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But he hasn’t left our bedroom. He’s perched on the edge of the bed, his focus on his clasped hands in front of him.
I can’t get the words out fast enough. “I’m so sorry, Jonah. I’m such an asshole.” My voice is unsteady. “Please tell me you’re not giving up on me yet.”
He offers me a small smile that momentarily distracts me from the dark circles under his eyes. It doesn’t appear like he had a good night’s sleep, either. “We’re both assholes. How about that?” He reaches out, beckoning for me to come.
I rush toward him, but hesitate when I get there—part of me wants to throw myself at him, the other part is terrified that he’ll hold me at arm’s length, that it’s too late, that the slope we fell down yesterday was too steep, the climb up too slippery.
That he’s already decided he doesn’t want to even attempt it.
But then he clasps my thighs with warm hands and his thumbs stroke my skin, offering me hope. “Using work as my excuse to take off yesterday morning was a dumb move. I just didn’t think you’d react like that. But I should have seen it coming.” His eyes shine with sincerity. “I’m sorry.”
I swallow the growing lump in my throat. “I overreacted—”
“No, you didn’t.” He steers my body in between his parted legs, pulls me down to sit on one thigh. I use the opportunity to curl my arms around his shoulders and slide in a touch closer. “You reacted. To something you’ve obviously been sitting on and not saying anything about for a while.” He presses his forehead against my collarbone. Drops of water linger on my skin.
“I don’t want to stop you from doing it, Jonah,” I whisper. With tentative fingertips, I stroke his bearded jaw. “I can see how much you love working with Sam. I mean, you’ve been geeking out with textbooks at night.”
He chuckles. “It’s been a while since I’ve learned something totally new. I actually like it.”
“I just don’t know what I’m doing here, besides being with you. And don’t get me wrong, I love being with you, and I love it when you come home at night, and there’s no one else I’d rather be with, but I feel like …” I struggle to find the right words to articulate this swirl inside me. “I don’t know who I am here. At least with The Yeti, we were starting that together—”
“We still have it, Calla.”
“I know, but it’s different now. You’re off,
doing your own thing. It’s kind of like your backup now. It doesn’t feel like ours anymore.”
Jonah nods slowly. “Fair enough.”
“And I don’t think I’m made for spending so much time alone. I’m not blaming you for that,” I add quickly. “But I’m beginning to think the reason I stayed at home with my mom and Simon all those years had less to do with high rent prices and more about me just liking being around my family.” I had the best of both worlds—freedom and privacy, but I never felt alone. I thrive on being on the go and being around people. “I guess I’m more like my mother that way than I care to admit.” We both live for schedules packed with appointments to make, social outings to keep, and tasks to complete. “It’s a big adjustment for me.”
I hesitate. “And, I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m beginning to feel like maybe I’m losing a part of who I am?” I remember my mother saying that once—that, isolated in the tiny, mossy-green house in the tundra in the dead of winter, thousands of miles from everything and everyone she knew, she began to wonder, to fear, who she would become in five, ten, twenty years if she stayed.
What choices she would begin to regret.
Is this what she meant?
Jonah studies my features. “Calla, I don’t know how to fix that for you. If I could, I would. But you need to stop doin’ things because you think I want you to, or because Muriel tells you to. I don’t give a shit if you know how to cook. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate not living off frozen dinners, but it’s not why I fell in love with you. If you burn everything from now until the day I die, I’ll still love you.”
Warmth fills my chest, hearing those words. “What if I burn down this house?” I ask tentatively, my lips curling into a smile for the first time today.
He gives me a flat look but it softens immediately, as his gentle hand tucks a strand of wet hair behind my ear. “Where’s the woman who rolled into Wild, knowing nothin’ about charter plane companies or Alaska, and convinced me, the stubborn ass, that Wild was doing it all wrong?”
“It was just a website.” My dad sold the company before we could ever hope to turn the lagging parts of the business around.
“Where’s the woman who got so pissed off at me one night, she shaved my face while I was unconscious?”
I tip my head back and laugh—the sound coming from deep within—and the simple act releases waves of tension that have gripped me since yesterday.
He sighs. “Calla, you’re not like anyone else I know around here, and I’m glad. I don’t want you to be like Marie. You’ve got somethin’ of your own to add to the mix. You don’t have to become someone else. Do what you wanna do. Seriously, if you want to put up motion-activated witches and goblins around our property to scare off bears, do it. If you don’t ever want to learn how to fire a gun, fine. If you want to let Zeke in to mow down everything in that garden, go ahead.”
“I’ve actually liked going out there and picking strawberries.” Even if I don’t eat them. I shrug. “It feels like I’ve accomplished something.”
“Then keep doin’ it! But do it because you want to. Find a way to make Alaska work for you, and soon, you won’t even think about the few little things that don’t.”
“The few little things?” I echo. “Man-eating bears, earthquakes, raging forest fires, giant mosquitos, worrying that you’ll crash every time you leave—”
“All right, all right …” He smirks, but then it fades. “I can’t be the only thing keeping you here. You’re too driven to be sitting at home, waiting for me. You need to find something that’ll make you want to be all in with this.” He presses a gentle kiss against my damp skin.
