Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
ELLIS
I’m ready a full hour early and go back to torturing myself and wallowing around my room. I can hear her moving around hers next door, and it’s toying with all my internal systems. I used to love watching her get ready. The little pouty expressions she’d make in the mirror and the way she’d toss her wild hair. She’s got one dimple on her chin that reveals itself when her bottom lip juts out just right. Right beneath the corner of her mouth.
I want all of it back. I want too much too fast.
I wonder if she still likes the same kind of underwear she did before. Smooth and seamless and barely there.
I toss my body backward onto the bed and fist the covers. “Stop it,” I growl at the ceiling.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, so I roll onto my side to pull it free from my jeans, and find a text from Silas.
Can you talk?
This asshole knows that now I’ll call because otherwise it’ll make me anxious wondering. I check my watch. Enough time to go down to the lobby and see what he wants this time. The walls are thin, and I’m not sure I want to risk Wren overhearing. If she catches any hint at how invested Silas is in this trip now, she’ll be spooked.
And he has been incessant. It took him cornering me at the wedding after he saw us dancing, but I broke down and told him about the paper on the counter that I found and how I took it to mean that there was something still there between Wren and me. He thought it was a stretch at first, but eventually came around and was supportive. Which turned into enthusiastic support.
Which expanded into him driving me insane ever since.
Even before we left, he was calling and peppering me about all my plans. Offering a bounty of suggestions I didn’t ask for. Spas and private boat tours and horses on the beach.
I still didn’t tell him about the letters from last fall… it seems like I’d be violating Wren’s privacy in a new way by sharing. More than I already have by doing it in the first place. The only person I have confided in, oddly enough, is Lennon Kirby. After she told me about the horses, I confessed everything. I told her my pen pal was my ex-wife. I told her I still loved her.
“Oh my god, Cap. This is fate,” she’d said. “This was destiny. You are meant to be together.”
I hate that. I want to earn my chance back with her. I want her to want me back, too. I don’t want anything else to be the deciding factor when it comes to us again. Which is also why I need Silas to keep his antics limited to me.
I hit Call on his name as soon as I reach the lobby.
“Hey,” he says lightly.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Not much,” he quips. “What’s up with you?”
“ Silas ,” I growl. “You asked if I could talk.”
“You didn’t tell me if you could or not.”
“ I— ” I cut myself off and move the phone away from my ear, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “I called, Si. I think that’s self-explanatory.”
“Have you kissed yet?” He’s munching on a snack into the phone, talking around a mouthful.
“Goddamn it, Silas, I cannot do this with you right now. We’ve been here for under forty-eight hours and we’ve been divorced for five years. I need you to chill. I’m begging, in fact.”
A pause. “So, no, then?”
“I’m hanging up.”
“No! Don’t!” he says, belting a laugh. “Micah wants to know what your Wi-Fi password is. He says you changed it since he was here last and you haven’t texted him back.”
“I’ve been gone for two days. He never asked the entire time I was still home. I’ve been busy!” Wait. “Does that mean you’re at my house right now?”
“Think he was previously avoiding the internet. And yup!” I hear him opening my refrigerator and shuffling things around. “Sage and them are on their way over, too. Micah’s been moping.”
“ I haven’t been fucking moping! ” I hear in the background.
I run a palm over my eyes. “Why is everyone going to my house?”
“Because your patio’s nicest and your beer fridge is stocked. Let me know if you kiss her tonight. If I’m willing to lose the friend I can shit-talk you to, then you’d better not muck it up.”
“Goodbye, Silas,” I drone.
He hangs up without a reply.
I rake both hands through my hair. They’re all going to know what this trip is really about, and they’re all going to be extremely invested. Shit. I’d better not muck this up.
I glance at the clock over the front desk counter; 6:15 now. Only fifteen minutes to go. But just as I get up to head back to my room and pace some more, I see Wren slip into the hotel bar. She’s wearing a flowery, low-cut dress that falls just around her shins. Sandals that tie around her ankles. A groan sticks in my throat at the sight of those little leather bows.
She orders a drink at the bar, and I watch her turn it in circles against the wood. I wonder if she’s nervous. I come up beside her and lean onto the bar, let myself inhale the perfume I’ve always loved. Like caramel and something floral I wouldn’t know aside from recognizing it on her skin. Jasmine, maybe. A spice underneath it that’s her.
“Come here often?”
She smiles into her chardonnay before she takes a gulp and looks at me. Big brown doe eyes and a full wide mouth in a heart-shaped face. Hair down and tumbling around her shoulders in a riot of waves and curls.
“Had the same idea, huh? A drink to level out the nerves?” she asks.
I shrug lightly. “Something like that.” I order an old-fashioned from the bartender when he comes by.
“Since when are you an old-fashioned guy?” she says, cocking a brow.
“Was I not before?”
“Nah-ah. Beer, or a Jack and Diet only.”
“Hmm.” I frown. “I’m not sure, then, honestly.”
I can’t read her expression or the gleam in her eye when she says, “All sorts of new discoveries to be made.”
When we step outside to wait for our Uber a little while later, the evening is bright and cool, the sunset blazing pink in a briny sky. When I look at Wren, I have to put a palm to my chest just to keep myself from reaching for her. Shimmer on her eyes and gloss on her lips. A fresh tan line that cuts its way over her collarbone. A little gold necklace sits at the base of her throat and winks in the light.
She tilts her head with a curious look my way, and I’m captivated—downright enthralled—by a curl that skips and dances against her cheekbone. I think of all the times I didn’t say everything I wanted to and regretted it later, and what she said about my compliments.
“I’m having a hard time not touching you,” I admit. “You are… you’re more beautiful than ever, Wren.”
She blinks heavily and steps into me. I stop breathing when she reaches up and puts her palm to the side of my face. I nuzzle it and kiss the heel, my breath picking up too quick again.
“You can touch me,” she says. I rest a trembling hand where her neck meets her shoulder and trace my thumb along the line of her throat when she swallows. “Let’s just take it slow.”
Her scent envelops my senses, soothing something frantic in me. “I like slow.”
Her smile blooms, my chest inflating the more it grows. “I know you do.”
She holds my hand during the ride over to Capitola, and I feel like I am honest-to-god being tickled under my skin, glee crackling and sputtering in every vein of my body. Fireworks all over. I thread her fingers right back through mine the moment she slides out of the car when we get to the restaurant.
“What’s this?” she asks when we walk hand in hand to an overhang covering a small platform. “Where’s the entrance?”
“Down there.” I walk her to the ledge at the border of the deck so she can see the restaurant hugging the cliffside below. “We take a little cable car ride to get down to it.” Lanterns glowing with tea lights line flagstone paths that weave through full, lush gardens surrounding it. The building itself looks like someone’s craftsman-style mansion tucked up on the rocks. Beyond and below are tide pools, the whites of foamy waves still visible in spite of the fading sun. Diffused yellow light shines through the paned windows that cover its multiple floors. There’s an outdoor fireplace on one of the side patios. Globes of string lights sparkling, too.
She gives me a flat look, pursing her lips. “ That place serves liver and onions?” she clips.
“They will,” I say innocently. “I called and asked. Pretty sure they thought I was a prank caller when I did. Honestly, Wren, I just wanted to take you to a nice dinner. If it’s too romantic, then I guess I won’t even say happy birthday to you tomorrow to make up for it, but, I promise, it’s not as fancy as it looks and—”
She kisses me. She’s kissing me.
It takes me a second to get my bearings. I’m frozen for a moment, with one of her hands clasping mine and the other cupping the back of my neck so she could pull herself up to me. I boomerang in and out of my body before it comes together.
She’s kissing me. Her lips are on mine after five long years. Five hundred years. She’s kissing me.
I’m home.