Chapter 9
Jason
Thwack
Another log splits, the two pieces falling at either side as I pull my ax free, position the next log, draw back and over and down and thwack. Repeat.
When it comes to burning off steam or clearing my head, I swim, kayak, hit pucks at the rink a few towns over, and work out in pretty much every way that’s available on an island this size with as much upkeep as our cabin has always offered.
But for the shit that really gets me tied up?
Chopping firewood has been my go-to since I was old enough for Gramps to teach me how to do it.
It’s what gets my head straight. Puts me in a calmer state of mind.
Today though?
Thwack.
Between finding out that my lawyer’s taking a three-day device-free retreat with his wife for their anniversary and that Rowan’s not engaged… Not so much.
She returned the ring.
They weren’t right together.
Thwack, thwack, thwack…
Shit, I’ve got to stop. This is already more wood than we’re going to need.
I run my forearm across my sweaty brow. Scanning the woods, I catch sight of Rowan through the trees.
Her hair is blowing around her face, and for a minute, I just stare.
But then she’s out of sight again, and I’m standing there like a tool, with a pile of chopped wood and nowhere near the clarity of thought I’m going to need to get through this weekend.
I stack the wood, and a few seconds later hear the screen door from around front.
I start to follow, but then I’m sixteen again, wondering if it’s going to look weird if I go to the kitchen when she just went.
Screw that. We’re adults. And I don’t need an excuse to walk into my own cabin. Even if it happens to be fifteen seconds behind her.
Swinging the door open, I step inside. She turns, and I stop.
Panic a beat, and then— “I was coming in anyway.”
Jesus, I did not just say that.
One pretty brow lifts, almost like she’s silently asking if I’m okay, if I hit my head out there or something.
“For a drink. Water.” Totally necessary specification there.
Kill me now.
The other brow lifts, and then she nods. “Good to stay hydrated.”
In case I was wondering if I sounded as lame as I thought I did, the answer was yes. Yes, I did.
I can practically feel the heat creeping up my neck into my cheeks and turn for my room before I make myself look more like a tool than I already do.
“Jason?”
I stop, my head dropping as I reply. “Yeah?”
“Water?”
I could deny it. Claim there’s a glass in my room or something.
I mean, there might be.
Instead, I remind myself that I’m a fucking man and go to the sink to pour a glass.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“So Monday?” she asks, throwing me a bone.
Right. Lenard. “Yeah. Looks like it. In all the time I’ve worked with this guy, he’s never not been around.
Not answered a call. Honestly, he used to joke that his wife was going to leave him if he didn’t learn how to clock out.
So guess it’s a good thing he listened.” I take a drink. “But of all the weekends, huh?”
She gives me a sympathetic nod. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I don’t like the idea of there being any question about the cabin. But waiting a couple days to get this fixed isn’t going to kill me.”
“So I guess we’re stuck here together. What do you want to do?”
I look at her leaning against the counter with the smile that turned my world upside down ten years ago. I know what that guy would have wanted.
But now?
My eyes drift down her curves, playing that game of catch and release at the tuck of her waist and flare of her hip, and then—
Fuck it.
Rounding the breakfast bar, I know exactly what I need to do.
Rowan
The easy smile pasted on my face falters as Jason closes in, a sense of purpose in his eyes I don’t understand but can’t look away from.
Then he’s in front of me with that big body eating up all the air in the room. He reaches… past me?
“’Scuse me,” he says, sliding the drawer open as I shift to my left.
I gasp. “Is that… the list?”
Surprised, Jason holds up a piece of Stanvic family history more special even than the mailbox. “You know about this?”
It’s a well-worn notepad, spiral-bound at the top, five-by-eight ruled pages with a vertical line down the center and a pencil tied with a length of twine to the wire.
“Ed told me about these. The lists. A log from each visit each year, documenting all the repairs and maintenance. All the significant events.” And as of closing the cabin up last fall, this notepad was going on year number seven.
“I’ve been low-key avoiding this since I arrived,” he says, setting it on the counter between us. “If Dad was here, there’d be no end to the shit he’d be giving me over the fact that this year’s list isn’t even started.”
Meeting his eyes, I lift a shoulder. “He’d understand. You’ve had a few things going on.”
The notepad is open to the same page they left off last summer, with the parting note from Ed written beneath the list of repairs and maintenance.
Love ya, kid, but next year, you’re clearing the shed.
“Oh, Jason.” The impulse to step closer and hug him is strong, but better judgment wins out.
“Dad thought he’d be here to heckle me as I faced whatever vermin had moved into the shed over the winter, the way I did last summer when he found the nest of raccoons.”
“He told me about that. He laughed that big, booming laugh of his,” making me feel like I was part of the adventure instead of outside of it. “And then said what he always said…”
Jason and I speak in unison. “Cabin life.”
He shakes his head with a weighted smile. “Dad must have talked your ear off.”
“Only because I loved hearing about his trips up here. Used to pepper him with questions every time he came home. More often than that.”
A beat passes, and there’s something in Jason’s eyes. “So why is it that in all the years, you never made it out here before this?”
I thought I would. I thought—
“Timing.” It’s a dodgy non-answer, but it doesn’t matter what I thought. Only that it didn’t happen. I missed my chance. And now it’s too late. “But now that I am here, what do you say we get started?”
“We?” Jason stares at me like my offer to help doesn’t compute.
“Why not? If neither of us is leaving, we might as well make a dent in the epic opening-the-cabin list, right?”
Maybe it’s weird. But this is as close to being a part of something I desperately hoped I would experience with Ed one day as I will get. And even if I missed my chance to have him show me the island that had been his favorite place for his entire life, his son showing me is the next best thing.
Jason can say no, but instead, he braces one forearm on the counter to lean over the notepad and twirls the pencil in his free hand.
“You sure? This could get messy.”
My heart skips, and the only thing I’m not sure of is if I’ll be able to keep my grin from revealing just how much this means to me.
But maybe I don’t have to. I’ve spent so much of my life watching every word I say, every look, laugh, and micro-expression. Always worrying about giving something away that might expose a vulnerability that could be used against me, or worse, inadvertently exposing someone else’s.
I’m not a kid anymore.
There is no more leverage.
So maybe I don’t need to be on guard every moment. Maybe if I just tell him—
“Positive,” I burst out, deciding to save the soul-baring revelations for Jill, or at least someone who hasn’t been looking at me like I was planning to strip the copper from the walls less than twenty-four hours ago. “Where do we start?”
Jason nods, his mouth falling into a grin that puts me on high alert. “How about the shed? In fact…”