Birthday Girl

I move forward, planting my hands on the island. “She’s not sleeping with Cole. They’re not together anymore. It’s unfair.”

“It’s a bed,” Cole finally speaks up, sighing. “It’s just sleeping. We can handle it.”

I look to Jordan, waiting for her to put up some kind of fight and help me out here, but all she does is raise her eyes, meeting mine and saying nothing. Like I’m the one letting this happen, and she’s waiting for me to do something.

If she’s not going to back me up, then I look stupid, fighting for her honor. She’s a big girl. They won’t understand why I’m the only one protesting.

And I’m scared now.

I want her and Cole to reconcile and be friends again eventually, but I don’t want them together, alone, all night. They were a couple, dammit. He knows her body as well as I do. What if they start feeling what they felt when they first got together and everything was good? What if she starts thinking she needs someone…younger? They have history.

I’m not going to be jealous of my son. We’re not competing. But he’s known her a hell of a lot longer. What if they talk and reconnect?

It’s on the tip of my tongue to just blurt it out. She’s mine, and she’s not sharing a bed with another man.

But I look at Lindsay and the trainwreck she’s been, and how, in the last six years, he has repeatedly taken her side. She always played the victim and guilted him into standing up for her, and he will stand with her again, because he knows I can stand on my own. It would make her year to find out I was screwing Jordan behind his back. She’s just looking for something to hate, and I’m not putting Jordan in the middle of that.

I drop my eyes, barely able to unclench my jaw. “Jordan, there’s blankets on the couch,” I say quietly. “Let me know if you get cold.”

I start to walk out of the room, but then I hear Jordan finally speak up. “No, Cole’s right,” she replies. “It’s a bed, it’s sleeping, and it’s only for a night or two. I’m cool with it.”

I stop and look over at her, but she’s just focused ahead, calm as can be. I squeeze my right fist and stalk out of the room, heading upstairs. It’s barely seven and a Friday night, but if I don’t get space, I’ll do something stupid.

Like pick the fight I so desperately want with her right now in front of everyone.

Sometime after midnight I fall asleep. I was on the verge of giving us away half a dozen times tonight, but the risk of regretting coming clean was too great. Not now. Not in front of my ex.

This is a fling. A dirty, sordid fling, right? At least that’s what everyone will think.

And it would break Cole’s heart. I’m sure he expects her to move at some point. He hasn’t been too concerned with her since he left, after all.

But knowing I swept in, played with one of his toys, and knowing there’s a chance I might make her happier…. Yeah, speaking from experience, there’s always a part of you that feels you have more of a right to a former girlfriend than anyone else, even after the breakup. He’ll see this as a betrayal. As me taking her side and trying to do better where he couldn’t.

And he’d be right. Every feeling he’d have I would understand.

I’ll come clean. Eventually. She’ll realize I’m too old—too settled—and she’ll want more. It won’t last.

Knowing that, though, doesn’t stop me from wanting her. From missing her and needing her.

The bed dips behind me, and I blink my eyes open, realizing someone else is in the room. It takes me a moment to register, but then relief floods me, and I reach my hand back, pulling her into me.

Jordan.

But then I furrow my brow, my heart jackhammering as

Victoria’s Secret’s Heavenly wafts through my nostrils, and I feel a leg that doesn’t have the same curves and tone I’ve grown to crave every day.

Popping up, I turn my head and see a familiar outline at my side but not the one I want. “What the hell?”

I whip off the covers and turn on the lamp, sitting up and staring at Lindsay. She’s wearing a red silk nightie.

What the hell does she think she’s doing?

“Are you serious?” She pins me with a surprised look like that wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. “Don’t pretend like you don’t remember the drill. Pike. When a sure thing shows up half-naked and horny in your bed, you don’t turn them down.”

She leans in, pressing her body into mine and going for my neck with her mouth.

“Stop.” I rise from the bed and grab my jeans from the chair, sliding them on. “I’m not that fucking desperate.”