Chapter 13
Rowan
I’m lost in the woods again. Running between the towering trees, freezing and terrified.
She won’t make me stay out here.
She’ll come get me.
I told her it was an accident. That I tried to clean it up before anyone saw that I got sick. But the bucket was too heavy and I tripped. I didn’t mean to spill dirty water on his white carpet.
I said I was sorry, but then he said it was too much.
He wasn’t into kids. He was sorry.
So we went to another motel, and she was so mad. So mad that I couldn’t have just thrown up in the toilet. So mad that now she had to find another solution.
I tried to be quiet, but she kept looking at me.
And then she was smiling, but it wasn’t her nice smile. It was the smile that gives me the quicksand-in-my-belly feeling. She brought me to the playground by the woods where one of her man friends took us hiking last year.
She told me she needed to find us another situation. But that she’d be back as soon as she could and not to let anyone see me except for her.
I asked her not to leave me, but she said it was the only way.
We didn’t have a home because of me, so now she had to find us a new one.
But then the sun went down, and it started to rain. And I waited. But an old beat-up car rolled down to the parking lot, and I hid in the woods.
She has to come back; she wouldn’t leave me. I call for help, but when I run toward the playground, I must run the wrong way. Because I’m lost and the trees are blowing and it’s raining, and the sky splits, blinding and deafening all at once.
“Shh, Rowan… You’re okay… I’ve got you.”
I gasp, clinging to the strong arms holding me tight against a wall of solid warmth.
“W-what?” I whisper in confusion as my night terror fades and reality comes into sharp focus.
Jason, grounding me in the now after I was lost in the past.
“Hey, you with me?” His voice is a low rumble against my ear, the heat from his body melting the remnants of icy fear in the pit of my stomach.
Oh God. I swallow and nod as I begin to extract myself from his arms.
Another deafening boom, and I jolt, mortification crashing through me with more force than the storm.
Instead of letting me go, he draws me incrementally closer like he knows I need it. “Just give it a second.”
I tip my head to see him. “Thank y-you.”
Illuminated by the storm, he’s all heavy lines and dark shadows. The tiny creases around his eyes and accumulation of small scars born in the last ten years have been erased by the night, making him look almost like the boy from a lifetime ago.
When the next boom sounds, I feel it, but not like before.
Jason’s hold loosens. “You okay if I turn on the lights?”
“Yes, please,” I whisper, the heat of embarrassment warming my cheeks. “Just for a minute.”
Just long enough for me to find my sweater and move out to the living room so the poor guy can get some sleep.
He nods, his eyes still locked with mine through the bits of darkness breaking up more lightning than I can count the distance of the storm through.
Not that I need to. It’s on top of us.
Jason shifts, leaning around me to the lamp on the corner nightstand.
Click, click.
My stomach drops.
His chest rises and falls against my shoulder with his heavy sigh. “Power’s out.”
I swallow hard, nodding into the darkness. “It’s fine. Just a storm.”
Lines go down. It happens.
But even as I try to talk myself into a rational headspace about it… it’s like I can feel the rain needling against my arms, the cold and the—
“Hey, you’re shivering.” Strong hands, warm and wide, rub gently over my arm, smoothing away the chill of fear pebbling my skin with the physical reminder that I’m not alone. I’m safe.
“I’m okay, really.” I climb out of bed to show us both how fine I am.
Jason nods, reaching for the blanket.
Forcing my feet to move, I round the bed, figuring I’ll wait out the storm in the living room. Only before I’ve even made it to the hall, he’s there… wrapping the comforter from the bed around my shoulders.
“Let me go first.” He gives my arm a reassuring squeeze before catching my hand as he steps past. “I can literally make my way through this place with my eyes closed. Gramps used to make a game of it when I was a kid.”
He leads the way down the hall and into the living room.
There’s more light in here with the picture window and fewer trees blocking the sky, but he holds my hand until I tuck myself into the corner of the couch across from the hearth.
“Okay?” he asks, before letting me go.
“Yes. Thank you. I’m good. You should go to bed.”
Instead of replying, he moves to the fireplace and crouches low to set the wood and tinder. “The power will probably be on by morning, but at least with a fire you’ll be able to see better and stay warm.”
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
He pauses, the broad expanse of his tapered back rising with a heavy breath. “Yes, I do.”
There’s something about the way he says it that makes me want to ask what he means.
But then he’s striking the match, and I’m riveted by the kaleidoscope of red, white, and yellow coalescing into a flame.
Soon, a fire blazes to life, and Jason stands in front of the amber glow. He looks over his shoulder at me. “Few minutes, and we’ll have some heat.”
I tuck my knees closer. “Thank you for this.”
He nods, raking a hand through the mess of his hair as he navigates around the easy chair and coffee table and into the kitchen.
“So, serious question.” The tap turns on, and it’s almost enough to drown out the raging storm.
“Ask.” At this point, I might tell him anything.
“Hot chocolate with those mini marshmallows you used to like.” He lights the burner, and I hear the comforting sounds of cabinet doors and the kettle meeting the grate. “Or the storm special… mini marshmallows and Irish cream?”
Jill would love this guy. “Storm special all the way.”
Jason
She told me I didn’t need to make her a fire or stay up with her. But she has no idea.
From the day we met, something about her got under my skin in a way nothing in my life ever has before. Something about seeing that fear and vulnerability in her eyes wrecks me.
Even after all the years and this business with the will, I’d move mountains to take her fear away.
Or maybe just make her some boozy hot chocolate and keep her company during this mother of a storm.
“Careful, it’s hot,” I say, handing her a heavy mug with too many layers of glaze.
“Protecting me from the dark, and now you’re keeping me safe from my hot chocolate too, huh?” Her lips purse through a soft smile, and she blows into her mug.
It’s a look I’ve seen even less than the others. And, damn, it looks good on her.
It’s sexy as hell… and causing a reaction I’d really like to think I’ve gotten over but clearly have not.
I clear my throat and take the other corner of the sofa. “That’s me. Full-service-Stanvic.”
“So,” she starts, pulling her knees up to tuck her feet under the blanket. “What do you want to talk about… other than this storm?”
Her.
I want to ask a million questions about the last ten years and the ten years before that. I want to ask about those months before I left home and if it was easier for her after I was gone.
But what she needs is a distraction.
“Last concert you went to. Band name. Whether it lived up to the hype. And did you buy the T-shirt? Go.”
We’re slouched into the loveseat with our feet propped up on the coffee table I dragged over after the first refill. The cabin is still getting pummeled by the weather, but the ground-shaking thunderclaps seem to have subsided, and Rowan has a warm, relaxed look to her.
Me?
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“I see that sour face, Jason.” She’s sitting up enough to point her mug at me. “I’m telling you he’s a good guy.”
“He left you for a year,” I choke out, staring at the woman beside me. “And then he decided to do it again?”
Our fire is dying down but still throwing off enough light for me to catch the eye roll as she lets out a quiet laugh.
“It’s not like he was following some band across the country. He’s a doctor working with a clinic in Madagascar. It’s meaningful work.”
A good guy.
A doctor.
Doing meaningful work.
Blah, blah, blah.
I don’t like him.
“What?” She laughs again, louder this time as she looks at me with gaping disbelief. “You’ve never even met him.”
Ack, the inner voice got away again. But also, “Don’t have to. The guy’s priorities are crap.”
She cocks her head, waiting for me to go on, but I’m distracted by the way her hair slips over her shoulder with the movement.
“If I had a woman like you at home, I wouldn’t want to leave you long enough to pick up the carryout. Let alone for a whole damn year.”
I blink, second-guessing that truth-bomb too late to take it back.
Damn those spiked drinks and Rowan’s heavy-handed pour.
“Right, except… Don’t you spend something like half the year on the road?”
Right. And I don’t even have the excuse of being a doctor changing the world for the better with no fucking pay. Because I make my living playing a game.
Yeah, pretty sure I might hate this guy. And not just the baseline hate that comes standard with dating Rowan. This is like the premium, extended package hate born of multi-dimensional jealousy.
“The longest I’m gone at a stretch is a few weeks.” But sitting here, looking at this girl who isn’t mine and never will be, I can’t help but wonder how guys like Boomer and Rux do it. How they say goodbye again and again and again.
“A few weeks is a lot longer than a twenty-minute round trip for carryout. Just sayin’.”
“Fair.” But then, because some part of me needs her to know it, I add, “It’s a lot of travel during the season, and that’s tough on a relationship. But for the right ones, the good ones, I’ve seen how they make it work.”
“I think Ron and I felt like that could be us.” She sighs or maybe yawns. “We wanted it to be.”
For sure I hate him. “But then he signed on for a second year.”
“Yes and no. Eventually, it became clear we wanted different things. Things we might not have even known we wanted or needed when we started making our plans.” She shrugs, cutting me a sidelong look. “So our plans changed.”
“And you didn’t want to move to Austin without him?”
“The job we were moving for was his. But unfortunately, I’d already given mine up and trained a replacement in Portland.
Same with our apartment. And when it came to deciding what I wanted to do next…
I figured it wouldn’t be the worst thing to take some time and really think about what I wanted for myself… instead of someone else.”
“Cue the cabin gig.” Another flash of lightning breaks up the night, but when the thunder rumbles seconds later, Rowan doesn’t seem to notice.
“I’ve always wanted to come here. I thought I’d get to with Ed. And then, too soon, he was gone. I didn’t have a plan. And my mother was about to…. So, cue the cabin gig.”