Page 34 of The Best Wild Idea (Off-Limits #3)

Silas

An hour later, I’m pacing the lobby, still waiting for Jules to come down. Each time the elevator dings, I watch the doors, hoping it’s her standing on the other side when they open.

But another ten minutes goes by without her showing up, and I’m starting to worry that whatever Grant wrote in that last letter was too much for her.

When the elevator chimes once more, I hop into it and ride up to her room, locating the room number that the receptionist said aloud when handing us our keys. I walk down the hallway and pound on her door.

My phone buzzes in my pocket with a text from Jules:

That better be you pounding like a maniac on my door. Because if it isn’t, you might need to come up here.

I smile before typing back:

Would you be mad if it was?

Within seconds, the deadbolt slides over and the door opens. She’s standing behind it, still wearing the same sweatsuit she wore on the plane ride this morning.

It’s a stark contrast to my crisp dinner suit, the one I know I won’t be eating in anytime soon, and my stomach growls in response.

She shrugs, taking a step back. “I was about to text you to come up.”

“Hangover still going strong?” I ask, knowing damn well her appearance has nothing to do with her hangover from the wine last night.

“Not hungover anymore.”

She walks back into her room and collapses down on the bed.

I sit on the edge right next to her, me sitting and her lying, while we study each other’s eyes. I wish I could read her mind.

I wish this trip didn’t have to unfold like this — a letter at every stop.

Dragging her through the mud again each time she’s finally starting to enjoy herself.

It’s a byproduct of the trip’s design that I’m sure Grant didn’t account for.

If she didn’t know about the letters already, I’d be tempted to steal the next two before she can retrieve them, just to relieve her of the weight she still has yet to bear.

“What’d it say?” I ask, gently.

“A lot of things.” She pauses. “One being that you stayed awake to stoke the fire so I wouldn’t get attacked by mosquitos all night. That night we all camped by the lake?”

She watches me intently, already knowing the answer.

How would Grant know about that? And why would he write it into one of these letters?

I chuckle nervously then reach in front of me to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“Of all the things he could have chosen to write to you about, why waste time on that weird detail?” I’m hoping to make light of it, although it has my own mind racing.

What else was in that letter?

I lie down too, facing her with some space between us, on my side. If she’s going to be curled up while we have this chat, then I will be too.

“Why did you do that?” she asks. “There were three other guys there that night and none of them felt the need to stay up to do that, including my own future fiancé. Hell, I could have stayed up all night to take care of myself. You didn’t need to, but you did. Why?”

She chews her lip, studying me as if this will be the moment that my face finally gives it all away and shows her exactly how I feel about her.

“Well, you’d already been having the worst day. First your ankle, then we found out that you apparently had the most tasty blood among us. Not surprising, given the company you had around you that trip.”

I pause to grin at her, coaxing out the sweetest smile. It spreads across her face like sunlight. My heart pounds, knowing that that look in her eye right now is meant for no one else in the world but me.

“Keep going,” she whispers, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Those bugs were ruthless. If that fire had gone out, you never would have made it through the night. I just felt bad for you.”

“Is that all?” she asks, gently.

“Why would Grant want to tell you about that, of all the things to spend his time writing to you about?”

She shrugs, but looks like she might have some idea.

“Was it because that was the night Grant told me he was proposing to you? Is that why he felt the need to include that detail? I didn’t even know he was aware I’d done that.”

“He said something else about that night,” she adds.

I think back, racking my memory for anything else that might have transpired while everyone else slept by the lake. I shake my head, coming up blank.

“You told him that you were glad he’d won the coin toss.”

She watches me even more intently after saying it, like she doesn’t want to miss a single micro-reaction.

I smile faintly, controlling my face as best as I can, and sigh.

“Grant’s really letting all the cats out of the bag with these letters, isn’t he?”

She doesn’t return the smile, but continues watching me, like she’s finally seeing me clearly.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she adds, running her tongue over her lower lip before biting it, releasing it slowly so that the tender flesh bounces back, more pink than it was before. “I think it’s sweet you did that.”

My body sinks deeper into the mattress. I don’t have a good answer for her.

Instead, I reach over to tuck another strand of stray hair back behind her ear.

She tilts her face up a fraction of an inch toward mine and I let myself steal a look at her lips, parted just barely, a sliver of white teeth visible beneath the pink.

Finally, our eyes meet somewhere in the middle.

“What else did Grant’s letter uncover for you?

” I ask her, not wanting to dive into the details of that camping trip if we don’t have to.

There’s a second reason I stayed up that night and it had nothing to do with mosquitos.

But right now, I don’t want to tell her that I couldn’t even fathom sleeping, knowing that she was going to be getting married.

We had always been a ragtag team of three, but my third-wheel position felt a bit more serious, knowing they were going to be husband and wife with me on the side.

Something about the pending engagement cemented a bond between them that I could never mount up to or truly be a part of.

They were my chosen family up until that moment.

As dumb as it is, the only emotion I could process that night — surrounded by my best friends and a cloud of thick smoke — was loneliness.

“He’s pretty adamant that he sent me off on this trip to live again.” Her voice pulls me out of the memory of that night.

“And that annoys you?” I ask, catching a hint of frustration in her voice.

“No. I mean, yes? I guess? I don’t know.

This is the third letter I’ve gotten to read from him, counting the first one back home, and each time I read one of them, it’s like he knows exactly what I’ve spent the last year of my life doing.

Like he was there to see it for himself.

” She laughs ironically. “He knew me so well, he even knows me postmortem.”

“He’s been right about everything?”

“Annoyingly so,” she confesses, smiling faintly.

Then her lips twitch into a broader smile.

“I wish I could have surprised myself by bouncing back. Not sitting home most nights watching old Schitt’s Creek episodes when I couldn’t sleep because it was the last series we watched together.

Sometimes I still start laughing and look across the couch, expecting to see him laughing too.

And I know it’s not good. Living in the past like that. ”

Her eyes settle into the space between us as a collection of memories stirs within.

I want to open up her mind and let every thought spill out across the room, like a thousand tortured microcosms that need to have their moment in order for her to be at peace again — instead of having been locked up there in her head all year long with nowhere to go.

“He’s pretty convinced that I’ve spent the last year hiding out alone and that I need you to remind me that this big ol’ world out here still exists.”

I smile, knowing that this is exactly what the last year has been like for her. That she’s been holding back from taking part in the world fully, partially out of grief, but partially because no amount of living feels right when you’re wrapped up inside a storm.

“I tend to agree with Grant,” I tell her.

She narrows her eyes at me, but then I go on.

“I was only eight when she passed, but it felt like I was insulting my mom any time I laughed or forgot for even one second. I spent years being angry because it didn’t seem right to be anything but angry.

Offensive, even. Then, well, you saw me after my dad died.

I basically jumped off the deep end. That time, there was no moral compass left. I was an utter disaster.”

“And after losing Grant?”

“I hate to say it but I sort of felt like a seasoned pro by the time we lost him.” I tilt her chin up with the pad of my finger. She blinks a few times, confused.

“How can you say that? I can’t imagine it ever gets easier.”

“Easier, no. Never . I struggle with his loss every minute of every day, Jules. Losing Grant gutted me in a way that was different from losing my parents, and in a lot of ways, it was somehow more painful. I loved my parents, but I chose Grant to be my family. He was irreplaceable to me, just as much as they were.”

Her eyes well up with tears. “I think I’ve needed to hear you say that.”

“And I’m sorry if I haven’t shown you that part of this journey for me.

But what I mean is that I gave myself some time to go off the rails for a shorter window, then slowly swam through the parts of grief that I knew I could do without — like all the idiotic coping strategies I used in the past. And then went straight to the better part of the whole train wreck. ”

“The better part? Excuse me if I think you sound crazy right now.”

She rolls her eyes, and I swallow down a laugh.

“You’re on your way to figuring that part out for yourself,” I tell her. “Even if you think you’re not, because against all odds, it’ll come next if you’re open to it.”

“Enlighten me.”