Chapter Twenty-Three
Jackie
Apparently, seeing Mitch save Lina and Gus had overridden all her rational thoughts. Why else would she have agreed to take him to her favorite cenote?
The way he’d looked, his confidence, competence—the whole package …
Jackie chose to ignore the waterfall of longing and feelings. Because if she took away even a single piece of resistance, she knew there would be no hope for her.
The radio signal cut in and out, as they drove in an old green Jeep toward Puerto Morelos.
Almost half an hour had passed with neither of them saying anything of substance.
They discussed the weather and the plans for the day, before settling into an uncomfortable silence, an unspoken question stuck between them.
What are we doing?
Mitch pushed his straw Stetson down like he was afraid it’d be carried off in the gentle early-morning breeze.
Jackie inhaled sharply. Did she want to talk? She wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe that was how her life would be from now on—never sure about anything ever again.
The static from the radio came through, dispersing the heaviness of the moment.
“Ruta de los Cenotes,” Mitch read out from the blue sign at the side of the road. “How far are we driving from here?”
She exhaled with relief. This—talking about anything but her jumbled feelings—she could do.
“We’re going to Cenote Siete Bocas, it’s about fifteen kilometers down here.
When we see a sign for 15.5 km, we need to turn right onto a dirt road.
” Jackie switched off the crackling, music-less radio.
“There are seven cenotes in one there, but you can’t go into two without equipment.
One’s open-air but the rest are in caves. ”
“Do they get busy?”
“They can be, though early morning is usually the quietest. December is also not as popular.” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “We should avoid the biggest crowds, given we’ll be getting there as it opens.”
Mitch scratched his left thigh over his light linen trousers. “I feel like I’m going to be eaten alive by insects.”
She laughed. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules. No sunscreen and no insect repellents. They ask to jump in a shower before going into the water as well.”
“No, I get the reasons. I’m only saying that the jungle insects must rejoice in them.” He balled his hand into a fist, rubbing it along the material in slow, circular motions. “I’m sure something got me already.”
Jackie wished she had no peripheral vision right now.
She always had a thing for hands, especially Mitch’s hands.
She could sit and watch them for hours on end when he used to maneuver his fingers over a Rubik’s cube, or sketch at the backs of his notebooks.
And seeing his hands at work with Lina and Gus …
Well, her thing for his hands was alive and well.
Steering wheel. Watching out for the 15.5 km sign. Dirt road. Cenote. That was her focus, not his hands. Even though her body seemed to remember how his hands moved all over it and inside it …
She gulped. “You’ll survive. I have some cooling gel for bites and stings in my room if you need it later.”
“Always prepared.” He smiled. “Remember when you carried a first-aid kit pretty much everywhere? You said you had to be responsible, as a future doctor.”
Her vision fogged with unshed tears. She shook her head, keeping the gates on those memories firmly locked. “That was a long time ago.”
She wasn’t going to tell him that she had a whole suitcase-sized first-aid kit in the back of the car, in case anyone ever needed it.
“I take it you never went to medical school?”
“Hard to do when you drop out of college, don’t you think?” Jackie bit off, glancing at him.
He tilted his head, the jungle around them bringing out the emerald in his eyes. “I thought you might’ve come back and finished at some point.”
“No. Never seen the point.”
“Lyla’s an OB-GYN, you know. She did her residency in New York, like you’d always talked about. She’s still there.”
Skin tightened over her face, and she looked straight ahead again. “You keep in touch with Lyla?”
His lingering gaze stoked the fire burning every single nerve ending in her body. “We chat every now and then.”
“What does every now and then mean?”
Silence stretched between them like ice over a fast river.
Jackie had a feeling she knew the answer before Mitch even opened his mouth.
“They were at my wedding, both Nick and her. So was their son, Brian.”
Air evaporated from her lungs, turning them into a desert. Her throat bobbed up and down, breath unable to settle down in her chest.
“Brian turned three in August. He’s very into trains,” Mitch continued in a soft voice. “It’s funny, Lyla never liked Eve. She had this whole thing in her head that we’d meet again one day, and that if I married anyone else, I’d always regret it.”
Jackie blinked back tears. “She always read too many romances.”
He let out a low laugh. “She reads a lot of romantasy now, too. Fated mates and all that.”
“You must talk to her quite a lot if you know all this,” she whispered. Her heart slammed against her ribcage.
Lyla, the best friend she’d ever had, not only got married but had a baby. And she wasn’t there for any of it. She’d wasted ten years of her life, missed milestones for people she loved …
Her heart cracked, exposing the fissure through its middle, with Mitch’s name etched there.
“Losing you brought us closer,” Mitch whispered.
A single tear fell into Jackie’s lap. “I’m glad you’ve had each other.”
Her clunky heart skipped a beat.
She didn’t notice Mitch’s hand moving, didn’t see it until she felt it just above her bare knee. Her skin rippled with goosebumps, his touch burning through her flesh.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you cry.” He didn’t squeeze her thigh, but he didn’t move to withdraw his hand either. “Sometimes, these things come out. They’re part of me, you know? I didn’t think.”
Jackie licked salt from her lips and straightened her back against the car seat.
His fingers twitched, inching higher up. “I hate to see you this sad.”
She sucked at the air. “Any sadness is of my own making. We both know that.”
She’d lost the only man she’d ever loved; she’d lost her best friend, and for what?
It was all her fault. All her stupid, stupid idea of protecting them from hypothetical hurt.
If she had a chance to turn back time, would she have done the same?
Left without a proper goodbye, running from country to country, and away from her feelings and demons, neither of which had ever stayed far behind?
Without thinking, acting on some ancient instinct, she took one hand off the wheel and put it over Mitch’s.
He twined his fingers with hers, turning their joined hands palms-up. “Every storm runs out of rain, eventually. You shouldn’t let that sadness tell you what to do now.” He smoothed her skin with his thumb.
For a moment, all the outside world didn’t exist. Jackie had forgotten that Mitch should’ve been married now.
She’d forgotten all the tears, all the pain, all the heartache.
She’d forgotten the lonely nights when she watched the moon from wherever she was in the world, wondering if he was looking at the same moon elsewhere.
She’d forgotten every other guy she’d been with, every time she’d let Mitch’s name slip off her tongue when she’d been with someone else.
In this single heartbeat, amid the charged silence broken only by the running engine as they moved closer to their destination, she was tempted to tell him everything. Or better yet, stop the car, angle her face to him and let her ravenous lips connect with his.
Knowing how good, how right, it’d feel didn’t help matters.
Then, the second was gone. Her lungs refilled with air, reason kicked back in, and she toed the gas pedal, swallowing the desire for something she had no right to crave.
“Jackie …” Mitch said and the mere sound of her name on his lips raised the hairs on her arms.
She groaned, energy sapping from her body. “This is such a bad idea.”
“You keep saying it, but I don’t understand why.”
Her heart throbbed as her brain flashed “caution” signs in bold red font.
Because I’m not strong enough to resist whatever pull you still have on me. Because I’m scared I’m going to fall for you all over again and my heart won’t recover this time. Because I don’t want to hurt you again.
She blinked, struggling to string together the words she wanted to say.
“Because you’ve been here less than a week, and I feel like I haven’t slept a wink. I can’t function with you nearby.”
Mitch opened his mouth, but Jackie continued, the feelings and confusion that had been brewing in her heart and mind since his arrival finally bubbling to the surface. “I thought I got over you. But it seems it was a lie.” She shook her head, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
A muscle in his jaw spasmed. “Jackie …” The low timbre of his voice filled the Jeep, signaling both desperate need and exasperation.
He opened his mouth, drew in a breath and closed it, like he needed some extra air to process what he wanted to say.
“Let’s not go there. I … I can’t go there with you, not unless you’re willing to go there with me too. ”
He turned his head to look at her and the deep sorrow in his eyes punched a hole in her heart. It was so dense, so visceral, that she wanted to reach out to his face and melt that pain away, somehow.
Her lips tingled at the mere thought of kissing the sadness away, like she used to do when they were together. Always the right eyelid first, then the left one.
Jackie had no clue how she managed to notice the sign for their turn. Tires groaned against the dirt as they went off the paved road.
“We’re here,” she announced, freeing her hand from his.
Mitch cleared his throat, flexing the hand that was just holding hers.
The ghost of his touch coated her fingers like a most treasured made-to-measure glove she’d lost and found again.