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It’s just the muskrats, I try to tell myself. So why is my heart jumping rope in my chest?
“I’m heading out,” I announce as I descend the staircase, tossing my purse over my shoulder.
I don’t get a response, so I glance around. “Pearl? Otto?”
She’s left a note on the round kitchen table: Went out for pizza. Don’t call! Xoxo.
I can’t help but smile. I leave, locking the door quietly behind me.
The cold is bone-freezing and chaps my lips. I hug my jacket tighter and slip into the rental car.
Donovan lives on the northern end of the island, and I have to wind down Main Street to get to him. From one end of the island to the other takes less than fifteen minutes, and that’s only because I’m obeying the under-twenty-miles-an-hour speed limit. His house stands alone on top of a sand dune, overlooking the beach.
The sunset looks beautiful, streaking golden-amber hues across the sky and ocean.
I get out of the car and take a second to admire it, even as the cold nips at me.
You don’t get views like this in London.
There’s a stone footpath that leads to Donovan’s house, a modern structure built with a sharp triangle slant and wooden slats across the sides. Tufts of dune grass sprout up from the sand. I’m halfway up the path when the door flings open.
A man steps out and lifts his arms wide. “Kenzi fucking Stratton!” he bellows.
He cuts the distance between us with his long-legged leaps and then swoops me up in a bone-crushing bear hug. He smells like chlorine, body spray, and minty aftershave. I close my eyes and inhale. He smells like Jason.
It hits me like a fucking curveball to the chest and knocks all the breath out of me. Probably doesn’t help that his hugs are boa-constrictor tight.
“Hey, big guy.” I gasp for air and pat his shoulder, like I’m tapping out at a wrestling match.
He grabs my shoulders and yanks me back with no apparent awareness of his own strength so he can look at me—really look at me. The biggest, cheesiest grin plasters across his face, and his blue eyes sparkle.
“Christ, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says. “You look great.”
Jason is an eye-contact kind of guy. Not a lot of those left—men who aren’t afraid to look a woman straight in the eyes when he speaks.
He makes it look natural. I’d forgotten how good it feels to be seen—everyone I’d worked with had their eyes on their phones or their computers and only looked up when you said, “Hey, take a look at this.”
Something else I wasn’t prepared for, though I don’t know why—those are Otto’s eyes staring at me. It knocks me off my center of gravity.
I squeeze his arms to ground myself. “You’re not so bad-looking yourself,” I tease.
“Come on in—Donovan! Look what I found!”
Jason ushers me in, and I hold up a bottle of wine. “Here. Couldn’t come empty-handed.”
Jason takes it and reads the label. “Check you out, classing this joint up. I love it. You wanna crack this baby open?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
I unwrap my scarf from my neck and shimmy out of my jacket. Jason takes those as well (a gentleman, who’d have thought?), and as he hangs them up, I survey the place.
It’s…shockingly nice.
I don’t know what I was expecting. A frat house? Something about two boys living together screams empty beer bottles, strange stains, and movie posters tacked into the walls.
This is a far cry.
White paint, a wooden designer coffee table, an entire wall of exposed brick. A shelf devoted to a record player and a wall of records. Post-modern art on the walls and an ivy plant in the corner.
