Chapter 30
Jason
“Dude, you just… left?” Boomer gapes twelve hours later from where he’s sitting on his acres-long couch in the New York apartment he shares with Lara and Zamboni.
The former is sleeping down the hall. The latter is paws up, tucked into the nook of Ben’s big-ass arm, overlong tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.
I rake my hand through my hair as I pace the length of my buddy’s place. I feel sick. Agitated. Fucking unmoored. “I wasn’t in the best state of mind.”
I was numb. Only not numb, because somehow the absence of sensation was worse than that searing pain when I’d seen Rowan kiss the man she’d planned to marry seconds after finding out that she’d been right. The cabin wasn’t mine.
Nothing was.
Not Rowan. Not the island. Not even this time we spent together.
Not when it ended watching another man kiss the woman I love.
I’d looked away, trying to breathe through the reality of it all… The fucking ex showing up.
Rowan going off with him. For privacy. Because they had a past and promises. While we’d had… loose plans to see how things went. Fucking hell.
Something in me just… broke. Shut down.
I was already packed.
I don’t even remember leaving. I barely remember calling Bruce. Turns out he’d been pulling up to the dock already, anxious to check on us.
Christ, saying goodbye to him was rough. Coming to the island had always been about seeing him as much as it was about the cabin itself.
He didn’t know what to say when I’d explained that it didn’t belong to me anymore. But the hug he gave me when we climbed off the Mae Belle was fierce. His arms shook, and for as grizzled and tough as the old guy is, pretty sure my eyes weren’t the only ones wet when we pulled apart.
He told me not to be a stranger, and I said I wouldn’t.
But… Christ, it feels like losing my dad all over again. My dad. My grandparents. And within a breath of believing that maybe, finally, I could keep Rowan… losing her too.
“I shouldn’t have left like that. I just… What was I supposed to do?” I say to myself as much as Ben. “Wait for them to come back so I could congratulate the happy couple on reupping their fucking engagement? Ask if I could have a word with Rowan alone so I could—”
Visions of throwing her over my shoulder come to mind.
Of closing us in the room we’d shared the previous few days and begging her to let me convince her to stay, to give me a chance.
Of getting on my knees and asking her to let me kiss her goodbye the way I had that first night…
and then making her come so hard that she’d forget about the selfless fucking doctor she’s loved for the past five years.
“Flash some abs?” Boomer offers. “Pull one of those Bunny moves Axel came up with to land Nora?”
He’s trying to lighten the mood. I think.
“Axel came up with them, but Grady’s the one who made it work.” And because it needs saying, “She’s seen the abs.”
She liked them. I know from the hours we spent in bed talking, part of which included her finger stepping up them and then punctuating her points with light kisses, licks, and the occasional teasing bite over them.
“You already gone soft with the season over?” Ben frowns, leaning forward. “Lift your shirt. Lemme see.”
I don’t have it in me to tell him to fuck off.
I don’t even want to.
Dropping into the chair across from him, I fold forward, rubbing my face. “I didn’t think I could handle it. Seeing her come in with him. Waiting for her to muster the courage to tell me she was going back to him… That she loved him?”
That she’d never love me.
“Static, man.” He sighs. “Jason, I know you were into her in high school. That she’s maybe always held a place in your heart.
But it’s only been a week, and this?” He waves a hand through the air in my direction.
“Shit, this feels like more than some carry-over crush from back in the day. Just exactly how long have you been in love with this girl?”
I look up, and he must see it in my eyes. That understanding most people don’t realize this guy is capable of is there in the hard punch of his breath and the way he pulls Zamboni higher on his chest and cradles the little guy’s head against him.
He knows. He’s been there. But I tell him anyway.
“From the night I met her.”
Rowan
“Mold?” my mother demands, the single word dripping with enough accusation and disbelief that anyone else would have crumbled.
Anyone who hadn’t spent a lifetime on the receiving end of this kind of implied threat and intimidation. Anyone with something left for this woman to take.
But there’s nothing left she can take from me.
Only from Jason. And all I can do is try to delay her taking the cabin long enough that maybe—
“Nothing to say? Suppose I should be used to it after the last weeks.”
“I told you, my phone and computer were fried in the storm. I couldn’t call.”
Her response is a snort. Almost like she knows I’m lying. But that’s the thing, she would never believe me capable of lying to her. Ever. She just wants to watch me scramble.
“I’m not happy about it either, Mom. I had an interested buyer, and now I don’t know.” I brush past her into the house that was the first and last true home I’ve ever known, barely recognizing it as the same space I once shared with Ed. With Jason.
God, it hurts.
The walls have been painted. There are purchases piling up that she hasn’t opened.
Clothing bags layered over the backs of chairs.
Boxes everywhere. The fixtures she modernized every few years since marrying Ed have now been “upgraded” with such gauche displays of wealth, I want to cringe.
The furniture that was as big and comfy as the man they’d been purchased by to accommodate has been replaced by “pieces” as brittle and ostentatious as the woman who bought them.
She was a chameleon, so good at faking nearly anything, including a modicum of taste… for a time.
But this?
Clearly, she isn’t interested in faking anything anymore.
Me? It feels like I’m faking every breath I take. Every beat of my heart.
Playing pretend at life when I’ve been dead inside since the moment I realized Jason was gone.
And now this.
I take a breath and summon the girl who was desperate for this woman’s approval. For her love. “Mom, I know it’s a lot. But I really need you right now. I can’t stay at the cabin until it’s been treated, and with all the damage from the storm, it’s at least a month out.”
Her foot taps impatiently. But I know her. I see her. And this woman is salivating over the fact that the daughter who dared to try and break out of her dysfunctional hold is crawling back.
“Not a single list saved to the cloud before this… act of God?”
More accusation.
But I’m ready. “I should have gotten to the mainland for the signal. Found a way to upload it somehow. I— I just never thought…”
Her favorite opening. “You never think, do you? You’re an adult now. Isn’t that what you keep telling me and anyone else who will listen?”
“Mom.” It’s more for effect than intention. She’s just getting going.
And I play along as she rolls into her next diatribe, nodding and making the appropriate noises while my mind drifts a handful of states away.
To a crackling fire and the steady hold of a man who made me feel seen and safe and alive and all the other things it has taken me too long to believe I deserve.
When it finally comes, I’m ready. “Why should I open my home to you after the way you’ve let me down? Let us all down?”
“Please, Mom. I don’t have anywhere else to go. Just until the cabin is safe to go back and get ready to sell… I’ll help you around here.”