Nova

Did he seriously think it was that easy?

“It’s not,” I argued. “You aren’t just happy because you say you are. Shit happens, Landon. Look at what happened to us before.”

He stopped at the end of the platform, where there was only one bungalow left. “We crashed and burned. We were hit with a set of circumstances that I wasn’t mature enough to deal with. I made the best decision I could with what I knew at the time, and it was the wrong one. That’s what happened last time.”

“What stops it from happening again?” I asked, my heart thundering in my chest. I felt like I stood at the edge of a huge precipice, and I was asking if he had a parachute…or wings.

He set me on my feet. “We do.”

I shook my head. “That’s not good enough.”

He cupped my face. “That’s all I’ve got. When the problems arise, we’ll take them one at a time.”

“That’s like saying, hey, I know this giant tsunami is headed this way, but don’t worry, we’ll devise a plan when it hits the shore!” The panic had moved from the edges of my mind to fully consuming any serenity I’d tried to keep ahold of.

“Rachel…” His eyes went soft, like he was trying to soothe a wild beast, and I realized I was the wild beast.

And my leg was caught in a trap.

“Why are we worrying about this now?” he asked, being all logical and shit.

“We’re going home in a couple days!” I shouted.

“Yes?”

“I’m going to be in L.A., and you’re going to be in Aspen! I’ll be at home with my parents who hate you and will spend the whole break trying to convince me to leave you, and you’ll be snowboarding and acting all Nova-like.” My chest tightened, the pressure harsh and a little nauseating.

He tugged my hand and walked me into the bungalow.

“So you’re worried that we’ll be apart for two weeks.”

“Yes, but it’s more than that, and— Landon, you can’t just walk into someone’s room.” My eyes swept over the bungalow, and I sucked in a reflexive breath. It looked like it had been stripped out of a vacation magazine—dark hardwood floors with mostly open walls and shades, and a giant four-poster bed sat in the center of the room with netting draped over it.

“It’s not more than that. You and I can make this work anywhere in the world because we’re both incredibly stubborn. We’ll decide not to let the petty shit get to us. We’ll work through the issues that come up, and we’ll make the choice to stay together.”

“Landon, the room. Someone’s going to come back.” Anxiety was reaching a critical level here, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the knowledge that we were trespassing, the thought of spending two weeks without him, or that little unspoken L word in my heart. One thing I did know? I had ten thousand emotions all warring for supremacy.

He put one hand on my hip and cradled my face with the other. “Rachel, the room is ours. I know you’re scared. I know this break is going to be a little test. But I also know that I love you—there’s no one else I want in my life, my heart, my bed. We’re going to be okay.”

I blinked up at him, trying to quiet my slamming heart, to draw a breath through lungs that had forgotten how to work, to process everything he said, and went with the first item because the rest was just too much. “The room is ours?”

“Yes.” He smiled and kissed me lightly. “I got it for us when I realized we’d have an overnight here. The ship doesn’t leave until the morning.”

All of those conflicting emotions felt like a rising tsunami in my chest—barely visible on the surface but powerfully deep and capable of so much damage if I didn’t get myself under control. I took in the details surrounding us as a distraction. The pretty linens, sturdy furniture, the glass area of the floor to see into the water. “This must have cost you a fortune.” He’d made plans for us…not just for tonight, but for a possible future. Even before, when we’d agreed to the apartment in L.A., I’d always been the one to push the plan.

“Yeah, I’m not exactly hurting for it,” he said with a small laugh. “We’ve been with Pax, Leah, Penna, and an entire boat full of people for the last seven weeks. I just wanted to have you to myself for a night. Leah packed you a bag and everything.”

That wave of emotion grew bigger, monstrous, until it threatened to swamp me. He’d had a bag packed. Another plan. He wanted me to meet his parents, to see myself in his future. Maybe…just maybe he wasn’t going to walk away this time. Maybe we could really have everything we’d missed out on before. Maybe this was real.

My throat closed as the wave broke over me, washing away what puny defenses I had left against him. All of my emotions, the fear, the mistrust, the excitement, and even the love flowed over me and then stripped me raw—left me vulnerable in ways I hadn’t been since the last time I’d given my heart to him.

It was too much and yet not enough all in the same moment, because I needed the very words, the promises I was terrified to depend upon again. I needed them with a force that terrified me—the same way I needed him.

The lump in my throat made it almost impossible to breathe, and my nose burned, like my body knew it couldn’t contain this hot mess of emotion any longer without combusting.

Oh, hell no. Don’t you do it. Don’t you dare do it!