Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (20 page)

“That’s not what I’m saying. It’s
me
. I’m not employed. I’m not stable. I never had the right to traipse in and wreck your development thing. I’m so sorry I did that.”

“I’m not.”

“You should be! This deal was important to you, and I put it at risk. You should hate me. You should always have hated me.”

“Look at
me
,” he said again. Because she wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing everything she’d done that she considered a mistake.

He understood how that felt. Roman knew exactly what it was to look in the mirror and see another person’s version of himself. He’d spent more than a decade hearing Patrick’s voice in his head, telling him,
There’s something wrong with you
.

Something wrong with him, that he couldn’t hold Ashley’s eyes on him now.

Something wrong with him, that she didn’t seem to see him.

Always, always something wrong with him, and one after another, every important person in his life slipped away.

We never want to see you again
, Patrick had said.

Roman had said,
Fine
.

Fine.

It had never been fine. It wasn’t fine now.

He could spend what was left of his life believing that he was broken, unlovable, unfixable. That by some accident of birth, some trick of inheritance, he would never belong to anything—never have love, family, community.

Or he could hope. He could risk.

He could lay everything out on the line.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said.

“I have to.”

“I know you think so. I don’t know what he said to you, but I know
you
. I know you need to move right now, so bad you can hardly bear to be standing here talking to me. I know you want to
do
something, because that’s how you are when you’re feeling too much—you need to act, to work, to make things change. So that’s fine, if that’s what you have to do. If you can’t take me with you, then I’ll stay here and talk to Esther and deal with getting my truck and your trailer and all your friends back where they’re supposed to be. But don’t leave telling me that I’m supposed to chalk up everything that’s happened to us as some big, impulsive mistake you made, because that’s bullshit.”

“Roman—”

“No, it is. It’s bullshit. I care about you. This trip—you and me—it’s real.”

“We haven’t even been together two weeks.”

“Maybe not, but you can’t tell me we haven’t been
more together
in however many days we’ve had than you’ve ever been with anybody else. You can’t tell me that, because I won’t fucking believe it. I don’t know everything that’s ever happened to you, but if you try to tell me that I don’t know
you
and you don’t know me—no. I don’t accept that.”

“It was sex.”

“It was more than sex.”

He took her by the shoulders, biting down on the urge to shake her. Biting down hard on
the voice in his head that just kept saying it, over and over,
Something wrong with you. Let her go. Something wrong with you. Give it up. Something wrong with you, Roman, and you don’t get to have this. You aren’t ever going to get to have it, so stop thinking you can. Stop hoping. Build a bigger fortress, live alone, count on nothing and no one. It’s the only way
.

Roman shook his head to clear it. He looked at Ashley—looked right at Ashley—and told that voice to fuck off.

He was done with that voice.

He refused to spend the rest of his life alone when he had a shot at spending it with her. If that meant he had to chase her all over the country—if it meant he had to tell her he loved her, or punch her senator-father in the face and probably make himself throw up in the process, or if it meant he had to tell her every day before she got out of bed that she was amazing and beautiful, exciting and awesome, worth every sacrifice he could possibly make for her—then he would do that.

He would do it for ten days or ten months or ten years. He would keep trying. Keep hoping. Because when he was with her, he couldn’t believe there was anything wrong with him—nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

He’d lived without hope. He was done.

This time, he would let her go, but he wouldn’t let go of her.

He would follow her. He’d take care of her friends. He’d talk to Esther.

He’d drive her trailer to his hometown and walk around in the mess of his own past, because there were parts of himself he’d left behind in Heraly, Wisconsin, and it was about time he took the past out to the woodshed and dealt with it.

There were things you couldn’t turn into
fine
just by pretending they’d never happened.

There were things you could never get your head around until you waded into the muck and made yourself feel them. It didn’t matter if you were afraid. It only mattered what you
did
about it.

He’d learned that from Ashley.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes pained, her mouth thin, and her lips blue. The wind whipped her hair into his face, and he caught a piece just to rub his thumb over its softness. He cupped her neck to feel her warmth, her pulse, and he said, “Ash, honey, it was
always
more than sex.”

She closed her eyes. “I have to go.”

“Then go. But I’m going to follow you.”

“Roman—”

“Go,” he said again, and he kissed her mouth. “But I love you.”

She shuddered. He didn’t think about it. He just kissed her again, harder, squeezing her shoulders, compressing all his hope for the future into this one kiss, this promise.

We can do this. You and I. Even if nobody believes it. Even if you don’t believe it right now—we can still do it
.

We can compromise. We can build something. We can love each other
.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Her voice came out high and pinched.

“Yeah, you do. And whatever it is, it’ll be the right thing. It’s going to be awesome, just because you’re doing it.”

She huffed a laugh. “I meant about you.”

“So take some time and think about it. And when I see you again, maybe you’ll know.”

The look she gave him was impossible to pick apart. Frustration and sorrow. Guilt and anger. Hope.

He would hang on to the hope.

Roman kissed her forehead. Then he turned the woman he loved around, flattened his palm in the middle of her back, and gave her a gentle push.

“I’ll take care of everything,” he said. “You go.”

With one last look over her shoulder, she went.

He stood on the plank she’d led him out on and watched her walk away, listening to her sandals flapping against the soles of her feet.

Listening to the waves beat against the rock.

His heart beat. His skin cooled.

He stood there until he couldn’t see her anymore.

Roman returned to the lawn to find all of Ashley’s friends gathered around the picnic table, eating and talking—and with them Carmen, bright as a cardinal in her red suit.

He checked the lot, but the vehicle she and Ashley’s father had arrived in was gone.

“They left you here?”

She nodded. “I told the senator I’d catch a commercial flight back.”

“He wouldn’t fly you?”

“It’s a very small plane.”

“Oh.”

Carmen took anxiety medicine when she flew, and even then she usually white-knuckled it and napped for hours after landing.

It must have been a hell of a flight up.

“You book a ticket yet?”

“No. I wanted to find out what your plan was first.”

His plan. Right. Because he was supposed to have one.

Everyone at the table was looking at him as though they expected him to. With Ashley gone, they would naturally default to assuming he was in charge—because, even though she didn’t think of herself as a leader,
she’d
been in charge.

He was her deputy. Her partner. Her …

Actually, he didn’t know quite what he was anymore, in regard to Ashley, but it seemed pretty clear these folks expected him to step into her shoes.

She would know what to do, even without a plan. Roman had prided himself on always knowing the next step. He’d never appreciated how much bravery it took to deal with problems as they arose.

“I guess I thought I’d start with lunch,” he said.

Nana patted the bench seat beside her. “Grab a seat. Esther made us a good spread.”

Roman folded himself into the space. “You eat yet?” he asked Carmen, who remained standing.

“No, I’m fine.”

He reached out for the platter of deviled eggs and extended it to her. “Eat,” he said. “You love these.”

“I really couldn’t—”

Nana made an impatient sound and plucked a plate from the stack. She grabbed two egg halves and a napkin before handing them to Carmen. “Please join us,” she urged. “Dora doesn’t bite.”

Carmen gave in and sat next to the toddler, who had chocolate particles smeared all around her mouth and the remains of a slice of black-and-white-striped cake on a plate in front of her.

Refrigerator cake. Some of the churchwomen had called it zebra cake. Roman hadn’t seen one of those in … how long? Fifteen years?

“What can I get you?” Esther asked Carmen. “I’ve got ham sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, mac and cheese, potato salad, fruit salad, rolls …”

They negotiated what would go on Carmen’s plate, and Roman thought about how he and Ashley had driven all the way here so Ashley could talk to this one woman.

Esther had Asian features and gray hair pulled tightly into a bun. Wearing tidy dark slacks and a blue cardigan, she made an interesting contrast to Nana, with her unruly curly hair and her oversize personality, and to Mitzi, whose dark good looks projected a sensual mischievousness.

It was odd to think all of these women had been Susan Bowman’s friends.

Odd that he had been, too, sort of.

And odd to recognize that it was really Susan who had brought Roman to this Wisconsin peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan.

She had given him Sunnyvale. In a way, she’d given him Ashley, too.

“What about you, Roman?” Esther asked.

“I’d love some of that cake,” he said.

He remembered the taste of refrigerator cake—thick, cold whipped cream spread between softened and crumbling chocolate cookies—and he wanted it. He wanted to
taste
something.

“You should have a deviled egg,” Carmen said. She held one in her hand, half eaten. A spot of yolk-yellow decorated one corner of her mouth. “They’re amazing.”

“I’ll take a couple of those, too. And a turkey sandwich, and some chips.” The chips were a reach for Esther. Roman grabbed the plate from her. “Here, I can do it.”

He loaded up his plate, conscious of everyone’s eyes on him.

Conscious of his grumbling stomach, how
hungry
he was.

He thought of Ashley in Nana’s kitchen, laughing and commenting on the strangeness of a life that had blown all of them so far off their accustomed paths.

How strange to be sitting here with Ashley’s people, famished, eating deviled eggs with Carmen.

Strange to have come full circle, back to Wisconsin, back to these picnic foods of his youth, this lake, and this view that looked so much like the life he’d left behind. Almost full circle.

He was a few hundred miles from Heraly, with work left in front of him if he was going to make it back to Ashley. If he was going to be a man who could operate without a plan, who knew how to love and how to hope, and how to face the future without flinching.

He ate the cake first.

It tasted amazing.

Ashley stood near the nose of the single-engine Cessna, reluctantly admiring the shine of its white paint and its zippy blue-and-gray racing stripes. The fuselage felt cool beneath her hand, the enameled finish perfectly smooth.

“You got a new plane.”

Her father grinned—the first genuine smile she’d seen on his face since he arrived.

She’d forgotten he could smile like that.

In the car on the thirty-minute drive to the airport, she’d been assaulted by all of the things she’d forgotten. The aspects of her relationship with her father that she’d blocked out, because it was easier to tell herself they didn’t get along than to admit they did, sometimes.

It was easier not to think about the smell of the Altoid mints he crunched like candy or the restless tapping of his fingers against the steering wheel.

How he always came out swinging, but after she gave in, he was the one who apologized
first.

How he wasn’t always angry, and he wasn’t always mean. He could be difficult, but he could also be genuine and charming, and she forgot when they were fighting how strong this other thing between them was—this yearning to love him and be loved by him, twisted up uncomfortably with all their other feelings.

Her resentment. His disappointment.

He helped her up into the cockpit. “Get comfortable,” he said. “I’ll make sure we’re refueled and ready to go.”

The seats were beige leather, the instrument panel tricked out with modern gadgets whose purpose she didn’t know. She didn’t want to look too closely, afraid she’d find out that she recognized some of them, after all. That somewhere in front of her were instruments her father had taught her how to read, years ago.