Chapter Nine #2
Not hard at all!
Goddamn it.
And now here they were.
Here they were, about to share a bed.
It’s a king. Kings were big. She’d been sleeping in it for several nights now, so she knew how huge it was. She could spread out like a starfish and not touch any of the sides of the mattress, which meant she could easily sleep and not touch Evie.
Okay. Okay, this is good. This is fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine. She felt her confidence clawing its way up out of the gutter, peeking out to see if it was safe. It’s no big deal. It’s one night. You’re doing her a favor. You’re a decent person. That’s all it is. You’re being a decent person.
And then she remembered the fight she’d heard, remembered the look on Evie’s face when their gazes had met in the hallway, how incredibly exhausted she looked, and that solidified that she was doing a favor. Being a friend.
Maybe she feels safe with me.
That was an interesting observation, and possibly accurate. Because the truth of it was, Evie could have easily just headed down the stairs. The reality was, Evie could have gone down to sleep on the couch, no discussion required. But she hadn’t.
She hadn’t.
She’d gone directly into Rowan’s room without a second thought. Like it had been habit.
No.
Like it had been natural.
It certainly felt that way to Rowan, as if no time had passed—and in her amnesia-riddled brain, not much had—and they were simply falling back into old rhythms. When it came down to it, though, when Rowan sifted it all out and saw what was left, it was that Evie was hurting.
And Rowan could never stand by and not try to help. Ever. Even if she shouldn’t.
With an exhale born of mental exhaustion, she stood up straight and gave herself a literal shake. Slowly, she brushed her teeth, did all her evening things, and changed into her own T-shirt. Filling her lungs with a big, fortifying breath, she shut off the light and opened the door.
The only light on was the small lamp on the nightstand next to her side of the bed—and that made her smile: her side of the bed.
Evie was already sound asleep on the other side, her hand curled into a loose fist near her temple, her face relaxed and her head turned toward Rowan’s pillow.
Slow, even breaths were the only sound in the room, Evie’s chest rising and falling gently under the fluffy comforter.
Moving carefully, not wanting to disturb her, Rowan slipped under the covers, plugged in her phone, and reached for the lamp switch.
The darkness wasn’t full—the moon shone through the open sheer curtains on the French doors, bathing the room in an ethereal blue glaze.
Rowan lay on her back, her arms out of the covers, her hands folded over her chest, and it took her more than a moment to understand that she was doing a pretty good impression of a corpse.
With a soft chuckle, she rearranged her position, turning onto her side.
Facing Evie, which she hadn’t realized would be the case until she was there.
And then? She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to.
Evie’s face was still as beautiful as ever.
Rowan remembered the very first time she’d seen her, in a coffee shop at home, on the corner near both their office buildings.
Evie’d sat at a small table by the window, laptop open.
Rowan could still picture the big red mug that—she didn’t know at the time, but eventually learned—was filled with a London Fog, Evie’s go-to hot drink that was made of Earl Grey tea, vanilla syrup, and steamed milk.
She also had a scone with a bite taken out of it.
She was dressed in business attire—an outfit Rowan had found devastatingly sexy back then and one she could still remember now.
She called it up as she lay in the dark, her emotions mixed about the fact that it hadn’t slipped away with her accident.
Sleek black pants, a white button-down shirt with a black tailored vest, and a black and silver striped tie, and describing it made it sound so masculine when it was anything but, especially paired with the high heels.
Her dark hair had been long then and fastened low at the back of her neck in a complicated twist that Rowan had longed to unravel with her fingers.
She’d stared. She had. She knew it and she didn’t care.
The barista had to call her name twice before she snapped out of it and finally grabbed her latte.
When she’d glanced back at Evie, those dark eyes met hers and Evie smiled.
Rowan had smiled back, then hurried out the door like she was being chased by a swarm of wasps.
But she’d gone back. Every day for the next eight workdays, she’d gone back at the same time, and Evie had been there at the same time.
On the ninth day, she walked in to find Evie at her usual table, but this time, there was no laptop.
There was, however, a second cup on the opposite side of the small table, as if Evie was having coffee with someone.
Just as Rowan’s stomach was about to drop out of her body into a glop on the floor, Evie’s eyes met hers, then indicated the cup.
She held out a hand toward the empty chair, a clear invitation.
When Rowan could finally get her feet moving, she approached the table, and Evie said with a sexy smile, “We’ve been doing this dance for almost two weeks now.
I thought it was time for us to have an actual conversation. ”
And the rest was history.
Rowan smiled now at the memory, even as her eyes grew heavy, and she could feel herself starting to drift. She stayed on her side, stayed gazing at Evie’s peaceful, gorgeous face, wanting it to be the last thing she saw as she sank into slumber.
Another thing that had changed for Rowan since her accident was the way she slept.
Before her head injury, she’d been a fairly light sleeper, waking at the slightest sound or shift in the energy of the room.
Now? She slept hard, like a toddler who’d been running around on the playground all day long.
And sometimes, she slept so hard that it left her bleary-eyed and with a foggy memory around anything that might have happened in the night. Well, foggier than it was now.
That’s what happened that night, because she was pretty sure she’d woken up to the warmth of another body wrapped around hers.
She was fairly certain that Evie’s body and her body had found each other in the night, had somehow made their way across the mattress to meet somewhere in the middle and entwined together like vines of ivy growing up and around the same tree.
She had a vague recollection of Evie’s warm leg draped over her thigh, her knee tucked snugly between Rowan’s legs, the way she always used to sleep.
She thought she could recall the coconut scent of Evie’s shampoo because her head had been tucked under Rowan’s chin.
And then later, she was pretty sure Evie had spooned up behind her, another common position when they’d slept, Evie playing the big spoon, her knees tucked up against the backs of Rowan’s, her nose in Rowan’s hair, her arm draped over Rowan’s torso, all of it warm and comforting and safe and, frankly, normal. Regular. Habit.
When morning came, though, Rowan was in bed alone, and now she lay there, wondering if she’d made it all up.
Evie was gone, her side of the bed cool, so she’d been gone for a while.
Rowan checked her phone to see that it was nearing nine o’clock.
Okay, not too bad, at least she hadn’t slept the whole morning away.
She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms over her head, gave her muscles a good wake-up call.
And then she lay there and stared at the sun across the ceiling in streaks of happy, cheerful yellow.
What if everything she (vaguely) remembered about last night was true?
It seemed strange that it wouldn’t be, though since the accident, she found it hard to trust her own mind sometimes.
But what if it was? What did it mean, if anything?
Was it just two bodies falling back into familiar habits? Or was it something more?
“Well,” she whispered out loud, “I can lie here and dwell on it or I can get my ass out of bed and get something to eat.” As if to entice her, the scent of freshly brewing coffee wafted up from downstairs and under her closed door, and that was all the encouragement she needed to get her butt in the shower.
Twenty minutes later, hair still wet and in a braid down her back, Rowan headed downstairs to breakfast.
“Morning, sunshine,” Justine said from her usual spot at the stove in the kitchen. She was manning a large frying pan that had four pancakes browning in it. “Hungry?”
“Starving.” Rowan helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot and gazed out the back door. She could see the boat was gone. “Who went fishing this morning?”
“Lizzie, Stevie, Sara, and Evie.” She flipped a pancake. “Claire went for a walk. Becca and Jazzy took the canoe out.”
Rowan let go of a small sigh. “Last one up again, huh?”
“Hey.” She turned to meet Justine’s soft brown eyes. “You are on vacation. Vacation is for resting and relaxing. If you’re sleeping a lot, it’s because your body needs it. Don’t get mad about that.”
Rowan smiled sadly. “You’re right.” She gave Justine a squeeze. “Um, if everybody’s gone, who are you cooking for?”
“You and me. Duh. Get the plates out, would you?”