Chapter 17
LOLA
When I wake up this time, it takes me a moment to realize I’m not at home, cuddled up in my bed in Seattle. And I’m not on the couch in Rowan’s living room.
I’m tucked under his arm, warm and cozy, my heart beating loud in my ears.
He’s hard against me and rousing himself, and as though right now is just a continuation of last night, he rocks into me, growling into the nape of my neck.
The morning sex is even better than the night before. No, that’s not true, but it’s still really good. When we’re done, panting and spent, I turn in his arms and tip my chin up, catching his lips with mine.
“Good morning,” he mumbles, and I catch that with my lips, too.
I love you, I think, then startle and blink, shaking my head. What the hell was that? It came to my mind so easily, so openly, but that’s crazy. I’m not the kind of girl who jumps into things like that.
I must be confused. I love this moment, this feeling. I love being pressed up against him and waking up already moving together. I love the way he grips my hip, his warm eyes and that smile. I love the scrape of his beard against my skin. I love the tickle of it through the back of my T-shirt.
And I’ve loved being here. Maybe last night I was even dreaming of what it would be like to stay here. I might have thought about the logistics of making trips up the mountain. The world’s most effort ever given for a booty call.
I would answer every time, I realize, if only Rowan had the signal to make the call in the first place.
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” I say, sitting up, even though my hair is still wet from the day before.
Rowan’s hands linger on me softly, fiddling with my hair, sliding over the curve of my hip, still reaching for me even when I stand up, like he doesn’t want to let go of me. When I stand, I can’t stop myself from turning around, giving his still-sleepy face a quick kiss.
When I close the bathroom door behind me, I’m breathing hard.
What am I doing? Is this cabin fever?
Deep down, I know it’s not. That, as much as I’m calling this crazy and quick, impulsive, it doesn’t feel that way. I think of Maisie, whose sister moved to France for a year and picked up the language, speaking fluently after just seven months.
“You really have to get immersed in it,” Maisie had said, shrugging and opening a care package of French teas and cookies from her sister.
That’s what this is, I think. A week with nothing else to do but think about Rowan, spend time with him. Adventure with him.
I’ve immersed myself in this life, with him, and now I’m fluent.
And I have the sinking, twisting feeling in my stomach that I don’t want to go back. Before, as a kid, I shuttled between two worlds without a choice. And then my dad died, and that left only the one.
The city, my mom. That life. And I’ve been living it for years. In Seattle, as an influencer, taking shots at the market, attending parties at the Space Needle.
Maybe it never occurred to me that I could have chosen my dad’s life. Or that I could have found a way to balance the two.
Pushing those thoughts out of my head, I step into the shower, letting the hot water run over me. As I do, flashes of the night before come back to me.
Rowan, his mouth on me. Holding me up in this shower, his hair dark, curls pressed down against his head and falling into his eyes. The soft, slippery feeling of our bodies together.
“Shower sex is not safe,” I remember Maisie saying once, shaking her head at a rom-com we watched. Maybe she’s right, but Rowan had absolutely no problem holding me up last night, one hand gripping my wet hair, the other tight on my hip.
“Okay,” I whisper under my breath, stepping out of the shower and toweling off. I need to think — need to get myself out of this lusty head space.
We had sex.
And when I woke up this morning, it was with his arm around me.
Can I date a man who lives in the mountains? He won’t even be able to send me goodbye texts. How would content work? I could work extra hard for a week, schedule posts, then come up here. Do a week on, then a week off.
That is, if Rowan is even interested in seeing where this goes. Maybe he doesn’t want a long-term relationship.
No. I saw the way he looked at me last night. I can’t believe that, after all that, he would just clap me on the ass and wish me safe travels.
I realize, as I step into my leggings, that my ankle is nearly completely healed, only the slightest twinge betraying the sprain I had before. Standing up straight, I turn it from side to side, staring down at it.
When I come out of the bathroom, I head straight back to his bedroom, only to find it empty, the bed made, the warmth of the morning gone. The curtains are pulled open, and the sun shines through, too bright, exposing what felt like a personal space before.
“Rowan?” I call as I turn into the hallway. Maybe he’s letting Cheese outside.
But he’s not at the side door. In fact, he’s at the front door, standing with his coat on, my suitcase sitting at his side. I slow my pace as I take in the scene, trying to parse this with the way I felt this morning, waking up in his arms.
“Rowan?” I ask again, the smile still strangely on my face as he turns to me. “What are you doing?”
“The road is clear,” he says, his voice even, his expression flat. “So you should be able to make it back to the city.”
I blink at him, then shift from foot to foot, my heart rising up into my throat. “Okay, I mean, I— uh—” I cut myself off, trying to figure out what I want to say. Up until this moment, I’d thought he would want me to stay.
I’d already been imagining the cute scene in which I insisted I’d have to go back — either today or tomorrow — and he’d beg me to stay, his arms around my waist, until we fell into each other again.
But here he is, my things packed. My hoodie and phone sitting neatly on top of my suitcase.
Something is wrong, but I have no idea what.
And I should call it out, should ask him what changed between this morning and now. Should question his sudden coolness toward me, prod him for details.
But I barely know him. And if there’s anything my mother raised me to do, it’s to not question things. We don’t talk about what makes us uncomfortable.
We don’t talk about the divorce, her infidelity, the new family that she’s been raising on the other side of the country.
The family she’s spreading out over the states, sending right to my doorstep.
I don’t want to go back to the city. Don’t want to go back to, Maybe you could show Darlie around the city! In fact, for the week that I’ve been here with Rowan, I’d managed to completely forget about that entire situation.
Maybe I should fight to keep this place that brought me peace. To stay here with the man who — at least for a little while — helped me to not feel like such a fuck-up.
But, in this moment, I’m just not that girl.
“Okay,” I say, swallowing through the lump in my throat, nodding, following him out the door. He leads me through the gate at the edge of his property, down the road, along a path that he’s clearly marked in his head from the night he went out to get my things.
Our feet crunch in the leaves. Evidence of the heavy rains is all around us, in the now-hardened waves of mud sliding down the side of the mountain.
The terrain struggles between the new growth that comes after rain, and the fact that it is September, and last night the temperatures dropped significantly.
When we reach my car, I try to take my suitcase, and he insists on putting it in the trunk for me. Through it all, we’re quiet. I’m practically screaming on the inside, insisting to myself that I should say something, anything to him, just break the silence.
Take a baby step. Move toward addressing whatever the hell happened in there.
But I can’t. It’s like my throat is frozen shut.
Maybe because part of me is afraid that if I voice it, if I point to the chemistry between us and the way I thought he might ask me to stay, he might laugh. His eyebrows might shoot up in surprise.
Once again, I’d be the girl wanting more from everyone else. Asking for more. Thinking he liked me more than he really does.
So, I bite my tongue and climb into the driver’s seat. I head down the mountain. And it’s only when I turn onto the main road, when I realize I didn’t say goodbye to Cheese, that the tears start to fall.