His tone was gentler when he spoke again, tweed giving way to cardigan. ‘I said some awful things to my sister too, once upon a time,’ he said. ‘Things she absolutely shouldn’t forgive me for. But… well, you’ve met her.’
‘It took youyearsto get past it, though. Years and years.’ The thought of this ache in my chest lasting more than a decade made me want to scream into the pillow and never stop.
‘Yes, it did, because I was young and dumb and didn’t apologise. Surely you of all people remember what I was like when I was younger, Shaw.’
I sniffed again.
‘You’re much smarter than I was,’ he said.
He wasn’t wearing his glasses, but somehow, unerringly, the pad of one of his fingers found the space between my knuckles in the dark, a feather-light touch. ‘If Fiona and I can sort out our shit, then you and Chess can definitely sort out yours. Just give her some time to calm and down and adjust to’ – his finger tapped between my knuckles, once, twice, three times, making my heart skip a beat in its haste to match his rhythm – ‘this.’
A long breath escaped me. It felt so urgent, the need to fix things, the ache in my chest so awful – but of course, along with everything else, I owed Chess what she’d asked for.
Time. Alone. Without me.
I inhaled and exhaled again, long and slow.
Then I turned my hand over on the pillow, so I could lace my fingers through Jonah’s. Hopefully, he would understand why – but if not, I’d come up with an explanation in the morning, once my head was clearer.
‘Thanks for yelling at me, Fisher,’ I said quietly. ‘I needed it.’
His fingers clasped mine, dextrous and certain.
‘Any time, Shaw,’ he murmured. ‘Any time.’
Chapter TwelveJonah
I woke the next morning to the soft trill of my alarm. Light was streaming through the gaps in the curtains, a sunbeam hitting me directly in the eye, and my wife was sprawled across my back, dead to the world.
I had not moved in the night. I didn’t like sleeping on my front, but the terror that I’d wake up beside Sadie with a visible erection had apparently paralysed me even in slumber.
She, though, had moved. Our fingers had been the only part of us touching when we’d fallen asleep. At some point, however, she had decided that my bony back was a superior cushion to the many hotel pillows, and draped herself over me like a quilt.
Her head was resting just above one of my shoulder blades. I could feel all ten of her fingerprints where they rested against my skin, one hand on the nape of my neck, the other on my waist. Her body was angled at a diagonal to mine, her breasts squashed directly into the middle of my back.
And if I thought too hard about that fact, then Project Control Your Inner Teenager, Jonah, Absolutely No Boners would be a complete disaster.
‘Shaw,’ I whispered, twitching my shoulders to rouse her and reaching over with one arm to turn the alarm off.
‘Mmm?’
There were a few more glorious, sleepy seconds of her warm weight pressing me down into the bed before she leapt off me like I was made of knives. ‘Oh, fuck, Jonah, I’m sorry!’
I sat up slowly, reaching for my glasses on the bedside table, wishing her eyesight were more like mine, because surely,surelyit was written all over me how little I had wanted her to move. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’
Thankfully, she told me to take the first shower (‘I need to pick the right first-day outfit’). I managed to escape to the bathroom before she noticed that Project Control was in catastrophic failure. I could only hope she didn’t hear the strangled sound I only managed to swallow half of when it failed completely in the shower – or if she did, she’d just assume I’d stubbed my toe on something.
We were going to have to find a place of our ownsoon, I decided, flicking through rental listings on my phone when it was Sadie’s turn in the bathroom, earmarking a few with Friday evening inspections that we could take a look at before dinner at Fi’s tomorrow. How was I ever going to be able to concentrate at work when I knew that I would be going to bed with my wife that night?
Sadie had clearly had the same impulse as me when it came to picking her outfit: armour. I’d put on my lucky tweed blazer, the one I’d worn to all my job interviews.33She was wearing a black jumpsuit, cinched at the waist, which I’d seen her wear at milestone events before: our PhD completion seminar, a TV interview she’d done on romance fiction for Valentine’s Day two years ago, a union meeting where we’d voted on whether to strike, dinner with my parents.
‘You look nice,’ I offered, instinctively standing up when she came out of the bathroom like we were in a nineteenth-century novel and then immediately feeling awkward about it.
She cast a critical eye over me. ‘You look like you’re going to be hot. It’s supposed to be a million degrees today.’
I chuckled self-consciously. ‘And here I thought my wardrobe was going to be perfect for the Tasmanian climate.’
I was prepared for her to take aim at my arsenal of tweed and knitwear and pull the trigger, but she didn’t. Instead, she bit her bottom lip, brow furrowed slightly.
