Jesse finds me in the kitchen in the morning. He wraps his arms around my waist and rests his chin on my shoulder. I stop buttering my toast and lean my back against his chest.

“Morning,” he growls into my ear.

“Morning.” I turn in his arms and lay a soft kiss on his lips. “Thank you for yesterday. I don’t think I ever said it.”’

“You don’t need to thank me for anything.”

His eyes are so soft, and his touch is so tender it makes my heart hurt. How can I put him through this? Last night was just another glaringly obvious sign that this relationship will never work. I pull away from Jesse’s embrace and take a deep breath.

“Jesse, I—”

“Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it,” he says, shaking his head.

“Jesse…” My throat tightens. My chest feels like it’s being crushed in a vice and I can’t get a full breath. I put my hand to my chest and feel a pain right in the center of it.

“Farrah, I know what you’re thinking. You think that it’ll be better for me if we’re not together. You think that you’re tearing my family apart.”

My eyes blur with tears.

“You’re not, Farrah.” He puts his finger on my chin. I close my eyes and let the tears stream down my cheeks. “Listen to me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I sob.

He’s still holding my chin. His other hand strokes my hair and he lets out a big sigh. “The only way you can hurt me is by leaving me.”

I sob again. It’s an ugly, snorting sound, and Jesse starts laughing. “Come on,” he coos, pulling me into his broad chest. I sink into him and my resolve starts to crack.

I don’t want to leave him. I want to wake up next to him every day, and smell his scent on my pillows when he’s not there. I want to be able to run my fingers through his hair and see that brilliant smile of his.

Is that selfish?

I would put him through hell with his family just because I want him to be mine.

I sigh.

“Hey,” he says, smiling. “Come on.”

My lips twitch into a shy smile and Jesse’s eyes gleam. Then, something crosses his face and he nods to the kitchen table.

“Let’s sit, I want to tell you something.” He grabs my toast and takes a big bite out of it before handing it over. I roll my eyes, and he grins. Before he sits, he grabs two cups of coffee and sets them down on the table.

His face is stony when he finally sits down across from me. I gulp. I don’t know what to expect. Jesse takes a deep breath and then pulls his tee-shirt off over his head.

His fingers brush over the jagged white scar on his left side. His hand is trembling, and his eyes are closed. I’m ready to jump up and wrap my arms around him when he opens his eyes and speaks.

“My brother did this to me about twenty years ago. I was fifteen or sixteen, I can’t remember.” He looks at me with steely grey eyes. They’re hard, as if he’s remembering the most painful memory of his life. He stares at a point just over my shoulder and keeps talking.

“I found him in his bedroom with Sally Harvey. I’d been seeing her—well, I mean. I was young. We’d gone out for ice cream and held hands a couple times. She let me kiss her on the lips. I…” his voice falters. “It was just school-kid love, you know? Like passionate, teenager hormonal emotions. But…”

He sighs, wrapping his big palms around his coffee mug.

“But I cared about her. I was supposed to take Sally out that afternoon, and I was going to ask her to go to the Regatta with me.” He sees me frown, and he explains. “Up by the cabin, at the end of the summer, there’s a big Regatta. People bring their boats from all over, and then in the evening there’s a big dinner and a dance. It was a big deal. I was going to ask her to be my girlfriend. I know it sounds stupid. I was just a kid, but…”

“It’s okay, you don’t need to downplay it. It would be big deal to a sixteen-year-old.”

Jesse nods. “So I walked in on Elijah with her. He’s two years younger than me, so he was only like fourteen years old! And here he is, with the girl that I loved, making out on his bed. She’d never kissed me like that. He saw me walk in and he got this… this smile on his face. It wasn’t a smile, it was so cold.”

Jesse shakes his head, sighing. “I started yelling. Sally was yelling. Elijah went nuts. He pushed me out of the room and into the hallway. His eyes…”

Jesse stares at the spot behind my shoulder again. His hand goes to his chest, as if he’s reliving the moment.

“He pulled out his Swiss Army Knife that my father had given to him for his birthday that year. Anyway, he pulled it out, and he held it against my neck. He said that if I ever walked in on him again, he’d slice my neck from ear to ear. He—” Jesse falters. “He vowed to never let me have a relationship with a woman. Said he’d steal every one of them away.”

He drops his head into his hands as my heart thumps. Elijah said those things? When he was fourteen years old?

“And then he sliced my chest. I needed thirty-two stitches. Sally went to the Regatta with Elijah. And Elijah made sure to make a move on every single girlfriend of mine that he met. Some of them cheated on me with him, some of them didn’t. But it was enough for me to stop bringing them around him anymore.”

The last words break my heart. Jesse laughs bitterly, shaking his head. “I know it’s pathetic to still let something like that affect me. I’m a fucking grown man.”

I get up and wrap my arms around him. “You don’t need to explain anything. I can’t believe I was going to marry that asshole.”

Jesse looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. He runs his finger along my cheek and shakes his head. “When I met you, it made me so mad that you were marrying him. It tore me up inside.”

“I’m not marrying him,” I say quietly. “And storming in here only makes it worse for him.”

“Does it, though? I could see it in your face last night. You wanted to end it with me. And this morning… I swear you were going to break up with me. One way or another, Elijah always gets what he wants.”

My heart breaks. Jesse is right. I was going to break it off with him this morning. I was doing it to protect him from his own family… or at least that’s what I told myself. Maybe I’ve been second guessing my relationship with Jesse to protect myself.

“Just do me a favor, Farrah,” Jesse says, pulling me onto his lap. “Give me a chance. Let me show you that I don’t care what Elijah thinks, or says, or does. Let me show you how much I care about you.”

I can’t speak, because my voice is gone. There’s a huge lump in my throat and my eyes are blurring. All I do is nod, and Jesse pulls me in to his chest.

He kisses me gently and then groans when his phone rings. Pulling away from me, he takes his phone out of his pocket and glances at the screen.

“I gotta take this.”

I nod.

“Hey, Coach,” he says into the phone as I get up off him. He stands up and turns away. “What’s up?” Jesse’s body tenses. I see the muscle in his jaw twitch and my heart starts beating faster. “Uh-huh. Okay. I’ll be right there. I understand.”

He hangs up the phone and takes a deep breath.

“Is something wrong?”

Jesse glances at me and kisses me softly again. “I gotta go in to talk to Coach. Nothing to worry about.”

Despite his words, his face is dark. I watch him leave and I know that something is very, very wrong.