Err on the Side of Violence: Terribly Acronymed Detective Club Series (Book 3)

Chapter Fifty-Three: Joe, Monday

Joe discovered one snag in the arrangement that brought Rachel, Al and Emma into their house. It wasn't that Al was in the house; Joe could stomach the man if there were two floors between them. It was the fact that Lauren and he couldn't share a bed, not after everything that had happened. 

Both of them agreed on this fact. Lauren seemed unrepentant and even less inclined to forgive him than she'd been at the beginning of Sunday. Something about what had happened at breakfast had infuriated her; placing Joanie next to him had backfired spectacularly and driven her to seek comfort in Al, causing the blowup from which they seemed unable to recover. By the time they'd finished setting Rachel and Al up in the rec room, moving the pool table against the wall and putting down air mattresses they'd used in previous camping trips, making sure they had pillows, blankets and linens, and setting up Emma in Naomi's room and saying goodnight to the kids, they were barely speaking to each other. Lauren had only taken the time to use the shower and change into fresh pyjamas before she was heading for the door of their bedroom. 

"Where are you going?" he asked her.

She turned and said, "I'll take the couch. I'm smaller than you."

"You don't have to do that."

"Yes, I do. You and Al need two floors between you for comfort."

"And if you take the couch, that's just one floor between you and Al."

"You forget Rachel's there."

Joe crossed his arms and said, "I don't think she's the buffer you want me to believe she is."

She looked startled at this. "She was as angry as you were to see us together in her room."

"Still, I think she's more inclined to forgive you than I am."

She crossed her arms and asked, "What do you think will happen if I go down there? Do you think I'll go down to the basement and we'll have a threesome in the rec room, on those thin air mattresses?"

He blinked in surprise. "No, of course not. Jesus, Lauren, the things you come up with. When did you get so crude?"

"What, you've never thought about it? You, me and Joanie, maybe?"

"Uh, no. It never even crossed my mind."

"Or maybe you, me and Rachel, since it seems more happened out there than I thought."

He gasped in amazement at her audacity. "I'll tell you if you tell me what you and Al were doing in their room." He could have also mentioned the day Naomi thought she saw her car at their house, but he didn't have enough proof to have the upper hand on that.

She glared at him for a long moment before saying, "Goodnight, Joe," and leaving.

It was a hard night. He barely got any sleep. As much as they agreed they couldn't share a bed, his brain hadn't informed his body of this, because it still felt the lack of her little weight beside him; the bed felt too large now, the space where she should have been too empty and cold. He kept tossing and turning, thinking about Lauren and Al in that room, and then Rachel and him in a ditch on the side of the road, and how no one was innocent among them. The secrets and the lies were tearing him apart. It was ironic that, with all the times he was with Joanie, it was the one time with Rachel he felt most guilty about, simply because it hadn't happened with Lauren's sanction; he still loved and respected her enough to know how important it was to have it. Why, then, did she not afford him the same consideration?

Because she knew he would never sanction Al in her bed. Never. It was one thing for her to have Rachel; she was another woman. But not another man. Even though he knew Lauren could turn it around and call him a hypocrite for welcoming another woman -- two, in fact -- into his bed, it still wouldn't change his mind.