20. Elise
— ? —
Elise
I wake to gray light filtering through the curtains and Rowan’s arm draped across my waist.
We didn’t do anything last night. Just slept, tangled together like two people who needed to not be alone. But waking up like this, his breath warm on the back of my neck, his body curved around mine, feels more intimate than anything we did yesterday.
I should move. Should extract myself before he wakes up and this becomes something we have to discuss.
Instead, I stay perfectly still, memorizing the weight of his arm, the rhythm of his breathing, the way his fingers curl loosely against my stomach.
Today we leave the cabin. Today we go back to the real world, where everything is complicated and nothing is certain. Today might be the last time I wake up like this.
The thought makes my chest ache.
“Your shoulders are up around your ears again.” His voice is rough with sleep, muffled against my hair.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” His arm tightens slightly. “What are you thinking about?”
“Leaving.”
“Ah.” He’s quiet for a moment. “The roads should be clear by now. We can head out whenever you’re ready.”
“And then what?”
“And then… whatever you want.” His thumb traces absent patterns on my stomach, feather-light. “I meant what I said. You can stay with me, or I can take you to a hotel, or the train station, or anywhere else. Your call.”
Your call. Like it’s simple. Like the choice of where to sleep tonight doesn’t carry the weight of everything else.
I roll over to face him.
He looks soft in the morning light. Unguarded. The careful composure he usually wears is absent, replaced by something more vulnerable. More real.
“I don’t know what I want,” I admit. “Part of me wants to stay with you. Part of me thinks that’s a terrible idea. Part of me wants to run away and never see anyone from this chapter of my life again.”
“Including me?”
“Especially you.” I touch his face, tracing the line of his jaw. “You’re the most confusing part of all this, Rowan. When I’m with you, I feel things I don’t trust. Want things I’m not sure I should have.”
“What do you want right now?”
I could give him a safe answer. Something vague and noncommittal. Something that preserves the distance I keep trying to maintain.
Instead, I tell the truth.
“I want you to kiss me.”
His eyes search my face. “Are you sure?”
“No. I’m not sure of anything.” I curl my fingers into his hair. “But I want it anyway.”
He kisses me.
It’s different from yesterday. Softer. Slower. Like we have all the time in the world, even though we both know we don’t.
His hand slides up my back, under the t-shirt I slept in, and I shiver at the contact. Warm fingers tracing my spine, mapping the curve of my waist, unhurried and reverent.
“We don’t have to do anything,” he murmurs against my mouth. “We can just…”
“I know we don’t have to.” I pull back to look at him. “I want to.”
“Why?”
It’s a strange question. Most men wouldn’t ask it. Most men would just take what’s offered and be grateful.
But Rowan isn’t most men. And after yesterday, after I used him to burn through my rage and gave him nothing in return, I understand why he needs to know.
“Because this might be the last time,” I say honestly. “Because when we leave this cabin, everything changes. Because I want to remember what it feels like to be with you when I’m not angry or confused or trying to prove something.”
“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.”
“It’s the truth.” I trace the line of his collarbone. “Same terms as yesterday, Rowan. No promises. But right now, in this moment, I want you. And I want it to be different from yesterday.”
“Different how?”
“Slower. Gentler.” I swallow. “Like it matters.”
Something shifts in his expression. Something soft and aching and full of all the things neither of us is saying.
“It does matter,” he says quietly. “It matters more than you know.”
He kisses me again, and this time I let myself sink into it.
***
He undresses me slowly, like he’s unwrapping something precious.
Each piece of clothing removed is followed by a pause, a breath, a moment where he just looks at me like he’s memorizing every detail. His fingers trace paths across my skin: the curve of my shoulder, the hollow of my throat, the soft skin below my navel.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. “I know you probably don’t want to hear that. I know it sounds like something men say when they want something. But it’s true.”
“Simon used to tell me I was beautiful.”
“Simon was an idiot who didn’t know what he had.” His mouth follows his fingers, pressing soft kisses along my collarbone. “That’s not a mistake I’m capable of.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I pull him up to look at me. His face hovers inches from mine, close enough that I can see every shade of blue in his eyes.
“I’m trying to know,” I say. “I’m trying to see you clearly instead of through the lens of everything that’s happened. But it’s hard. The part of me that trusted Simon, the part that believed I could read people, understand their intentions, that part is broken now.”
“Then let me prove it to you.” His voice is low, intense. “Not with words. With this. Let me show you how I see you.”
“How do you see me?”
“Like you’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever touched.” His hand cups my face. “Like I’ve spent years waiting for a moment I didn’t think I’d ever have. Like I would do anything, anything at all, to make you believe that this is real.”
“Show me,” I whisper.
He does.
***
It’s nothing like yesterday.
Yesterday was fire and fury, all sharp edges and raw need. This is something else entirely: slow and deep and achingly tender, every touch deliberate, every moment stretched out like honey.
He takes care of the condom first, unhurried even in that, and then he moves inside me like he has all the time in the world. Like nothing exists beyond this bed, this room, this moment where our bodies are speaking a language our words can’t quite manage.
I feel tears prick at my eyes, and I don’t know why.
Maybe because it’s been so long since anyone touched me like I mattered.
Maybe because I’m terrified this is the last time.
Maybe because I can feel him holding back, being careful, treating me like something precious when part of me wishes he’d just take what he wants and let me stop thinking.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed to mine. “Don’t disappear into your head. Stay here.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.” He kisses me, soft and slow. “I’ve got you. Just feel this. Just feel me.”
So I do.
I let go of the fear and the doubt and the constant mental calculations. I stop thinking about what this means or what happens next or whether I’m making a terrible mistake. I just exist in my body, in this moment, in the feeling of him moving with me.
When I come, it’s like a wave breaking, not the sharp, almost-painful release of yesterday, but something softer and deeper that seems to go on forever.
I hear myself make a sound, somewhere between a sob and a sigh, and then he’s following me, his face buried in my neck, my name on his lips like a prayer.
Afterward, we lie there tangled together, neither of us willing to move.
“That was…” I start.
“Yeah.” His voice is rough. “It was.”
Silence stretches between us, but it’s not uncomfortable. Just… full. Heavy with things we’re both feeling but not saying.
“I don’t want to leave,” I admit finally. “I know we have to. I know the real world is waiting. But I wish we could stay in this cabin forever.”
“We can’t hide from reality indefinitely.”
“I know.” I trace patterns on his chest. “But reality is where everything gets complicated. Where I have to figure out what I’m doing with my life and deal with the divorce and face all the people who are going to have opinions about my choices.”
“You don’t have to face any of that alone.”
“Don’t I?” I prop myself up on one elbow.
“Because here’s the thing, Rowan. I don’t know who I am anymore.
I spent years being Simon’s wife. Before that, I was building a career that I gave up.
Before that, I was just… a person with potential who hadn’t figured out what to do with it yet.
” I shake my head. “I don’t know who Elise is, separate from all that. And I think I need to find out.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” I take a breath. “I’m saying I need some time. On my own. To figure out who I am when I’m not defined by a relationship.”
His expression doesn’t change, but I see something flicker in his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or resignation.
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe. Enough to find my own place, start rebuilding my life, remember what it feels like to stand on my own two feet.
” I touch his face. “It’s not about you.
Or, it’s not only about you. It’s about me needing to know that I can survive alone before I let myself depend on anyone again. ”
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because I’m not saying it’s over. I’m not saying I don’t want to see where this goes. I’m just saying I need to press pause before I can figure out what happens next.”
“Pause.” He nods slowly. “I can do pause.”
“Really? Because most people can’t. Most people hear ‘I need space’ and translate it as ‘I’m leaving forever.’”
“I’m not most people.” He pulls me close, tucking my head under his chin. “Take whatever time you need. Find yourself, or whatever it is you need to find. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“And if I need longer than you think? A month? Three?”
“Then I’ll say it again in three months, and I’ll mean it just as much.”
I want to believe him. I want to trust that his patience is real, that he won’t get tired of waiting, that when I’m finally ready to reach for him, he’ll still be there.
But trust doesn’t come easily anymore. Maybe it never did.
“We should start packing,” I say eventually. “The roads won’t stay clear forever.”
“Probably not.” But he doesn’t let go. “Five more minutes?”
I settle against his chest.
“Five more minutes.”
***
We pack in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Patricia’s envelope goes into the last trash bag, unopened. Ed’s truck came for her the day before, and she didn’t stop in.
The cabin looks different now, violated somehow, the flood damage visible everywhere. Water stains on the walls, warped floorboards, the smell of damp that no amount of airing will fully remove. It’ll take months to repair. Maybe longer.
Simon left early this morning. I heard an engine in the drive around six, before the sun was fully up, and by the time I got to the window, Ed’s truck was already pulling away with him inside. He didn’t say goodbye or leave a note, just the truck keys sitting on the kitchen counter.
I should probably feel something about that. Relief, maybe, or satisfaction. But mostly I just feel numb.
“Ready?” Rowan appears in my doorway, bag over his shoulder.
“As I’ll ever be.”
We carry our bags out to Simon’s truck together. The morning is cool and clear, the sky a pale blue that seems wrong somehow after so many days of gray. The flood debris is everywhere: branches and leaves and unidentifiable objects scattered across the property like the aftermath of a war.
I pause at the car door, looking back at the cabin.
Three weeks ago, I arrived here a different person. Someone who thought the worst of it was already behind her. Someone who didn’t know the full extent of her husband’s betrayal or the depth of her best friend’s treachery.
Now I’m leaving as… what? Someone wiser? Someone more broken? Someone who’s taken the first steps toward something new but doesn’t yet know where the path leads?
“Hey.” Rowan’s hand finds mine. “You okay?”
“No.” I squeeze his fingers. “But I will be. Eventually.”
“I believe that.”
“Do you?”
“I believe in you.” His voice is quiet, certain.
“Whatever happens next, whether we end up together or you decide you need something different, I believe you’re going to be okay.
Better than okay. You’re going to figure out who you are and what you want, and you’re going to build something beautiful. ”
My throat tightens. “That’s a lot of faith to put in someone you barely know.”
“I’ve known you a long time, Elise. I know you better than you think.” He opens the car door for me. “Ready to go?”
I take one last look at the cabin.
Then I get in the car.