Chapter 12
Rowan
Get a grip, girl!
The guy was helping you get a vase. And okay, for a minute, it might have felt an awful lot like the same simmering current of attraction that was there before our parents got together. So what?
I set my flowers on the windowsill above the sink and then give it a few seconds to try and gauge where Jason is going. Not around front. Perfect.
I put my work gloves on and return to the clearing to mow, chastising myself as I take the first pass.
Yes, Jason is probably releasing twice the pheromones of the average guy, but I still didn’t need to lean into it.
I’m stronger than that.
Smarter.
I mow neat lines, one after another, reminding myself that for the first time in my life, I’m truly, totally free.
No vulnerabilities. No accountability. No other shoe waiting to drop.
And even if there are a few residual sparks between us, it’s not like either of us is going to act on them.
Talk about messy.
Inconvenient.
Flat-out stupid.
And not even close to why I’m here.
Reaching the end of the final row, I turn to survey my work. It’s the smallest mark, impermanent to the island, but lasting to me. I ought to be pleased, but instead, all I can think of is how much I wish Ed could see it.
Jason
I’m laid out on the utility room floor about to start on the drain when a pair of grass-and-dirt-covered sneakers topped by some painfully pretty ankles comes into view.
“Hey, if you’re good here, I’m going to take a walk for a bit.” Her weight shifts as she tucks one foot behind the other.
It’s not some sexy move. Nothing flirtatious about it. But the way my throat goes dry and my grip tightens on the wrench, you’d think she was giving me the OnlyFans treatment.
Which is bad.
Get it together, man.
“No, I’m set. Enjoy the fresh air.”
That casually tucked foot lets go, and then she’s leaving, her quiet, “Back in a while,” pulling at me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.
Sliding out from beneath the sink, I wipe my brow and call after her, “Hey, everything okay?”
She’s already past my line of sight when she answers. “Oh, yeah. Fine.”
I don’t know what it is, not the tone, not the words, not any one thing other than my gut urging me to get up off the floor and follow her when she leaves.
Thing is, the instinct that’s served me so well on the ice and off through most of my life has a singular blind spot. Rowan. And when it was wrong with her, it was really wrong.
I watch her feet as she leaves. And after a minute of prolonged, angsty deliberation over whether I should ask if she wants me to go along with her, I remind myself I’m not a fourteen-year-old girl and to knock that shit off.
The fix doesn’t take long to finish, and when it’s done, I grab my phone from the counter to check with Bruce if we’ve got an ETA on the lock guy.
A few minutes later, I’m heading out through the utility room door into an afternoon that’s beyond perfect. The wind is playing through the treetops and pushing big cotton-ball clouds across a vast and vividly blue sky as sunshine dances over the water.
I follow the wooded path along the bluffs at the far side of the island, above the remains of the old boathouse and past the boulder bed where the sound of the waves crashing below rises in a deafening roar.
The trees thin out ahead, and I see her.
She’s sitting with her back partially to me, cross-legged on the lookout rock, a few loose curls playing around the sliver of her profile.
Lesson learned on sneaking up on this woman, I give her a warning call. “Rowan?”
She turns, brushing her hair from her face, and then smiling as I walk over.
It’s not until I get closer that I notice the shimmer of her eyes and the bit of moisture she must have been trying to wipe away when I showed up.
“Aww, shit. Rowan, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted.”
“You didn’t. I’m just… I’m fine.” Turning back to the lookout, she pats the empty spot on the boulder. “Want to join me?”
I move in beside her, trying to leave as much room between us as I can, but in the end, it’s not even an inch. Not that it matters since in the next breath, I’m reaching for her, brushing a knuckle across her cheekbone to catch the last of her tears. “You want to talk about it?”
She shakes her head with a soft laugh, absently rubbing the pendant my father gave her between her finger and thumb. “Just feeling my feelings. Thinking about Ed.”
“He’s been on my mind too. You know this was his favorite spot.”
She smiles. “I do. He told me about it. Brought me a picture of the ‘Thinking Rock’ once. It was from a day like this, with the sun shining on the distant shore and the turbulent water between. He said there was nothing like actually being here though. Feeling the wind rushing around you and hearing the gulls, the waves. All of—”
“Nature’s chaos,” we say in unison, turning to each other with matching grins.
“He’d tell me, ‘Everything else can wait, kid. Just take the minute and soak up nature’s chaos.’” I swallow past the knot of emotion, not from sadness, but from having someone to share this with. Someone who gets it.
“It’s one of those Ed-isms that always resonated with me. But there were a million, really.”
“There were,” I agree.
We sit for I don’t know how long, comfortably not talking, just soaking in the kind of afternoon my dad loved best.
By the time I need to head back for Bruce and the lock guy, the wind is really picking up, and the sun has slipped behind one of those endless cloud banks, so Rowan decides to come with me.
It’s cooled off enough that I close the windows before getting dinner going while Rowan showers.
I’m making a roast chicken and root vegetables with my go-to recipe for quinoa and herb muffins on the side.
Something I’ve made dozens of times, but tonight, I have to triple-check that I’m not forgetting an ingredient.
Because distraction is a thing. It has auburn hair, a surprisingly wicked sense of humor, and tears that wreck me in a way nothing else can.
Rowan isn’t supposed to be on my mind this way.
Not anymore.
But it only gets worse once she emerges from the bathroom, fresh scrubbed and infusing the air with the same hit of honey and vanilla I couldn’t ignore lying next to her last night.
Because I don’t want to think about how pretty she is with those tendrils of damp hair falling past her shoulders or how good she smells.
I don’t want the fact that she’s not afraid to meet my eyes and has zero qualms about giving me shit to satisfy something inside me I didn’t know I’d been missing.
I don’t want to know how easy it is to talk to her when our lives aren’t aligned in a way that means I get to keep her after this weekend.
And I definitely don’t want to notice the way her sweatshirt (one of those faux-oversized numbers that’s actually cropped at the waist, resulting in a flash of skin here and there) reminds me of what it was like when my hands were wrapped around those scant inches of smooth—
Stop.
“What? Oh, sorry,” she replies from the far side of the living room, looking up from her phone with a sheepish smile that tells me my inner voice is getting louder.
“Just obsessively refreshing my weather app over here. I know the signal’s bad even when it’s totally clear, but I can’t get the forecast.”
Right, get with the program. “No, I was talking to myself, not telling you to stop. Refresh away.” I pull up my app. “Yeah, mine’s not updating either. When I checked this morning, it looked like there was some weather south of us, but all we’re getting is wind.”
Just then, I get another text.
Gut drop.
“You okay?” Rowan crosses to the built-in divider, stopping there like she’s not sure the kitchen is big enough for the two of us.
“That was Bruce.”
She must see it in my face but isn’t ready to give up hope. “The lock guy’s going to be… late?”
I wish. “He doesn’t want to cross the lake tonight. Too much wind. Too many waves. He’s not coming until tomorrow.”
She nods.
I nod.
We’re both thinking it: another night in the same bed.
Or maybe this new Rowan with her zero-bullshit tolerance is thinking, Another fucking night in the same fucking bed because this fucking douche locked me out of my room.
Whatever’s running through her mind, I can’t blame her for either it or this new layer of tension between us.
And it only intensifies as the night progresses.
That easy conversation we couldn’t stop slipping into is nowhere to be found.
And the sparse and stunted interactions we do share revolve around things like which cabinet the pepper is in (the one to the left of the sink, top shelf), the weather (it’s really blowing out there), and who’s going to clean up (she washes, and I dry.
And when our fingers touch mid plate handoff— awkward).
We retreat to our corners, her by the front window at the west wall, me on the loveseat on the south wall. Then her in the wingback on the north wall, and me in the kitchen.
We look at our phones, practically gasping with relief when that sketchy signal delivers a text drop. And when the signal won’t even give us that? Well, I’ve been doing a deep dive on my downloaded files and saved screenshots.
Then it’s finally late enough to justify going to bed.
We take turns in the bathroom. Rowan is first, and when she emerges, she’s draped in a T-shirt so long that only the barest hint of her sleep shorts is visible beneath.
She looks all too much like the girl I used to find curled up on the couch with her books spread out around her when I got home from a late practice.
I’m careful not to touch her when we pass on my way in to brush my teeth and change. Not that it makes any of this less uncomfortable.
And when I’m finished, she’s already in bed, her hair spilled around her pillow, her eyes echoing what I’m feeling as I climb in beside her:
It was easier when we were fighting.
Jason
It’s been an hour or so since we went to bed, and the stormfront that was supposed to stay well south of us is howling through the trees and rattling the windows.
But that’s not what woke me.
I can sleep through most anything. Hell, the team jet had to make an emergency landing once because the weather and turbulence were so bad, and I had no idea until Rux, our captain, smacked me on the side of the head and told me to get my ass off the plane.
But one restless murmur from Rowan and I’m wide awake, blinking at the lightning splintering the night sky, my senses on high alert.
She’s fine.
It was one little noise.
I tell myself I don’t need to roll over and make sure she’s okay. First, because watching her sleep is the line I refuse to cross.
But second, because if she woke up to me staring at her in the dark, there would be no coming back from that kind of creepy.
I have my pride, damn it. Maybe.
Or do I?
Because her next mumble is layered with an undertone of distress that hijacks my resolve and has me propping myself up on one arm.
There’s enough light from the lightning to see her face and the troubled lines between her brows.
She doesn’t like storms.
I don’t want to wake her, but when she flinches in her sleep, it does something to my chest I didn’t think was possible.
“Shhh.” I lift my hand but stop short of touching her. “You’re okay.”
Except she isn’t. Her breath is coming faster as she shrinks into her pillow. And even through the relentless wind and rumbling thunder, I hear her whimper, “Help…”
In all my life, one word has never cut so deep.
Jesus. “Rowan, hey, wake up… It’s just the storm.”
She doesn’t hear me.
Blinding light fills the room in time with a deafening, ground-shaking crash.
She screams.
And, because I physically can’t stop myself, I do the unthinkable.