Chapter 13 Lola
LOLA
The moment Rowan disappears into his bedroom, the door closed behind him with a resounding click, I bring my hand to my lips, staring after him and breathing hard.
Around me, the cabin is deathly quiet. I can’t even hear the trees and leaves rustling outside. The only sounds are my own breath, the rapid pounding of my heart, and the blood roaring in my ears.
What is up with him?
Everything leading up to the moment he snapped out of it and walked away made it seem like he was going to kiss me.
He was going to kiss me. I know he was. A man doesn’t look at you like that and not kiss you. Or at least, not want to.
And fuck, did I want to be kissed by him.
The rough way he planted his hand at the base of my back and pulled me into him, the promise of the scrape of his beard against my chin?
His breath, hot, fanning over my cheeks, and the way he stared at me like he wanted to eat me whole — Maisie has never read something like that in her romance novels.
Nobody on the planet has ever wanted to kiss someone as bad as I wanted to kiss Rowan just now.
Then, before I could do that — just surge up and say fuck it and kiss him because he wasn’t kissing me — he’d dropped me like I burned him and turned, stalking quickly down the hall and disappearing.
So, if he wanted to, why didn’t he? Should I have verbally consented to it? How could he not tell that I wanted it, too? I mean, I’m still standing here, basically putty, trying to put the pieces of myself back together. His absence pulses through the room like a physical object.
He was so close I could see the gold flecks in his hazel eyes. Close enough that I could smell the forest clinging to his jacket, could trace the exact lines around the corners of his mouth.
He was close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his hazel eyes.
All at once, the truth flies toward me like a dolly zoom. In and out, the room getting bigger while I shrink down.
Rowan.
Henry Rowan Travis.
I gasp, fully clapping my hand over my mouth, eyes darting to the end of the hall, leading to his room. Did he hear me? Can he sense that I’m realizing the truth?
How he knew exactly how to take my drone apart. That technological ability that didn’t quite make sense, not with the beard and the whole lumberjack thing he has going on.
Because he hasn’t always been a mountain man. In fact, he’s not even from Washington, or Seattle. Holy shit. Holy shit.
My journalistic instincts were spot on. From the moment I saw that fence out there, I knew there was something going on here.
Henry Rowan Travis, billionaire tech wizard.
He had a huge falling out with the co-founder of his company — and I think something with his fiancée?
— before dropping off the face of the earth.
It was a massive story, everyone postulating about where he might be.
Saying maybe he died, maybe he overdosed, maybe his partner — what the hell was his name? Evan? Eric? — killed him.
I start to pace in the living room, my fingers twitching with the urge to start looking stuff up.
For the past couple of days, not having my phone hasn’t bothered me so much, but right now, I wish more than anything that I could do some internet sleuthing.
That I could read through articles and get the exact details.
All I have to rely on now is my recollection of it, what I got through the news, and if I’m being honest, I was never really that interested in the technology news sphere.
Since the original big scandal with Zuckerberg, there’s been one each year.
It’s like those guys love to double-cross each other.
If it had been a smaller story, I wouldn’t have heard about it at all. But it wasn’t a small story. There were criminal proceedings, and some sort of romantic entanglement, and then when Travis disappeared, that was the icing on the cake.
“Holy shit,” I whisper to the empty room, turning and taking in the huge wall of books, thinking about what it must be like for him, spending all his time here alone.
Well, with Cheese.
What would it be like to go from having everything — surely a life of glitz and glamor — to being out here in the middle of nowhere, living in a cabin only a bit bigger than my two-bedroom apartment back in Seattle?
I pull my phone out, open Maisie’s contact, then put it back in my pocket. I’d give anything right now to have someone else to talk to about this, even if I had to skate about the truth to protect Rowan’s — Henry’s? — identity.
If I could call her right now, I’d tell Maisie that I came across a huge news story. Something that, if I could write the story, would break in the biggest publications. They’d be fighting over who got to have it.
It would be a taste of the field I left behind. And it basically fell in my lap.
But I’d also tell her that the person the story is about is… not someone I want to hurt. Not after meeting him and seeing what he’s like. The thought of having a huge story like that is tantalizing, but it’s not worth betraying Rowan’s trust.
I continue pacing, my mind whirring faster than it has in a long time. Influencing is fun, but usually, it’s just a grind — finding the right shots, creating a narrative with videos, cursing myself when I realize I forgot a transition.
But this? This is something completely different. A puzzle for my brain to turn over and over again, looking at the thing from all angles.
Rowan said he had a good reason to be hiding out like this. When he said it, it didn’t sound like he had a good reason, like he needed to hide — it sounded like he had a good reason. Moral. Like he’s not hiding out here to avoid punishment or the law, but for some other reason.
My ankle starts to ache and I stop my pacing, forcing myself to take a deep breath.
How does he handle being up here in the quiet? Without the internet as a bounce board for my thoughts, it feels like everything is unconfirmed.
What does Rowan do when he feels like this?
At that thought, my head lifts and I look into the dark kitchen, where a loaf of bread sits, proofing. I know there’s another in the fridge that’s ready to go into the oven.
He uses his hands. He makes things.
My stomach growls, and I think that maybe I should give it a try, too.
Rowan’s kitchen is unfamiliar to me, and I can’t figure out how to make his stove work the way I want it to.
I poke around in his cabinets, my mind racing as I try to figure out what I’m going to make him to eat. Each time I pick something up, turning it over in my hands, my mind starts to wander again.
Out there, in the woods, I’d reacted impulsively to the sight of the bear cub.
Of course, I’d learned about bears the first time I came to Colorado.
That they’re not friendly, and even if the cubs are friendly, the mothers will not be.
That black bears aren’t that big of a deal, but if we see a brown bear — a grizzly — we’d better hope we brought the gun with us, depending on the time of year.
I knew all that, and I still turned toward the bear, instead of away from it.
I’m always like this. Always making things more chaotic than they have to be.
It’s part of the reason why things are how they are. Part of the reason why my mom needed to start over with a new family. Make more kids after me. Like I’m a shitty first draft.
Swallowing down those thoughts, I decide I’m going to make breakfast for dinner.
Rowan’s kitchen is devoid of anything you might find in mine back at home — no frozen waffles, no TV dinners, in fact, nothing that’s pre-made aside from the bread he’s baked himself.
There are some bagels in the freezer, and I suspect he made those, as well.
Trapped up here with nothing but his thoughts. After everything that happened to him, it’s no wonder he’s baking all the time. I’d need something to take my mind off it, too.
Once I have the eggs and bread on the table, I turn to the stove.
Rowan used it while I was in here before, but that doesn’t exactly translate to an understanding of how to use the thing. I reach out, fiddling with the knobs, chewing on my bottom lip, trying to figure it out.
If I was at home, I’d just have to turn a dial, and the top would glow electric red.
I decide, after five minutes of messing with it, that there’s not enough wood inside. All I have to do is open the little door and put some more wood inside.
Easy.