Chapter 18
No Glass Slippers
Jane
Two suitcases by the door.
His: structured, precise, black leather with monogrammed initials I never noticed before today. The kind of luggage that has its own dust bag.
Mine: navy blue, slightly scuffed along the bottom from being dragged through too many bus terminals and up too many flights of stairs. The zipper pull is a paperclip I fashioned in an airport bathroom nine days ago because the original snapped somewhere over the Atlantic.
They're positioned almost touching. His is upright like it stands at attention with the wheels perfectly aligned. Mine leans slightly to the left because one caster is bent and has a suspicious wheel wobble.
I’ve officially lost my mind. Analyzing luggage proximity like it means something.
What’s next—reading tea leaves by tomorrow?
This is what eight days of a fake relationship does to a person’s critical thinking.
Even if we’d said this feels real.
West hands me a mug. Coffee. Black, because somewhere around Day Three he learned I take it black in the afternoon and with cream in the morning, and he's never once asked me to confirm.
"We need to leave in fifteen minutes," I say.
"I know."
Neither of us moves.
The casita is doing that thing where familiar spaces suddenly look like museum exhibits. Here is where they had breakfast. Here is where she tripped over his running shoes. Here is where he pinned her against the wall last night and—
Nope. Not going there. Not with luggage to carry and a commercial flight to catch and mascara that's already on thin ice.
"We should probably panic," I say.
"That's why I made coffee."
I take a sip. It's perfect. Of course it's perfect. The man makes coffee like he does everything else—with infuriating competence and zero visible effort.
This morning I had breakfast with his parents and Aunt Milly. They sat around a table overlooking the ocean and passed fruit platters and asked me questions about my business like it was a real business and not a one-woman disaster circus operating above a laundromat.
Eleanor Prescott told me she hoped to see me again soon.
She meant it.
Now I'm standing in a casita with packed bags and a man who looks at me like I'm the view, and we have maybe ten minutes before we absolutely have to walk out that door.
"I'm going to miss this coffee," I say. What I mean is: I'm going to miss everything about this room and you in it.
West sets his mug down. Steps closer. His hands find my hips.
"We still have ten minutes."
His thumbs trace slow circles on my hipbones through my dress. My body leans toward him the way plants lean toward sunlight—involuntary, cellular, a little embarrassing.
"Ten minutes isn't enough time for what your thumbs are suggesting."
"My thumbs aren't suggesting anything."
"Your thumbs are writing essays."
His mouth twitches. That almost-smile that took me two days to earn and makes me feel teenage fan with a backstage pass every single time.
Eight days. I've had houseplants longer. Granted, I killed them, but the comparison stands.
My phone alarm blares from the counter. The one I set at midnight because I knew—knew—that if left to our own devices, we'd still be in this casita at sunset, ordering room service and pretending the outside world was optional.
"Commercial flights," I say. "International check-in. Ninety minutes before departure."
"I know, Jane."
"I'm just establishing—"
"I know."
His forehead drops to mine. We stand there, breathing the same Caribbean air.
The salt-tinged breeze through the window we left cracked. His soap. His skin. The sound of his exhale mixing with mine.
I should have bought him something.
A gift from the resort shop. A keychain or a shot glass or something equally ridiculous that he'd never use but would prove I was here.
But every time I thought about it, my throat closed up, so I didn't.
I must've said that out loud—the thought leaking through—because his voice cuts through my spiral.
"You gave me plenty."
I blink at him. "What?"
His mouth curves. Slow. Dangerous.
He taps a finger against his collarbone, right where his T-shirt collar gaps open. Then lower, where I know there are scratches I left when he had me against the wall last night. And lower still.
"I'm counting at least five love bites," he says, voice dropping half a register. "I plan on referencing them extensively."
Heat crawls up my neck. "That was—those were—"
"Enthusiastic?"
"Accidents!"
"Sure they were." His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist. "Either way, I'll be thinking about them. A lot."
"That doesn't count as a gift."
"Doesn't it?"
"West—" My face is burning. "You can't say things like that when I'm trying to have a mature goodbye conversation."
His expression shifts. Something softer but more intense.
"Who said anything about goodbye?"
The word hangs between us. I didn't mean it. Or I did, but not the way it sounded. Not the permanent version.
"I just mean—"
"I know what you mean." His thumbs draw slow circles on my hips. "This isn't a goodbye."
"It's a logistical transition."
"Sure."
"An intermission."
"If you want."
"A geographically mandated pause."
"Jane."
"What?"
"Stop naming it and let me hold you."
So I do. Step forward until my forehead rests against his chest and his arms close around me and I can hear his heartbeat through the cotton—steady, reliable, the kind of rhythm you could build something on.
My hands press flat against his back, feeling the broad planes of muscle, the warmth of him seeping through the fabric.
He smells like that soap. Clean linen and something woodsy underneath, and the faintest trace of salt from the humidity that never fully leaves the air here. I've been breathing this scent for a week and I'm already calculating how long it'll take to fade from his T-shirt after I steal it.
Because I am absolutely stealing his shirt.
The alarm screams again.
"Okay." I step back. "Now we really have to go."
He grabs our carry-ons—mine in his left hand, his in his right—and pulls his rolling suitcase behind him like it weighs no more than tissue paper. I reach for my bag.
"I've got it."
"It's my carry-on."
"And?"
"And I'm a capable adult woman who can carry her own—"
He's already out the door.
I take one last look at the casita. The unmade bed. The coffee mugs. The dent in the plaster I'm going to pretend I didn't notice.
Stop it.
The door closes behind me with a soft click that sounds louder than it should.
Twenty-five minutes.
That's what the drive to Clayton J. Lloyd International Airport takes, and I'm counting every one of them like coins in a jar I can't afford to spend.
West drives the rental with one hand. The other covers mine where it rests on his knee. His thumb traces absent patterns on my knuckles—figure eights, infinity loops, a language I didn't know I was fluent in until this week.
Windows down. Anguilla passing by in golden-hour technicolor. Palm trees and painted fences and goats standing in the road like they own the mortgage.
"That's where you tried to tail Blake to the beach bar," West says, nodding toward a turnoff.
"I was surveilling."
"You were wearing a floppy hat and sunglasses."
I'm laughing, but my chest aches. Every landmark is a timestamp now. That's the rental yacht where Scarlett called me fast food. That's where West caught me at the pool. That's where we—
He squeezes my hand. His assuring touch stops me from spiraling… and tears.
The airport sign appears—blue and white, bureaucratic, utterly indifferent to the fact that it’s sending me away from the first man who’s ever made me feel overflowing and gutted all at once.
"Your eye is twitching."
"That's a medical condition."
"It's a tell. You get it when you're catastrophizing."
"I don't catastrophize."
He looks at me.
"Fine. I'm catastrophizing at a reasonable level."
He pulls into the parking area. Kills the engine. The quiet is sudden and complete except for the ticking of hot metal and the distant whine of a turboprop.
Twenty-five minutes used. Balance: zero.
The airport is small. Open air where Boston would have walls. Warm breeze cutting through the terminal like it hasn't heard of climate control.
West carries both carry-on bags again. I've stopped arguing because choosing battles is a sign of maturity, and also because watching his forearms work is a coping mechanism I'm not ready to surrender.
I nearly take myself out three steps through the door. My stupid suitcase—the one with only three functional wheels and a personal vendetta—clips my ankle and sends me lurching sideways into a tourism display rack.
Brochures cascade around me like confetti at a parade nobody invited me to.
Maybe it doesn’t want to leave either.
"Death by luggage," I mutter, shoving brochures back onto the rack. "This is how I go. Jane Cooper, killed by her own packing choices."
West doesn't laugh. He steadies me with one hand on my elbow and picks up the three brochures I missed, returning them to the rack with the methodical patience of a man who thrives on chaos.
We reach the split. Two signs. Two arrows. Two entirely different experiences of air travel.
Commercial Check-In: BermudAir → Left.
Charter Services → Right.
There it is. The class divide.
I veer left. Toward the check-in counter where twelve other passengers are already queued in a polite, shuffling line. West follows me.
"You don't have to wait with me."
"Where else would I be?"
He takes the handle of my wobbly suitcase before I can protest, hooks it neatly to his own, and starts pulling both with one hand. The two carry-ons end up slung over his shoulder like they weigh nothing.
I blink.