Chapter Twenty-Six
ALLIE’S GOT FELIX STRAPPED TO HER CHEST IN A SOFT CARRIER, her iced latte from Cocoa balanced in one hand as we walk along the water on Bay Street.
“So, Drew’s in New York?” I ask, brushing a stray hair off my forehead.
She nods. “Yeah. He had to fly back early for work stuff. It’ll be fine though. My parents are here, obviously. And Jack.”
I glance over. “Jack’s had time to help out?”
She shrugs, adjusting the strap across her shoulder. “He’s staying in the guest house, but he’s been over at the house a lot. He shows up with breakfast smoothies, hangs with Felix, changes diapers, distracts mom when she’s being intense. Honestly, he’s been kind of a lifesaver this summer.”
I let her words sink in. “It’s funny, picturing Jack changing diapers.”
Allie laughs. “I know. But he’s been great.”
It makes me smile, imagining Jack with a baby. That thought should probably scare me, but it doesn’t. We keep walking, the breeze coming off the water just strong enough to make the heat tolerable. Felix shifts against Allie’s chest, a tiny fist pressed against her shirt like he’s making a point.
“He’s been sleeping so much better this week,” she says, glancing down. “Last week I thought I’d never feel human again, but suddenly he’s back to giving me these six-hour stretches. It’s like he knew his dad left and decided to give me a break.”
I tuck a curl of hair behind his ear. “He’s a gentleman.”
“He’s plotting something,” she says, sipping her iced coffee. “He looks innocent, but I know that face.”
“That’s Jack’s baby face, by the way,” she adds.
“Oh no.”
“Exactly.”
We walk into The Sugarmill boutique to check out a trunk show they’re having with an Australian designer.
Allie finds a dress she loves and says she’ll come back to try it on when she has her hands free later.
Back out on Bay Street a few golf carts pass.
The occasional rooster calls out like he’s running late.
Allie shifts her coffee to the other hand.
“Jack’s stayed on the island longer than I thought he would. He keeps saying he’ll rebook his flight and then doesn’t.” She pauses, then exhales softly. “He’s different this summer,” she says. “Calmer. Like he’s finally letting himself slow down.”
Something inside me pulls like the tides. I stare at a cracked seashell half buried in the sand of the road, willing it to anchor me.
Allie sings to Felix, her light and steady voice smoothing over the air between us. But I feel the space she’s leaving for me in that silence.
BY THE TIME I FINALLY LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN, THE SUN IS setting and I’ve been pacing for the last hour.
Maybe more. I made tea and forgot to drink it.
Sliced a mango that had gone too soft on the counter and ate it standing over the sink like it might settle me.
It didn’t. I stood barefoot in the grass for ten minutes before deciding.
I don’t want to waste any more of this summer just thinking about Jack. After circling each other all summer with so many things unsaid.
I look at the bougainvillea in a new way as I step outside the front gate. The ocean’s loud tonight, all rolling rush and pull. And the breeze moves through the palm fronds in that whispery way, mimicking how I feel. Restless.
When I reach his guest house, the porch light is on. Smoothing my hands down the sides of my dress, I lift my hand to knock, but before I do, I hear a voice from off to the side.
“Looking for Jack?”
Turning, I see Jack’s dad settled into one of the Adirondack chairs underneath the large yellow bloomed Cassia tree, a paperback resting on his stomach.
“Oh hi,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Yeah, I am. Is he here?”
He shakes his head and shifts in his seat slightly. “He went down to the beach about twenty minutes ago. Said he needed to clear his head.”
My heart stumbles. “Thanks,” I say, already backing down the steps.
The path from my yard to the beach is hushed in twilight, the sky gone coral, the sand cool against my feet. I slow as I reach the edge, pausing before the final step.
Pacing just fifteen yards out, Jack’s head is bent like he’s deep in thought or trying to outrun one. His hands are jammed in his pockets and his shoulders are tight.
Something in my chest loosens. Because he’s here. Pacing outside of my house. Like he wants to come up the path but can’t. I think about all of the almosts.
The soft claps from the sidelines. The long looks across crowded rooms. Karaoke night. The bougainvillea along the fence. The garage roof. The excuses to stop by. The rain and the painstaking way he helped transport my paintings. The way he quietly showed up all summer. “Everybody keeps Lucy.”
Like he’s been choosing me in a hundred ways, expecting nothing in return.
The errands he never had to run but did.
The quiet presence when storms came in, when I lost myself in all the noise of the island.
Noah had been the opposite, all fireworks and spotlights, singing his heart on a stage, making sure I couldn’t miss him.
And I didn’t. I saw him. But I was so caught up in the chaos of parties and people and outfits and distractions, willing myself not to notice the person who simply showed up, again and again.
Through the chaos, there was always him.
And now here he is. Pacing this stretch of beach. Maybe we’re both trying to find our way to the same place.
“Are you planning to come up?”
His head lifts. He turns. And for a beat, he just looks at me like he’s not sure I’m real. Like maybe he conjured me. Then he exhales, slow and uneven, like the air’s been caught in his chest all day.
“Luce,” he says, like it’s a full sentence.
I start toward him, my heartbeat so loud it drowns out the ocean.
His mouth quirks. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Thinking hard, apparently,” I add, nodding toward the zigzag of pink sandy footprints trailing behind him.
His mouth tips into something sheepish. “Yeah, well. I didn’t know if I should show up uninvited.”
“You’ve been showing up all summer,” I laugh. “Just never with anything to say.”
“I had this plan,” he admits. “I was going to win you back this summer.”
His eyes flick to mine.
“Then I’d see you, and the plan would just…evaporate. Or get derailed. Every single time. So I just…kept trying again.”
Heat climbs the back of my throat.
He swallows. “I kept telling myself to be patient. To wait for you to figure out whatever you needed to figure out. But every night I’d walk this path and wonder what would happen if I just climbed up.”
He glances up at the house. “And then,” he continues, voice thinning, “one night I opened my laptop to look at flights back to New York…and ended up looking at flights to Charleston instead.” He huffs out a laugh that isn’t really a laugh.
“Old, historic houses with tiny closets and sweeping porches I can’t stop picturing you painting on. ”
My breath catches.
“I haven’t gone back to New York,” he finishes. “Because home doesn’t exist without you in it.”
“Luce,” his voice drops. “I never stopped loving you. Not once. Not for a minute. Not even when it was easier to pretend I had.”
The world goes very still.
“I tried,” he says, barely above the tide. “God, I tried. I worked. I traveled. I worked some more. But every time I’d picture the life I wanted…” He shakes his head. “You were in it. Laughing or painting, or just…being. And it stopped making sense to build anything that didn’t have space for you.”
He takes one small step, then another. Close enough that I can see the fear in his eyes, the hope right behind it.
“If you’ll let me,” he says, voice steadying, “I’ll move to Charleston.
I’ll mend fences and change your lightbulbs and bring you coffee and plant things I might never see bloom.
And I’ll never stop trying to win you back.
” He swallows. “Because love is supposed to feel like this. Present. Steady. Like something you recognize when you finally stop running.”
His eyes find mine, tired, terrified, sure.
“I’m here,” he whispers. “Tell me if I should stay.”
“It was never about a place. Before, Jack. It was about knowing you’d meet me somewhere. That you were willing to show up. Be all in.”
He looks at me with years of regret in his eyes. He looks down for a second, then back at me.
“I am all in, Luce,” he says. “If you’ll let me.”
I suck in a breath, the air suddenly too full of everything we haven’t said.
“That’s all I ever wanted,” I whisper.
Jack’s voice is low, certain. “There hasn’t been a summer, a day, a moment when it wasn’t you.”
The world stills at his words. The waves hush at the shoreline and the breeze barely stirs. His eyes hold mine, steady and unflinching.
My throat tightens. “Jack…” It’s all I can manage, his name carrying a hundred tangled summers.
He takes a step closer, the sand shifting beneath his feet, and his hand reaches out, brushing against mine. “I love you, Luce. I’ve always loved you, and I will always love you.”
The breeze dances slowly in my hair, warm and insistent.
Something inside me clicks into place, quiet and certain, like it’s been waiting for this moment all along.
I don’t think. I just move. My hands twist into his shirt, and then his arms are around me, pulling me against him, and it feels like finally exhaling after holding my breath all summer. Longer than that.
His mouth finds mine, and there’s no question in his kiss. Like we’ve both known this was coming and the only mistake was how long it took to get here. His arms tighten around me, holding me steady and close. My hands flatten against his chest, working their way up to his shoulders.
When we break apart, I’m laughing and crying at once, salt on my lips that has nothing to do with the sea. He rests his forehead against mine, smiling that slow, infuriating smile.
“About time,” he whispers.
I press closer. His hands slide into my hair. The kiss deepens. Sharpens. We’ve been so careful for so long, but there’s nothing careful about this. It’s all heat and hunger and finally.
He pulls back just enough to breathe. “You taste like mango,” he says, slightly breathless.
I laugh, pushing forward again.
“I love you, Lucy,” he says, lips brushing mine.
I kiss him again, harder this time, and he groans low in his throat, like it’s too much and not enough. His hands slide down my sides, slow and sure.
We break apart again, only barely. “I love you, Jack.”
My fingers slip into his hair and he presses closer, like he can’t be close enough. A low sound rumbles in his throat, and heat shoots through me in an arc I feel deep in my body.
We break apart only long enough to stumble toward the house, tripping, laughing, hands tangled like muscle memory. Jack bumps the door shut with his heel and I’m pressed against it before I can think, his palm spanning my hip, his mouth finding mine again, not a hint of hesitation left.
“Upstairs,” I breathe into his kiss. It’s not a request.
We barely make it, pinging off the wall, kissing in broken bursts up the staircase.
His firm hand skims the small of my back each time I wobble, steadying me as we hurry, and the familiarity of that undoes me more than the heat.
He rediscovers me, jaw, shoulder, collarbone, as if he’s cataloguing what he’s missed.
I’m nearly dizzy with the rush of being wanted this much.
By the time we reach my room, my dress is off and his shirt is somewhere on the stairs.
I hook my fingers in his belt loops and guide him toward the bed.
He lowers me onto the mattress with a kind of reverence that makes my pulse stumble.
The urgency dissolves into something slower, deeper, something that feels like long summer evenings and years of almosts snapping into place.
It feels like returning. Like forever.
It feels like blooming.