Chapter 27
Rowan
Jason catches me, and I squeal, laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.
I feel free… joyful. Happy like I can’t remember ever feeling before.
Because of Jason with his everywhere-at-once hands and low rumbling laughter underscoring mine. From the start, I’ve been looking at this man like there was a ticking clock on how long I’d get to be with him. On the time we’d have together.
I reminded myself over and again that this couldn’t last. But suddenly it feels like maybe it could. Like it… might.
Surrendering to the greedy pull of his touch, I let him draw me in flush against him. Head tipped back, I look into the mirth-filled eyes.
“What’s that look?” he asks.
It’s you. “Happiness.”
A contented sound rumbles up from low in his chest, and I loop my arms around his neck. His slip around my waist, crossing, holding me even tighter against him so I can feel every breath, every beat of his heart.
I swallow, whispering the words that start us down a path we never agreed to travel. “This is good, Jason.”
His hand stills with the backs of his knuckles light against my cheek. “Yeah, it is.”
I want to tell him that I’m falling for him.
That he makes me feel things I didn’t know I could feel, want things I’ve never wanted before.
I want to ask him if he’s feeling anything like I am, because the way he looks at me, touches me.
I swear he does. I want to ask if he could see something between us existing outside of an escape.
In the real world where we have jobs and apartments and power and phones.
My racing heart stalls with the realization that I can’t say any of that. Not yet.
Jason still doesn’t believe the will is real. And if it turns out that I’m not wrong about it? Finding out that he’s lost this place would be brutal. It could change everything.
Until we know for sure what I’ve truly cost him, I can’t ask for more than this.
So instead, I tell him a different truth. “You’re the best escape I’ve ever had, Jason Stanvic.”
I expect a huff of laughter. Maybe an eye roll.
What I don’t expect is the way his brows draw down or the flicker of an expression that— I don’t know what it means.
“Rowan, this has been good,” he says tentatively, shifting on his feet.
I blink, something inside me stilling at the serious tone. The quiet way he said my name. The searching look that begs for an understanding that… Oh my God. Is he ending it?
He glances away, his posture stiffening and then, like he was reminding himself to play it cool, going casual. Too casual.
“We had a plan.” He swallows. “An agreement.”
I nod, a numbness creeping over me.
It’s okay.
It’s going to be fine.
I’m not going to cry. I’m not. Because this was everything I asked for and so much more. Jason unlocked something in me I didn’t even realize existed. And even if I don’t get to keep it… That’s a gift beyond measure.
“You said you weren’t interested in anything serious.” He rakes a hand back through his hair, then shakes it out at his side. “But… I don’t… I mean, what if it didn’t have to be serious, serious?”
What?
Oh.
The air rushes out of my lungs in a whoosh that leaves me dizzy. Because this man isn’t breaking up with me mere hours after I realized that I’ve somehow fallen in love with him.
He’s awkwardly, painfully broaching the subject of more.
I nod, not fully understanding what’s on offer here, only that it’s not a hard stop once we leave the cabin.
And the nod must be enough. Because then he’s nodding too and smiling, and is that a gusty sigh of relief?
Then, before my very eyes, all that awkward tension seems to dissipate, leaving the man I’ve been falling for since… well, in this iteration of our lives, since the moment he looked at me like maybe he was seeing more than Marsha’s daughter.
And now I’m trying to play it cool, offering a single shoulder lift like my heart isn’t racing a mile a minute, and those tears I wasn’t about to let myself have at the thought of him ending things are threatening for an entirely different reason now.
Joy.
Hope.
Again and again, these two emotions, previously mere shadows of what they are now, keep pushing their way to the front of the room.
“We don’t need to call it anything,” I offer easily as he steps into my space and wraps his arms around me so I’m melting into the heat of his body, the rightness of being close to him like this.
“No rules.”
I can hear his heart beating beneath my ear. “No plans.”
No end date or promise of goodbye.
His hand smooths over my hair, bunching it at the base of my neck and then slipping down the rest. “We just let things… happen.”
I nod. “See how it goes.”
He bows his head to meet my eyes as his darken. “Take it slow.”
“Good idea,” I halfheartedly agree because of course it makes sense and that’s what you do.
But then my focus is drifting to his mouth, and I can feel that thing between us…
only this time, it’s not just the air crackling with the charge of attraction, it’s a stronger, more powerful pull I feel deep beneath my ribs.
“Yeah, good idea,” he agrees gruffly, his arms wrapping tighter around me, pulling me in and up against him.
Closer.
I go to my toes, my arms falling around his neck, the fingers of my right hand threading through his hair.
Closer.
Our brows touch, his mouth brushing like a breath across mine.
I’m trembling.
“Okay, we’ll take it slow,” he says again. Pauses, his hands bunching in my shirt, and then, “Unless—”
Ping.
We freeze.
Zzzz. Zzzz.
Ping. Ping… Ping.
Jason blinks first, a furrow etching between his brows as the rest of the world rides in like a tidal wave of cellular intrusion, shattering this little bubble of isolated perfection.
My phone is plugged in on the breakfast bar beside us, notifications flashing across the screen like lightning. The vibration of the device against the counter is like rolling thunder and my mother’s signature alert is the crash that shakes the very foundation of where we stand.
The storm is here, and suddenly, desperately, I want to keep hiding away with Jason.
I don’t want to let the rest of the world in. I don’t want to let her in. Or the looming reality of what Jason and I have been willfully ignoring for days.
We slip apart, and Jason hands me my phone. “Service is back.”
He doesn’t appear any happier about it than I am.
“Just needed power, I guess,” I say, disheartened.
The look on his face conveys everything I’m feeling.
We weren’t ready for this.
It’s too soon.
I stare at the device in my palm, still plugged in to the outlet. The screen violently populating with notifications I don’t want to see, don’t care about.
“Mine must be in our room.”
I nod, wondering if Jason would go along if I suggested we just leave them off. For a few more hours or days. But then one of the notifications rolling past catches my eye.
Mom
You’re welcome.
Dread spools through my center at the cryptic but painfully familiar message. No good ever came from those words.
I’m trying to scroll back when I hear my name, muffled.
Is he under the bed? “Can’t find your phone?”
I turn in a circle to see if it’s on any of the shelves or end tables. Nope. Windowsill… also no. I glance out at the sunlight and cotton-ball cloud day and—
“No.” The word leaks out like a wheeze as I brace myself against the top of the couch, then start toward the door.
“Jason,” I try again.
My voice feels funny, my breath too thin for sound. But his carries cleanly from the other room. “Got it. Just need the charger.”
He says something else, but I can’t hear it over the pounding of my heart as I stare at the figure coming up the path then past the clearing.
This can’t be happening. It can’t.
My stomach hollows as a man who has no business being on this continent, let alone this island, jogs up the steps.
“Thank God, Ro,” he heaves.
“Ron?” I croak as my ex-fiancé pulls the screen door open and lets himself in.
He sweeps me into an awkward embrace that pins one arm to my side while the other remains poised somewhere between stop and what-is-happening. “I’ve got you. Everything’s okay now. I’m here.”
Nothing is okay.
“You’re supposed to be in Madagascar,” I choke out, pulling free. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
I drove him to the airport myself while he double-checked the backpack he’s now dropping on the floor for his passport and papers. Watched him walk through the automatic doors where he only distractedly looked back at the last second with something I thought with a pang might be regret.
“I came for you.” His hands find mine, and his eyes, placid and earnest, follow. “I gave it up. All of it. For you. For us. And Ro, I’m never leaving you again.”
And that’s when I see Jason, standing stock-still in the hallway.