Chapter 19
B y the time we crossed the North Carolina line, the storm was biblical.
Horizontal rain, thunder so loud it rattled the glove box, and visibility somewhere between bad and you’re gonna die.
The rain was coming down sideways, so thick and furious it looked like the world was dissolving in front of the windshield.
The wipers thrashed back and forth like they were about to give up, and the car felt like a tiny metal coffin with Fitz gripping the wheel like it owed him something.
I was curled up in the passenger seat of Fitz’s car, barefoot, legs tucked under me, hoodie zipped to my chin.
My body still felt like it was on Paris time, and my brain was wet concrete from the transatlantic flight, zero sleep, and the emotional whiplash of coming home to the place where every memory felt like it had teeth.
Fitz hadn’t said more than ten words since we left D.C. And honestly? I hadn’t either. We were both wrecked in our own ways—him from law school, me from three months of getting my ass handed to me by French pastry chefs with zero chill .
My head was leaning against the window, but I couldn’t fall asleep in his car any more than I could on the nine hour flight from Paris to D.C.
with a toddler screaming behind me the whole time and a customs officer who looked like she wanted to ruin my life out of sheer boredom.
All I wanted was to sleep or soak in a bathtub for forty-seven hours.
Instead, I was trapped in a car with him.
And of course , he looked like he had just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad minus his usual tan.
Other than giving me a cursory nod when he picked me up outside the airport, he had barely looked at me once since we got in the car. Not that I was watching. Much.
I knew he was wiped. Law school at Georgetown was probably eating him alive and he looked a little more pale and thin than last summer.
I hadn’t meant to end up in a car with him.
Mom had called last minute to inform me that Fitz was driving down to the beach house from DC anyway and that he would just pick me up at Dulles for the trip down.
And of course he’d say yes to her. Fitz always said yes when it came to my family. So now we were in the middle of a Carolina back road, water slapping at the windows, several hours away, and the goddamn ferry wouldn’t even run in a storm like this.
“I’m calling it,” he muttered, pulling off onto some narrow little road flanked by trees that bent sideways from the wind. “We’re not making it to the house tonight.”
I straightened up and rubbed my eyes. “So what do you propose?”
“To stay the night, get some sleep, and we’ll hit the road early in the morning.”
“There’s nothing out here,” I said, peering through the dark. The GPS glow lit his jawline. “You planning to pitch a tent in a Waffle House parking lot?”
“I don’t plan to pitch a tent anywhere.” He looked at me pointedly. “There’s a B he hated that at least one part of him wanted me—and that part was long and hard.