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“Sounds like something Agnes said to me once.” I wish I had the answer.
“That’s probably ’cause she said it to me last night,” he admits.
“That’s who you were talking to on the phone?”
He nods. “I needed to know exactly how much of a jackass I was. She’s always been good at tellin’ me.”
“Agnes would never tell you that.”
“Trust me, she’s got her own special way.” He smiles. “Anyway, she helped me see my part in all this.”
“I’m sorry for mine.” I cup his jaw between my palms. “And I’m sorry about Marie. She didn’t deserve that. I’ll apologize the next time I see her.” My idea of her dating Toby might be good, but my intentions weren’t. If the roles were reversed, I’d probably hate me.
His hand slips beneath the hem of my towel to settle on my hip. “Agnes thinks I have a huge blind spot with Marie. I’m startin’ to think she might be right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did I ever tell you that she was engaged when I started flying her around to the villages?”
“No.” Jonah has never said much about his friendship with Marie.
“Yeah. We hit it off right away. And I’m not gonna lie, I thought she was hot, and super smart, and nice—”
“Okay, I get it.” I wonder if I want to hear this.
“If she’d been single, I probably would have made a move. But she was gettin’ married, so she was off-limits, right from the start. Anyway, she was only supposed to come out once every two or three months, but she started makin’ trips once a month, sometimes more. We’d spend days together. We got to be really good friends. And then about a year in, she told me she’d broken off her engagement. She said they’d grown apart, that she didn’t love him anymore. I flew into Anchorage to see how she was doin’. We met up at a bar to have a few drinks, shoot the shit. When we were saying good night, she kissed me.”
I knew this. At least, I knew about the kiss—not the how, when, or why. “And?”
“And …” He hesitates, as if he doesn’t want to admit the next part. “For about ten seconds, I was gonna go with it. But then I stopped because it didn’t feel right. I hadn’t looked at her like that in a long time, and she was too important to me as a friend to screw it up. Plus, I knew she wasn’t the kind of girl who was into hookups, that she’d be lookin’ for somethin’ serious, and I wasn’t lookin’ for that, with anyone. I told her all this, too. She apologized, said she was just drunk and not thinking straight, and that us being friends was too important for her, too. So, we agreed to not talk about it again and left it at that.”
“And you believed her?” I can’t hide the doubt from my voice. I know the first thing Diana would say if she were hearing this story—Marie didn’t love her fiancé anymore because she’d fallen madly in love with a certain bullheaded bush pilot. They were close friends. He was attracted to her. That he denied her that night didn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future, once he was ready to settle. I sigh. “Guys can be so dumb.”
“What was I supposed to do?” He shrugs. “We went back to things being normal and they seemed fine. She didn’t date anyone for a long time. Said she wanted a break after being tied down for five years. She mentioned this guy with a bunch of ferrets who asked her out, and she told him she wasn’t interested.
“And then I met that pilot with the coast guard that I told you about.”
I nod, and in the back of my mind is that little voice that automatically tosses out curious questions like it does every time there’s mention of a woman from Jonah’s past: What does she look like? Does she think about him? Does he think about her? If she had been in the picture last summer, would I be here now?
“A few weeks after Teegan came into the picture, Marie started dating the ferret guy. I figured she’d changed her mind, he grew on her, whatever. I didn’t think anything of it. She seemed happy. I even met the guy once, and he was decent enough.
“Then Teegan and I ended things, and Marie was single again a week later. Said it wasn’t working for her. Again, I didn’t think anythin’ of it. And she never mentioned dating anyone again. I’d ask sometimes, because I was curious, and she’d say she was too busy with work. Last year, she finally admitted that she’d met a guy, but she was waitin’ for him to figure his shit out.” He frowns. “I’m starting to think she was talkin’ about me.”
I give him a look—he didn’t see that coming?—and shake my head.
His gaze drifts along my bare collarbone, over the knot in the front of my towel, and the hint of cleavage peeking out. “And then I met you, and you were like a wrecking ball comin’ into my life, Calla.” He laughs. “A fucking beautiful, hot-pink wrecking ball. And everything changed for me. All these things I didn’t want before, suddenly all I could think about was havin’ them all with you.” His eyes land on my mouth. “And I haven’t stopped thinking about them since.”
I capture his lips with mine, coaxing his mouth open with my tongue as a shaky sigh of relief escapes me. It feels like our first kiss all over again—tentative and brimming with raw need. My hand finds his cheek, the coarse hair of his jaw tickling my skin. “Same. You did that to me, too.” My entire perspective on life seemed to change, and a big part of that was because of Jonah.
He turns his face in to kiss my palm. “I’m so used to having Marie as my sounding board for everything that at first, I didn’t think twice about venting to her after that day up in the safety cabin.” He meets my gaze. “But then she said what she did, and I started thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be talking to her about us. Not because I think she’d ever try to convince me to leave you. That’s not her. But it can’t feel good, to listen to me talk about the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
His jaw tenses, and when he peers up at me, I see a raw, vulnerable pain that Jonah so rarely makes visible. I can’t get close enough to him, twisting and clambering onto his lap, my entire body moulding to his as my thighs wrap around his hips and my arms rope around his head and every other part of me is pressed against him.
I feel a sharp tug on my towel and then it’s unraveling, leaving me naked against his dressed body. But there is no playful foreplay this time around. No pauses, no lingering looks or smiles or touches. Our mouths and hands become tangled and rough in a frantic attempt to touch and kiss every part of each other as we maneuver our way fully onto our bed.
Jonah tugs his shirt and track pants off in a hurry, a
s if he can’t wait another second, and then flattens me beneath his weight as we roll into each other. I coil my legs around his hips, opening myself up for him. He pulls back long enough to peer down at me, the agony in his eyes piercing my heart. “I can’t ever lose you, Calla.”
