Fourteen months. Fourteen fucking months of Lola, without Sloan.
“What if I get a restraining order?” I asked, clutching at straws. “They can’t force her on my tour if she can’t get within a hundred feet of me.”
He scoffed. “For what? Throwing stripper shoes at your trailer? Mentioning you on Twitter? Has she made any threats? Hurt you in any way?” Ernie put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, I don’t want you climbing a ledge yet. I’m working on it. I’ll get the lawyers involved if I have to. I didn’t even plan on telling you until I had a definitive answer, but with this shit…”
“Fuck. No wonder she showed up here.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. She’d probably hoped for some happy reunion between us, so I wouldn’t fight it when I found out what she was trying to do.
But I would fight it. I would do everything in my power to make sure this didn’t happen. Because if it did, it might cost me Sloan.
Chapter 20
Jason
♪ Superposition | Young the Giant
My feet were back on Minnesota soil for the first time since Christmas. I loved that Sloan had come home with me. Despite the shitty night I’d had, compliments of Lola, I hadn’t stopped smiling all day. I was irritable right until I picked Sloan up and she bounced into my arms.
We walked with Tucker to the rental car counter at the tiny airport in Duluth. Sloan laughed at the single luggage carousel.
“So where is Minneapolis from here?” she asked, leaning down to pet Tucker. He sat pressed against her leg, looking up at her.
“The Twin Cities are two and a half hours south.”
“And we’re going…”
“Two hours north. Let me show you.” I pulled out my phone and brought up Google Maps. “Right now we’re here. And here’s Ely.”
She leaned over and I caught a flurry of her perfume as her shoulder pressed into my arm. Something seemed to activate between us. She turned her face slightly in my direction, her eyes moving to my lips, and I felt the same pull that had almost dragged us under last night tug me toward her again.
Sloan was moving slower in this relationship than I was. I didn’t take it personally. I meant what I said: I’d wait for her. I’d wait as long as she needed. When she was ready, she’d let me know. And if I was doing my job as her boyfriend, making her feel safe—and making sure she wanted me enough—it would all work itself out eventually. There was no rush.
This was just a season, and there’s beauty in all seasons. Even if you are looking forward to the next one.
“It’s surrounded by so much green,” she said, clearing her throat, and we both seemed to snap from our daze.
“It’s on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.”
“And you go in there?”
“I grew up in there,” I said, tucking my phone back into my pocket.
She looked up at me with those deep-brown eyes and put her hands on my chest. “Thank you for bringing me.” She stood on her toes and gave me a quick kiss.
When we broke away, she nuzzled her nose to mine. “And you’re sure your parents are okay with me coming?” she asked again.
“Absolutely. My mom has probably been cleaning and recleaning the house in anticipation of your arrival. You’re the first girlfriend I’ve brought home since prom.”
She jerked her head back and stared at me for a second. “Please tell me that’s a joke.”
“I haven’t brought a girl home in ten years.”
Panic washed across her face and she wriggled out of my arms. “Why?!”
“Uh, because I haven’t had one worth bringing?” I smiled. Flustering her was becoming one of my favorite hobbies. I totally got why Kristen did it. Sloan was so beautiful when she was blushing and biting her lip.
“But…you’ve had serious girlfriends. What about the one that you dated for three years?”
“Jessica? Yeah. That was my prom date.”
“Jason!”
“What?” I laughed.
“What the hell? This is not what you sold me on!”
I chuckled and put my hands on her arms. “They’re going to love you.”
She put a finger to her eyelid and looked at me bleakly.
I shook my head at her. “You would make the worst poker player, you know that, right?”
“Jason, you made this sound like it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Would you have come if I’d told you the truth?”
“No.”
“Well, then.”
She glared at me.
“Would you prefer that you’re just one in a long line of women that I’ve brought home?”
She narrowed her lone eye at me. “No.”
“Well, then,” I said again, proving my point.
She took her finger from her eyelid and hugged her arms around herself. “What if they don’t like me?”
Impossible.
I tipped up her chin. “There’s a very real possibility that they’ll like you better than they like me.”
Mom was flipping out. Not just because Sloan was The Huntsman’s Wife, but because I didn’t bring women home as a rule.
And bringing Sloan home meant exactly what Mom thought it did.
Chapter 21
Sloan
♪ White Winter Hymnal | Fleet Foxes
Jason had his playlist on the Bluetooth of our rental SUV. On the plane we’d shared his headphones, each of us wearing an earbud so we could listen and still talk to each other. We’d had our foreheads together the whole time. I think I’d learned every fleck in his irises on that flight.
Jason looked at me from behind the wheel. “So just to warn you, my mom’s going to put us in separate rooms. She’s kind of old-fashioned.”
“Wise woman.” It was probably safest to keep us separated, especially after last night.
“We could always get a hotel room,” he suggested, giving me a wicked sideways glance. “Everyone does keep telling us to get one.”
My cheeks heated.
I could count the number of men I’d slept with on one hand and have fingers to spare. And the last person on my list had been the only man I’d planned on sleeping with ever again. Even though absolutely nothing had felt wrong about what happened between Jason and me last night, Brandon’s memory had been just enough of a buzzkill to pull me from the moment.
But I doubted I’d hesitate again.
Jason was slowly edging out all the things that froze me in time. He was thawing me from my nuclear winter from the outside in—and he was almost to my core.
He smiled at the road and I admired his profile from the side. The lines that creased at the corners of his eyes, the slope of his nose, a small freckle on his cheek, a square jaw and closely trimmed beard with its flecks of red, his Adam’s apple.
My eyes followed his neck down to his arm. I took in the muscles of his biceps, then the hair on his forearm, his hand on the wheel. I thought of how his voice sounded when he sang, the way the calluses from his guitar felt on my bare skin, and how much talent was in those fingers. Those hands wanted to touch me.