Chapter 29
Rowan
“Forget about your mom, I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side,” Ron announces as we leave the cabin and head toward the path. “Must have been weird being stuck with him. How’d he end up here, anyway?”
“There was a miscommunication. And… he’s not my brother.” I keep walking.
Ron is commenting on the damage from the storm. At the fallen limb, he lets out one of those airy whistles.
The house is behind us, windows open. Still too close.
Jason is somewhere beyond the billowing sheers. I don’t want him to have to listen. And the man who just flew halfway around the world and then spent two days cooped up in a town without power or phone service trying to get to me deserves to have a conversation in private.
Carefully, I say, “Ron, did something happen at the clinic? I just—”
His hands come up in a double stop signal. “No, no. I’m sorry. I’m just sliding back into being ‘us.’ Skipping ahead when we still need to talk… and I’m guessing you didn’t get my messages since Friday.”
“No. I didn’t.”
Ron squints out at the water. “So, kind of a blindside.”
We come to the point where the path leads into the woods. If we kept walking, we’d arrive at a rock that overlooks the water and is perfectly, just barely big enough for two people to sit there thinking.
Instead, I put my hand on Ron’s arm, gently suggesting, “Here’s good, okay?”
Taking a tight breath, he nods. “Yeah, this is good.”
“Did my mother have something to do with you coming back?”
The wince says it all.
“So that’s what ‘you’re welcome’ was about.” At least, now I know there isn’t some other shoe ready to drop.
“I guess I should have led with that. But Ro, she’s not the reason I came.
I told you, I couldn’t get past the feeling I made a mistake.
She reached out, explained you were out here alone, packing the place up.
Hinted around about how much good the funds from the sale of a property like this could do for the clinic.
” He shrugs. “But that was her. Not me. I mean, I’ve met your mom.
Can’t really see her parting with a single dollar of Ed’s estate, no matter what the cause. ”
I sigh, shaking my head with a smile. “She always thought she had you snowed.”
He makes a noncommittal sound then meets my eyes. And I’m startled by what I see in them. Because he’s not, by nature, an overly emotional man.
Practical. Pragmatic. Polite. Yes.
There’s nothing volatile in his makeup. He’s always existed in a space of moderation as far from the polar extremes as one could get.
It wasn’t indifference, exactly. He cared.
He was just a man so deeply absorbed in his own priorities, I never had to worry about him watching me too closely…
Picking apart my every reaction and response in search of a vulnerability to be exploited at some later point.
He was safe. He let me be. He let me breathe.
It’s the reason I was drawn to him. The reason I stayed with him.
I loved him for it.
Then Ed died. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the last conversation we had. He’d been fishing around for details about when Ron was going to be back from his year abroad, if we’d talked about wedding plans.
He must have seen something in my face, heard it in my voice when I sort of stammered about not having the chance to talk often and us probably figuring it out once we got to Austin. And then, because it all sounded so weak to even my own ears, I told him that Ron was a good man.
Ed agreed. And then with such gentle caring, he’d asked me if a good man was all I wanted, if it was enough. Or if maybe I might want something more.
Eventually, I realized I did.
“We were good together, a team. It was a mistake to leave you behind for that full year. It was a bigger mistake not to push harder when you said it was over.”
I reach out and brush his cheek with my thumb. “That wasn’t a mistake. That was two people who cared enough to let the other go when they realized how good they were at living without each other.”
Ron holds my stare, and it occurs to me that this might be the longest we’ve ever looked into each other’s eyes. What a stark contrast it is to Jason and how I could get lost in his eyes forever. How he begged me to let him see me.
How he looked at me like he’d never get enough.
The distraction of that thought is my only defense for not noticing that Ron is moving in… to kiss me.
It’s so completely unexpected, it takes a beat to fully register the closed-mouth press of his lips against mine. I don’t respond.
I don’t slap him or shove him away.
I pull back, putting my hands up between us.
His head drops. “Okay,” he says, resigned. “I get it. That was a mistake.”
He’s embarrassed and apologetic, and I don’t know what to say that won’t make him feel worse.
I didn’t want to hurt him. He came all this way, was willing to sacrifice his plans for me. And I think he deserves to know. So I tell him about the man who has never been a brother to me returning to my life.
I tell him that I don’t know if it will last. But that I hope it can.
He gives me that earnest smile and says he hopes it can too. Then we start back to the cabin and the man I’m desperate to return to.
The closer we get, the more nervous I get.
The phones are working.
Jason might have the answer he’s been waiting for.
I haven’t wanted to bring it up before, but depending on what his lawyer says, I wonder if we might be able to work it so that my mom doesn’t realize she’s selling the island to Jason.
“I’m back,” I call, as Ron closes the screen door behind us and steps into the kitchen for his bag.
Maybe Jason’s on the phone. I walk to the bedroom, increasingly aware of the quiet.
He could be listening to messages. Have his headphones on.
At the doorway, I blink, unease coating my skin at the sight of the neatly made bed and no Jason.
The lack of damning evidence, should Ron have happened back here.
I wouldn’t have let him, but Jason didn’t know that.
I turn for the bathroom. The door is open, a solitary toothbrush in the short glass that held two this morning.
He’s being sensitive. Moving his things out of plain view. Just in case. He isn’t… he wouldn’t have…
A wave of panic suddenly swamps me, narrowing my vision and tightening my lungs in ways only the worst storms have caused before. “Jason!”
Ed’s door is still locked, the utility room is empty, but coming from the kitchen, Ron catches me. Then quietly, “He left a note.”
Thank God.
I take a steadying breath. It’s fine. He just had to… do something somewhere on the island. So he left a note, so I wouldn’t worry.
Except one step closer to Ron’s outstretched hand, and my blood runs cold.
I recognize the lined paper from the narrow pad that chronicles the history of this cabin and its loving occupants. Only this sheet has been torn free, and instead of the neat print populating all the pages that came before, there are only two hastily scrawled lines…
Lawyer confirmed.
Take care of this place.
Hands shaking, I fly out front, gravel and dirt giving way as I circle the cabin, past the shed. The place where my work gloves frame the spot where a branch speared the earth and broke through the wall that had existed between us for a decade.
I stop at the edge of the clearing where the land drops away and the break in the trees gives me a clear view of the water, a few retreating boats in the distance.
I watch, my hand half raised, though to which one, I don’t even know.
My heart breaking in a way it never should have been allowed to break.
Hoping he’ll look. That I can catch his attention and signal for him to come back. To let me say it again.
I’m sorry.