Chapter 27
Now
“Everybody got your helmets strapped on?” Our guide, Eduardo, asks, giving us a thumbs-up.
I check the straps on my helmet, disassociating from the fact that I’m fifty feet off the ground, hovering over the jungle somewhere outside Kona on the Big Island, until I catch sight of the looming treetops swaying underneath me.
I wince and drag my gaze back up to where Eduardo is explaining the safety protocol for zip-lining.
I’m sure the words he’s saying have meaning—important meaning—but I’m having trouble paying attention.
And not just because we’re way too far off the ground right now.
But because Liam is standing close enough that I can’t look anywhere without catching a glimpse of his toned butt in shorts that can only be described as European length.
If he’s trying to torture me, it’s working.
“Psssst,” Bella hisses from behind me.
“What?” I ask, strategically avoiding eye contact. Since the incident, I haven’t been able to look at my sister. Or Chris, for that matter.
“How come you guys weren’t at yoga?” she whispers. “If I have to suffer through an hour of Jonah in short shorts, then so do you.”
“We were, uh…” I glance at Liam, who is—Lord, help me—bending over to tie his shoe. “Busy,” I tell her.
She gives me a look. “Really taking that baby making seriously, I see?”
My cheeks flush. I want to tell her off, but I should probably at least attempt to keep up this insufferable lie.
“You know how it is when you’re ovulating,” I tell her.
I’d say I’m going to hell for this, but given how good Liam looks in those shorts, I think I’m already there.
“Did Liam start working out?” Bella asks. “His arms are massive.”
Ugh. As if I needed any reminders.
“Yeah, he got a trainer,” I say, commanding myself not to look at said arms. Arms that pinned my wrists over my head and—no, do not go there!
“Is it the person who trains Marvel actors?” she asks. “Because daaaaaamn.”
My mouth pinches into a grimace. “Can you please go back to the phase where you were too nervous to talk in front of him? I think I liked that better.”
She puts her hands up in a sign of surrender. “Hey, I’m just congratulating you on having a hot husband.”
Hmph. Lucky me.
“I bet he’d totally kill someone for you,” she goes on. “Like if he had to, he would.”
I give her a look. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was in this Mafia romance I read,” she says with a shrug. “Her ex made her cry, so he just offed the guy. It was surprisingly hot.”
“Since when do you read romance?” I ask, distinctly aware that in all the years my mom and I spent swapping mass-market paperbacks, my sister never once took any interest. She was always much more into self-help and Gray’s Anatomy (the textbook, not the Shonda Rhimes masterpiece).
“I sort of started getting into them lately,” she says slowly, her eyes shifting away like she’s embarrassed.
My chest clenches with little pangs. “Really?”
She nods, still avoiding eye contact, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe this has something to do with Mom. I’m about to ask when Jonah turns around, giving us both evil eyes.
“Will you two shut up?” he hisses. “I had to wake up at five a.m. two months ago to book this, so if you could be present, that’d be great.”
Bella rolls her eyes, and we redirect our attention to Eduardo as he explains how to properly hold on to the harness.
“Any questions?” Eduardo asks when he’s finished. “No? All right, so for this first platform we’re going to need partners.” He claps his gloved hands together. “Everyone, buddy up!”
Before I’ve so much as turned around, Liam’s beside me. “Hey, buddy.”
“We’re not buddies,” I snap.
“Come on, the two of us, strung up together in a harness?” His eyes shimmer deviously. “Could be fun.”
I glare at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“I was enjoying whatever happened this morning.”
“Don’t get used to it. That was a lapse in judgment, and you know it.”
But even as I say it, I know he can see right through my flimsy defenses.
And honestly, I can too. I’m a romance author.
I know better than anyone that when two people agree to bang under the pretense of getting something out of their system, they inevitably won’t.
But I need to stay strong here, romance tropes be damned.
“I told you,” I say stiffly. “That was one time. For closure.”
“Right.” He bows his head, lips barely grazing my earlobe when he whispers, “And when exactly did you find closure, Roslyn? When you were dripping all over my hand? Or when I was inside you? Fucking you like you begged me to?”
Ribbons of heat coil around my skin and I step back, turning away from him before he can see the telltale blush working its way up my neck, but his fingers wrap around my hip, pulling my body flush against his like he’s a paddle and I’m the Ping-Pong ball at the end of the string.
“Careful,” Liam whispers, his lips hot against my ear. “Your family is watching us. You wouldn’t want them to think we’re fighting, do you?”
I swallow an unsteady breath, desperately trying to block out the scents of cologne and sweat and pheromones, all of which feel like emotional assault weapons right now.
“What do you want from me?” I force out.
“The same thing you want. The only difference is I’m willing to admit it.”
But perhaps that’s the problem. I don’t know if we want the same thing.
Of course I want sex. But I want more than that.
I’ve always wanted more than that. I want him to be vulnerable and honest and raw.
I want him to trust me with his broken, messy parts and to know I can trust him with mine.
I want something he’s never been able to give me. And that terrifies me.
“All right, everyone have a buddy?” Eduardo asks, clapping his hands to gain our attention. “Now you and your buddy are going to be harnessed in together for this one, so don’t be afraid to get cozy.”
Great. Cozy is the last thing I need to be getting with Liam.
I’m still roiling as Eduardo helps us get strapped in, but as soon as we near the edge of the platform, where nothing stands between us and a fifty-foot drop to the ground, I forget all about Liam.
My vision blurs, my body growing sticky with panic as I peer over the edge, following the line of the cable across the ravine and into the abyss.
Heights didn’t used to bother me, but since the accident, the same thoughts that were once nothing more than uncomfortable niggles now feel like full-blown terror.
Without warning, I’m hit with flashes of memory.
The green traffic light up ahead. The crash of the car, followed by ringing in my ears and muffled cries.
I shut my eyes and pull away from the edge just as Liam leans in close enough so that only I can hear and whispers, “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lie, not meeting his eye.
“You don’t look fine. You’re pale.” The flirty, mocking timbre is gone from his voice, instead replaced with concern. “Is it the height?”
I nod, losing my angry edge.
“Do you want to hold my hand?” he asks.
I search his face, looking for the trap, how this might be one more piece in the game he’s playing with me.
But his face is serious, full of concern, and so against any vague notions of pride, I take his hand.
As soon as his fingers wind through mine, my breathing changes.
Like despite everything, my body still knows that he’s someone safe.
“How about a distraction?” Liam whispers.
Another Liam-shaped distraction is not what I (or my vagina) need, but the treetops start to zoom in and out of focus, so I tell him okay.
“Do you remember the night we got tattoos?” he asks.
I frown, unsure why he’d bring that up, of all things. “Some of it,” I admit. “We were pretty drunk.”
His mouth quirks. “I honestly don’t know why they let us get them. We were clearly inebriated.”
“I guess we’re just lucky we didn’t end up with the Chinese symbol for water or live laugh love,” I say.
He lets out a low, buttery laugh, which vibrates against my rib cage. “I would have gotten live laugh love for you. I would have gotten any tattoo you wanted if it made you happy, Ros.”
A painful lump emerges in my throat. I think about the words Forever isn’t long enough when it’s with someone you love, and how they feel like a cruel joke. Apparently forever was too long for both of us.
“Do you think you’ll keep it?” I ask after a beat. “The tattoo, I mean.”
His eyes move back and forth across my face, searching. “I don’t have plans to get it removed if that’s what you’re asking.”
It is what I’m asking. But there’s something else I want to know too. Something I’m still too afraid to ask.
The question strums my internal nervous system until Eduardo asks if we’re ready.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to do this,” Liam whispers. “I can tell him no. Just say so.” But I shake my head. I want to do this.
“I’m good,” I whisper. “I can do it.”
“You sure?” His voice is like gravity. A heavy pulse that centers me, a reminder that I’m okay. Or at least I will be.
“Just don’t let go.”
He squeezes my hand, reassuring fingers looped through mine like I’m something precious, something he wants to be careful with. “I promise,” he whispers.
Liam gives Eduardo a thumbs-up, then I’m strapped into Liam’s lap, my back pressed against his chest. Liam squeezes my hand one more time and then we’re off.
My belly swoops up into my throat and I shut my eyes, bracing myself. But the steady drumbeat of Liam’s voice appears in my ears.
“Open your eyes,” he says, his fingers still intertwined with mine. “You have to see this.”
Tentatively, I open my eyes, waiting for the precipitous lurch in my stomach, the breach of panic. Instead, the jungle comes into view and my breath is stolen for a different reason.
It’s majestic.
Not just the swirl of green. The layer of mist and fog hovering like crowns around the base of hills in the distance. But the feeling of flying. Of being weightless.
For so much of the past year I’ve felt heavy, like I could feel the physical weight of pain and grief in my bones.
But here, flying over dense jungle and ravines so deep we can’t see the ground, Liam’s and my shrieks vibrating against our bones, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
I feel alive. Present. Here. There’s no pain of the past, no agony of the future.
Only here. Only now. Only weightlessness.
The whole journey lasts about thirty seconds, then, just as quickly as it starts, we’re landing on the platform, blood pumping like my body is a flame, newly ignited with oxygen.
But it’s hard to say if that’s because of the adrenaline rush, or the lingering sensation of Liam’s body pressed against mine.
Of his hand, still tightly wound with mine.
In that moment I feel my body and my heart and my mind warring against one another. One desperate for him, one too afraid to act, and another arguing, perhaps most rationally, that wanting him is casting myself in a role I know is destined for a painful third act.
It’s a bad idea. One that will burn me in the end. But I like the heat too much to stop dancing near the flames.