Kelly appeared at my door, hair disheveled, blanket in her hand.
“Dad?”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, frowning as she made her way into my bedroom and stood by the bed.
“New house,” she said simply, and it was all the explanation I needed.
I made space for her to crawl into bed next to me. She shifted and turned until she found a comfortable position, then pulled her blanket over her shoulders.
I laid back and stroked her hair until her breathing slowed. I envied how quickly she could fall asleep sometimes, although it was a trait I wished she had had back when she was a toddler. Back when putting her down usually meant that I would fall asleep first and she would wake me up every few minutes, as if it were some kind of game to her.
I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. After her death, I had dreamt of Janice almost on a daily basis, and I usually woke up feeling a lot worse than when I had gone to sleep. It was no secret that I missed her, but the dreams made finding closure so much harder. Luckily, those dreams had become rarer over the years, but every now and then, that one memory would pop up. That night of wine and games and laughter, when we were our happiest. It was three weeks after that night that we had found out Janice was pregnant, and to this day, that night was the one memory that cut through me the worst.
Kelly shifted beside me, and for the first time in a long while, I longed for Janice to be here with us. To see the beautiful girl her daughter had grown up to be. To take care of the idiot her husband had become.
To keep the two of us from losing our minds completely and tearing at each other’s throats. To share the moments when we laughed so hard, Kelly would roll onto her back and kick her feet into the air.
My chest clenched, and I felt tears well up behind my closed lids. I fought them back, took a deep breath, and let it out in a long and broken sigh.
I fell asleep a few minutes later, and dreamt of nothing at all.
Chapter 10: Jenni
I couldn’t stop thinking about Alex Logan.
I had tried to sleep early, grateful for the fact that Garth had not passed by as promised. On any other night, I might have been upset, angry even, although it would be fairly unlikely for him to actually do what he said he would. A part of me had expected him to show up and break the mold, only because he had seen me out with the Logans. Garth had a habit of marking his territory, and spending the night at my place would have been an opportune way to show me who wore the pants in what we were kidding ourselves into thinking was a relationship.
Thankfully, though, Garth hadn’t passed by, and I had spent the night tossing and turning in bed before finally giving into the fact that I was not going to get any sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see Alex. Hazel eyes boring into mine, strong hands holding my waist and pulling me closer to him. I imagined running my hands over what I could only imagine was a perfectly chiseled body, and I caught myself crossing my legs just to calm the heat coming from in between them.
I had spent most of the night in front of the computer, Casper cuddled at me feet as I wrote. Chapter after chapter, the words just flowing as if I had no control over them. I was on cruise control, typing away like a mad woman, and all the time using Alex as the image for my protagonist. The sex scene I wrote was one of the hottest I had ever conceived, and I had stopped at least three or four times to cool down before continuing. In my head, Alex was the alpha male and I was the innocent damsel in distress, and although the story I was writing was borderline cliché, it hadn’t been hard imagining the two of us as the characters rolling about under the covers in my story.
It was only when the sun had come up did I find myself crawling into bed and falling asleep, only to be woken up two hours later to the incessant ringing of my phone and Hank demanding to know where the hell I was.
“I need to talk to you.” My father’s gruff voice startled me, and I loo
ked up from the finance sheets I was revising from the day before. I was exhausted, eyes drooping, the numbers in front of me blurring into each other and making absolutely no sense.
The morning crowd had already begun to gather, and most of the tables were occupied. Three waitresses were dashing back and forth between the guests and the kitchen, calling out orders and refilling coffee. It was the usual bustle of a busy day, and although I was supposed to be wide awake, keeping an eye on everything going on, I was lost in my own little world.
Something my dad was aware of, especially after giving me a look that would have had me cowering into a corner if I hadn’t been this tired.
“Sure, dad, what’s up?”
Hank shook his head and nodded to the back, a gesture I knew meant he had serious business to discuss with me. I braced myself and followed him past the kitchen and the storage room, then into his office.
The small space that was occupied by a desk and filing cabinet was barely enough for the two of us together, and I had to press myself against the wall just to close the door.
“I’m not going to beat around the bush, Jenni,” Hank said, sitting down behind his desk. I always found it amusing how big he looked in his chair, his burly figure almost falling over the sides as he rested his arms on the desk. “I’m disappointed, and I have a feeling you know why.”
“Sorry, dad,” I replied. “I didn’t mean to be late. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“That’s not what I was talking about,” Hank said. “Although, I’m guessing both subjects are related.”
I frowned in confusion and waited for my father to keep going. He had a habit of pausing for effect, and at times like this, that was more than just annoying.
“Garth Liston,” Hank said.
I felt my heart drop, knowing that the conversation I had hoped to avoid was now upon me. “What about him?” I asked, feigning disinterest.