim to you all he wants, darlin’, but that pussy is mine. Always has been, right from the minute I first touched you.”

Even though my body is still humming from one of the best orgasms of my life, I want more. I
need
more, and I hate him for it. I burrow my face into the crook of my elbow to hide my tears and whisper, “Get out.”

He doesn’t make any attempt to leave, and I have to clamp my jaw down tight to keep from screaming. “Get. Out.”

“Hols,” he warns as he stands. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and even now as he towers over the bed I can see the strong set of his shoulders. Jackson Rowe. The man I love. The man who just ripped me wide open with nothing more than his mouth, and a few harsh truths.

I know him well enough to know this isn’t just about proving a point; this is about Jackson winning, but even I know he doesn’t really want the thing he thinks he does. He wants me. Not me and my baby. He wants Holly Harris the prick-tease, he wants it hard and fast, and without strings, against the kitchen counter, and he’s only in this room right now because he’s afraid of losing out to someone else. His ego couldn’t handle it.

He told me he loved me, but if that were the case, he’d want what’s best for me and my baby—and that’s not him.

“Jack, please, just get out. Please?” I beg, and break down into uncontrollable sobs. I don’t even care that it’s loud enough to draw the attention of the rest of the house. All I can do is clutch the pillow into my chest and cry.

“Shit, Hols, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry, baby,” he whispers.

“Just go,” I say, and he leaves as quietly as he entered.

I
PULL
into the drive after spending the last hour and a half lugging my fat arse around Lismore looking for maternity clothes and ice cream. There’s a shiny black SUV parked in my spot, and I’m a little pissed, because I have a boot full of groceries, and an aching back, and the only thing I want to do is head inside and put my feet up while Coop strums his guitar and Snickers snuggles into my side. So when Jack comes tearing out of the garage like someone’s chasing him, I’m not a happy camper. We haven’t uttered a single word to one another since the other night in my room. I haven’t been able to even look at him without bursting into tears, or wanting to tear him a new one.

“You don’t wanna go in there,” he says as he comes over, and pens me in against the door. “In fact, why don’t you and I go for a drive?”

“What are you talking about? I just got home. I have ice cream, and my feet hurt, and I just wanna loaf around in my jammies and veg out. Whose car is that, and why the hell are they in my spot?” I ask as I move toward the steps.

“It’s, um …” He begins but just as he’s about to finish the screen door opens and my mum and dad are staring back at me from inside my house.

“Your parents arrived twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, hell no!” I say, and start back for the car. Coop runs down the stairs, and my parents come out on the veranda to gawk at me some more. My mother holds her hand against her face like she’s mortified at my condition and my dad? My dad squeezes her shoulder to comfort her.

“Hols, just wait. I invited them here to talk—”

“I’m sorry, you what? Coop, tell me you didn’t.”

“I told you, man.” Jack folds his arms across his broad chest. “I knew she’d flip.”

“I don’t even know why you’re here,” Coop says to Jack. I can see by his expression that he’s almost out of patience. “None of this concerns you, so why don’t you just go back to your tool shed and bang some nails into things?”

“Everything to do with Hols concerns me.” He challenges him. “I told you this was a bad fucking idea from the start.”

I turn to Jack, and accuse him. “You knew about this?”

“Yeah, I knew about it, but I didn’t think this dickhead was actually stupid enough to go through with it.”

“I can’t believe you invited my parents, Cooper.”

“I ran into your mum at the store yesterday. It just kind of happened. I didn’t mean to, but, baby, I don’t see how this is a bad thing. Our kid should have grandparents in his life.”

“Not those grandparents, he shouldn’t!” I begin walking towards the house, but then I remember my parents are there, and I kinda hate Coop a little for bringing those people into my home. They don’t deserve to be there, not after what they did to me. I spin around and let him feel the brunt of my anger. “They kicked me out, Coop. They found out I was pregnant, and all alone, and they gave me an option: kill my baby, or get out.”

Okay, so maybe I forgot to mention that part to him
. He looks stricken. In fact, he just took a step back, like I’d actually hit him.

“Are you shitting me?”

“Does it look like I’m shitting you?”

“Hols, I didn’t know. I just thought it was time to mend fences.”

“Yeah, well some fences should probably stay broken,” I mutter, as I see my mum walk down the steps towards me. She opens her arms, like she expects me to go running into them. I can’t remember the last time my mother hugged me. Even as a kid she was always too busy with dolls, and her stupid sewing luncheons. My mum engulfs me in her arms, and I stiffen as she wraps them around me. I’m planted firmly against her breast, which smells like expensive perfume and too much fabric-softener. It makes me want to gag.

“We’ve missed you so much, Holly,” she says and I know this has to be for Coop’s benefit, because I saw her in the supermarket just last week and she turned and walked away from me rather than have our meeting become an embarrassing public spectacle. The weird thing was, when he and I dated, they weren’t too thrilled with that idea because “the music industry made next to no money and that’s not a solid foundation for a career”.
Guess his fat bank account is a solid enough future for them now, huh?

“Yeah, I can tell,” I mutter, and then my dad steps up and gives me a hug that’s every bit as awkward.

“Look at you,” Dad says as he steps back to take me in. He glances down at my belly and then he quickly looks away, like he’s embarrassed to be caught staring.

“I assume you’ve thought through of all your options?” Mum says.
Yeah, she’s all rainbows and kittens.

“I’m keeping him. There is no other option.”

“Him?” she asks—
and did she just fucking pale?
My mother just turned ashen talking about her grandchild.

“Honey, you know it’s not too late to consider adoption. There are hundreds of couples looking to adopt, and we can even help you get set up with an agency.”

“She said she’s keeping it,” Jack pipes up from behind me.

Mum glances over at him like he’s pond scum, or something she got stuck on her shoe. “Holly, you’re a nineteen-year-old girl.”

“I’m twenty, actually. Had a birthday a month ago.”

My mother just stares, her mouth gaping for a moment, and then she starts right up with the same crap again. “What are you going to do with a baby, Holly? You’re still a girl yourself.”

“This is bullshit,” Jack says. “You need to leave.”

Coop finally snaps out of his mental vacation, and says, “He’s right, you should leave. Holly and I are raising our baby together, and she’ll be taken care of.”

I just stare at him. “Seriously? I’ll be taken care of? What am I, a fucking doll?”

“Holly Harris,” my mum reprimands.

“You know what? Fuck you, Mum. Fuck both of you. It’s time for you and Dad to shove your prejudiced bullshit up your arse, because this kid is mine. I’m not giving him up for anyone, and I can tell you that even if I lose everything, and him and I end up living out of a goddamned cardboard box, I’m still gonna be a better fucking parent than both of you combined. Unlike me, my child is going to know what a hug is, and what love feels like and just how fucking special they are. So, you take your big, fuck-off SUV, and get it the fuck off my property, because I have a tub of ice cream to eat, and then I have to put up some baby crap in the nursery where your grandchild is going to sleep.”

“Holly,” Coop says sounding just like them.

“Coop, go home. Jack, bring the ice cream.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I stalk inside, and leave everyone standing there in my wake, including Jack, who of course is laughing his arse off as he waves to my parents and follows me up the steps.

It’s not until I’m inside and I hear their car drive away that I break down. I’m standing at the fridge, my head stuck in the freezer in an attempt to cool off, when I feel Jack come up behind me and wrap his arms around my waist. I stay stiff in his embrace for a moment and just breathe, willing the tears away, and then he rests his chin on the top of my head and I break down. I let him spin me around and wrap me in his big arms, his flat, hard stomach flush against my round, soft one.

“You did good, kid,” Jack says and I give a half-hearted laugh through my sobs. Then Coop clears his throat from the doorway, and Jack kisses my hair before pulling away.

“Can I have a word?” Coop asks.

“You can have several. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s gonna tear you a new one.” Jack chuckles, and then turns to me, “I’ll be in my room until you need me.”

I stare up at him and nod, wiping away tears that my parents definitely don’t deserve. “I meant what I said, Coop. I do not have a thing to say to you. Wait, actually, you know what? I do have something to say: screw you. You brought my parents here without talking to me first. Did you not stop to think there was a reason I wasn’t in contact with them? You think I want to be estranged from my folks while I’m pregnant? I’m terrified about this shit; it would be nice to be able to talk to my mum about it, but seeing as she’s a colossal bitch who gives the Ice Queen in Narnia a run for her money, that’s not going to happen. You brought my parents here, to my safe place, without talking to me, and opened up a whole fucking can of worms that had no right being opened.”

“I didn’t know, Holly.”

“Yeah, that’s just it. You didn’t know. Because you’ve never asked.”

“Would you have told me if I had? Or do you only confide in Jackson these days?”

“Jackson would never pull a stunt like that.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not more like him. I’m trying, Hols. I’m trying real hard to be okay with this thing you have with him.”

“Thing?” I ask, and then turn beet-red, because I’m reminded of the
thing
I had with him the other night in my room while Coop was out in the lounge room watching a movie. “I don’t have a thing with Jack. We’re friends. He’s—”

“Your friend” —he puts air quotations around the f word— “I know. I also know that up until recently, he was a friend who you liked to fuck, so excuse me if I’m not rock-solid with having the dude around. I’m trying real hard to make us a family, Holly, but you have to let me.”

“I think I’ve had about all the family I need right now, Coop.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need a day or two to myself.”

“To yourself? Or a day or two alone with Jackson?”

“That is not fair—”

“No, you know what’s unfair? Getting to be the sucker who tags along behind you when you’re tagging along behind him. You think I don’t see the way you look at him? Think I don’t feel the attraction between you? I used to be that for you; once upon a time, you looked at me the way you look at him.”

“That’s not true,” I say, but he’s already heading for the door. “Coop.”

“I’ve got some things I need to do back home, anyway. I’ll hop a flight to Sydney in the morning, and be back in a few days. I’m sorry I interfered with your parents. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” I say, and take my big-arse bowl of ice cream out to the lounge room.

Shortly after Coop leaves, Jackson comes out of his room. He flops down on the couch beside me and steals my spoon, which he points at the episode of
The Bold and the Beautiful
I’d pre-recorded and says, “Oh look, he chose Brooke this week.”

I laugh and snatch my spoon back, licking off the ice cream he hadn’t yet finished. “The woman with the golden snatch wins again.”

“Yeah, but I reckon he’s doing the doc on the side. They have chemistry they can’t ignore,” he says, but he’s no longer looking at the TV. He’s staring straight at me.