Then he asked, quiet and strained, “What did you say?”
I shook my head. Nothing. I said nothing. Please let it go.
The gravel ground under his feet and I knew he was coming. I tensed, unsure what he was going to do or say. When his hand touched the back of my elbow, I pulled away and rounded to his side of the car. Running away was stupid. I’d need to deal with this, but I couldn’t look at him. There’d only be rejection in his eyes. I couldn’t see that, rejection and pity. My heart withered up. It would completely shatter me if I saw it, but I already knew that he pitied me. He had to.
I was pathetic.
“Look at me, Alex.”
My shoulders stiffened. I couldn’t do it. Nothing would be the same after that.
He stepped closer. I heard the gravel once more, but I kept myself firm. I couldn’t keep running. I was going to see what I was going to see. If he rejected me, if he pitied me, I’d deal with it. I had to. Going in circles around the car was only putting it off.
Slowly, so slowly, as my heart pounded, I forced my neck to turn. Then I saw him, but there was nothing.
He was bristling in anger. His hands were in fists pressed to his legs and his jaw was clenched tight while his eyes were glistening with repressed emotion. He wrung out, “You must have an extremely low opinion of me if you think that.”
This wasn’t right.
I shut up. What the hell?
My heart was pounding like crazy, but what he said didn’t make sense. “What do you mean by that?”
He threw his head back and barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“You think I’m going to leave you. You’ve always thought that. What’d your friend say, that I’m not going to treat you right? Oh, wait. That’s right.” His eyes hardened and he clipped out, his tone ice cold, “That I’m not going to be patient with you, that I wouldn’t go the extra mile. The best one was that I’m not boyfriend material.” He frowned as his jaw clenched. “No, I have a better one. That I wasn’t a good guy, your friend, Angie, said I wasn’t a good guy. I might not say nice things and I might not do nice things all the time, but I don’t think that makes me a bad guy.”
Oh. Goodness. My heart began thumping against my chest. I knew he had heard, but I hadn’t thought about it. He was right. Angie had said all those things about him and I hadn’t defended him.
I hung my head. “I’m sorry, Jesse.”
“No, no. Don’t do that. Don’t apologize to someone like me, who’ll treat you like dirt. It’s a shame I’m not like Eric Nathans, right? He’s the good guy. He’s going to treat you right.” He took a step closer. His eyes were gleaming at me. “He’s boyfriend material. He’s going to be patient with you. He’s not going to do the shit things I did to you. Right?”
He bit out that last word and I flinched from the intensity behind them.
My throat started to burn as I remembered that day. I couldn’t bring myself to defend what I had done or defend what Angie had been saying. She’d been wrong. I’d been wrong.
The burning turned into liquid pain. It flowed everywhere in me.
Jesse wasn’t done. He ground out, “What the hell did I ever do to you?”
My head snapped up then. Baring my teeth at him, I couldn’t hold back the anger anymore. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.” He never flinched.
“You ignored me.”
He flinched now. “I didn’t—”
“You did!” I took two long steps and shoved at him. The small ball of control in me snapped. I kept shoving at him. “Ethan died and a week later you took my virginity. You never called me after that. You never called at all. You f**ked me and you walked past me at school. You didn’t even look at me, you ass**le. You just walked away.”
The pain was agonizing. I wanted to bend over, maybe that would ease it. I pushed past it, so much damn hurt blazing inside of me. I reared back to shove him again, but he caught my hands. Trapping them against his chest, he turned so I was pushed against the car. Then he crowded me in, his thighs on either side of me and his chest was pressed against me. I tried to shove him back, but the fight was leaving me.
An image of that day was on repeat, playing over and over again in my head.
We were in the hallway. Angie had been talking to me and I looked up. He was there with two of his buddies. I opened my mouth to call out to him, but he went past. I was air for him to walk through, a ghost that he couldn’t see. He made me feel like that for the rest of the year until Ethan’s birthday.
The fight suddenly left me. I was weaker because of it.
He came to me the second time. His touch made me alive. I’d been starving for it. I continued to hunger for him until the next summer, until the anniversary of Ethan’s death. Jesse found me again. Then again in August. He came to me. And again. And again. He kept coming for me, but I hadn’t been the only girl. He told me there’d been others and I had heard about the ones in high school. He told me about the ones during his freshman year at Grant West.
I couldn’t handle that, not again.
“Hey.” He captured the side of my head and lifted up. “I’m sorry. I was a mess that first year.”
“So was I,” I said.
“I know.” His chest lifted up and down. “Shit, I know. I’m sorry.” Pressing a soft kiss to my forehead, he moved to my eye and pressed another one. The other eye got a kiss, then my nose, then both sides of my cheeks. He lingered above my mouth, whispering against them, “I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to stay away from you.”