Chapter Text
Jessie had read hundreds of books that mentioned the “sunlight filtering in” through the windows in the morning, and had always thought it was just another overused phrase. She would also never admit to how many romance novels she’d actually read, but that was neither here nor there. And it probably was — an overused phrase that is — but , as her eyelids fluttered open, it was the only word she could think of.
She hadn’t slept this late in… years? Seriously? She thought, horrified at herself, as per usual. She was always up before the sun decided to do any kind of filtering, and was long-buried in work by the time it did.
That morning, though, she could see the dust particles in the air, and could see actual beams of sunlight filtering in through the sheer curtains of the guest room. It felt pretty magical. She felt pretty magical. When was the last time she stayed up that late, without looking at the clock, without thinking about getting up early to exercise?
She stretched luxuriously, arms up until her fingertips bumped the wooden headboard, her legs down and out until her toes grazed the skin of the man lying next to her. She pulled her legs back quickly, not wanting to wake him up. Suddenly self-conscious — even though she knew that was ridiculous — she pulled the blanket up over her bare chest, tucking it under her arm.
Jonny hadn’t woken up, but she could tell he was stirring, and took the moment to watch him. His hair was disheveled, some of it stuck to his skin with sweat. She smiled at that thought, knowing she was responsible for that heat. She took in his jawline, solid and angular and absolutely delicious, and let her gaze slide down, down past his chest, past his stomach to where the sheets rudely covered up the rest of him.
Her stomach fluttered at the thought of the night before, as she remembered hearing her name on his lips, and how she couldn’t wait to convince him to say it again. Maybe even all day long. They could order delivery, and he could say something like, “Pizza can wait, I’m hungry for something else,” and then show her, again, how much he absolutely needed her.
He was gorgeous — golden and kind and holy hell , very skilled… and he’d been desperate for her. That felt good.
He was the polar opposite of Mark, who was only desperate for her, suddenly, once she took herself out of his equation. Had he ever been desperate for her? Maybe. She could barely remember the times when she was excited to see him, so maybe that was her fault, too.
She rested her chin in her hands, lying on her stomach, watching his chest rise and fall. She stared hungrily at his lips — they were slightly parted, slightly chapped. They’d been so soft, a smooth peachy pink, the night before, but it looked like she’d… roughed them up a bit. She sighed and flopped onto her back.
Even though she’d just woken up, her heart rate felt obscene. She had enjoyed herself so much , and with someone who meant so much to her. It had all just clicked .
She couldn’t take it anymore, she needed to have her skin touching his, so she slid over to Jonny, nestling into the crook of his arm, dragging her fingers over his abs. She shivered, and so did he.
Jonny had been sleeping hard , but her warm skin, her fingers over his stomach — she pulled him through the haze and into the morning.
His eyes fluttered open, and his arms instinctively circled around her, his body curving into hers like a puzzle piece. She smelled like sleep, if that’s a thing. It had to be, because she smelled like it. Her hair was tangled from the seawater, sure, but it was still breathtaking in the sunshine. She was warm and soft and she fit perfectly into him, her left leg snug between his, her hand on his chest. He reached up and placed his hand at the base of her neck, gently pressing into it, walking his fingers up to her hair and back down again in a quick little massage. She sighed, and he pulled her face to his in a slow, lazy kiss. It all felt like a dream, but he’d never had a dream as good as this.
A tiny thought, like a fruit fly buzzing, crept into the back of his thoughts. Dreams never last. You always wake up.
He nuzzled his face into her hair, suddenly anxious to memorize her smell, to emblazon the way she felt into the recesses of his mind. His body felt warm and satisfied and, to be honest, a little sore, but his mind was starting to work, building friction and a slow, unsettling heat. He was anxious, he was worried, and god she felt great. It was all very confusing.
He’d just had sex with Jessie. Twice. Plain and simple. Jessie Bannon. Jessica Lynne Bannon, Race Bannon’s daughter, one of his oldest, best friends. She was naked and incredible and she looked downright dreamy. She smiled at him, she purred, she whispered, “Hey, good morning,” and she seemed to be interested in bumping their count up to three times.
He was, too, obviously. But.
His chest felt tight, and the moonlight was gone. Things looked a whole lot less like his entire life depended on finding out how she tasted, and a whole lot more like decisions and choices and futures and feelings.
But… her hands were in his hair. He mumbled, “Mmm. Morning, Jess.” He leaned in and kissed her, let his hands lazily rove over her absolutely naked body, rolled on top of her to try to distract himself into a more pleasant kind of frenzy. “Jessie.” He had to say her name, but hearing it come out of his mouth like that scared the shit out of him. “Jessie.” Again.
“Yeah?” She took his face in both her hands. Looked him in the eyes, tried to silently convey to him how happy she was that she’d found what she’d been missing. Him.
He heard her loud and clear, and was this close to admitting the same about her, even though it was terrifying, and complicated, and terrifying.
But the doorbell rang. His head jerked out of her hands, and he tried to crane his neck enough to look out the window. Jessie scrabbled her hands back up to his face, tried to pull him back to her. Her heart had just dropped into her guts. She just wanted to feel his lips on hers one more time before reality crashed into her lap.
And the doorbell rang and rang and rang and rang. The chime was punctuated by knocking. And yelling.
“What the…?” Jonny rolled off of her.
No kiss. Damnit. She sighed. She didn’t have a good feeling about this.
“Jonny, no. Please, just don’t. He’ll go away eventually.”
He sat straight up, turned to her. His eyes were wide in a look that made her stomach churn. He was horrified.
“Oh. Oh, my god,” he murmured, raking his hands over his face, through his hair. His thoughts were awful, painful, they made him want to throw up. “That’s him ? That’s Mark?”
“Probably.” Resigned, she crawled up to the window and looked down. Sure enough, there was Mark, still wearing his clothes from the day before and looking bedraggled. He was pacing back and forth, angry. Upset. Is he crying? She pressed her forehead against the glass, and sighed again. At this point she just felt like one, giant, heavy sigh. She knew she should probably be nervous, or full of dread or guilt, but she was just tired. She wanted him to leave. She turned around and sat back down on the bed. Jonny had already pulled his underwear back on and was shuffling into his jeans.
“Wha— no, don’t do that. Why are you doing that?”
“Jess, are you kidding me?”
“No! We were — it was nice, we were having a nice time!”
His black shirt crumpled in his hand, Jonny stopped to stare at her. Enough, Quest, he thought. Grow up. “We just fucked,” she winced at that, and he felt bad, but he couldn’t make the words stop coming out of his mouth. “ hours after you got proposed to by another guy. A guy you were with for two years. ”
He might as well have punched her in the stomach. That tone in his voice, his language — he was ashamed. He was disgusted with himself. For sleeping with her. Tears raced to her eyes, threatening to spill over her cheeks.
“It’s not like I said yes, Jonny! In fact I distinctly remember saying no as many times as I possibly could.” She gathered up the sheets under her arms. She was in his house, or at least where he was staying anyway. Hers was across the driveway, a few steps away from where Mark’s car was parked. How was this going to work? Who was going to storm out of the house, and where were they going to go?
“Jesus, your relationship isn’t even cold yet and I just, I just… danced all over its grave.”
“Alright.” She threw the blankets off of herself and swung her feet over, planting them on the floor. “Stop it. You’re freaking out. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Are you kidding me?” He asked again. Swallowed thickly as he took in how naked she was. Shook his head. “Does he even understand that it’s really over between you two? Is it really over between you two?”
“Yes! ” She must have been louder than she thought, because the yelling from outside stopped abruptly, then got more frantic. “Jonny, as far as I could tell, you were pretty explicit last night about both of us being in our right minds. I hear that tone in your voice — don’t you dare turn this around and put it all on me.”
“I — ah, shit, Jessie, I just feel terrible.”
Something about that sentence struck a match in her chest. How many times would she have to tell the men in her life that she knows what the hell she’s talking about?
“Stop it!” She ripped the shirt out of his hand and threw it on the floor. “Do you know what that sounds like to me? That you feel terrible about sleeping with me? ” She started crying a little on that sentence; she couldn’t help it. “I told him no and I told you yes and why won’t anyone trust that I know what I want?”
“Because you don’t. ”
The blood stopped moving through her veins, just for a beat. “Excuse me?”
He bent over to pick up his shirt, pulled it on over his head. “You used to know exactly what you wanted.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He grunted, turned around, and stepped out of the guest room, trying to gather his thoughts. Which was hard to do with the doorbell ringing relentlessly.
“I cannot believe you are just walking away from me!” She stormed after him, without a thought in the world for finding her clothes. “I cannot believe you are suddenly feeling sorry for him, taking his side.” She stood at the top of the stairs and watched him jog down them.
“I’m not, I’m not taking his side. I— “
“Last night, and I’m going to quote you on this because I don’t know about you but last night was a big deal to me!” She yelled it. Really yelled.
The knocking stopped, so did the doorbell. Shit. A muffled “Jessie?” came from outside.
She lowered her volume, but not her intensity. “Last night you said you could kill him.” She pointed toward the door. “And now, you’re telling me that you feel sorry for him?”
He was self-destructing. His thoughts were falling down, one by one, like a serpentine of dominoes laid out in his brain. He’d forgotten about that — how could he have forgotten about that? “Jessie, no. Fuck that guy, that’s not what I mean. It’s just, I could have waited. We could have waited. I don’t like what I know about him, but two years? It’s so soon, you’ve got a lot to process, you know?” He paced around a bit, then made a beeline to the kitchen to find his shoes. When he found them by the sliding door, he stared at them, remembered kicking them off, remembered the rush of lust in his ears like angry ocean surf. Damnit. He looked up at her, still naked, standing at the base of the staircase. He mumbled something she couldn’t hear.
“I didn’t catch that,” she quipped, and started to cross into the kitchen.
“I said that there’s stuff between us, Jess. You and me. Stuff I would have talked about if, if—”
Jessie had never really understood the phrase “seeing red.” It made sense figuratively, of course, but she’d never before felt like her entire field of vision had been lit on fire, like she could shoot flames straight out of her eyeballs. “If you hadn’t kissed me until I was dizzy? If you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to sober me up specifically so you didn’t feel guilty in the morning?” She closed the gap between them. “What was the point of that?” she put her hands on his chest, shoved him back. “Huh? If you were just going to be disgusted by yourself no matter what?”
“I never said I was disgusted! Jessie, it was incredible.” Oh god . He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know what he was thinking.
“Oh well, good, that’s good to know. Jesus , Jonny. What is wrong with you? What stuff is there between us?”
This was not the time for it, he knew. She was still stark naked, her ex-boyfriend was still outside — he could see the guy’s silhouette pacing back and forth through the frosted glass of the front door. It was like a daytime soap opera — absolutely ridiculous. But, when was he ever going to get to say this to her? He didn’t see a future full of honest chats ahead of them.
“I miss you, Jessie. I miss the old you.”
Her rage winked out, like someone had put a glass dome over a flame. She blinked at him. She suddenly remembered she was naked. She wished she knew where she’d thrown Lawr’s fancy robe. “Huh?”
“You’ve never visited me. Not once. And we were going to go everywhere , do you remember? You and me and Hadj. And we were going to go where we chose , on our terms, not where our dads’ work took us.”
“Jonny, I—”
“Please, let me talk.” Jonny needed her to put on clothes. There was a coat rack near the sliding door, so he pulled a long jacket off one of the hooks, handed it to her. She put it on, silently.
“I love you. Okay? And I know that’s a weird thing to say right now, but I don’t mean it like that. ”
That was rough. That one hurt, because in the filtering sunlight, half-asleep, she had thought that, just maybe, she did mean it like that. Surprise, surprise, Bannon. Wrong again.
“You were literally my life for a while — you and Hadji and Race and Dad and,” his voice hitched for a second, but he recovered quickly. “And Bandit.”
Damnit . Jessie sucked in a breath. She missed that dog, too.
“And then, Dad asked you to take his place at work,” his voice was laced with a bitter edge. “and then you stopped going on trips, you stopped asking me about what I was doing at work… you just stopped. I don’t even remember when you stopped calling me. You used to call, you used to check in. You used to give a shit. Now you just... you just stay here. In Maine, hiding behind your desk while your dreams rot into oblivion. Our dreams.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. She was angry at him, she was hurt, she was angry at herself. She sighed, met his eyes.
“Jonny, that’s — that’s not fair. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Christ, Jessie, I did. I just gave up so long ago you clearly don’t even remember.”
She shook her head. “Alright, fine. You’re right. I owe you explanations. Can’t it just be that? Can’t we just take today to talk? I’ll make the coffee this time, we can hash it out.” She took a step closer, the taste of him curling like smoke around her memory. She reached out, tugged on his t-shirt gently.
You’re weak. A weak, weak idiot , he thought, as he let her pull him to her. His hands slipped underneath the coat, just to her waist, but even that was more than he should have.
She moved in to him, as close as she could. Looked up and into his eyes. “Can’t this be a detour? Instead of a full-on road block?”
The tense silence was interrupted by a scraping noise outside the door. Mark was moving potted plants around, like a crazy person, probably looking for a key. More proof that he had no idea who she really was or what her life was like. The Quest compound was not a “key under the flower pot” kind of a place. She groaned. Reached up, and touched Jonny’s lips lightly, kissed him sweetly. He kissed back. “Please, just wait here, okay?”
She stomped over to the door and ripped it open. Jonny stepped abruptly further back into the kitchen, out of view. He didn’t want to be seen, but more than anything, he didn’t want to know what Mark looked like, didn’t want to be able to envision anguish on the guy’s face.
“I said I’d call you Mark.”
“And how was I supposed to know that would actually happen, huh? You left me at the restaurant. You won’t answer the phone, you won’t talk to me. What can I do? ”
Jonny felt like vomiting all over again. The guy’s voice was strained and gruff, like he’d been crying.
He couldn’t do it. He’d drive to Tina’s, find Duke, tell him the plans had changed, and he’d get his stuff another time. There was a lot going on in his brain, but the loudest thing was a voice, screaming at him to get the hell out of there.
He inched backward, quietly, toward the sliding doors, and slipped out into the daylight.
Mark’s tears, his ragged voice, it all just made her want to scream. She tried to scrape the depths of her soul, tried to pry out some empathy, but she came up empty handed. “So you can cry?” She snapped. “You, who would never cry, not even on our wedding day, if we ever got married?”
“Jessie, what did I do wrong? What can I do to fix it?”
There was that desperation, too little, too late. The fact that the same question, what can I do to fix it, was on the tip of her tongue, reserved for someone else, softened her rage just enough for her to find some kindness in her voice.
“I owe you an apology, Mark.”
“It’s okay — the restaurant, I mean. It’s fine.”
“No, god , I mean, I’ve been lying to you for a long time. I’m not happy. With us, anymore. I haven’t been for a long time and I should have said something a long time ago. That’s awful of me, and I’m — I’m so sorry.” There was that emotion she’d been looking for. Tears were sliding down her face, and she felt like shit, but she also felt free.
Wow. Honesty. Who’d have thought.
Mark’s voice, however, turned hard. She hadn’t been expecting that. He narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“Why are you wearing a coat in the house?”
“I— it was the closest thing to me. That’s not important.”
She heard a car door slam on the other side of the house. A thin layer of frost started to spread throughout her chest, making it hard to breathe.
“Are you trying to tell me you’re naked under that? In the Quest’s house, not yours?”
“Mark, please leave. I’ll get you all your stuff later today. I will talk to you about this. I will, but I’m not ready, and that’s why I told you to wait for me to call you. ”
His jaw dropped, and he stared at her, slack-jawed for a moment. “So that’s it? Two years, and that’s—”
The crunch of gravel cut him off. A silver Mercedes pulled around the front of the house from the garage area, and sped down the driveway. The windows were down, and the driver’s blonde hair shuddered in the wind, fully visible from where they stood.
Mark turned back to her slowly. Jessie braced herself.
“Wow.”
“Mark, it’s—”
“I always wondered, and now I know.”
“ No , it’s not like that at all. ”
“Have a nice life, Jessica. I’ll want that ring back with the rest of my stuff.” He backed away from her. “It’s a good thing I kept the receipt.”
***
Back to the Present
Jessie’s scream ricocheted off the cliffs below them. Her shoulders were heaving, and she’d dropped the hoverboard in the grass. She didn’t turn, didn’t look at him, didn’t say a word. She stared out at the moon, sucking in deep gulps of breath.
Jonny did not say anything. He’d done plenty of stupid things in his life, but trying to talk to someone who had just primal screamed their guts out into the ether was not going to be one of them.
Truthfully, he was happy to not be talking. His heart was still pounding, the vision of Jessie leaping over the ravine still flashing in his mind. Part of him felt like he should have been impressed by it, and he was, in hindsight, even if he felt like taking her by the shoulders and shaking some sense into her.
But none of that mattered. She was fine, and he’d yelled at her, and he felt like shit about it. He knew it was high time she yelled at him.
She looked away from the moon and turned back to him. Tears made tracks down her face, and her voice was rough, like she’d been yelling over a party all night. “I said, ‘just wait here.’ I said please . And you left.”
He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. She wasn’t yelling at him — he really, really wished she would yell at him; he’d prepared himself to navigate through her anger, not her broken heart.
“I did.”
“After Mark left, I had to clean everything up. All the dishes, the coffee grounds, the guest room. I couldn’t find my shoes. And everything just hurt. Seeing all your stuff in your room, knowing you’d just left it there. Somehow, I knew you weren’t coming back. Knew you’d rather replace all of your luggage than have to look at me.”
The smart thing would be to say, That’s not true, Jessie, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. She was right. She was right.
“You’re right.”
“I’m — what?” Her hands hung at her sides, and she chewed at her bottom lip. “You were really so traumatized by sleeping with me, that you bolted, halfway across the world, just to get away?”
Jonny sighed, bent over and picked up her hoverboard. He took both his and hers and laid them gently up against the keeper’s house. There was dew on the grass, and he wasn’t looking to get in trouble with his dad, on top of everything else.
He ran a hand through his hair, and Jessie exhaled, annoyed. She could watch him run his hands through his hair all damn day, and that was… annoying.
“I want to get something through to you. I want there to be absolutely no question here that I’m telling the truth, okay?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Oh...kay. I’m listening.”
“Can I touch you? Without you punching me in the face, or clawing out my eyeballs? Even if I deserve it?”
She stared at him, skeptically.
“Actually, you can totally punch me in the face if you want; just let me say what I need to say.”
All she wanted was for him to touch her. All she wanted was to punch him in the face. Or claw out his eyeballs.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.”
His fingertips tingled. He’d sneaked a few brushes here and there; a thumb over her hand, his leg against hers, but there was that permission again. It lit him on fire.
Her brain felt like someone had stuffed it full of static electricity. The surf sounded louder behind her. The waves were crashing, the seagulls were relentless. The moon wouldn’t shut up.
Jonny took a few steps closer to her and held out his hands, palms up. She put her hands in his.
“I’ve got a lot to say to you, Jess, and I have a feeling most of it’s going to piss you off. So I want to say this before I say anything else.” He didn’t get any closer to her, but he squeezed her hands, burned his gaze into hers. “I am not traumatized by having sex with you. I’m not disgusted by the fact that it happened. And even though I ran halfway across the world afterward, sometimes it’s all I can think about. The minute you walked into my dad’s office this morning I remembered how your skin tasted like salt from the ocean, and I still can’t get that fucking Stevie Nicks song out of my head.”
It felt like the edges of her heart were cracking. She’d wanted to hear a lot of things out of his mouth — apologies, groveling, an incredible story about a three year emergency that explained it all away — but this was what she’d been secretly terrified of: that it was her . That he regretted it. That if he could go back in time, he’d take the whole thing back. “It was Fleetwood Mac,” she whispered.
“I have never felt like that, Jess. Not before you, and not after you. It was like... magic . You were magic, and I’m —” Oh god. His throat was getting tight, and he sounded like a junior high drama student, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m so sorry for making you feel like you’re anything less than that.”
She broke for a few seconds. She let some tears fall down her cheeks, watched him lift her left hand up to his lips and let him kiss her palm, lightly, like the flutter of someone’s eyelashes. She sifted through the knowledge that one of her biggest fears wasn’t true, and felt a new heat build itself through her relief.
Jonny saw her eyes take on a harder edge, and he set his jaw. “Okay.” He let her hands slide out of his.
“So, then, if that’s the case, why ? If you’re not disgusted by me, but you also couldn’t look at me , then what?”
“Okay. Okay, so,” he took a deep breath. “This is… not great, okay? I get it. You’d think after three years I’d have a better explanation, but all I’ve got is that I panicked. I panicked and I ran away and then I was so ashamed about running away but… I was so confused by what happened, and what it might mean for our friendship… and I took the easy way out.” He stopped for a moment, searched her face. “I stayed away so I wouldn’t have to talk about it, and so I wouldn’t have to see this exact look on your face. And it all felt bigger and worse and more unforgivable with each year that went by.”
Her emerald eyes flashed. She wanted to wring his neck. She wanted to shove him off the cliffs. Her fingers felt numb.
“That’s it ? That’s all you’ve got?”
“It was a lot , Jessie! I felt terrible for that guy, even though I totally wanted to throttle him. And I was scared shitless by what we’d done, you know? I mean, you’d just told me you’d turned down a dude you’d been with for two years and I was like ‘Hey why don’t I comfort her and then lay her down by the fire, ’ I mean what in the hell was going through my head?”
“And all of those awful things you said to me before you left? How you missed the old me, how who I am now just doesn’t cut it?”
He held a hand up. “I did not say that. Not exactly. But that’s what’s gonna piss you off — you’ve been dealing with shit I know nothing about, and I’m sorry I wasn’t someone you could talk to about it.”
“But?”
“But something is missing in you, Jessie! I’m not going to pretend there’s not.” There were tears in his eyelashes. He blinked them away. “Something is not okay and you’re so obviously miserable.”
“I’m —”
“You used to be obsessed with life — you’d learn as much as you could about everything so that you could conquer it, you know? And now, now you’re —” He held his hands out again, this time grasping for words that wouldn’t dig him an even deeper hole.
“ Terrified. ” She sounded gutted; her voice was hollow and resigned. “I’m terrified of everything, Jonny.” She took a breath in through her nose, let it slowly out of her mouth. She noted the cries of the seagulls, the smell of Jonny’s body wash, the cold air on her skin. “Well, I’m getting better. I was terrified of everything. Now I’m just terrified of most everything.” She shrugged, sent him a half-hearted smile. “I think back to all of the things we used to do as a family, and I feel like I watched it all play out on a tv show once, a long time ago.”
“I want to help.” He tried to reach for her hands again, but she stepped back.
“You don’t get to help, Jonny. You ran away.” She walked over to the hoverboards and grabbed hers. She flipped the switch and watched thoughtfully as she let go of it over the ground. “I can understand your panic, I guess, but it doesn’t really feel forgivable right now.”
She stepped onto the board, dipping with it for a moment before it stabilized. “You know, I never got to tell Mark the real reasons I ended things with him. I never got to say, ‘Hey, you made me feel like shit, and like I’d never be good enough, and I’ve been over you for months ,’ because he watched you drive off. He saw me naked under a coat and he watched you peel out of the driveway, and he never talked to me again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I appreciate the apology. I can’t blame you for all of that.” She looked out at the ocean again, let the wind sift through her hair. “If you would have just stayed with me, we could have figured it out. We used to be good at talking about the heavy stuff, when it really mattered.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Jessie.”
She turned back, breezed over until she was only a foot away from him. “I really want to go on this trip. It’s important that I do, for so many reasons. So, let’s just try existing around each other, okay? I’d love to hear about work from you , instead of from a report.” She pursed her lips. “I’m sorry I stopped calling, stopped checking in on you.”
Jonny sucked in a breath. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d wanted an apology from her. “That’s all I want, Jess. I just want to exist around you.”
“Hmm.” She gave him a mock salute, and glided off to the main house.
She took the bridge this time.