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 itisSeptember, 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,anythingto 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.
CHAPTER 18
ROWAN
Cheese won’t stop looking for her.
My dog noses at the couch, pokes her head into the kitchen, and runs excitedly to the door each time there’s the slightest sound outside it, her tail swinging from side to side like she might find Lola around every corner.
How is it possible that Lola was only here for a week —one week— and my dog is looking for her? Expecting her to come back?
I got Cheese just before I first moved to the cabin. Found her behind that restaurant when she was just a puppy, a little wriggling caterpillar in my hands. She’s not used to visitors — Pete, at the most, who only stays for an hour when he comes.
So, when Lola showed up, and when she stayed the night, Cheese must have thought her presence would be permanent.
And that realization does nothing to help my sour mood.
When I first woke up this morning, I was trying to figure out how I could convince Lola to stay here with me. Surely, she’d havereasons to go back into the city. Prior engagements. Pictures to post, or live streams scheduled.
For a fraction of a second, I’d toyed with the idea ofpayingher to stay with me. Just before moving out here, I gave my accountants and financial managers orders to start dispersing my money out to various charities as they saw fit. At first, they’d tried to talk me out of it, and eventually, they talked me down to giving away only ninety percent.
Still, I could pay Lola three times whatever she’s making now for the rest of her life, just to remain in the cabin. Or even to come up every other week.
But she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would want to accept that money. She wants to make her own way, and besides,it was only a week.
A fact I had to keep reminding myself of. That she’d fallen on my porch just six days before. If Pete or anyone else had told me about a week-long fling that they were seriously considering like this, I’d try to talk some sense into them.
But with Lola, it’s different.
At least, I’d thought it was different. I thought she understood me. I thought we understood one another.
