“I’m so sorry,” Anna said to both Jake and her mother, fitting the phone to her ear. “That’s the third time in fifteen minutes work has called me, and I don’t recognize the extension this time. I have to assume that the world is ending.”
“Take it, take it,” her mother said with a worried frown. “I hope everything’s okay.” She looked up at Jake as Anna turned away, but not before Anna could hear her next words. “She works too much. She always has. So when are you two leaving?”
What had Erin been telling her mom about Jake … and what was this about a trip? Had her landlady suddenly gone insane? Was it time for an intervention?
She realized the person on the other end of the line was now listening to dead air, and she roused herself to speech. “Hello, Anna Richardson,” she said, using her best unruffled business voice, as if she wasn’t walking down the middle of her driveway, rocking a T-shirt, sandals, and suit trousers.
“Anna, this is Todd. I’ve been trying to reach you.” His voice was cold. “I assumed you were ignoring my call, and it looks like I was right.”
“Yes, I know you were trying to reach me, Todd, but it’s Friday and my family is in town. Which you know, because I told you they would be, at least fifty times. So how can I help you?”
“I need you here,” he said, and suddenly she realized that his voice was tight with panic. “All hands on deck. The Zenryou deal just got thrown a major curveball. They want to expand our operations to include three satellite sites, and we don’t have enough staff to cover it. We’re bringing in new personnel, but they need to hit the ground running by Monday, and I need you to train them.”
“Train them,” Anna said dully, not believing her ears. “Over this weekend.”
“Yes, over this weekend. Your bonus is going to be out of this world, Anna, so don’t worry about that. Everyone is up to their eyeballs in work, and money is flowing like crazy to get this deal done. We’re pulling in everyone who’s even remotely qualified, and we’ll pick from the best of the lot at the end of the weekend. When can you be here?”
Anna looked over at her mother, talking to Jake. Jake, who didn’t ask her to be anything but herself—her real self, though she didn’t even know who that was anymore. Jake, who didn’t get his sense of security from the piles of cash in his bank account, or from the roof over his head, but from the knowledge that he would succeed no matter where the open road took him. Jake, who felt everything so deeply, so viscerally, that he couldn’t always be trusted to say or do the right thing … but he could be trusted to do something. To move. To act. To live every moment as fully as he could. Jake, who was walking toward her right now, sensing something was wrong.
“Anna!” Todd was steamed now, or maybe just a little bit desperate. But Anna let the phone drop from her ear, her hand flopping to her side as Jake walked up to her.
“Hey, there,” he said, brushing the hair back from her face. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great,” she said, almost automatically. She opened her mouth to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. She just stood there, staring at him, feeling her world crash down around her again. She seemed to be making a habit of that. First when she’d missed out on her road trip with Jake, and now this. She hadn’t even made it to lunch before work had swooped in to ruin her plans. Why did she think it wouldn’t ruin every plan they ever made?
And if she left now, went in to work, she would miss yet another chance. Only this chance would be worse.
Not because her family would be disappointed—though of course they would be. And not because Jake would finally see, without any doubt, that work ruled her life and that’s all there was to it. He would take off, without question. And so he should. Their paths would diverge and they’d never come across each other again.
But that’s not why it would hurt so much.
It would hurt so much because … because she wanted to do something different this time. Finally, inescapably, she wanted to just … not do the smart thing. She no longer wanted to be the girl who studied all night when her high school and then college friends were partying. She no longer wanted to be the girl who worked around-the-clock when her post-grad friends were finding ways to forge relationships, pursue hobbies, hell, even get married, like Kristen and Scott. She didn’t want to max her 401(k) right now, she wanted to max her life.
In the distance, her mother’s husband emerged from the house. Her little baby sister tottered out beside him, screaming at the top of her lungs, while Rick looked sheepish and her mom went to relieve him of parental duties. Back at Jake’s brownstone, his entire family waited, pounding through the house, filling it with laughter and noise and screaming. And then there she was, heading off to a foreign country by herself, with nothing but technology and deadlines and coworkers for friends. With her most reasonable romantic option for the next several months a guy whose idea of foreplay was texting about quarter-end bonuses.
Jake shifted in front of her, trying to read her expression and not exactly knowing what he was seeing. Which made sense, since Anna didn’t know what she was thinking anymore. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know where Erin got it into her head about you taking a trip with me. I didn’t say anything to her about it, I promise—”
“I know, I know,” Anna said, her voice small and tight. “She probably just got the wrong idea. I called her the other day, when we were on the road. I … I was kind of excited, I guess.”
“You were?” Jake’s smile was soft, and Anna’s world tightened down on her, narrow as a pinprick.
“Yeah, I was.” Now her words were barely a whisper. “I don’t know how to be like you, Jake. I don’t know how to be carefree, to just go out on the open road into a future just waiting for you. Not look back, not worry. I don’t know how to do that.”
“Hey.” Jake tilted her chin up. “You don’t want to be like me, Anna. I get so filled up with anger, emotion, whatever, sometimes, I don’t know how to let it out. I roll too fast, I crash too hard. I get why you may not want to be around that, I really do.”
“How can you even say that?” Anna shook her head. “You act like you’re this out-of-control guy, but you’re not, Jake. You just feel everything so much more than everyone around you. You pick all your battles to make things right.”
He let out a wry laugh. “Well, I didn’t always make things—”
“Then you made them less wrong. You stood up for something. You tried. Maybe you didn’t always know when to stop, but you knew you had to start—and you did. You took that step. You’re a good man, Jake Flynn. You have to see that. I see that, and I barely know you.”
“Well, then you’re good, too, Anna. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You think the future is waiting for me—well, it’s waiting for you, too, if you want it. Whatever you want it to be.”
Anna’s smile was rueful. “I’ve created my own future already,” she said, though the words didn’t make her feel any better. “Now all I have to do is live it.” Her phone rang again in her hand, and then again. Todd must have hung up, thought he’d lost the connection to her. And, being Todd, he was trying again. Her mind tried to grapple with the details of apologizing to her family, shoring up her work files, heading back in to a full weekend of work prior to leaving everything she knew behind. She knew she had to do it, but she didn’t want to do it. For the first time in her life, she was faced with a decision between work and not work, and she was veering dangerously, perilously toward the untaken road. Even without Jake on it, it seemed like a better choice than the road she was on right now, the one taking her toward work and more work, money and more money, loneliness and more loneliness, even in the midst of a crowd.
“Well if you don’t like your future, you can always change it, Anna.”
No, I can’t! Fear surged up within her, panic running through her. “I …” She cleared her throat. “I have to go to Japan, Jake. And now, now …” She swallowed again. “Now I need to go back to work for the weekend, to help prepare the rest of the team. There’s a lot of money in it. And probably a promotion.”
“And that’s important to you?”
“Of course it’s important to me!” Anna snapped. “I have to make money! I have to make sure everything’s okay for everyone!”
“It looks like everything already is okay with everyone,” Jake said quietly, and he nodded to the side. Anna followed his gesture, seeing her mom and stepfather cooing down at their little girl. Jake’s grandmother had somehow appeared out of nowhere, and she was holding the baby’s hand as well, her eyes lit up with delight. “Your friends are happy, Anna. Kristen is married. Your mom is safe. It looks like everyone is doing just fine—everyone except you.”
Defensive anger flashed through her and she glared up at him. “I’m fine.”
“You’re more than fine, sweetheart, you’re amazing. And I’m telling you now that the world will beat a path to your door. It will always beat a path to your door, whether you go back to work right now or, you know, in another year.”
“A year!” she gasped, not believing her ears. But as soon as she said the words, something unfurled in her, a tight little knot of despair that she hadn’t even realized she was carrying around with her. “A year,” she said again.
“Or however long makes sense,” Jake said, watching her closely. “Let’s just go, Anna. Ride off down that road with me. I know I’m not perfect. I worry I might say too much, or get so full of whatever it is inside me that I react the wrong way or do the wrong thing. But I want to try, Anna. I want to see what it’s like. And I want you to be with me every mile of the way. Who knows, you yourself might find some hidden opportunity around some far-off corner that changes everything for you, and makes you see things in an entirely new way.”
A year. The idea took hold in Anna’s heart, refusing to let go, even as her brain screamed at her to be smart, be sensible, be responsible. “But Jake, you can’t saddle yourself with me for a trip like that. I’ve never traveled so long before.”
He grinned, a year full of promise in that smile, the kind of smile from the kind of man she’d never thought would look twice at her—rough and real, who drank every drop of life and experienced it completely. Who never met a risk in life he wasn’t willing to take—except for maybe sharing that life with another person. Only now he was offering to do just that, with her. Now he was giving her more than he could possibly realize. A chance to do the unexpected. To be the unexpected. “You’d never ridden a motorcycle before you met me, either, Anna,” he said. “And that turned out okay.”
“But I—”
“Anna.” Jake’s voice was firm, and she blinked up at him. “Being with you this past week has been the best thing to happen to me in longer than I can remember. I’m already half in love with you. Say yes and I’ll fall all the way.”
“Then, yes,” she said, without thinking, feeling the tears spark in her eyes. “Yes.”
Her phone chose that moment to ring again, only this time Anna did pick it up. It wasn’t Todd, however, it was her boss.
“Cindy, I’m so glad it’s you,” she said, her eyes wide and fixed on Jake, her heart pounding as if she was about to jump off a tall building without a net below. She couldn’t believe she was saying the words, but as each one passed her lips she felt wilder, more dangerous. “I’m tendering my resignation, effective immediately. I have a new opportunity that’s come up that I cannot fully leverage without devoting every minute to it, and while I know there are a hundred other people you can call to do my job there, only I can do this one.”
“You cannot be serious.” Cindy’s words were startled but not desperate. “Anna, we can talk about this.”
“I’ve done a full diagnostic on the situation,” Anna said, shaking her head, though Cindy couldn’t see her. No one could see her, really, except Jake. Except the only man who’d maybe ever really seen her in a way that actually mattered. She could do this, she thought, feeling happier than she ever had in thinking those words. She would do this. “It’s my first once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Cindy. I don’t know how many others I’ll get if I don’t go for it. My decision is firm.” She couldn’t even hear Cindy’s words over the thudding of her own heart, but she heard the resignation in them, the clipped finality.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Anna?” Cindy finished. “You’re walking away from an incredible opportunity.”
“No,” Anna whispered, and before her there was only Jake. Jake and opportunity, and an endless open road. “I’m riding into one.”
She felt the phone slip out of her fingers, which had suddenly turned numb. She didn’t know if she’d dropped it or if it had been taken away, only that Jake was still in front of her, his entire body seeming to pulse with the intensity of his gaze. Then Jake lifted both hands to her face and leaned forward, brushing his lips against hers.
“Hello, Anna Richardson, I’m Jake Flynn,” he whispered, his fingers now trembling, too. He held her firmly—not as if she might break, but as if he wanted to raise her up, to put her closer to the sun and the stars. He swallowed, and his voice was rough when he spoke again. “You wanna take a ride on my bike?”
Anna lifted up on her toes, and kissed him fiercely, even as his fingers firmed on her face, strong and sure and ready for anything. “Hello, Jake Flynn,” she said back when she could breathe again, her heart in her words, her smile, and her future. “How can I refuse an offer like that?”