For always, p.6
For Always, page 6
“Don’t touch the rainbow,” she’d whined.
“Rainbows are lame,” I’d said, picking through to find a lightning bolt. “This is cool.”
She rolled her eyes. “How long are you going to be in here bothering me?”
I rolled my eyes right back. “For always.”
I chuckled at the memory. This trip to the cabin could only be an improvement.
The frost crunched beneath my boots as I surveyed the yard. Debris stuffed the gutters, and the downspout on the eastern corner had detached from the roof. Did Mr. Dalton know?
The lumber rack next to the front door was at least full of wood. With a covered roof, it’d be dry. Heat was my top priority.
“You want a fire going before she arrives.”
I let out a shaky breath, my nerves powering me to the door as I ran the pad of my finger over the ridges of the cabin key.
“Someone has to be your first.”
Beau was right about that. Vanessa may have obliterated my heart, but it still pumped blood and held life, as evidenced by its wild beating against my chest.
For months, I’d let myself grieve the loss of a relationship that had died long before its last breath. One I’d clung to because I needed it.
But even knowing how it had burned out before my eyes, the things I’d done or she’d done to guarantee we suffocated the flames of affection, I still asked myself why I hadn’t been enough.
My feelings for Vanessa didn’t prevent me from moving on with someone else. My feelings about myself did.
“Someone has to be your first.”
There was something poetic that it’d be Riley. Jesus, Vanessa had hated her growing up. Catty girl shit. Vanessa’s favorite type of drama.
“I was going to take Fallon to the cabin,” Beau said that morning, his grimace telling me this was an enormous sacrifice. “You take it, though.” He patted my back and gave a solemn nod.
“I don’t—”
Beau batted away my refusal. “Take the night, but wash the sheets when you’re done.”
Was I going to do this? Was I ready?
My body was ready. Fuck, was it ready. I even thought my heart was ready. My head, though? That guy wasn’t as sure.
No. I turned to flee, certain I made a mistake. Riley was attractive and friendly enough when chatting instead of forcing her tongue into my mouth, but she couldn’t be my first. It didn’t feel right.
“Maybe then you’d know how to keep a woman.”
I hesitated, my foot stopping mid-stride. Riley wouldn’t be more than I needed for a night. No expectations. No risk. It wouldn’t matter if I knew how to keep her.
No pressure.
I needed to move on. My heart was ready, and goddamnit, my dick was definitely ready.
Vanessa and I had a decent sex life until we graduated from college. She’d seemed happy. I’d been happy. But the following years became a slow descent into pleas for closeness and scheduled intimacy. Birthdays and anniversaries and routine Sunday mornings when she was half asleep, and I wholly ached from no contact.
When I confessed that to Beau, he offered his unsolicited advice about buying toys, trying new positions, or any number of things to spice it up. But the lack of sex hadn’t suffocated our relationship. I could have fucked Vanessa daily and still felt her pulling away.
It shouldn’t have surprised me when she found someone else. It probably would have hurt less if it hadn’t been one of my college buddies.
Vanessa and I fell in love as kids. We grew up, but instead of growing together, we grew apart. It was harder for me to let go of her because she’d been all I had after my mom died. I didn’t hate Vanessa as much as I wanted to. I simply hated that I couldn’t be what she needed. Maybe I wasn’t enough for someone to stay.
My hand shook as I put the key in the lock. Beau had given me a gift. Riley didn’t need me to be anything more than a good time.
I twisted the key and let myself in.
Nothing had changed in the small cabin.
One bedroom and a bathroom, a cozy living room with an eating nook next to an open kitchen. All visible from the tiny mudroom.
Like a memory sealed in time, the bench next to the door would squeak and rock unsteadily if I were to sit on it. The overstuffed sofa with its brown velour and tufted pillows. The two rocking chairs across from it, one with a missing cushion and the other with that striped throw blanket over the back.
The eating nook with two frogs connected by their webbed feet in the center of the oak table. Salt and pepper shakers that Mama Dalton picked up at Bertie Belle’s shop.
I stepped inside, my boots wet with snow and mud that I wiped on the maroon welcome mat, the one with a faded reindeer on it.
My hand pressed against the same wood panel I always found when leaning to toe off my shoes. My palm rested higher these days, but faded handprints from Beau and me over the years still lingered.
Even the musty scent of dust and cedarwood hadn’t changed. It’d take me a few hours to adjust to the smell, and it wouldn’t completely disappear. A tang on the back of my tongue that would stay until I left.
My chest puffed with familiarity. That same crackling fire in the stone hearth, which Beau’s grandfather built by hand.
Crackling fire?
I scratched my head, surveying the cabin. I could see nothing had changed because the floor lamps illuminated the living room. Not that it mattered. The glow of the fire would do the trick just fine otherwise.
“You want a fire going before she arrives.”
It was supposed to be me who started it and prepared the cabin. I whipped around to scan outside the window. My truck was parked alone in the gravel driveway. Riley wouldn’t have gotten here first, let alone been able to get inside the house.
“Hello?” I called to an empty room.
I slowly stalked toward the bedroom. The door cracked open enough for me to see no signs of movement. I pushed it open anyway, my jaw tense and my stomach bracing for someone to jump out at me, but the bedroom sat just as empty as the living room.
“Huh.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose with the suspicion that I wasn’t alone despite an empty cabin. Unless something enchanted this place with magic, someone was already here.
A last check of the tiny bathroom. The one with a small pedestal sink and a shower that likely wouldn’t fit me at adult size. There was nowhere to hide. Whoever had been here wasn’t any longer.
Pulling up my phone to call Beau, a slamming door abruptly interrupted me. A flash of white and a low hum as Kate danced her way to the sink from the back door off the kitchen.
“From the window... To the walls...” she sang, her hips undulating as she danced with her back to me, swaying her arms above her head and waving them as she reached for a glass.
“Till the sweat...”
Her pale skin shone with sweat of its own, visible along the back of her neck, with her hair pulled into a messy bun and her shoulders exposed. Because Kate was in a towel.
Only a towel.
She was sweaty and unaware and singing across the room. I stood deathly still, not daring even to breathe.
I didn’t know my endgame here. I hardly understood the scene before me, but I knew one thing. Kate was here.
Only a towel.
I blinked, then blinked again as she filled the glass with water. Watched her give her round hip one last hard thrust. Watched her turn around with a smile on her face. Watched her drop the water glass before it shattered against the linoleum floor.
“What the fuck?” she screamed, her hands flying over her face as she lifted her knee to her stomach in some strange pose of protection.
“It’s just me! Just me!”
I held my hands out to show her I meant no harm, pulling my beanie off and giving her a good look at me.
While I had a good look at her.
Only a towel.
Jesus. Why was she only in a towel?
Kate lowered her leg, her hand wrapping around the cotton knot, fisting it tightly over her chest.
“What are you doing here?” She squinted, trying to decide if I was real as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Where’s Beau?”
“The glass,” I said quickly, pointing at the shards at her feet. “Don’t move.”
Kate gestured to the small pantry next to the fridge. I retrieved a hand broom and did my best to clean up around her. Thankfully, she’d drained the water from the glass before dropping it, but it was still a mess.
Crouching at her feet and getting the last of the glass, I willed myself not to focus on her bare legs. Her skin, so smooth and pink—flushed.
“What were you doing outside in a towel?”
I stared at her toes; their tips painted a deep purple.
She sighed, leaning against the counter. “The sauna.”
“That’s new,” I mused.
I deposited the glass in the garbage, putting the broom away and still not looking at her. It felt... weird.
“My dad built it five years ago, since the shower in this place sucks. It won’t clean you, but warms you up nice and toasty.” Her cheeks were still pink. “An anniversary present for my mom. Or an apology for all the years he dragged her out here in the dead of winter when she didn’t want to come.”
I stepped out of the kitchen, giving Kate room to breathe. Or maybe it was for me.
“I had no idea you’d be here.”
Kate shrugged, checking the floor before she moved.
“I needed a quiet place to work. I didn’t think you and Beau would head out here.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Beau’s not with me.”
“Oh.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “You came by yourself?”
I nodded, my stomach doing somersaults for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. It’d be easy to tell Kate I was supposed to meet Riley. To apologize, tuck tail, head back to Windmere, and leave her to it.
But…
“I needed some quiet, too.”
She frowned, stepping toward me like she’d forgotten she was in a towel and that I’d interrupted her escape into the wilderness.
“Because of me? Listen, Jason. I’m sorry for being wretched. You didn’t deserve that, and Beau told me everything, and I hadn’t realized—”
I held up my hand to stop her, not wanting to acknowledge any of that.
Her eyes pinched, wrinkling in the corners with fine lines drawn across her forehead. A woman in her late twenties now. Kate’s skin was beautiful, clear, and smooth, but those lines. Shit. They killed me a little. Proof she’d grown up.
“I don’t want to get into it,” I said honestly. “I get it. I upset you. You upset me.” I gestured between us. “It’s kind of our thing.”
She smiled. “Our thing?”
“Yeah. I tease you because you’re the bratty little sister. You try to hit back because I’m the hot friend of your older brother that you’ve lusted over since the moment he started bringing me around.”
She punched my arm.
“You’re delusional. I lusted over Aaron Smith. When Beau read about it in my diary, he stopped inviting him to hang out with you guys.”
I laughed, thinking of all the times we’d read her diary despite her best attempts to hide or safeguard it. Kate was boy-crazy. Of course, I gave her shit about it—and the guys, too.
But it wasn’t the secrets that felt most meaningful when flipping through those pages and getting a window into Kate’s thoughts. Intelligent and clever, funny and observant. A different view of Kate when she wouldn’t let me close enough otherwise.
“Is that why my name wasn’t in there? You were afraid Beau would kick me to the curb?”
She licked her lips and glanced away. “Thank god Beau moved out before my junior year.”
“Things start getting good, then?”
Kate leaned against the counter, crossing her arms with a smirk. “That’s between me and my diary.”
She lifted one shoulder playfully and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind her as she said, “And the shed behind my parents’ house.”
I stood outside the door, leaning against the wall and listening.
“I can head back to the house,” Kate called through the door, her voice muffled as she moved around the bedroom. “Give you the quiet. Just let me pack up my stuff. It won’t take long. I was only staying the night, anyway.”
Shit. Riley.
“Uh, listen. I don’t want you on the roads at night,” I said, frowning at the lack of bars on my phone. “I need to make a call. Is there reception here?”
“Left corner by the bathroom,” Kate said. I heard the zipping of a bag. “Stand on a chair and get as high as possible, close to the water stain.”
I walked to where she directed. “Which water stain?” I hollered.
“The one that looks like a cat batting a ball of yarn,” she hollered back.
Thank fuck, I got two bars. I connected the call, choppy as it was, and whispered an apology to Riley.
“I’ll call when I’m back,” I told her.
“And we can get together? Finish what we started in that—”
Kate was rustling around in the room, and my eyes darted to the door, waiting for her to come out. I don’t know why. It was a phone call. I’d done nothing wrong. What did I care if Kate knew I was talking with Riley? Or anyone?
“Jason!” Riley’s voice cut through the chatter in my head.
“What? Uh-huh.”
She cooed into the phone. “Well, I won’t say I’m not disappointed, but I’m glad you caught me before I made the trek. Next time, don’t eat from Stan’s gas station.”
I feigned a groan. “Yeah, asking for trouble.”
“Hey, add a log to the fire,” Kate called from the bedroom as the door swung open.
Kate stepped out with her hair loose over her shoulders and dressed casually in light gray sweats.
“Gotta go. Thanks for understanding.” I hung up before Riley answered.
Lowering myself from the chair and moving it back to the table, my heart pounded like I’d done something wrong.
Kate rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and pointed at the fire.
“Keep this going all night, or you’ll be freezing. It’s already cold enough in the bedroom without heat. Sleep with the door open and use the electric blanket, and you should be fine. Unplug the blanket in the morning, though. It will fry the circuit if you forget and leave it too long.”
She headed toward the kitchen, a beige and white striped travel bag over her shoulder. “Are you staying up here for a couple of days?”
“You’re leaving?”
Kate nodded, opening the fridge and taking out three bottles of wine. The girl knew how to party. I’d give her that.
“I’ve ruined the last two nights, Jason. I think two for two is plenty.”
“The roads aren’t safe at night,” I blurted, aware I had no problem with Riley making her way out here.
It was a lie, anyway. The roads were fine. Winding and narrow, but okay when driven with caution. Kate grew up here. She was aware of how to drive safely. But I wanted her to stay.
“It’s fine.” She took a paper bag from underneath the sink to load her groceries. Pausing, she asked, “Did you bring enough supplies? I can leave the food.”
I smiled. “Not the wine?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Never the wine.”
“Kate,” I spoke softly, which caught her attention.
She glanced up from the grocery bag, one hand clutching a bunch of bananas and the other resting on the counter.
“I changed my mind. I could use the company.”
She lifted her eyebrows, likely surprised by the gentleness of my tone and the vulnerability of my admission, so I added, “Even if that company is yours.”
Her aim was shit, and the banana hit the wall behind me instead of my head.
Eight
Kate
“Double them up,” I said, nodding at the musty camping mat Jason dragged from the garage. “Being of such advanced age, I imagine your body will protest a night on the floor.”
I’d spent many nights as a kid on one of those camping mats in front of the fire. Even in my prime, there was always an ache in the morning.
Jason nudged the mat with his toe. “I did pull a muscle in my neck reaching for a pen on the floor the other day.” He glanced at the couch. That wouldn’t be much better. “I mean, as the biggest person in this cabin, it would make sense if I got...”
His eyes drifted toward the bedroom.
“Nope,” I said, popping the p. “I was here first.”
Watching Jason pout was like traveling back in time. It didn’t happen often—usually, it’d been me to pout and whine—and when his full lips parted and he gave a nasally huff, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You know the rules.”
We had plenty growing up, but the sacred law of “I was here first” still reigned supreme.
He unfurled the sleeping bag, rolling it over the mat and muttering under his breath for a minute before glancing up. Too busy with my eyes stuck on watching him work, I didn’t have time to turn away and pretend I wasn’t staring like a creep.
I glanced away, heading for the kitchen. I was tired of staring at his shaggy hair anyway, hanging casually over his forehead from the efforts of setting up his bed. Unkempt and tousled, it looked better than I cared to admit, though my noticeable blush gave me away.
I cleared my throat. “Want dinner?”
Jason flopped onto the sleeping bag, testing it out. He scooted to prop against the couch, sitting up. “Yeah, I do.”
Standing at the counter, I smiled and flipped him off. “How does it feel to want?”
Jason cracked into laughter, his hands lacing over his stomach as he shook his head, remembering all the times we’d sneered that stupid retort.
