Chapter 8
EIGHT
AUGUST
I wake up at five-forty-three.
I know without looking. My body decided on this time at some point in the last two years and has not wavered since. Dr. Delaney calls it a positive adaptation. I call it the universe’s way of ensuring I never screw up anything too important to sleep through.
The cabin is dark with the gray-blue dark before dawn. When the morning light is thinking about it but hasn’t committed yet.
Marie is asleep on my chest.
Fuck, it feels good to have a woman’s warm body nuzzled against me again.
I was never one of those guys always hankering for greener grass. I loved being in a committed relationship.
I miss having a warm body in bed beside me at night, and not just because of the regular access to sex.
I liked the meals together, and always having a person to talk to, and having someone to tackle life together with.
Life is really fucking terrifying, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.
Even with how bad I fucked it up, Priscilla was still the best thing that ever happened to me. I’d probably be dead now if it wasn’t for her. And then getting a human as amazing as Owen out of the whole mess?
It’s so much more than I ever deserved.
And it’s also why, as good as this feels, it’s best I enjoy it while I’ve got it.
And then, along with the wild, amazing memories of last night, I need to take this experience for what it was, with gratitude that I can pull the recollection of it to spiral over as a pleasant thought when the other noise gets too loud.
Because every single bit of last night was… fantastic.
I’m generally aiming for a base level of fine in my life lately, so running across a little bit of terrific is—
Well, it makes me want to hold this strange, weirdly wonderful woman tighter.
Exactly when I need to be planning how I’ll pull away from her body and go start my day.
Because it is officially time to get the hell out of here and start hitting my regular routine. Hard.
Stick to the plan. No deviations.
I have things to do. The shop doesn’t open until ten but I need to swim first, and I’ve got to eat something before I swim.
I told her I’d be gone before seven. It’s not yet six but it’s close enough that staying is starting to feel like a choice rather than just inertia.
I should extract myself carefully and go back to my RV and start my day and let her sleep. She’s got an enormous amount of life to sort out today and she doesn’t need me in the middle of it causing her problems or delays…
I know myself well enough to get that I’m best in short doses. I’m a walking disaster at the best of times and a fucking curse on people’s lives at the worst.
Nobody needs that. Certainly not her.
Still… I don’t move.
Instead, I stay just where I am and allow myself to inhale her hair. It smells like a faint, delicious floral with a little bit of chlorine mixed in since we didn’t exactly shower properly when we got in last night.
Her breathing is slow. Her hand open against my ribs. She looks like someone who has finally stopped running after a very long day.
I look at the ceiling.
She’s leaving today, I think.
Probably today.
Either way, soon enough she’ll figure out her next move and she’ll be gone. And I’ll still be here doing my laps. I’ll think about her in the cold water when I want to think about something good.
She shifts in her sleep, letting out a small little noise, her hand closing loosely around a fold of the sheet. I look at the top of her head and take another long inhale. Like a creeper. Fuck.
I’m so going to get up.
In a minute. Just one more minute.
The light outside is softening from gray-blue to something warmer, and I can hear the birds starting up in the live oaks along the fence. Somewhere further back in the park someone’s already making coffee. I can smell it through the cracked window. Early risers going about their routines.
Marie takes a long slow breath.
She goes still for a moment. I feel the exact moment she remembers where she is and I wait for her to tense when she realizes she’s snuggled up in the arms of a stranger after all we did last night.
But instead, her body relaxes. Which, fuck, is something I’m going to be thinking about later when I’m in the cold water.
She tilts her head up.
“You’re still here,” she says. There’s a smile creeping at the edges of her mouth.
“Leaving soon,” I say. “It’s not six yet.”
She makes a sound of acknowledgment and puts her cheek back against my chest. My arm around her is intentional now, slightly squeezing her to me.
Fuck, she feels so good held against me like this.
I look at the ceiling and think: now. Get up now.
I still don’t.
We lie there in the quiet for a while, the cabin getting incrementally lighter around us, and I’m aware of her easy breathing and her warm, soft curves pressed up against me.
Fuck, this feels way too good.
Dangerous good in a way that makes me want things.
“I should figure out what I’m doing today,” she says eventually.
“Yeah.” I swallow hard.
“I don’t have a plan.”
“You’ll make one.”
She goes quiet again. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “Thank you. For staying. I don’t know how one-night stands work or if that was cool to ask, but I really appreciate it.”
One-night stands.
I knew that’s what this was. It’s what I wanted and assumed it was all along. I’m glad she put it in words, like a boundary between us.
I don’t say of course because it isn’t of course. Nothing about last night was of course. I say, “Yeah,” instead, which isn’t eloquent.
And still the selfish part of me is disappointed I can’t ask for her number. Which is fucked up because I know she just left her husband yesterday and the last thing she needs is mess like me in her life.
At least one of us has some self-preservation instincts.
She nods, cheek moving against my chest.
I’m about to actually get up.
I’ve decided.
I’m doing it.
I’m totally just about to swing my legs over the side of the bed here any second—
When the knock comes. Three sharp raps at the cabin door.
Marie lifts her head. We look at each other. Clearly she’s not expecting anyone.
It’s barely past six in the morning and the authoritative quality of that knock makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Are you expecting—” she starts. I shake my head.
Three more raps. Harder.
Marie pulls the sheet up and calls out, “One second.”
She looks around for clothes. I’m already pulling on my swim trunks from the floor.
Marie finds a t-shirt and shorts from her suitcase, hopping to pull them up over her ass as she goes to the door.
I stay back, pulling my own shirt on, and looking for my slip-on sandals, so I hear it before I see it—
The sharp inhale Marie takes before she says, “How did you know where I am?”
“Location tracking,” says a familiar voice from outside that smacks me like a fist to the face. “I knew one day I’d—”
I look up in shock. What the f—
Why is my mother standing in the doorway?
She’s exactly the same as when I last saw her seven years ago. She’s got the same rigid posture and same thick mask of Texas-church-lady makeup. She wouldn’t even go out to get the mail without an hour of “putting on her face” first.
Her eyes shoot from Marie to me and back to Marie.
“Mom?” The confused word comes out before I’ve decided to say it.
Marie spins.
She looks at me like she’s never seen me before.
“You’re Jake’s brother?” she says.
And there it is. Jake’s brother. Which means she’s—
Oh shit.
The husband she left yesterday—
“Jake’s wife isn’t Marie,” I say, still dumbfounded. I never met her but I heard a little bit about her before I stopped talking to Jake and Mom. Things were a little hectic back then, what with the drugs and the crazy shit I was up to non-stop. “It’s Lauren or Lucy, or L—”
“Lennon,” she whispers, eyes as wide as saucers. “Marie is my middle name.”
The full horror hits me.
I just fucked my brother’s wife.
Soon to be ex-wife, but still.
I watch it land on her face and I can see the exact moment it tips from shock into something else.
“You’re the brother. From the mental hospital?” she squeaks.
And there it is.
Jake’s version of me.
The word mental hospital in her mouth in that newly frightened register, and I can hear exactly how he told it. In his mournful, slightly martyred voice. All, my poor troubled brother, and it was so hard on our family.
I know what I look like to her right now, which is exactly what he always said I was.
Except worse… maybe like a crazy stalker or something.
“I live here,” I reiterate. “I’ve lived here two years. I didn’t know who you were.”
My mother makes a sound. Not a word, exactly, more just like the audible version of contempt and vindication. She’s been waiting for her suspicions to be confirmed and she feels like she’s just watched it happen in real time.
“Of course,” she snaps. “Of course you’re here. Of course this is where you are.”
“Mom—” I drag a tired hand down my face.
“No.” She steps fully into the doorway, making Marie stumble backwards.
Shit, Mom’s inside the cabin now, which is not where I want her. I’m betting it’s the last place Marie wants her, too.
Marie—shit, no, Lennon—Jake’s wife.
Fuck. I can’t think about that right now.
“No, you don’t get to Mom me.” Mom shakes her finger in my face. “Not after this. Do you have any idea—”
She turns the finger Lennon’s way, and the pivot is so sharp it’s almost military. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What the two of you have done?”
“It’s not what you think,” Lennon starts.
“It’s exactly what I think.” My mother’s voice drops to something that’s quieter. Oh shit. The woman has two registers: loud, which is bad, and quiet, which is generally much worse for whoever’s on the other end of her ire.
“I can see exactly what happened. You leave my son—my good son, who has given you everything and worked himself to the bone for you—and you come straight here. To him. The two of you have probably been carrying on for God knows how long behind Jake’s back—”
“No!” Lennon objects. “I just met him last night and I didn’t know he was—”