Enjoy Your Stay (8 page)

Ana sprints between Bob and Elijah. “Dad,” she says, “consenting adult here, remember?”

“That’s my fucking daughter, Cade.”

“Whath a thex tape?”

“Sammy, stop watching it. Go to your room.”

“What didth I do?”

“Just go to your room!”

I’m about two seconds from peeing myself, but I just can’t stop. I don’t even think I’m laughing any more so much as being hysterical. Maybe I’ve unlocked a superpower higher than humour.

Ana glares daggers at me. “This isn’t funny.”

Jack’s trying to cover his eyes and ears, and make his way over to the TV at the same time. He stumbles into the coffee table and almost topples. Which of course makes me laugh harder.

I stand and watch the images on the screen as I laugh, and then I start to really get into what’s going on.

“Damn, girl, your man has some rhythm. And some length. Holy shit, Cade, you’re hung like a—”

“Dead man,” Bob finishes as he grabs Elijah’s ear, and yanks him toward him, pushing Ana out of the way. He delivers a hard swift punch to Elijah’s gut, and then another, until Cade is on his knees.

“Dad!” Ana screams.

Jack’s still stumbling around, running into the furniture, and Elijah is on the floor cupping his family jewels. I walk over to the TV and attempt to pull the flash drive out of the side, but Jack chooses that moment to stumble into me. He goes down in a heap, and I trip over and land on my arse on top of him.

Ana’s busy chewing her father out for punching her boyfriend in the nuts, and I’m trying to unseat myself from Jack’s lap when Elijah’s voice comes from the speakers, “That’s it, baby girl. Suck my cock. Oh, fuck!”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” Sammy pipes up from behind the couch.

Bob looks like he’s ready to kill someone. He glares at both Ana and Elijah, and then throws his arms up and storms out the front door, leaving the heavy scent of bourbon and cigarettes in his wake. I scramble up off Jack, and yank the cord from the wall.

“Go to your room, Sammy,” Ana yells.

“But ith boring in there.” Ana gives him a look that says her patience has reached its limit, and he stomps off towards the bedrooms.

“And you,” she says to Elijah, wrenching the USB stick from the TV, and throwing it on the floor in front of him. “What the hell was that doing in the TV where my brother could find it?”

“I’m sorry, baby.” He coughs, and get to his knees, hugging his abdomen. “I watched it earlier. I guess I just forgot to remove it.”

“You watched it earlier … when?”

“When everyone was out.”

“You watched our sex tape alone?” She gives him this little smile that makes me roll my eyes. Those two can’t even stay mad at one another for more than five minutes. It’s sickening, really.

He shrugs, and snatches it up off the floor. “It’s hot. I watch it all the time.”

“Elijah Cade, I think that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Does that mean you’ll give me a blow job?”

“No. That means I won’t make you go and talk my dad down from the ledge.”

“Thank fuck, because I really don’t wanna be punched in the nut-sack again.”

“He’s still going to string you up by your balls for this. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But hey, at least he’s out of bed before noon.”

“Dude, you are so fucking dead,” Jack says from the couch.

“Oh come on, man. My girlfriend looks like that” —he indicates to Ana’s tits and arse as she leaves the room— “and you expect me not to make a sex tape, and immortalise that shit forever?”

“She’s my cousin, you fuck-rag.”

“And yet I’m still not sorry.” He flops down on the couch, and kisses his flash drive before tucking it inside his pocket. “I’m still gonna be watching this thing when my balls are hanging down around my ankles.

“If I see that shit on RedTube, I’m gonna kick your arse.”

“Please. As if I’d share this with any one. It’s for my eyes only.”

“And the whole family’s, apparently. Nice Johnson—” I mutter, and then baulk when I realise what I just said. “—I mean job, Cade. Nice Job.”

Yeesh
. Is it wrong that I need a cold shower after seeing my best friend and her boyfriend play hide the sausage? I glance at Jackson, who’s watching me closely. His brows practically reach his hairline and his mouth is twisted into a sneer.
Yep. Completely and utterly wrong
.
Stupid pregnancy.

H
ERE’S THE
thing about birthdays and being pregnant. As a rule, the exclusion of alcohol tends to make them pretty suck-tastic. The week leading up to my birthday, the mood in the house had been pretty uneventful. Bob and Sammy were still occupying our spare room, Ana was overcompensating and playing mother to everyone, Elijah was just … more Elijah-ish than usual, and Jackson and I alternated between tearing one another’s clothes off, and wanting to junk-punch one another.

I’d finally gotten my appetite back. I could eat almost everything without wanting to toss my cookies over the lounge room floor. My morning sickness was completely gone, and for the first time in my twenty-one
weeks
of pregnancy, I was really showing. And there was the problem. It didn’t seem to bother Jack. I mean, in the past I’d felt more bloated from eating one bowl of pasta too many, but every time I shed my clothes, that little bump was right there, mocking me. Oh, and did I mention I was celebrating my birthday without alcohol? Yeah, so not how I planned to spend my twentieth.

I hadn’t planned on a camping trip to Whoop-Whoop, either, but here we are in Jack’s Ute, with both the tray and the interior full of shit that’s apparently necessary for survival in the bush. Elijah insisted on taking the bike—probably because it meant Ana would have to wrap her body around him like a monkey the whole way.
Great. Now we’ll be in for even more sex-capdes.

I insisted on taking my car, but that was quickly vetoed by everyone, and their dog. Still it’s kinda nice to be out of the house, and away from all the things that depress me. Like the fact that Bob and Sammy are still grieving, and that Ana and I no longer have jobs on account of the diner going kapow.

I glance over at Jackson. He’s munching out on Smith’s chips, and singing along to some crappy music on the radio. And he’s completely oblivious to the fact that he’s so drop-freaking-dead gorgeous when he’s letting go. Not that he’s ever really been uptight about anything; more that when he’s not “on”, when he’s not trying to get into someone’s pants, or lead them to make stupid decisions because he’s so very clever with his hands and mouth, he’s just kind of … perfect.

Then, of course, he goes and opens his fat mouth.

“You lovin’ on old Jack there, sweetheart?” he asks, glancing back and forth between me and the road.

I smile snidely. “No. You just have chips on your face.”

He runs his hand across his mouth, and over the stubble on his chin, brushing away crumbs that aren’t there. I love it when he forgets to shave, and the biting sensation of his facial hair against my soft lips as he’s going down on me. I could come just thinking about it. I squeeze my legs together until the seam of my shorts grazes my clit. Then I close my eyes, and slowly shift my legs this way and that, enough to feel the heat in my belly unfurling.

“Holy shit, Hols, you okay?”

My eyes snap open. My heart races, and heat floods my cheeks. I glare at him. “Yeah. Just tired is all.”

“Nice try, sweetheart. I know your tired face, and that’s not it. That’s your
I need to be fucked
face. You want me to pull the car over?”

“No!” I say, a little too quickly. “Just keep driving.”

“Alright, but I gotta warn you, darlin’, you keep writhing that way, and I’m gonna need to pull the car over and knock one out myself.” He shrugs. “Or fuck you senseless.”

His words run like an electric current through my veins, sparking all my senses to life and making my whole body hum. I rest my head against the seatback and close my eyes. We have to stop doing this. Before it becomes the kind of situation neither of us can walk away from. I have to stop giving in to this ridiculous connection we have. I know he cares about me as a friend, and he wants me the way a lover should, but Jack’s not cut out for this family thing. The further into this pregnancy I get, the more I can see a future with him, which just makes no sense at all. Put aside the sex, and we really can’t stand one another. That’s not much to base a relationship on.

Goddamn it. Why? Why the hell am I even thinking about this?

I don’t want a relationship with Jackson Rowe. I wanna bang his brains out all over our house, and then I want him to go away, so I don’t have to stare at his pretty face until the next time I want to have the brains fucked out of me.

“Just drive, Jackarse.” I sigh.

He looks over me with a troubled expression, frowns, and then mutters, “Yes ma’am,” before whistling along to the radio.

Always with the fucking whistling.

Bastard.

Two hours of driving through the lush rainforest, and we pull into a deserted camping ground beside Elijah’s bike. As soon as Jack shuts off the engine I’m out of the car, and I’m practically kissing the soft grass beneath me. The twist and turns leading all the way up to the Nightcap National Park was one thing, but he had to slow the car to around 10km
/h
on several occasions to avoid giving the baby brain damage as we bumped over potholes on the unsealed road. Ana comes over and hands me a water bottle as I sit on the grass, and the boys talk smack about getting the tents set up before we lose too much daylight.

We’re pretty much smack-bang in the middle of summer, so we have daylight savings on our side, but night still sets in cold and quick in the rainforest, meaning we really only have an hour or two to set up camp.

I should get up and help
. Ana unloads the Eskies onto a nearby picnic table. Jackson and Elijah pull tents from the back of the Ute, and argue over where each one should go, but at this stage I couldn’t be arsed, so I sit back and watch Jack’s muscles bunch with exertion as he shakes our little two-man tent out of its bag. Poles and pegs go flying everywhere—and no it’s not weird that we’re sharing, where else are we going to sleep, with Ana and Elijah?

Jack begins clearing some of the sticks and debris from our site as he and Elijah debate where to put the tent. He crouches down, and picks up a hollowed-out termite-ridden log, and tosses it off into the bushes beside the camp. Then he grabs the tent, and lays it out flat. I’m taking stealthy snapshots of his arse in those jeans—for future spank bank purposes, of course—when I see something move behind him. I tap the phone to zoom the camera in around his legs, and the biggest wombat I’ve ever seen comes barrelling out of the burrow that Jack just removed the entrance to.

“Uh, Jack?” Elijah shouts, just as the beast bashes his huge head into Jack’s legs. Jack goes down in a heap, and Elijah throws the tent pegs and turns tail, running toward me as the wombat sets him in his sights. I’m laughing so hard it takes me a good thirty seconds to switch my camera from snapshot mode onto record.

Ana is pulling a giant watermelon out to set on the picnic table when she sees Elijah running. The watermelon flies out of her hands, and cracks open on the cement, splattering all over the Esky and up her legs.