Chapter 21
U gh, for fuck’s sake. The second she left the room, I wanted to follow her and explain. The second she turned, I didn’t.
Coward.
I stood there, hands still damp, staring at the sink like I might find absolution in a stack of rinsed plates. Everything smelled like citrus and sugar, but all I could taste was my own fucking bitterness.
I’d come undone. Again. I just had to get into it with her.
She’d walked out with her chin high and her words still burning in my ears— You didn’t want her, Fitz. But you don’t get to punish me for it.
She was right. Of course she was. And that only made it worse.
I left the towel on the counter, grabbed the bottle of Blanton’s from the liquor cabinet, and found Jack sitting with Jazz on the back patio. They both looked up as I approached, and Jazz, ever the sweetheart, immediately knew what I needed.
“I’m going to head in for a bubble bath and a yummy book boyfriend. You two should hang out, shoot the shit,” she said breezily as she hopped up and gave Jack a quick kiss.
“You’re cheating on me again!?” He grinned in mock outrage. “That book boyfriend better not be hotter than I am.”
“Don’t worry baby, I may take a bath with him, but you’re the only one I’ll touch. He’ll last for a few hours, but you’ll last a lifetime.” She peered down with love and spark and all the googly-eyed bullshit that everyone secretly wants.
After she was gone, Jack turned to me. “Jesus,” he said, taking one look at me. “You look like you just got kicked in the chest.”
“Something like that,” I said, tossing him the bottle. “We drinking?”
He blinked in hesitation but then said, “I’m here in your time of need, brother.”
I raised a brow. “We gotta have an excuse to crack open the Blanton’s?”
He shrugged in agreement. “Good point.”
We sat. The deck was in shadow as the last bits of sun fell, the sound of gulls and tide sloshing somewhere beyond the dunes. I poured us both two fingers. No ice.
“You want to talk about it?” Jack asked, glancing over as he took the first sip.
“Nope.”
He nodded again. We drank, and the burn was good. Clean. Like punishment and forgiveness in one swallow.
After a while, he said, “So you may not want to, but you probably need to. And now that we’ve downed the first round…” He trailed off, giving me space to start.
“I mean, I don’t know what to say about Sloane. It’s over.”
Jack waited a beat. “Like a bad fight but we’ll get over it in a few weeks over—or over over? ”
“Over over.”
Another pause. Then: “Huh.” That was Jack for I’m surprised, but not that surprised. “You want to tell me what happened?”
I shook my head. “It was just...time.”
“Time,” he echoed, like he was trying the word on for size. “You were together for two and a half years, Fitz.”
“I’m aware.”
“And you’re telling me the thing just expired like a fucking carton of milk?”
“It was just becoming more and more clear that she wasn’t what I needed. And I probably wouldn’t make her happy in the long term either.”
I thought about it for a minute and then carried on.
“Our whole relationship, up until this trip, has been like an impressionist painting: it looks pretty from a distance, but when you get up close, the details are hard to make out. I guess we zoomed in on the details and realized they didn’t add up. ”
He turned to look at me fully now. “So if Sloane isn’t it, then what do you need?”
My mouth went dry. The answer was immediate.
Physical. Like my body knew it before my mind could shove it back down.
Green-blue eyes. Honey-blonde hair sunlit at the edges.
That laugh she tries to hide. The curve of her waist when she’s folding dough.
The way her voice drops when she’s pissed.
The way she calls me Whitmore like it’s a weapon.
But I said none of it.
Because Jack Winslow was my brother in everything but blood.
Because I loved him. Because the thought of telling him that I wanted his little sister in all the unholy ways under the sun—had already wanted her, would always want her—was enough to make me want to throw myself into the ocean and stay there.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Jack gave a hollow laugh. “Bullshit.”
I downed the rest of my glass. “You really want to do this right now?”
He shrugged. “Why the fuck not? You got a better time in mind than sitting on a beach drinking bourbon with your best friend after ending a relationship that everyone thought was heading toward the isle?”
I poured another. “Well, I don’t.”
We sat in silence. The kind of silence that wasn’t easy.
Eventually he leaned back in the chair again, glass in his hand, voice quieter now. “Well can you tell me what you don’t want about Sloane?”
“Sloane’s not Jazz,” I said. “She doesn’t have that warmth and liveliness to her.”
“Well no shit,” Jack scoffed. “But Jazz is messy and loud and bubbly and isn’t composed like a curated exhibit in a fucking museum. And I love that about her, but I always thought you’d never go for a girl that was a bit unpolished or imperfect. It doesn’t fit the Whitmore legacy.”
“I agree.”
“You’ve been going for girls that would look the part in the family portraits. You think you’re supposed to want someone like her. And maybe you do. Maybe a part of you likes the safety. The predictability.”
I looked over at him, jaw tight. “This a therapy session?”
“No.” He softened. “It’s a conversation with a friend. With your oldest friend. With the guy who watched you eat frozen taquitos in your boxers for a week when you got dumped at eighteen and still thinks you’re the smartest asshole he knows. ”
I barked a laugh. Then drained my glass again.
“And that guy,” Jack went on, “just wants to know why someone like you, who can have anyone, who knows everything, who’s never once reacted on a goddamn emotional impulse in his life...suddenly blows up a perfectly solid relationship.”
I stared at the dunes out in the distance, watching the last remnants of the gloaming slip beneath the horizon. My head was buzzing already. I hadn’t eaten since this morning, and I didn’t even want to.
“I think I’ve just come to realize that ‘perfectly solid’ isn’t enough.
Yes, Sloane is perfectly fine. She’d make the perfect-looking wife.
But perfect-looking isn’t necessarily perfect.
Just because it’s expected of me doesn’t mean that I don’t find the Sloanes of the world a bit boring and one-note.
Everything is cream. Soft, luxurious cream, sure, but there is no fucking pink or polka dot or what-the-fuck-ever.
And I mean that literally and figuratively.
You know, walking into Sloane’s closet was an endless sea of neutrals.
Sometimes I wanted to buy her a fucking magenta dress just to see how she’d react. But I already knew how she’d react.”
I took a breath. “Sorry for the long rant about a fucking color wheel but you get my gist.” I took a sip of bourbon from the crystal highball balanced in my hand. “I think my life has been lacking color.”
He raised a brow. “So you want color. What kind of color?”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know. Fire, maybe.”
“You want someone fiery?”
“I want someone who doesn’t flinch when I get cold. Who burns back. Who doesn’t let me lie to myself and calls me on my shit and laughs like the world’s ending and makes everything feel…” I trailed off .
Real. Like home. Like the thing I never let myself want.
Jack was watching me. Carefully now. Something narrowing behind his eyes. “You talking about someone in particular?”
“No.” I stood up. Too fast. The deck spun slightly.
“Fitz,” he said, lower now. “Hey. Come on.”
“I need air.”
“We are in the air.”
I laughed—short and sharp. “Then I need more.” I walked down the steps into the sand, the bottle still in my hand. My head was pounding. My chest was tight.
You don’t get to punish me for it. Her voice echoed in me like a bell I’d never stop hearing.
I could still smell her on my shirt—citrus and something sweeter. I could still feel her hand brushing mine at the sink. Could still see the way she walked away like she wasn’t looking back even though I knew she wanted to.
She wanted me to stop her.
And I hadn’t.
Because I’m a coward.
Because I’m still the sixteen-year-old idiot who shook hands with Jack over a sacred, juvenile promise to never touch what mattered. Because I’m still pretending I can look at Charlie Winslow and not see every version of her I’ve ever wanted.
I sank into the sand, the bottle tucked between my knees, my mouth dry and my brain too loud.
And for the first time in years, I didn’t feel in control. I just felt wrecked. And completely, irrevocably hers.
I sat in the dark for an hour, maybe more. Long enough for the sand to cool under me, long enough for the tide to shift, long enough to realize that not even the ocean could drown the thing gnawing at my insides.
It didn’t help.
Nothing helped.
I was drunk. Bourbon sweat clung to my skin, my mouth was dry, my heart pulsing like it wanted to fight me.
I stood up slowly, tried to breathe deep and steady, but the world tipped anyway.
I caught myself on a dune post, straightened my shoulders, and walked back to the house on legs that didn’t quite trust me.
The back door creaked open easy. Lights were off, except for the kitchen—dim, low, golden.
She was there. And here I was, my blood still thick with bourbon and want.
She was barefoot as usual, wearing a loose beach cover-up the color of saltwater. It floated around her thighs like a whisper. One shoulder exposed, legs bare, hair twisted up but coming undone. She stood at the counter, stirring lemon custard in a glass bowl.
The smell hit me first—lemon and vanilla and butter and the promise of sin.
I wanted to put my mouth on her and never come up for air.