Written in 57 minutes. It’s shorter than usual because I honestly had zero clue where I was  going with this chapter until I started writing. Hope you like it, and let me know what you wanna see when they get to the island!

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Maybe a stronger woman would have found the willpower to push Jason away. After all, he’d been pushing her away for weeks, hadn’t he? And the only reason he’d even kissed her today was to make her stop talking—no, she should definitely push him away and demand he have a conversation like an adult—

But a funny thing happened when Elizabeth raised her hands, intending to press them against his chest, to push him away—her fingers curled into the fabric instead and she gave in, let herself be swept back up in the moment. In how good it felt to be in Jason’s arms, to lose herself in his scent, the warmth, the dizzying weightlessness she’d felt only once before—that night in her studio—

His breath was hot, mingling with hers when he finally pulled back, his fingers still tangled in her hair. Elizabeth slid her hands up to cup his jaw, looked up so that their eyes met—held—and then she kissed him again, not really sure where she found the courage. His hand was warm, sliding across her skin, down her neck to the shoulder left bare by the shirt Sonny had given to her to wear.

Then both his hands were at her hips, sliding beneath the shirt, his fingers warm against her skin. She broke away, gasping for air, clinging to him. He swayed slightly, but held on, his arms around her waist, linked at the small of her back, his thumbs brushing against the bare skin of her spine. She buried her face in his chest, trembling.

“I’m a little confused,” Elizabeth said finally, pulling back to find him looking at her.

“So am I,” he confessed, and she smiled tremulously. There it was — the warmth in his eyes that she’d been missing all morning.

“You should be resting,” she murmured, resting her cheek against his chest again. “Laying down. Not that—” Her cheeks flamed. “I didn’t mean—”

But he laughed, his chest shaking slightly. “I know. And you’re right. I’m a terrible patient. If I’m honest—there’s some pain.”

“Some pain,” she echoed with a roll of her eyes. “How many laps around the bedroom did you do while I was out with Sonny?”

“Not that many,” he said, a little sheepish. He gingerly made his way over to the bed, his face creasing with pain as he sat down, spun slightly to put his legs up, but he sat up against the headboard. “I wanted to wash up.”

“And brush your teeth,” Elizabeth said, running her tongue across her taste. He lifted a brow, and she bit her lip, a little embarrassed. “I, um, could taste the mint.”

“You had coffee,” he said, and her flush only got deeper. He held out a hand. “Come here. I think we need to talk.”

“Another state of the union?” she asked, wrinkling her nose, but she sat on the edge of the bed, drawing one of her legs beneath her. “I’m sorry for…basically falling apart.”

“It’s been an interesting—” He glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Eight hours? Is that it? It’s only ten?”

“I guess.” She picked at a loose thread in the comforter. “I meant what I said. I don’t want to go to the island if you don’t want me there. I’ve spent my whole life being somewhere I wasn’t wanted—”

“Not wanting you there isn’t the problem.”

“Then what it is?” She lifted her gaze to his again. “Sonny made it sound like the only option—”

“You have all the options you want to have, including going back to your life and forgetting any of this ever happened,” he said quietly. “I can put a guard on you, and we’ll go back to how it was.”

“Pretending I don’t exist?” Elizabeth challenged. “That’s what you want?”

Jason sighed, rubbed a hand down the side of his face. “No. No. It’s not. But it’s an option. I just—” He let his head fall back against the headboard. “Is that how you feel? That I’m testing you, waiting for you to fail?”

“N-No. Not exactly. It’s more like—” She pulled her other leg on the bed, sat cross-legged. “I guess maybe it’s me feeling like I have to prove myself. Like there’s some magical answer to all this and when I find it, you’ll change your mind, and I don’t know…we can stop having this conversation and go on to the next one.” She smiled weakly. “You know, like my parents. Always dangling their approval in front of me, and me deciding whether I want to try to earn it or thumb my nose at it so they can see how much I don’t want it. That’s on me, and I’m sorry. You’ve been pretty clear where you stand, and I’m the one who keeps pushing back.”

“I don’t know about that. I tried to be clear,” he admitted. “But I feel like we left a door open when we talked that night in the studio—”

“More like I wedged my foot in as you were trying to lock it,” Elizabeth cut in, and his quick grin felt like sunshine on her skin. “Then again, you’re the one who picked kissing me as a method to shut me up, so it’s probably not helping.”

“No, it’s not.” Jason studied her for a long moment, long enough that she wanted to squirm and look away. “Let’s try something different. What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Elizabeth repeated, bewildered. “Why? What do you mean?” She drew her brows back. “I want you to follow the doctors order and get better faster. I want you to not have been shot. To have told me. I want—” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know. I want it to be like it used to be. When we could just talk and there wasn’t all of this in the middle. I don’t know why it has to be so hard. Or awkward.”

“I don’t know either. I don’t like it. It’s the last thing I wanted. All of this—” He paused. “I don’t know.”

“We just complicated something that didn’t need to be complicated,” Elizabeth decided. She scooted up towards the head of the bed and sat next to Jason shoulder to shoulder. “I should have just come straight to the garage the day after the show to tell you I was upset you didn’t show up or tell me you weren’t going. But I let it fester into this whole ball of resentment. And you—” She looked at him, found him looking back at her. “Can I be honest?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like you pressed fast-forward button on something we hadn’t even talked about. I mean, Jason, we were just flirting, you know? And you were already planning how depressed I’d be about living with your life and trying to protect yourself from breaking up with me, and we hadn’t even gotten to a first date.”

Jason opened his mouth, then closed it, drawing his brows together. He looked forward. “I—when you put it like that—”

“And I  started to freak out about the physical side of things when you know, that hasn’t even come up. And I don’t think I’d be a girl to sleep with you on the first date.” She squinted, looked at him. “Well, maybe. You’re pretty hot.”

“I’m sorry?” He looked at her now, startled.

“I mean, I never thought about if I’d have a three date rule. You know, you’d have to buy me three dinners before you got under the clothes.” Elizabeth pursed her lip. “I never needed to develop that philosophy. But maybe I should.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“We were both skipping ahead, and skipping some stuff that might be fun. Like, remember when we were on the bike on the island? After we yelled at each other at those rocks. Going back to the house,” Elizabeth said. “I liked that. And walking on the beach in the moonlight, talking.” Her cheeks heated and she looked away. “And you know, on the terrace.”

He exhaled slowly. “So you’re saying we just throw out all the stuff we talked about last week.”

“No, no, because there’s some stuff in there that’s important. I feel like I just got a little crash into some of the things I might have to deal with, though I’m hoping the shooting and dragging you through a parking garage is, like, once a year tops, you know? Do you get shot more than that?”

“Uh—no, but—”

“And well, the physical stuff is going fine, I think. The first time might have been fluke where my brain just took a vacation, but it happened against today. I think I’m doing okay there. What do you think?”

“I—” Jason looked at her. “Yeah. That’s—that’s all good.”

“Good. But other than that, yeah, I think we throw it out. We’re going back to the island, and you have to get better anyway, so it’s not like you have to worry about me jumping you or anything.”

“That’s—that’s good to know.” His voice sounded slightly strangled. “So—”

“And we just let things happen. You know, live in the moment. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Maybe we’ll hate each other in a few weeks,” she told him, and the corner of his mouth curved up in a half smile.

“You think that’s possible?”

“Sure. I can be pretty annoying, I have it on good authority. Plus, you haven’t even see how much I ignore people when I’m painting. Sonny said he could get me art supplies. I didn’t even tell you! I signed a contract with the Jerome Galleries. I’m going to have an exhibit in August.”

He grinned. “That’s great. It’s exactly what you were hoping for.”

“Right? But it’s also super stressful because now I have to paint and create, and I will totally ignore you for hours at a time. And when I’m not, I talk too much. And you hate that.”

“I don’t—”

“I know, you said like to listen to me talk, but maybe that’s just because you haven’t really gotten to know me yet. So you know, give me two weeks to get on your nerves. And you! You might annoy me.”

“Maybe I’ll annoy you,” he said. “I don’t like to talk. Maybe you’ll get tired of carrying the conversation. And I hate watching TV. I don’t watch movies.”

“See? We don’t even have to worry about what happens in six months. We’re going to burn this out in, like a month tops. Problem solved.” She slid off the bed. “I have to go tell Sonny we’re all set. He’s getting me security so I can go to the pool house and pack.” She looked around and found her clothes folded on the top of the dresser where she’d left the night before. She scooped them up. “You’re going to rest, right? Don’t, like, start doing push-ups or whatever.”

“No, I’m going to rest.”

“Good. This is a good idea. You’re going to be happy we changed the plan.” And going on instinct, she leaned in and kissed him quickly. “I am very good at annoying people. Ask anyone. In a week, you’ll be begging Sonny to send me away—”

“Not going to happen.” He caught her arm, pulled her back to kiss her again, drawing it out. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

“No, you’ll be asleep. Rest. Or you’ll see how annoying I actually can be.”

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