Chapter 4
Jason
“Get off my fucking island.” I drop the two bags I just pulled out of my dad’s room at Rowan’s feet where she’s standing just inside the front door and then turn back for the rest.
“Jason.” Her hand wraps around my arm, but I don’t stop. “I know that sounded bad. I know.”
“Did it?” In Dad’s room, I grab two more bags without looking at her.
How much did she bring?
“Can we just stop and talk a minute?” Her eyes are pleading, and again she’s got her fingers on my arm, the light contact sending signals to my brain that don’t mix with all the shit I just learned.
She’s here to sell my cabin.
This was her idea.
She’s still as beautiful as she was at fifteen, seventeen, twenty. More so.
But she’s not the person I thought she was.
“Let me explain.”
“No.” I shrug her off.
I drop the bags with the others by the front door. “Take what you can carry tonight, and I’ll have the rest delivered tomorrow.”
I march over to the kitchen and rifle through the junk drawer until I find the relic I’m looking for.
Rowan comes up beside me. “I understand what a blindside this must be.”
But I’m already headed back. “Ya think?”
It was your idea…
I want Marsha’s words out of my head as much as I want Rowan off the island. “You need to go.”
“No. You need to understand, this is real. I can’t leave.”
“Bullshit.” Something ugly is boiling over inside me. The kind of thing I’d normally want to put a lid on. But now? I don’t know how to stop feeding the flame.
I pause outside my dad’s room and jerk his door closed as she hovers behind me.
“Jason, what are you—”
I take the key I just dug out of the kitchen drawer and, with all too much pleasure, jam it into the lock. And… click.
“Jason!”
“Might want to reconsider leaving.” I hold the key up by the smudged tag and dangle the thing, like a total asshole, before pocketing it. “Unless you’re good sleeping on the floor.”
For a second, she looks like she’s considering a go at my pocket. But then her arms cross, and she juts her stubborn jaw at me.
“Whether you believe it or not, my mother owns this property. Which means she has the right to report a trespasser.”
Whatever shred of hope I had about there still being some of the girl I used to know in this woman’s body dies.
“You’re going to report me?” Good luck with that.
She takes a nervous swallow and— come on, man —now is not the time to want to comfort her.
“Not me. My mother.”
That call I didn’t want to make to the team’s lawyers would be nothing compared to one to the sheriff’s department.
I nod. “Having my name attached to a trespassing charge over a family property can’t happen. Doesn’t matter how it’s resolved or that I’m in the right.”
“You’re not. And you can’t afford this kind of press.
So you should go. Leave the key. Catch up with your hockey bros and take the night to cool down and get your head straight.
Tomorrow, you talk to your lawyer, pull on your big-boy hockey pants, and come back when you’re ready to have a civil conversation. ”
My big-boy hockey pants? Jesus.
“You’re right. I don’t want that kind of press. Which, I guess, puts you in the driver’s seat here. Or it would…” I give it a beat. “…except for one little thing.”
Her chin comes up, stubborn and strong.
“Well, it’s not that I’ve known Terry, AKA Sheriff Black, since he was stuffing Legos up his nose and dropping his underwear to his ankles when he peed.
He’d file the report, because the man is married to the law.
But he wouldn’t remove me without the paperwork I’m betting you don’t have. ” Because it doesn’t exist.
“Then what?”
“Marsha can’t report a trespasser her daughter never told her about.”
She gulps.
“But yeah, go ahead and call her back. Without a list. No pay-by-the-ton junk removal service either. Just tell her that I was standing two feet away during your call. That you hid that I was here.”
Why didn’t she tell Marsha? Something about that wants my attention, but I’m too far gone to stop. So I go in for the kill.
Leaning in, close enough that I’m practically huffing the honey-vanilla scent of her hair, I whisper, “And then you can tell her that you hung up on her too.”
Rowan gasps, her eyes satisfyingly wide with shock as I step out of her space.
There was a time I would have done bodily harm to anyone who so much as looked at Rowan the wrong way, let alone intentionally upset her. But that guy blinked out of existence the minute he realized the girl he wanted to protect so bad wasn’t real.
It was your idea.
Shaking her head with some world-class indignation, she brushes past me, muttering, “This is what I get for trying—”
“To steal my cabin,” I call after her, following exactly two steps behind her. Because apparently, even now, I can’t let go.
She whirls around, and we’re less than a foot apart. “I am not trying to steal your cabin, Static.”
Oh, she did not just take my team nickname in vain.
“Then what the hell are you doing here… Rowan?” Shit, that was not even close to the ooh burn finish the moment merited, but her name is so embedded in my brain it’s all I had.
“Aside from picking through my family’s history, our memories, for whatever you can find to make a buck.
” And then, because it’s tearing a hole in my chest, “She said this was your idea!”
“It was!” Rowan roars back.
She stares up at me, her chest rising and falling as fast as mine. Those whiskey eyes holding the kind of contact she never used to give. “But it wasn’t about making a buck. I tried to convince her not to sell. Then just not to sell right away. But she wouldn’t listen.”
“Why then?” I feel sick. Like all the fight is drained out of me.
“Because you never showed up. And while I understand why now, I didn’t then.
I had to do something. If I couldn’t save this place, at least, I could make sure that Ed’s things were cared for.
That some of the mementoes from his family were preserved.
He deserved someone who loved him closing the cabin up.
It was the only thing left that I could do for him.
And I knew my mother wouldn’t.” She firms her chin.
“So yes. This was my idea. I asked to come. And I lied to my mother about why because greed is what she understands. But I did it for Ed. And…” She huffs an irritated breath. “I did it for you too, dickhead.”