Bitter? Jealous? Those weren’t words I’d use to describe Jesse, but tonight, he seemed to be a little of both.

“Jesse. I’m sorry,” I said. “I let Garth get into my head. I let him remind me of all my fears and insecurities. I let him tell me what I deserved and what I didn’t deserve.” Shit. If I got any more vulnerable, I would turn into one gaping, bloody wound.

“Well, sorry, but I don’t let Garth Black decide what I do and don’t deserve. And you shouldn’t either.”

“I know,” I replied quietly. I could have gone into all the reasons I had. Why it was so easy to believe the Garth Blacks of the world. Why the bad was so much easier to believe than the good. Man, I could have gone into a day-long lecture on the special brand of screwed-up I was, but my apology wasn’t about me. It was about Jesse. It was about me hurting him and needing to make amends.

Jesse studied my face, like he was trying to remain objective about the whole thing but he failed. A long sigh followed. “What were you doing at Garth’s place that night anyways, Rowen? Why were you kissing the hell out of me that afternoon and snuggled into his lounge chair later that night?”

I could have cried from the pain in Jesse’s voice alone. From knowing that my actions had caused that level of hurt in him. Everything inside of me wanted to edit the truth. Everything inside of me wanted to appease him with a surface answer. Everything inside of me wanted to protect myself.

I flipped everything inside of myself off and sucked in a deep breath. “Because Garth Black isn’t able to break my heart.” I bit my lip and pressed on. “You are.” The ice in Jesse’s expression melted. His eyes softened. The wrinkles in his forehead smoothed. “I never have to worry about Garth hurting me, because I know he will. I know what to expect with him. I know he’ll screw up and leave me if I don’t leave him first. I don’t give him every piece of myself because I know what I’m getting into. I don’t know what I’m getting into with you, and if I give all of myself to you, you could break everything.” Was I really spilling my guts in a honky tonk with hundreds of people around? I took a quick scan of the area. Yeah. I sure was. “You make me feel too much, Jesse.” I crossed those few steps I’d put between us. “It freaks me out.”

There was almost a full minute of silence between us. Nothing but him studying me and me just letting him. A minute of silence after you drop that kind of deep stuff on a guy is basically an eternity.

Finally, Jesse’s mouth parted. “When you open yourself up to people, you let the bad in with the good. I can’t promise I won’t ever hurt you, Rowen. But it won’t be on purpose. I will never hurt you intentionally. I can promise you that.” Jesse’s hand dropped to my waist, but he didn’t draw me to him. He drew himself to me. “But if this is something we’re going to give a go, I need you to promise me the same. I need you to promise me you won’t go out of your way to push me away, or hurt me, or fall asleep on Garth Black’s lounge chair, when—not if—things get scary. I can tell you don’t want to let people in, that it scares you, but you need to let me in if we’re going to have a fighting chance. You can’t shove me away the moment you let me inside, as much as I know you’ll want to.” His fingers curved into my waist, and the warmth and strength in them made my eyelids heavy. “Don’t hurt me, Rowen,” he whispered in a way that tugged at any and every feeling I had for Jesse.

I knew letting him in would be like going against a strong current. I knew it wouldn’t feel natural, or be my first, second, or even third instinct, and I knew it would be a daily struggle to keep from running from Jesse when things got serious, when things got . . . scary, as he’d said.

But when I looked into those eyes of his that saw everything, those eyes that saw me, I knew the fight would be worth it. The struggle to let him in when I wanted to barricade the windows and lower the gates would be a battle I’d never regret fighting.

I inhaled. I exhaled. I wove my fingers through his where his hand still rested on my waist. I locked my gaze to his. “I won’t.”

It was a promise. A vow. A prayer. It thrilled me. It terrified me.

But what I noticed most was the warmth running through my body and into my veins. The feeling of peace that washed over me was nothing I’d ever felt before. The next thing that overwhelmed me?

The smile that lit up his face.

“I think you owe me a dance,” he said, sliding his other hand around my waist. We weren’t on the dance floor, nowhere close to it, but we could make our own little dance floor right there.

My hands settled over his chest, and I tried pressing closer. Apparently, we were as tight together as two people could get. “I owe you three.” I winked up at him.

“After this past week, I think you owe me more than that.” He tilted his hat back farther on his forehead.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked as we started swaying to the silence of one song ending and another beginning.

“I’ll think of something.” One corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other. “But why don’t you kiss me while I’m thinking?”

It was one of those moments that felt like it was more a scene pulled from a movie or a book. Boy and girl moving in for a kiss as the band breaks into a slow song . . . girl glances for the briefest moment over boy’s shoulder before she closes her eyes to taste his lips and sees . . .

The boy’s ex-girlfriend.

“Crap,” I whispered. Josie was watching the two of us with a blank expression. She didn’t look over-the-moon pissed or irreversibly hurt. She looked more like she couldn’t quite understand what she saw.

“What?” Jesse said, pulling back right before his mouth connected with mine. I could have been kissing him . . .

But I couldn’t do that in front of Josie, not with her watching like she was the most confused person in the room. I owed her an explanation, too. I’d owed a lot of those lately.

“Hold that thought.” I shot him a quick smile before winding around him.

“Rowen?” He grabbed my hand. “Did you just miss what I said a whole two minutes ago?”

I looked at him, confused.

“The whole you-can’t-run-away-when-things-get-serious thing.”

“Jesse, trust me, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now than kissing the hell out of you, but Josie just walked in and saw the two of us together, and . . . Well, she looked a little . . . shocked.”

Jesse’s forehead lined as he checked behind me. He sighed when he saw her. “You want me to go with you? Talk with her together?”

I shook my head. “I think it would be a more productive discussion if you weren’t present.”

He lifted a brow.

“You distract me too much, and if I’m going to explain to Josie what I’m doing with her ex-boyfriend and come out on the other side with her not hating me, I’m going to need all my mental faculties.”

He smirked at me.

“Wish me luck,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze before slipping free.

“Good luck,” I heard him say as I made my way to the still stunned Josie.

She didn’t run off or glare at me as I approached; she just continued glancing between me and Jesse like she was trying to accept something impossible to accept.

When I stopped in front of her, she didn’t look behind me again. I wasn’t sure if that was because Jesse had moved on, or because she couldn’t look at him anymore.

“You want to talk?” I glanced at the door.

She bobbed her head.

I led the way through the crowd, and she followed. The night had taken so many unexpected turns. Good ones, bad ones. Good, bad. Good with the bad. Just as Jesse had said. I had to accept the bad with the good because it’s inevitable.

I didn’t say anything until we were outside and out of range of anyone who would listen.

I spun around and couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “Josie, I am so, so sorry you just saw that.”

She stared at the ground and crossed her arms. “But you’re not sorry for falling for my ex-boyfriend?” Her voice wasn’t especially sharp, but the words hit me like it was.

I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I couldn’t make it seem like some shallow infatuation. “No, I’m not sorry for falling for Jesse,” I said slowly. Josie’s face lined. “But I am sorry for hurting you in the process. I’m very sorry for that.”

She chewed something out on her lip for a moment. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“Up until a few minutes ago, I didn’t know what to say. I knew I liked Jesse. I knew he used to like me. I just wasn’t sure if he still did.”

Josie’s eyes closed. “I saw the way he was looking at you, Rowen. The way he was touching you.” She exhaled and leaned into the truck beside her. “If you’re still not sure if he likes you or not, I can tell you with a hundred percent certainty that he does.”

My heart burst at her words. It broke at her words. Damn, that was a hard discussion to have with the ex-girlfriend of the boy who made my heart go boom-boom.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I had nothing else. I’d say it all night long if that’s what she needed to hear.

“No, I know, and honestly . . . I’ve had my suspicions that something’s been going on between you two for a while now,” she said. “It sucks, but it’s like what I told you inside. I knew when Jesse and I split up, that was a permanent thing. I knew there was no chance of us making up and moving on together. I knew he’d wind up with someone else. I was surprised he wasn’t seeing anyone sooner, given the parade the single girls practically had when they found out we’d split.” She kicked the toe of her boot into the dirt and continued to stare holes into the ground. “I also knew it would break my heart when I saw him with another girl, no matter who that girl was.” She glanced up at me and managed to form a small smile. “I guess at least I can say I like the girl he fell for.”

Another heart breaking/bursting moment. Josie had just found Jesse and me an inch away from lip-locked, and there she was, two minutes later, admitting that it sucked to see, but at least I had her stamp of approval. Why did the first girl I’d wanted to be friends with in a long time have to be the ex-girlfriend of the boy I liked?

Ah, yes. Thank you, Fates, for the reminder: life was unfair. More times than it wasn’t.

I did something totally out of character, again, and wrapped my arms around her to give her the most sincere, awkward hug in the history of hugs. “I’d understand if you wanted to hate my guts. I’d even say I deserved it.”

Josie made a noise that sounded like part laugh, part sob, then hugged me back. Hard. We were talking the hardest hug in the history of hugs. “It would probably be easier if I hated your guts. It would be easier if I could hate Jesse’s, too. But I can’t.”