Chapter 19 #3
I need a second. He said I need a second.
I did that. With a water glass and a push-up bra and basic physics.
"Are you going to tell me what's happening?" he asks.
I consider playing innocent for another thirty seconds. But I've earned this honesty. I've been earning it for three days of sandwich betrayals and laundromat ambushes and voice messages that made my body stage a revolt.
"You may have broken a dam," I say. "And I'm experiencing consequences. Ongoing. Inconvenient. Entirely your doing."
"Consequences?"
"Physiological. Constant. You did this."
The real smile appears.
Slow. Slightly stunned.
The one that took me a day to earn on the island and still makes my chest contract every single time.
"Tell me," he says.
I am in so much trouble.
"You first."
"Show me."
His voice. Low and unhurried and absolutely certain. The raspy tone that means he knows where this is going and he's going to take his time getting there.
I hold his gaze through the screen. My fingers find the zipper.
Pull it down. Slowly.
The hoodie falls open and the push-up bra does what seventy-five dollars of underwire was engineered to do—and his jaw tightens.
A visible flex of muscle. The lamp behind him casting his cheekbones in sharp relief.
"There she is."
Quiet. Like he's been waiting specifically for this.
The way he says that. Like I'm something he's been thinking about in the dark.
I'm going to need medical intervention.
"Skirt," he says. "Lift it."
I swallow—and obey.
Slowly.
Bunching the soft fabric of upward until the damp fabric of my underwear is visible on screen.
I watch him watch me—his gaze dropping, locking.
The stillness of him is almost more dangerous than movement.
“Look at you.”
His voice is rougher now.
“Jane.”
The way he says my name feels like contact.
I don’t hide. I don’t angle away.
I let him see what he’s done.
He exhales once, sharp.
Then he shifts. Unhurried.
He removes his shirt, then lowers his pants and underwear.
Wrapping around himself on screen with the deliberate confidence of a man who commands space even alone.
Even here. Even two hundred miles away through a screen, he fills the room.
"Look at you." His voice is rough now. Fraying at the edges.
"Show me your breasts."
My fingers shake—just slightly—as I pull the bra cups down. The cool air of my apartment hits my skin and my nipples tighten immediately, and I don't hide them. Don't angle away. Let him see.
"Squeeze your breasts for me.” I can hear the raspiness of his voice. A pant.
“Touch your nipple."
I circle it with my fingertip. Slowly. Watching his expression crack—just a hairline fracture in that discipline, that composure, that maddening control.
"Lick it."
I hold his gaze. Lift my left breast. Lean down and run my tongue across the peak, slow and deliberate.
His whole body tenses. I can see it—the muscles in his forearm locking, his grip tightening, the rhythm of his hand changing.
I’m getting wetter by the second.
I bite down. Not gently. A small sound escapes me—involuntary, sharp.
"Naughty girl."
Two words. He said two words and I am completely undone. My hand is between my thighs before I consciously decide to put it there, fingers pressing against the soaked fabric of my underwear, and the relief is so acute I whimper.
"Move them aside," he says. "Let me see."
I do. Push the fabric to one side. Slide my fingers through the slick heat of myself while he watches through the screen with an intensity that makes my skin feel like it's being touched.
"You're so wet." He says it like it's a fact like he's memorizing it for later. "Is that for me?"
"Who else?" My voice is barely mine—thin, breathless. "You did this. Every day since the island. You—"
"Tell me what you've been thinking about."
"Your hands." My fingers circle my clit and my hips lift off the bed. "The way you held me against the wall. The sounds you made when—"
"Keep going."
"Your mouth on me. The way you taste. The way you—"
I break off into a moan that's louder than I expect, and his hand moves faster on screen, his breath audible now, rough and catching.
"I want to be inside you right now," he says, and the words are not controlled, not measured, not the West who calculates everything three moves ahead.
This is the version of him that exists only when I've dismantled every wall. "I want to feel you come around me."
"I'm close—I'm already—" My fingers move faster, the pressure building in a way that's different from the island, different from his hands, but the same desperate climb toward something that feels like falling and flying at once.
"Talk to me—keep talking—"
"You're beautiful like this. Soaking wet. But I’m not there.” The words come out rough, almost angry about it. "Touch your clit, the way I showed you, Jane. Spread your legs wider. Slower. I want to watch."
His rhythm shifts—harder, less controlled. A rough exhale.
I spread my legs over the arms of my chair.
My fingers move. Circle. Press.
The tension builds—familiar now, the particular tightness he taught me to recognize, the coiling heat that starts low and spreads upward.
"There you go. I'm watching every second. Don't look away." His breath catches. "I want to lick your pussy till you’re pushing against my face, push my fingers inside of you, the way you like it, make your toes curl. You’re mine. You understand that?”
I nod my head, focusing on his voice.
A sharp inhale. "When I get my hands on you I'm going to make you earn it. Hold you right on the edge until you're begging me. You want that?"
I moan and close my eyes to focus on the intensity and escalation of the moment.
“Oh Jane, I miss you… what you do to me.”
The sight of him unraveling—jaw tight, eyes burning, his big cock in his hand, head glistening with precum, that magnificent composure finally teetering—pushes me over.
I come with his name in my mouth and my hand between my legs and his face on my screen—not perfectly timed, not choreographed, just the real breathless actual thing.
My back arches off the chair, thighs shaking, a cry I couldn't swallow if I tried ripping from my throat.
The pleasure hits in waves—cresting, breaking, drowning me.
On screen, through the blur, I see his hand move faster—jaw clenched, eyes burning—
"Jane—"
He follows. A groan that sounds like it's torn from somewhere deep and vital. His head drops back. His hand slows. His chest heaves.
Silence.
Both of us on screen. Breathing hard.
Neither of us speaks for a long moment. The kind of quiet that isn't empty—that's full of everything we just did and everything it means that we chose to do it from two hundred miles apart.
The apartment central heater turns on suddenly. My heartbeat pulses in my ears. The screen glows between us.
"Hi," he says finally. Quiet.
"Hi."
He doesn't hang up. I don't either.
"I miss you so much."
No caveat. No qualification. Just the fact, sitting in the space between Boston and New York like a stone dropped in still water.
I don't answer immediately. The answer is right there—enormous and terrifying and absolutely not something I can say on a Friday night in my Boston bedroom while my heart is still hammering and my hand is still damp.
"I know."
He accepts that fully.
"Hang up," he says.
"You hang up."
"Jane."
"West."
I hang up first. Press my face into my pillow. Then into his T-shirt, which still smells like clean linen and woodsmoke and the specific chemical composition of a man who is ruining my life from another state.
This is a prolonged chemical reaction to distance and his voice and the specific way he says my name and I will be completely fine when this wears off.
He has such a good voice.
Fresh from the shower, I hop into bed and pull up Netflix like a woman with absolutely nothing to confess.
Nothing to unpack. Nothing to reflect on. Certainly nothing to replay in high definition.
I have been sitting there approximately four minutes when Grace’s voice cuts through the apartment.
“JANE. JANE—OH MY—”
Oh indeed.
Grace is back sooner than expected.
Then she bursts into my room, holding her phone with both hands like it contains breaking news or evidence in a federal investigation.
Her eyes are wild and red.
Has she been crying?
I wait for her.
"I got in." Her voice cracks. "Jane. I got into the Cedar Falls program."
Everything stops.
"What?" I'm on my feet. "The nursing residency?”
"YES! On full scholarship. Free housing in the hospital residential program. Paid clinical hours for the full internship year." She's reading from her phone, hands shaking. "And a signing bonus after graduation that's—Jane, look at this number."
She turns the phone toward me.
I stare at it.
Grace. My baby sister. Look at you.
I pull her in. Hold on.
Mom died when Grace was fourteen.
I was nineteen.
There wasn’t a dramatic moment when I decided to become responsible.
It just… happened.
So, the relief isn’t gentle.
It hits like a ledger slamming closed, knocking the wind out of me in the process.
It’s two years of future tuition disappearing in one email.
Two more years of “we’ll make it work” I don’t have to whisper at three in the morning.
The full ride residency means free housing. Paid hours. Clinical fees I don’t have to quietly offset.
It means Grace can focus on her rotations. On her patients. On passing boards.
On being twenty-two instead of budgeting like she’s forty.
It means she gets to graduate without a shadow attached to her name.
It means she gets to start clean.
"I'm so proud of you." My voice is steady. Barely. "So incredibly proud."
She pulls back, fully crying now, still beaming.
"Jane, it's in Colorado." Her voice breaks differently on that. "Cedar Falls. I can't just—you're here. How do I—"
"Show me the details."
She shows me. The program. The campus photos.
The mountain town I've never heard of, tucked into a valley.
More photos. The town center. The hospital. The residential complex with mountain views and walking trails.
Then the cute brick storefronts. String lights strung between lampposts. A confectionary called Candy Jar, its chalkboard menu visible through the front window.
She reads the details aloud in the careful, steady voice she uses when she’s trying not to cry again.
"Jane. They have a mountain."
“Grace, the Continental Divide runs through half the state. Mountains are the default setting.”
"Not like this one."
I smile and look at the photo over her shoulder. It is, objectively, a very good mountain.
This is Grace's thing. Her news.
"We're going to check it out," I say. "Road trip. You and me."
Her whole face lights up. "I was hoping you'd say that. This weekend?"
This could be her future.
Underneath, quietly, a thought I'm not ready to examine fully: if Grace is in Colorado, the tether that's kept me in Boston shifts.
My business isn't a building. It's a laptop, a phone and a reputation I've spent four years earning—especially now, with the bridesmaids’ glowing reviews.
I can run it from anywhere. New York, maybe?
I think.
I've just never had a reason to go anywhere. Never let it mean anything.
Slow down, Jane.
Road trip first. See the place. Be certain it’s good for Grace.
Don't make it into something until it's something.
“How about next weekend?”
One week later.
I take Grace to a coffee shop that isn't the cheapest option within walking distance and order a croissant each. Fourteen dollars. I do not flinch.
Growth.
Grace drops a folder on the table—printed photos, color-coded notes, a hand-labeled map of the Cedar Falls residential campus that looks like it was produced by an extremely organized serial killer.
"Can you tell I’m excited?" She laughs at herself. "I keep telling myself we need to see it in person before I commit. But my heart is already there, Jane!”
She clutches her chest dramatically. I look away before she can see the way my own chest tightens—for a different reason.
I’ll miss her.
"I've been reading about it. It's small but it has everything—farmers market, good coffee, and the nursing program has an eighty percent retention rate after graduation, which means—"
"Which means it actually places people."
"Yes. Jane, this is the one."
She goes back to her coffee. Then, after a moment:
"If I'm in Colorado..." Grace picks at her croissant, not looking at me. "You know you don't have to stay in Boston, right?"
My coffee stops halfway to my mouth.
"I'm serious." She looks up, and her eyes are bright.
"You've been arranging your whole life around me since I was fourteen. And I love you for it. But Jane..." She reaches across the table, grabs my hand. "If there's somewhere you want to be—someone you want to be near—you're allowed to want that."
"This is about your program—"
She lifts her hand to stop me.
"This is about you being happy." She squeezes my hand once, hard. "Colorado's two thousand miles from Boston. It's also nine hundred miles from New York City."
"Grace—"
"I'm just saying. You have options now… like New York."
She picks up her mug. Case closed.
I file this conversation in the same drawer as I would’ve missed the whole thing.
And this time, I leave the drawer slightly open.
He calls on a Wednesday. Voice call. Gym acoustics — high ceilings, bass echoing somewhere behind him. We talk for an hour and seventeen minutes.
I check the time after.
Mortified.
At the end:
“Don’t forget, I’m on the interview circuit starting tomorrow. Coaching conversations. A few different places.”
"How's that going?"
"Good, I think. Still finding the right fit."
"You'll know it when you find it."
"Yeah."
We hang up.
It’s been three weeks since Anguilla. Three weeks of distance behaving like it’s reasonable.
By Friday morning I still haven’t told him about Grace’s scholarship and plans.
Not because I’m hiding it.
But because if I say it now, he’ll start calculating distance. Start offering proximity before I even know what I want.
I won’t let him build around a maybe.
Road trip first. See the place. Be certain.
It was supposed to be a weekend.
It’s now ten days.
If we’re driving across the country for this possible next chapter for Grace, we’re not skimming the surface. We’re walking it. Sitting in it. Testing it.
And for once, I have the funds to do that without twisting my life into knots.
Grace’s brochure is spread across the coffee table. Thanks to Natalie, we have the means to get there. The car keys hang by the door. My bag is packed.
Ten days.
Grace and me. The open road. A town neither of us has seen.
A future that doesn’t have a shape yet — just a direction.
I take the keys off the hook. Turn them over in my palm.
The Carriage Awaits.
In an hour, we drive.
Once Grace’s decided.
Then I'll tell West.