Chapter 25 – Rowan
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rowan
We don’t talk on the way back to the suite.
One wrong word and the whole shaky truce we’ve built will flip on its back. We both know exactly how fast silence turns into something we can’t take back.
Tessa walks half a step ahead of me, stiff with that ankle she pretends isn’t hurting. She doesn’t limp; she power-marches. Her chin’s up, and her shoulders are rigid.
Her jaw’s locked. Her breathing’s thin. And knowing her, she’s digging her nails into her palms hard enough to leave marks.
She hasn’t looked at me since we left.
Impressive, really. Most people break eye contact with me out of fear; she does it out of spite.
But I haven’t stopped looking at her.
I track everything because I can’t not—every lift of her shoulders, the tiny tremor in her fingers when she digs for the key card.
Nothing about her is dramatic, but she gives herself away in these small, infuriating ways she’ll never admit to.
And of course, I notice, because I’ve had my hands on all the places those tells begin.
Everything between us feels different now—tighter, heavier. I hate it. And I want it. And I hate that I want it.
She steps up to the suite door, the key card steady in her hand, even though her pulse is absolutely not. The lock clicks, and my stomach tightens, which is fantastic, because apparently, I’m fifteen again and ruled by idiotic hormones.
If she turns around right now, I’ll say something I shouldn’t.
If she doesn’t, I’ll think something I shouldn’t.
Either way, I’m screwed.
She knows it.
I know it.
And neither of us is brave enough—or stupid enough—to be the first to say it out loud.
We reach the door, and I follow her in.
She crosses the room fast, drops her phone face down on the table, and starts unzipping her fleece with choppy, irritated movements.
She’s not overheated—she’s unraveling, and the jacket is one more thing she can’t stand touching her right now.
She shrugs it off her shoulders and then it hits me—the smell.
“Oh, for fuck’s—Waffles!”
He rockets out from behind the couch. Tail wagging. Super proud of himself.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter, already heading for the bathroom to find whatever sad excuse for cleaning supplies this place thinks qualifies as hospitality.
Tessa lowers herself onto the bed, tucking one foot under her while keeping the other elevated. “He’s probably anxious. Or overstimulated.”
“He’s an asshole,” I say, staring at the steaming evidence of his moral collapse. “He should be tried at The Hague.”
“He’s a baby.”
“He’s a biohazard.”
Waffles walks over and licks my ankle, which I assume is supposed to be an apology, but I’m not accepting personal injury compensation from a dog who just nuked the carpet. I still want to catapult him into the nearest body of water.
I scoop up the mess, gagging because, of course, this is my life now, muttering curses under my breath the whole time as I disinfect the carpet with hotel-grade nonsense. Then I take the bag out, call housekeeping, and seriously consider requesting an exorcist.
Meanwhile, Tessa’s on the bed, cuddling that traitorous fur goblin.
“I’m going to burn down this room,” I inform no one in particular when I return.
Tessa hums, stroking Waffles’s head. “Use a scented candle. Something calming. You’re tense.”
My eye twitches, and I peel off my shirt, walking toward the bathroom with the intention of taking a shower so hot that it resets my ability to make decisions with my body. But I stop in the doorway.
Tessa’s still cradling her ankle. Still pretending she’s unaffected.
But her eyes flick up to me when she thinks I’m not looking.
And that’s when I pivot.
I don’t say anything. I just walk into the bathroom, turn on the tub’s faucet, and twist it toward warm. I stand there like an idiot, watching the water rise, then grab the overpriced bath salts from the welcome basket and dump them in because apparently, I’m a concierge now.
I check the temperature with my hand, adjust it, then adjust it again because suddenly I’m incapable of leaving anything imperfect. I pull a towel from the shelf, shake it out with more force than necessary, and set it on the edge of the tub before I can overthink this any further.
Then I walk back into the bedroom and jerk my chin toward the bathroom door.
“Tub’s ready.”
She blinks at me. “You ran me a bath?”
I don’t answer because the truth is pathetic, and I don’t do pathetic.
I ran the bath because she was barely holding it together, and some traitorous muscle memory in me reacted before my brain could shut it down.
It’s the same instinct that had me carrying her books freshman year, the same one that made me memorize her coffee order before I even admitted I liked her.
It’s not strategy. It’s me losing control in ways I swore I wouldn’t.
“I—why?” she asks.
“Your ankle’s swollen,” I say, tone flat enough to pass for indifference. “Heat might help.”
She nods once. “Right. Medical necessity.”
“Exactly,” I say, as if I didn’t adjust the water temperature three times.
She walks past me and disappears into the bathroom. The door clicks shut.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and scrub a hand over my face.
I want to be angry. I need to be angry. That was the entire point. Keep her at arm’s length, use the situation, get what I need, leave clean.
But all I can think about is the look she gave me right before she kissed me—certain, and so damn honest it still knocks the wind out of me.
And now I’m running baths.
Fantastic.
* * *
By the time I hear the water draining, I’ve changed into a clean shirt, wiped down the rest of Waffles’s destruction zone, and sent a terse text to Chad to tell him we won’t be joining the group lunch.
He responds with three thumbs-up, and I resist the urge to block him.
The bathroom door creaks open, and Tessa emerges in one of the hotel robes, hair damp, and cheeks flushed from the heat. She doesn’t say anything. Just limps slowly back to the bed and climbs in beside Waffles, who immediately curls into her side.
The robe slips off one of her shoulders when she sits back, exposing the line of her collarbone. My eyes hit it before I can stop them, and my pulse spikes because I remember touching her there, remember the way she’d breathe harder when I put my mouth on that exact spot.
I look away for half a second, then immediately look back because I’m a disaster with no self-respect.
I need to get myself under control.
This is supposed to be simple. A performance with rules and boundaries I designed. But she sinks into the bed, and suddenly I can’t remember why I ever believed I could keep this clean. Or why I thought three years was enough time to get her out of my system.
I stay in the armchair, elbows braced on my knees, watching her the way a sane man wouldn’t. “Feel better?”
She shrugs, tugging the robe higher on her shoulder. “Less homicidal.”
“Good. One of us should be.”
She tilts her head, eyes narrowing just slightly. “You didn’t have to run a bath.”
“I didn’t.”
“Right,” she says dryly. “You just accidentally turned on the faucet and dumped in bath salts.”
I raise a brow. “You’re welcome.”
She rolls her eyes, but she hides the smile behind Waffles’s head as she scratches behind his ears. The room feels different for a moment. The quiet settles in a way that doesn’t make me want to pace a hole in the floor.
I stand before she can ruin it. “Stay there. I’ll get food.”
She blinks at me. “You don’t have to—”
“Stay,” I repeat, already moving toward the door. “If you walk around like that, you’ll limp straight into another partner meeting, and I’m not rescuing you twice in one day.”
She doesn’t argue.
And I don’t let myself look back as I leave.
Ten minutes later, I come back, balancing two paper containers of grilled chicken wraps, fries, and a brownie so oversized I don’t want to think about its calorie count. I’d pretend the trip wasn’t for her, but even I’m not that delusional.
She’s still on the bed when I walk in—ankle propped on a pillow, robe tied tight, Legally Blonde playing with the volume low.
“I brought sustenance,” I say, holding up the boxes.
“Smells like fries,” she replies without looking away from the screen.
“Excellent observation. Truly groundbreaking work. You could’ve been a detective.”
I set the food between us and sit cross-legged at the foot of the bed. It’s close enough to feel the warmth of her legs through the blanket, but far enough that I can pretend it’s accidental.
She reaches into a container, grabs a fry, and eats it without meeting my eyes. The silence stretches, but it’s not the acidic kind we walked in with; it’s quiet, and almost cautious, like we’re both waiting to see which version of us is going to show up next.
“Do I want to know how you bribed the kitchen?” she asks finally.
“I didn’t.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You smiled at them, didn’t you?”
“I threatened them a little.”
“How romantic.”
There’s a small smile tugging at her mouth, and the second I see it, something loosens in my chest.
We eat for a while, neither of us talking much. It’s not awkward; it’s rhythmic. Comfortable. She steals a fry from my container, watches a scene play out on the screen, and absentmindedly scratches Waffles’s belly with her foot like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
And that’s the problem.
It is natural. Too natural.
This feels like the nights we spent eating takeout on my dorm mattress, pretending the springs weren’t digging into our backs. It feels like the thousands of tiny domestic moments we lived before everything fell apart—before I told myself I needed to get over her, before I convinced myself I had.
Like the last three years didn’t happen.
Like the space between us never existed.
Like I haven’t spent every day since trying to kill the part of me that still wants this.
And I’m failing spectacularly.