Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fiona
I couldn’t sleep.
For more than two hours, I’d been lying in bed watching headlights sweep shadows across my ceiling whenever a car passed outside. Granny had gone to bed hours ago. The refrigerator hummed faintly downstairs, and every so often the old house creaked as it settled against the cool April night.
My brain refused to settle with it.
What was I doing?
What was this thing between Jasper and me?
And what did he actually want from me?
I rolled onto my side and stared at the phone on my nightstand. The screen was dark, but I knew exactly what our last conversation looked like without opening it.
Every day he was there.
Good morning.
How was school?
Did you eat?
How was work?
Text me when you get home.
Goodnight, Cher.
The rhythm of him had slipped into my life so quietly that I hadn’t noticed how much I depended on it until Georgie pointed it out.
Did Jasper like me?
Not as Georgie’s little sister. Not because Josie had brought home some upset girl one night and he’d felt sorry for her. Not because he was protective by nature and I happened to be someone he’d decided needed protecting.
Did he like me the way I was starting to admit I liked him?
My stomach flipped.
I covered my face with both hands.
This was ridiculous.
Jasper was kind. Protective. Thoughtful. He sent flowers, remembered things I told him, worried when I didn’t answer, and seemed genuinely interested in what happened in my life.
None of that automatically meant he wanted me.
Attention had fooled me before. Billy had made fifteen-year-old me feel like I was the most important girl in the world. I’d believed him. Joseph Higgins had asked me to a dance and somehow I’d turned that into proof he liked me right up until I watched him walk inside with Amy.
My history did not exactly suggest I was an expert at interpreting men.
But Jasper felt different.
That was the problem.
When he called me Cher, something in his words made my chest ache. When my phone buzzed, I hoped it was him before I even looked. Conversations that should’ve lasted ten minutes somehow stretched for hours.
And lately, it felt as though we kept creeping closer to a line neither of us would name.
Maybe I was imagining that too.
The rejection letters still sat on my desk, reminders that wanting something badly didn’t make it yours.
I stared at them.
What if I told Jasper how I felt and he responded with pity?
I could almost hear him.
I’m sorry, Cher. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
No.
Absolutely not.
I couldn’t ask him directly. If I’d imagined all of this, I wasn’t sure I could ever look him in the face again.
But I needed something.
Some clue that would either let me hope or force me to stop before I made a complete idiot of myself.
I sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. Our last text had come earlier that night.
Goodnight, Cher.
Two completely ordinary words that had somehow left me staring at the screen for ten minutes.
This was stupid.
So incredibly stupid.
I grabbed my phone anyway.
Me: What’s your type?
The second I sent it, I wanted to throw the phone across the room. What kind of question was that?
The three dots appeared almost immediately and my stomach dropped.
He was answering.
Jasper: Someone I shouldn’t want.
I stopped breathing for a second. That was not an answer I’d prepared for.
Was there someone in Diamond Creek? A woman at the clubhouse? Someone he’d met recently?
Or...
No.
I wasn’t doing that yet.
Me: That’s not a type.
Jasper: It is now.
Now meant recently, or that something had changed from before. Or... I was turning two words into a love confession because apparently, I’d lost every bit of common sense I possessed.
Me: Hair color?
Jasper: Chestnut.
My fingers tightened around the phone. My hair was chestnut. Light brown most of the time, but the red came through whenever sunlight hit it.
Lots of women had chestnut hair.
Probably.
Me: Eye color?
Jasper: The kind that makes a man forget what he was saying.
I rolled my eyes even while my heart started pounding faster.
Me: Conveniently vague
Jasper: Pale. Striking. Difficult to look away from.
My smile disappeared.
Pale. Striking.
My eyes weren’t a normal blue or gray. They were so light they looked silver, and people had commented on them my entire life.
I swallowed. It could still be a coincidence.
Maybe.
Me: Height?
Jasper: Tall enough to make me appreciate long legs.
I looked down at myself beneath the blanket. Five foot nine definitely qualified as tall.
My throat went dry.
Me: Jasper.
Jasper: You asked.
And I was beginning to regret it because he was either deliberately describing me or I had finally gone completely insane.
Me: Personality?
His answer took a little longer this time.
Jasper: Kind. Smarter than she thinks. Quietly funny.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Smarter than she thinks.
He’d said that to me before when I complained about school and again when I’d told him about the scholarship rejections.
Quietly funny.
That one was his too. He’d called me that after I made him laugh over text.
You’re quietly funny, Cher. I like that about you.
I knew those words and he knew I knew them.
Me: She sounds suspiciously familiar
Jasper: Does she?
I stared at his response, my eyebrows pulling together in frustration.
He was making me say it.
The asshole.
Me: Maybe.
Jasper: What’s your type?
I should’ve known he’d turn it around on me.
If I described him, there was no pretending I hadn’t understood what he was doing. If I lied, I’d spend the rest of the night wondering what would’ve happened if I hadn’t.
Me: I don’t have one.
Jasper: Liar.
I bit my lip and smiled, then took a breath and typed the safest answer I could think of.
Me: Fine. Dark hair.
Jasper: Promising.
My pulse jumped.
Me: Blue eyes.
Jasper: Very promising.
I pressed my lips together. I could have stopped there. It was vague enough that it could mean anyone. I should’ve stopped but my fingers kept moving.
Me: Too much confidence.
Jasper: Perfection requires flaws.
I laughed, then clapped a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t wake Granny.
Me: Charming when he shouldn’t be.
Jasper: I like him already.
I stared at the screen before adding one detail that would make it impossible for either of us to pretend I was describing some random imaginary man.
Me: Carries a knife much too large for polite society.
That pause felt longer—as I watched the three little dots flicker—than every other one combined as I chewed on my lip, waiting for a reply that would either confirm this was real, or end it completely.
Jasper: Cher, I think you’ve met the man of your dreams.
My whole body went still.
The man of your dreams.
Him. He meant himself. There was no possible way he didn’t.
Unless this was more Jasper flirting. Unless he was laughing in Nebraska because he knew exactly how flustered I was and thought it was cute.
But he’d described me first.
My hair.
My eyes.
My height.
Things he’d said about my personality.
Me: I’m still deciding.
Jasper: Take your time. He isn’t going anywhere.
I lowered the phone to my chest.
He isn’t going anywhere.
My heart beat hard beneath the phone. Was that a promise? Was he telling me he’d wait while I figured this out? While I figured myself out?
I stared at the ceiling again, but now the shadows didn’t matter.
Jasper Francis Alexander DuBois had just described a woman with chestnut hair, pale striking eyes, long legs, and a personality that sounded suspiciously like mine.
Then he’d asked me to describe my type, and I’d given him dark hair, blue eyes, too much confidence, charm, and that ridiculous knife he carried.
There wasn’t another man on the planet I could’ve been talking about.
He knew it.
I knew it.
And then he’d called himself the man of my dreams.
I rolled onto my side and hugged the phone against my chest. I wanted to believe him. That was the frightening part. Hope had burned me before. I knew how easy it was to hear what you wanted instead of what someone was actually saying. I’d done it with Billy. I’d done it with Joseph.
I didn’t want to build another fantasy and then discover I’d been standing inside it alone.
But Jasper had given me something tonight that was awfully hard to explain away.
He hadn’t said he loved me.
He hadn’t even said he wanted to date me.
But he’d described me when I asked what kind of woman he wanted.
And when I described him back, he’d told me to take my time because he wasn’t going anywhere.
I closed my eyes, and for once, I let myself stop fighting it. Instead, I let myself feel it without immediately searching for a reason not to trust it.
Maybe the flowers meant something.
Maybe the constant texts meant something.
Maybe Jasper’s concern wasn’t simply who he was with every woman.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one lying awake wondering what this was.
I still didn’t have all the answers, and I wasn’t brave enough to ask him for them yet.
But with my phone pressed against my chest and his last message burned into my mind, I finally let myself consider the possibility I’d been too afraid to touch.
Jasper might actually want me too.
And somehow, that possibility was even more terrifying than believing he didn’t.