Page 58 of Saving Ren

I watch as Cooper joins Zac in Coop’s office doorway. I didn’t realise they were both still here and thought I’d managed to avoid an interrogation.

“What are your plans for the weekend? You wanna catch up Saturday night or something?” My eldest brother asks.

I give my keys another go around my finger as I formulate an answer.

“I’m not sure what I’m doing yet. Can I let you know in the morning?” I ask.

“Am I invited?” Dani asks from behind her desk.

“No,” Zac responds. “Grown-ups only, you don’t qualify.”

“Suck my dick,” Dani flips Zac her middle finger as she replies.

“Children, you are all more than welcome. Dad and Jackie are coming over, so I thought. . .”

“Ah shit, just remembered, I’ve got something on,” I tell my brother.

I watch as he lets out a long breath before leaning into the door frame and folding his arms across his chest and crossing his long legs at the ankle.

“I’m sorry, mate, he’s coming down here to play golf tomorrow and wanted to catch up. I had no choice,” my brother apologises.

“I understand, it is what it is, and it’s not your fault,” I tell him honestly.

“You and Dad fallen out?” Dani asks. “Or hasshedone something to piss you off?”

“Nope, just busy,” I lie.

“Got plans with the non-girlfriend?” Zac asks. I know he’s asked in order to deflect Dani’s enquiry, but his new favourite phrase he’s taken to using to describe Lauren is beginning to piss me off.

“You still sleeping in the guest bedroom?” Cooper joins with a question of his own.

“None of your fucking business,” I tell them both. “I’m done. Enjoy your weekend, everyone.”

As I reach the door that’ll lead me out of the building and the refuge of my truck, Zac calls my name, and I turn.

“You’ll be needing a wheelbarrow to carry your balls in here Monday, they’re gonna be so blue.”

I flip him my middle finger and keep walking towards the door.

“He doesn’t have any balls. He handed them straight to Lauren the second he laid eyes on her in the pub last week.” Ignoring the pair of stand-up comedians I’m related to, I make my way to my truck.

Once I hit the highway towards home, I call Ren.

“Ello, my lover,” she answers with an accent sounding something like the farmer’s wife in the ‘Babe’ movie. I both shudder and smile at the same time.

“Chance’d be a fine fucking thing.”

Two weeks! Tonight will mark fourteen nights Lauren has been staying with me. Apart from a couple of times I’ve climbed into bed beside her when she’s been having another one of her nightmares, it’s been fourteen nights she’s slept in my bed while I’ve laid downstairs in the guest bedroom,notsleeping.

“Well, play your cards right, Mr Wild, and you just might get lucky.”

“Really? And I thought coming home to you every night for the past few weeks already made me the luckiest bloke on the Peninsula.”

I hear someone making a gagging sound in the background.

“Which member of the coven can I look forward to the company of this evening?” I ask.

“You’re on speaker, Wild. I heard that,” Jo calls out.