Chapter 16
ROWAN
We change out of our battle-worn clothes before we leave. I’m in black jeans and a black t-shirt—it’s not a matter of noticeable bloodstains, but I feel the sticky fluid congealing in the fabric, and I hate it. The sweater I gave her to wear on the boat is white, and it’s fucked. Her blood seeped into the collar and the sleeves when she wiped at her wound, and I hate it twice over. I’d burn it in the firepit if I weren’t so abysmal at lighting the goddamn thing.
Jules decides she wants to break down the tent and take it with us. She’s sweet and sentimental and, as much of a clusterfuck our “first date” has been, it’s a memento. A trophy to remind us that the odds are stacked against us, and we’re in the messiest ever mess, but we’re going to win by sheer determination alone. I plead my case that we might not have time: Her father’s henchmen could be on their way to us as we speak, it’s only a possession, and we don’t need it. She flashes me those eyes. I know she’s trying to manipulate me, but recognizing that and giving in anyway doesn’t make me a sucker, it makes me kind. “If it’s that important to you, fine.” I get to work. She tries to help but only ends up getting irritated. I ask her to take care of the air mattress instead.
I’m not “butch” per se, but it’s becoming clear that I’m better at the “boyfriend jobs.” Gender roles are trash, and I don’t believe they should exist, but it’s good to know our dynamic. Like, I know she cooks and she’s good at it. Her mom taught her how. I don’t fucking cook unless I’m aiming to assassinate someone discreetly without the need for poison. She knows I enjoy doing laundry. The simplicity and repetitiveness of it relaxes me. She loves clothes, abhors laundry. Dynamic.
I manage to get the tent folded small enough to fit in its travel bag and we’re out.
The car situation. Do I take the whip I stole? Dumb idea. A stolen car will end up drawing attention to us. The cars I’ve stolen in the past were luxury brands for international buyers in Russia or Qatar, or wherever the fuck my father sends hot merchandise.
The Camaro is coming up fast. I gotta tell her. “Um, I wasn’t bullshitting when I told you I had a problem with my Jeep. What I didn’t tell you, and what makes sense now, is that I had to ditch it because your cousin had me in a high-speed chase on the I-95. I didn’t know it was his car; I’d never seen it before. All I knew was someone was following me.”
“Rowan,” she groans, “this is the kind of knowledge you have to drop on me. I get why you didn’t; you thought it would scare me. Please don’t try to be my father and shield me from everything, okay? We’re in this together, and little spills are easier to clean up than big ones.”
“True.” It’s terrifying how rational she is. She’ll never have to try to manipulate me; all she’d have to do is logic me. Emotions are arguable, cool-minded calculations; facts are not.
She pops the trunk of her white Beamer and I shove the tent and my duffle into it, followed by her luggage. Then she’s cracking up, unprompted, like a madwoman. All I can do is gawp at her as if she belongs in an old-school asylum for the insane. “That.” She points at the Camaro parked a few spaces behind her. “That’s the car you stole, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s hideous.” She covers her injured brow to keep it in check as she laughs harder.
I can’t not laugh. She’s right. “I didn’t have the luxury of searching for an aesthetically pleasing vehicle to boost, Juliet.”
“I’m glad we’re leaving it here.” She hands me her keys. “I don’t know where we’re going, but you drive.”
I pitch the suggestion of going to Canada. I’m following the maps app to nowhere and we’re heading north anyway. We can be over the border in three hours. Jules humors me with ideas of what we could do in Montreal—botanical gardens, art museums, shopping on Rue Sainte-Catherine. She’s traveled more than I have and has been there before. “I bought my favorite pair of Michael Kors boots there.” Eventually she wakes herself from the beautiful daydream and brings us back to earth. “I don’t have my passport with me, though.”
Damn it. I have mine. My villainous mind starts contemplating ways we could cross the border illegally. I’d drive through a cornfield if I had to. I don’t think Jules would be thrilled about it. “It’s wild what a law-abiding citizen you are, considering you’re mob royalty.”
She gives me an eyeroll. “Oh, please. You like good girls. Elisa’s more of a good girl than I am.”
“Of all the women who have actually been with me, you’re still on the one who hasn’t?”
She flips her long blonde hair at me and sulks. “Yes. I don’t care about the women before me. She’s, like, concurrent with me.”
It’s been a rough day in every sense of the word. She’s tired and ornery. “Okay, but I’m not tryna flee the country with her, am I?”
I shift my eyes from the road and catch her squinting at me, bothered that I shut her down with a lone sentence. “You couldn’t just let me be mad for no reason for five minutes?”
“No. That’s a girl game I don’t play.”
She leans over the center console, stretching her seatbelt to its limit to kiss me. “I love that about you. You won’t let me get away with throwing a fit.”
“You’re not an unreasonable spoiled brat so why bother pretending to be?”
“Because it’s fun to wind people up sometimes.”
I don’t see the appeal. Winding someone up in my line of work? Someone would end up with their teeth bashed in. “Whatever you say.”
There’s a sign on the side of the dusty country highway that reads Chandler House Inn, Two Miles. A random inn in a nameless Maine town is as good a place as any for two runaways to get some respite from the day’s craziness. It’s starting to get dark, and I’m aching from head to toe.
“Google that joint.” I motion to the sign.
She does. “It’s a five-room bed and breakfast in a converted Victorian mansion. There’s a swimming pool, and the two suites on the ground floor each have a private jacuzzi. Ooh. That would be a very good thing for your muscles, which I’m sure are killing you.” No joke. She’s been watching me try to loosen myself up for an hour.
The beating I doled Teague was not my first rodeo. And Jules is too intelligent not to know that an ice bath would be better. I see what she’s doing. She’s had to be wily her entire life in order to gain any freedom or an identity of her own. Sooner or later, it’ll sink in for her that she doesn’t have to be that person with me. “Just say you want a tubby, Jules.”
“I want a fucking tubby.”
“Okay, my love. You shall have one.”
Driving though Gray, Maine, it irks me how eerily quiet it is. Not that I expected a bustling nightlife from a tiny, one-tavern town. But it doesn’t have a quaint seaside village vibe, more like something from a horrifying zombie video game. The fog rolling in, smokey and iridescent under the streetlights, is not helping the atmosphere.
Chandler House sits atop a hill. Its driveway is unpaved. The BMW churns up gravel and pebbles the whole way. There’s a parking area with only one space taken. I occupy the one beside it.
“I can’t decide if this feels cozy or if we’re about to walk into a remake of Psycho,” Jules says as we’re ascending the wide verandah to the front door. Psycho I could handle. It’s “cozy” that makes me anxious. I thrive in chaos. It’s been my default state of being for twenty-three years.
We enter the inn. Jules goes straight for the antique wooden desk with a handwritten sign that reads Check In and rings a small gold bell. The ting reverberates for a while. When no one greets us after a minute, she rings it twice more. I feel that. It’s not out of character for her to be impatient, but it is for me. I understand where it’s coming from. I want to get into a room, a closed space that’s unlikely to be intruded on, but that I could defend if it were.
A woman with salt and pepper hair comes jostling down the winding carpeted staircase, appearing disheveled as she ties her bathrobe closed. “Hi, hi, hello!” she singsongs. “So sorry, wasn’t expecting any guests tonight.”
Jules beams and turns up the charm to eleven. “Please, don’t be sorry. We’re sorry not to have made a reservation. We were just passing through town, saw this beautiful inn, and felt so drawn to it! It seemed like a very comfy place to get some R credit cards are trackable—either of us using one could mean trouble. Right. Money is the solution to almost every problem. If money can’t fix it, it’s not a problem, it’s a crisis.
“How about I pay cash up front,” I wager, “and put down a nonrefundable cleaning deposit on top of the room fees?”
Jules winks at me. Her posture reverts to easy breezy. “We try to live within our means.”
The woman examines us. Per usual, Jules looks well put together and stylish in her Calvin Klein V-neck dress. Glad I changed into my daily standard business casual.
“Unorthodox but, sure.”
She gives me a price. I offer an extra hundred bucks a night. She agrees. I sign the old-fashioned guest book with my dead mother’s maiden name and the address for the John F. Kennedy Library. We make the exchange—cash for a room key. “Your room is at the back of the house, down this corridor here, off to the right. Breakfast is served at eight thirty.”
Jules thanks her. All I can muster is a polite grin as my inner voice berates me: Why you gotta make everything so seedy? It’s not normal. No, it’s not. I long for normal. Maybe someday.
Jules is right that the searing water relieves my tender muscles. I’m aware heat exacerbates inflammation, but I don’t give a shit. I want instant relief. I get a FaceTime call as Jules is about to submerge her naked body in the hot tub. It’s Merrick. I answer with audio only. He doesn’t question it or greet me with any civilities. He goes straight to it.
“Bro, what the fuck did you do?”
What haven’t I done in the last few days? “Guess you heard.”
“That you shot one of Calloway’s guys at the marina, he bit it, and now you’re on the run? Yeah, I heard. Why’d I hear it from Ben and not you?”
“I haven’t had a lot of time to chat, Mer.”
“Oh, and Ben’s out and going to Estonia or somewhere in Europe with his dad?”
“Europe is news to me, too. But yes, I got him out.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Was it him or Alistair?”
He knows damn well it wasn’t Ben. Ben’s my guy, not my father’s. I don’t strongarm my guys into submission, or put the fear of God into them. I wouldn’t give anyone a reason to turn on me; it’s better to be respected out of love than respected out of fear. That’s how you earn and keep loyalty. It’s a concept Callum Monaghan never grasped.
“Alistair.”
“Is there anything else?”
I tell him I ruined the most perfect day of my existence by almost thrashing Teague to death on a scenic beach while his cousin, the woman I love, watched.
He heaves a sigh from deep in his chest. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”
Hearing him say it, the hopelessness of his tenor, makes me consider lying, but he’d be able to tell. “I don’t know.”
“Take me off speaker.”
Shit… “Okay, done.” I bring the phone to my ear.
“Is she worth it?” he murmurs. “Everything you’ve had to do since you met her. Everything you’re giving up for her.”
Tension between our families has been building for years. I would have had to defend myself against the Calloways in due course, once things became untenable. Falling in love with Jules sped up the arrival of an inevitable outcome, that’s all.
“Yes. But losing you and Ben, that’s the one thing that hurts. I haven’t said it enough, or maybe I’ve never said it at all, but I hope you know that I’ve always loved you both and I always will.”
He gets choked up and doesn’t try to cover it. “We love you, too, you idiot. If there’s anything I can do?—”
“I’ve kept you in the dugout as much as possible for a reason. Don’t try to make it to the starting lineup. Stay as far away from this disaster as you can.”
“I will. As long you know I’ve got your back should you need me.”
“I do know that. You’re my main dude. I appreciate you.”
“Take care of yourself, Row,” he says and hangs up.
Jules slinks across the hot tub to sit next to me.
I put my arm around her shoulder and hold her close. “Have you talked to Rose or Shannon?”
“No.”
“You should get on that. If Merrick was worried, they will be, too.”
“We’re terrible friends, aren’t we? Terrible friends, terrible daughters. I’m a terrible cousin.”
“Maybe. But a lot of that is what we were made to be. We can try to be better at one of those things. We choose our friends, and they choose us.”
“You’ve got some Yoda pearls of wisdom.”
“Try, I do, young Padawan.”
“I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“Good.”
She snuggles into my shoulder. I play with the wisps of hair coming loose from her messy bun. “I’m drained,” she says through a yawn.
“Same.”
“Hey, you know what? Tonight will be the first night we sleep together without having sex.”
“That actually sounds nice, but, uh, let’s not make a habit of it. Cool?”
She laughs against my skin, then looks up at me and goes, “That’s the most fuckboy thing you’ve ever said to me.”
That’s because I’m not one with her. I couldn’t be if I’d tried. Sex is important, and ours is fire, but I’ve been all in on her from the start.