49. Chapter 49
Three hours.
In just three hours, Lindsey would be home free. And in another twenty-nine she’d be home.
She thanked the clerk for her ticket and looked around for a place to sit until it was time to board the bus back to Ohio. Three hours. Graham would be long gone by then.
With Helen.
She should’ve let him have it this morning. If she wasn’t so exhausted. If Jase hadn’t kept her up all night…
She needed coffee.
Coffee.
Dancing. Ketchup. Tongue. Massive c—
She shook it away. They were remnants of another life. Jase wouldn’t be bringing her coffee today, or ever. He was probably relieved she bowed out gracefully.
Okay, her exit was as graceless as the lamp and torn collar.
Better than facing the awkwardness of Jase waking up in her bed.
He deserved a proper goodbye for staying, and Graham deserved a knock-down, drag-out fight for leaving, but more important than whatever she owed them was protecting the fragile threads of her heart from more hurt.
The ticket crumpled in her palm was the way.
She almost made it to an open seat on a metal bench near the far wall when someone called her name.
Lindsey turned abruptly and saw Jase, red-faced and sweaty, running to meet her in the middle of the crowded station.
“Jase? What are you…” She was very aware that the last time she saw him awake, he was also red-faced and sweaty…and naked. “Did you run here?”
He bent at the waist, bracing his palms on his knees, trying to catch his breath. She remembered him having more stamina than this. Lindsey pulled a water bottle from her shoulder bag and handed it to him.
“Are you okay?”
“I hate Texas in the summertime.”
He was wearing the torn shirt.
He’s an expert in the sack and I couldn’t even undress him.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He finished the water and stood up straight, saying, “You left before we could talk.”
“I thought you’d appreciate a quick exit.”
He laughed. “No, that’s not it.”
“What then?” She raised her eyebrows. “You wanted a morning blowjob?”
“What? Yeah. No. No.” With seemingly great effort he repeated what he’d said in his note: “Don’t leave.”
She gaped at him. As if what he said wasn’t crazy enough, he followed it up with, “Finish the trip with me.”
“You’re joking,” she said, still gaping.
“I’m not.”
She looked around for help in the sea of unfamiliar travelers, finding none.
She didn’t want to be there, and she definitely wasn’t promised an ending in a bus station reeking of unwashed clothes and traces of urine.
But if she stuck to her ticket, by tomorrow night she would be back in her own apartment, twelve hundred miles from the nearest Young.
“Jase, I’m going home,” she said.
“We’re not done yet,” Jase said.
“You know how crazy you sound? Why would I finish the trip?”
“It was supposed to be the three of us. You, me, and Graham—not Helen.”
“Yeah, well, Graham made his decision, didn’t he? Take it up with him.”
She turned to walk away and he stayed on her heels.
“My brother is a selfish prick.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“This isn’t about Graham anymore. It’s about my dad.”
“Don’t do this, Jase,” she warned. Don’t you dare.
“He built this trip for us.”
“Not for me.”
He let her go a few steps without him, allowing travelers to pass between them. She thought he gave up. Then he yelled, “Wait!”
She froze. The despair in his voice raised the hair on her arms.
“You promised him,” he said, as if she forgot. “You told me he asked you to not quit. So, what are you doing?”
Stiff and jerky as a doll on a pedestal, Lindsey forced herself to face him.
“That’s not fair, Jase. Do you realize what you’re asking of me?”
“I do,” he said, walking towards her. “And I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“Why? We don’t owe each other anything.”
“Not each other. But we owe it to my dad not to let Graham ruin his trip.”
She couldn’t believe she was even considering it. That his argument was hitting a nerve.
Lindsey shook it away. Three hours. In three hours, she’d be on a bus.
“I can’t do this. I can’t stay—“”
Her eyes caught something familiar across the room.
“Is that…” She stared at the book in the hands of a woman sitting near a bank of windows. “It’s not possible.”
“What is it?” Jase asked.
She approached slowly, intent on the book’s cover, only vaguely aware Jase was following her.
“Excuse me?”
The woman near the windows lifted a pair of chins and narrowed her eyes at Lindsey.
“I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. “Can you tell me where you got that book?”
“It’s mine,” she said, creases deepening around her frown.
Lindsey swallowed the lump in her throat. “Sure. Okay. You see, it was a limited print. There are only a couple copies in existence. That makes it kind of special.”
“I found it in a booth in Greenville, Alabama,” she said.
“Can I see it?”
Lindsey didn’t wait for permission to take the book, and Jase silenced the violated woman’s rebuttal with a look.
She knew what she would find inside the cover.
There, in slanted script she recognized from his letters, was the inscription: Property of Jason Young.
She pressed the book into Jase’s chest.
“I did leave it at the truck stop,” she said, more to herself than to Jase. What had Farmer Pederson said? I think there’s more than three of you on this here trip.
She was never leaving, she realized. One way or another, Jason would’ve made sure she stayed.
She should’ve been angry that she didn’t have a choice. Instead, lost in the ether between reality and fantasy, where books made their way across multiple states and into the exact right hands at the exact right moments, she looked up at Jase and said, “Okay. Let’s finish this.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” the affronted woman grunted. “That there’s my reading material for the bus.”
Lindsey drew a fifty-dollar bill from her purse and said, “The book is mine.”
The money seemed to pacify the woman. That or Jase’s last look warned her it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Lindsey took Lovers Who Wander back from Jase and held it to her chest. She couldn’t fathom the remarkable journey it made to get there, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to finish the trip with Graham, his new girlfriend, and the brother she’d slept with a few hours ago, but the old man willed it.
And on this trip, his will must be done.