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But only for a moment.
By the time his body hit the dirt of the Swan River shore, Wystan was already dead.
But fate wasn't finished with him yet.
FOUR
Tacey knew she should just get going, but she slowed as she reached Callie's new gargoyle statue. How she'd carried the monstrous thing into the house, Tacey had no idea. Maybe he wasn't actually stone? Almost without thinking, she reached around to squeeze what she had to admit was a perfectly sculpted butt cheek. It felt warm and hard, like stone that had been in the sun, but it also had a little give to it, like that special foam Rochelle had used when she made her cosplay armour. So if he was actually foam instead of stone, she should be able to push it into Callie's room so Rory didn't come home to see the monster in all his naked glory.
Yet when she gave him an experimental push, he didn't move at all. She put her full weight to him, shoving against his side because Callie would not forgive her if she broke off that enormous dick, but he didn't budge. Maybe he was stone, and he was just warm because he'd been standing in the sun.
"You'd better hide him before I get home from dinner, Callie," she muttered as she headed for the front door. She did not want to spend her evening explaining penises to a six-year-old.
Of course, Rory wouldn't be Rory if she didn't want Tacey to explain something.
"Mum, who's One Direction? Grandma said you loved them. I thought you were only allowed to love one man, not five. How can you love five men?"
For a moment, Tacey wished she could explain stone penises instead.
She took a deep breath. "They were a band when I was in high school, sweetie. I loved their music, not them. I never met any of them. I only saw them on TV. Kind of like you love the Mandalorian."
"But I want to marry the Mandalorian. You can't marry all five men. Then I'd have five daddies, and you said even one daddy is more than we need. We don't have enough bedrooms for five of them."
Tacey looked askance at her mother.
Mum shrugged. "She was looking for more drawing paper in your desk, and found a stack of your One Direction posters. I took them off the wall, but I didn't throw them away, in case you still wanted them, so when she came to ask me about them, I told her."
"Well, you can safely throw them away now. While I might not turn Harry down if he ever asked me, I doubt there's any chance of me meeting, let alone marrying any of them. Especially if Rory's going to want astronaut training so she can fly her own spaceship in the future, just like the Mandalorian." Tacey ruffled Rory's hair.
Rory reared back, horrified. For a moment, Tacey thought she might actually bite her – something she hadn't done since she was a toddler. "Mummy! Will you buy me a spaceship, too? When I'm all grown up and a bounty hunter?"
Tacey's mum's eyes grew wide. "That does not sound appropriate."
Oh, not again. "Then you should tell that to Octavia, not me. She's the one who got Rory into Star Wars and all the spinoffs." But Mum would never believe Octavia could be at fault. She believed she'd brought up Octavia too perfectly for that.
"You could always move back home so we can help you take care of her. You could go to university like your sister and make something of yourself," Mum began hopefully.
She'd better shut down that train of thought before Mum got any further. Tacey shook her head. "No, Mum, I'm fine running the café and living in Bell House with the other girls. It's lovely of you to have Rory over for a sleepover occasionally, but this is the life I want. I'm not Octavia."
Perfect Octavia, the second child they'd done everything right with, after messing up with her. Her parents had never said it aloud, but Tacey knew they'd thought it. If they knew half the things Octavia had done, both while she'd still lived at home and now she'd moved out...but she'd rather let Mum believe the pretty lie than betray Octavia's trust.
"But now Octavia's out working so much, she doesn't have time to help you take care of Rory. If you moved back home..." Mum began hopefully.
"Rory's at school five days a week now, Mum. And Octavia's only working a temporary contract. When it's finished, she'll be back working at the café with me in between developing the game she's working on."
"If she wasn't helping you so much, maybe she'd have finished that game of hers and sold it for millions to some gaming company. You can't rely on your sister's help for everything, Tacita Bell. She does have her own life to live, you know."
As if Octavia would ever let Tacey stand in the way of her ambitions. Octavia had picked out the property where they'd opened the café because of the perfect studio upstairs. Tacey insisted she work the occasional shift in the café – paid, of course, because she wasn't that stingy – in exchange for free rent upstairs, and Octavia had instantly agreed. If Octavia wanted to change the agreement, she only had to ask. As it was, Tacey had had to ask Octavia's permission if Rochelle could stay there while Octavia was working at the mine site up north. If it had been anyone but Rochelle, Octavia probably wouldn't have allowed it, but they'd been friends at university, working together on some secret film project with Rochelle's bloodsucker of an ex-boyfriend. Until he'd hit it big with his video streaming channel, and left the girls to finish the project without any help from him.
Rochelle was much better off with Ben, in Tacey's opinion.
"Are you listening to me, Tacita Bell?" Mum demanded.
"Yes, Mum," Tacey lied.
Mum rolled her eyes. She might not have been the perfect mother – and as a mother herself, Tacey wasn't sure if anyone could actually claim that title – but she knew when Tacey wasn't telling the truth. "Come set the table for dinner. Aurora helped prepare it, you know."
Rory picked exactly that moment to start listening to their conversation. "Don't call me that! That's a princess name! I am not some silly princess! I'm going to be the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, and I can bring you in warm or..."
