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“So, you’re sending me away and you’re asking me to decide if you’re what I want, when I’ve already told you so many times that you’re everything I want?” he chokes, squinting as if the sun is too bright, though it’s hiding behind the clouds. “I don’t get it.”
I take an unsteady breath. “You can’t be sure, not fully, after the long weekend we just had. Aside from the party, these past few days have been like a dream, and nothing is ever the same when you wake up. You need distance from it. From me. Trust me on that.”
“If you say so, but I know nothing is going to change,” he tells me with such ferocity that I almost believe it and cave.
But I don’t want him to be another smear on the chalkboard, making the layers of who I am even more muddled, even more unreadable, making it impossible for anyone after him to get close. I don’t want to lose Lyndsey and Graceandhim in one fell swoop if it doesn’t work out, and though I know it’s asking for a lot—way too much for a couple who are just beginning—it’s necessary. The reward has to outweigh the risk. It just… has to.
“I hope it doesn’t,” I say quietly, leaning in to steal a kiss from his lips.
At first, his mouth is stiff and angry, refusing to kiss me back the way I want him to. But as I press into him, slipping my arms around his neck, pulling him closer, the frost thaws and his lips move with mine in the slow, sensual ebb and flow that I’ve come to cherish.
I’ll miss it if this is the last time, so I’m determined to make the most of him, just in case it’s a farewell. But if thisisthe last time, there’s the strangest comfort in knowing that it’ll be for the best, one way or another. It won’t feel good for a while, but I’ve been through hell before and lived to tell the tale.
Or it might last, Summer. This might be the beginning, and you’re ruining the moment,a stern voice whispers in my mind, sounding so much like my grandma. Since letting go of the cypress carving, I haven’t heard Ben’s voice, so perhaps my grandma is playing stand-in while I adjust to a newer normal, keeping me from catastrophizing.
I concentrate on Rowan, sinking deeper into his kiss, his embrace, the security and warmth of him. He pushes me back toward the cottage, my back bumping up against the front door and, for a moment, I think he’s going to insist on us going inside to pick up where we left off this morning.
Instead, he pulls back, breathless. “You stay right there,” he says. “I’m coming back, and when I do, I’ll be bringing an answer that you’d better accept, this time. In fact, I’d stay right here with you if it didn’t mean getting fired, and I’ve only just gotten my job back.”
“What?” I frown at him, completely thrown. As far as I was aware, he’d been working since he came home from Malaysia. Otherwise, why had he been in New Orleans every day, driving by my gallery?
He smiles and steps away from me. “Like you said, we don’t know each other that well yet, but I don’t care about that. I’ve got skeletons in my closet too, and when I come back, we’re going to sit down and hash out everything, right down to the packet of gum I stole when I was nine. Didn’t sleep for days, thinking the cops were coming for me.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be back before you know it, and you’re still going to be exactly what I want, flaws and all.”
Holding up his hands like I’m a puppy that’s been asked to “stay” he heads down the porch steps and up the garden path to the gate, cautiously walking backward the entire time. At the gate, he finally turns, letting himself out onto the road where his car is parked.
As he opens his car door, he raises his hand in a wave, and there’s a confident smile on his face that I’m going to carry in my mind until I see him again. I’m going to let it nurse the embers of hope that still glow in my heart, and as I lift my hand to wave back, I hear my grandma’s voice again, whispering on the warm breeze:It might last, Summer. This time, it might.
And “might” is good enough for me, but the rest is in Rowan’s hands now.
* * *
I roll out of bed,the sun still tucked up under the covers of night. Dawn can’t be far away, but it’s dark in the bedroom as I fumble for my phone and, yawning, pad out into the living room. I keep going, straight through the back door and onto the rear porch, where I sit in the ancient rocking chair that Ms. T gifted to me a lifetime ago. A book is balanced on the arm, open where I left it last night in a fit of frustration. I kept reading the same sentence over and over, too distracted to concentrate, my heart leaping every time a car rumbled by on the road at the top of the lane, but none of them stopped.
Rubbing my eyes, I bring my knees up to my chest and check my phone for the billionth time, but there’s no message from him, no missed call, no notification of any kind other than a text from Ms. T that just says,Any news?Like she wouldn’t be the first person I’d call if he had come back.
I knew I risked losing him if I sent him away, but I guess there was an arrogant part of me that never doubted he’d return. All I know of love is whirlwinds and tragedies, and I think I might’ve pushed Rowan too hard, too quickly, even if the reasons were well-intended. Who wouldn’t freak out when the person they liked essentially asked them to decide if they were ready to commit forever, or not at all?
Rowan isn’t Ben. I don’t want him to be, but where Ben was a current, rushing with the flow of everything around him, Rowan is a lagoon; slow-moving and steady. I threw a rock and made the water ripple, upsetting the stillness of him, and after letting the waters calm again, I imagine he’s come to realize that he doesn’t need that disturbance in his life.
“I’ll be back before you know it, and you’re still going to be exactly what I want, flaws and all.”I replay his words in my head with a heavy heart, looking out toward the meandering water in the near distance, wishing that Rowan would float to these shores with an excuse that’ll raise my spirits again. But New Orleans isn’t the DuCate mansion; he has a signal, and yet the radio silence continues.
Once the rose-tinted glasses came off, I knew he might not like what he saw. It's been three days… and I think I have my answer, loud and clear.
28
ROWAN
“Couldn’t this wait until the sun comes up?” I ask the road that blurs by beneath the headlights, the white stripes down the center flashing hypnotically. “Sure it could, but where’s the romance and drama in that?”
I flash a sly glance at my phone, clipped onto the air vents, recording everything. Call me over-eager, but I wanted to document this moment in my life, because everything is about to change and I’m going to look back on this drive in five, ten, twenty years’ time and smile until my cheeks ache. It’ll probably be the most romantic thing I ever do, so someone should probably have it on record that I can make a grand gesture.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, you’re likely looking at this under-caffeinated, exhausted husk of a man, also wondering why I’m not just calling the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with so I’m not keeping either of us waiting for the rest of our lives to begin. But, I’d like to refer you back to my previous point—where’s the romance and drama in that?
“Summer deserves the bells and whistles for baring her soul to me, and I’m going to give them to her, and then some.” I grin, picturing the scene. “Here’s how I’m hoping it’s going to go: I slam the car door, hop over the gate, sprint down the path and there she is, running out onto the porch because I’m there, just like I promised. She might give me a smack, too, for basically dropping off the face of the digital world for three-ish days, but, in my defense, she was the one who told me to take all the time I needed… and I wouldn’t have done any soul-searching of my own if I’d messaged her. I’d have buckled immediately, and that wouldn’t have been fair to her.
“I didn’t get it when she asked me to leave and think about the future, but then I looked back through some of these recordings, and I remembered why I started them in the first place.” The GPS chimes to tell me to keep going straight, like I don’t already know that. “Madame Therapist, you told me I needed to sit with my feelings, not just document my stream-of-consciousness. Really use this as a private talk therapy to work on whatever I might be going through. Turns out, there was a lot I needed to unravel when it comes to Summer.”
I chuckle at the madness of it all, swerving a plastic bag that floats into the road like a specter, giving me a minor heart attack. “She showed me who she is, pared back to the cluttered humanity inside. Part of me was only seeing the surface, and I’m glad she warned me of what I’d face if I chose her, but that’s not why I’m driving to her at…” I check the clock “… four o’clock in the morning. I’m driving to her because she put Grace and Lyndsey before her own happiness, and because she had the courage to send me away. Still, I’m late.”
