“I can’t do this,” Toby said, turning around.
Tabby let go of her tits. “What the hell, man?”
“We need to talk, and until you stop it with all this Jessica Rabbit shit, I’m not gonna look at you.”
“What are you talking about, you melon?”
“I think we should go upstairs and have a cup of tea and?—"
“I don’t want a cup of tea,” she snapped, probably louder than was necessary. “What’s the fucking deal? Why are you being lame? Fuck me.”
Toby held up a finger. “Passing over the fact you think I’m being lame, I didn’t want to say it like this, but Noah and I talked.”
Tabby felt dangerously close to throwing up. She pressed a hand to her solar plexus, willing everything to stay down. “What? How? About what?”
“About us. Noah figured out we were hooking up, and he came around to talk to me a week ago?—”
“He fucking didwhat now!?”
The timeline of Toby’s backslide into nice-boy behaviour suddenly made absolute sense. Noah, the giant cockblocking cuntlord, must have put the hard word on Toby, and he’d refused to see her or be even slightly mean since. Anger tore through Tabby like wildfire, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to claw her brother-in-law’s eyes out. He had been devastated since Nix’s latest miscarriage, and rightfully so, but this crossed a million fucked up lines.
“What the fuck does Noah thinks he’s doing, keeping tabs on me?” she asked Toby’s back. “I’m twenty-fucking-seven, and he can go fuck himself!”
Toby turned, his expression grave. “He’s worried about you, and I don’t blame him. Again, I didn’t want to say it like this, but he told me that… well...”
Nausea swam through Tabby’s torso, and she pressed her stomach harder. “What? What did that Judas fuckface tell you?”
A muscle ticked in Toby’s jaw, but his pale blue eyes were gentle. “That your mother’s in town. That she’s been… he said she was basically stalking you.”
Tabby saw Sam’s face as they had walked toward the Albert Street café. She’d been pale as a sheet but quiet.
“You don’t seem angry,” Tabby had said.
“I’m not,” Sam replied. “That woman doesn’t deserve my anger.”
She returned to her body, still standing in Toby Tennant’s foyer.
“Yeah,” she told him. “We saw that bitch today and it’s over now and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tabby—”
“No.” She put her hands on her hips. “No ‘Tabby.’ Either take me rough like I asked, or I’m leaving.”
Toby looked her up and down, genuine hurt etched all over his face.
She knew this wasn’t right. Anything they did now would be tainted with the stinging tail of her ultimatum, but she wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t. She needed to release all the emotion boiling up her insides. And sex with Toby was the best way she knew.
Unwillingly, she returned to the Albert Street café, sitting down in a booth between Sam and Nix. Her sisters had flanked her the entire walk there, standing on either side of her like sentries. While Sam looked numb, Nix had been poised and commanding—vibrating power from head to Louboutin-clad toes. A Valkyrie preparing to do battle. Her miscarriage hadn’t broken her. If anything, she had drawn strength from her pain. She’d sat straight as an arrow, one hand on Tabby’s arm, the other on her purse, watching the door for Jo.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she told Toby again, but her voice seemed to be coming from a faraway place.
They’d all ordered coffee but been unable to have more than a few token sips.
“She’s late,” Nix muttered. “I said four on the dot.”
“Oh, the runaway mother’s bad at timekeeping?” Sam replied. “Strike me fucking surprised.”
It was almost five when Jo walked through the door. She wore a navy jumper and black jeans and looked so much like Sam and Nix that Tabby nearly puked right into her coffee. She’d had to excuse herself and go to the bathroom three times to throw up while they’d waited. Sam and Nix accompanied her, as though worried their mum might spring out of a sanitary bin and snatch her.
