Two more steps deeper inside the room, and I saw him. My throat went dry at the same time my heart leapt higher than it had while I’d been out on that chimney. He was pacing at the side of his bed in the same pajamas he’d worn the night we spent together—which was more like saying he wore no pajamas—and looked like he was swishing something around in his mouth.
As soon as I took a step toward him, his head snapped up. When his eyes landed on me, they went soft for one moment before they went as wide as eyes could go.
He raised his arms at his sides, obviously a bit frantic, but he wasn’t saying much.
“I can’t read crazy hand signals,” I said, as he continued to wave at me, to the window, back to me. “Words are a safer bet.”
He gave me an exasperated look, lifted his finger, and gave a final swish of whatever was in his mouth before turning around and grabbing a cup. After setting the cup back on his dresser, he turned around. I noticed the plastic bottle of bright blue liquid beside the cup.
“Mouthwash?” I said, trying not to smile. “Someone wanting fresh breath for any particular reason?”
Jesse rushed by me and bee lined for the window. “Someone was wanting fresh breath for a very particular reason until a certain someone pulled a stunt that could have killed her.”
I was still smiling too much over the whole mouthwash thing to let his mood affect mine. “You mean the same stunt someone else performed a week ago that could have killed him?” I came up behind him and stopped when he was just out of arm’s reach. Given that he was wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off sweats, I didn’t trust myself to stop touching if I started.
“I’ve climbed that chimney a thousand different times, Rowen. That’s totally different.” He looked out the window again, and his body went more rigid.
“Well, I’m here now. Alive. In one piece.” I couldn’t pry my eyes from the deep seam running down his back. I wanted to trace it with my fingers. I wanted to taste it with my tongue . . .
I needed a sharp slap across the face and a cold shower. “So can we forget about how I got here and just enjoy that I am here?”
Jesse slipped his head back inside the window and turned to me slowly. His eyes were still anxious, but his mouth turned up just enough to let me know the worst of the storm had passed.
“You wouldn’t want that mouthwash to go to waste, would you?” I gave him a suggestive smile, and he took my suggestion. He crossed the distance between us until his chest was nearly right against mine. His hands moved into their favorite spot: at the curve of my waist, just above my hips.
“No, I wouldn’t want that,” he said, his eyes now clear. It was amazing how, with the right distraction, a girl could talk a guy back from the ledge every time.
“Well?” I said a few moments later. “Are you waiting for an invitation?”
And since he wasn’t moving fast enough, I clasped my hands around the back of his neck, lifted up on my toes, and brought my mouth to his.
“Sorry. I was waiting for an invitation,” he whispered in the space between our mouths.
I pressed my mouth to his. “Here it is,” I said when I pulled back.
Jesse’s eyes were still closed, but he smiled for a moment before he pulled me back to him. His hands tightened at my waist as our lips moved together. When our mouths parted and my tongue touched his, his hands tightened again. If he gripped me any harder, I’d pass out, so I gave him one last lingering kiss.
His eyes were still closed, and that smile had gone a little higher.
“Fresh mint?” I asked, still tasting the mint.
When he opened them, I saw how excited his eyes were. His pupils were dilated, and the irises were extra blue. “Spearmint.”
“Well, I approve whatever it is.” I couldn’t just taste him; I almost felt him. It made me want to actually feel him again.
“It seemed like you might have,” he said, looking smug.
“How was that for not ‘pushing you away’?” I lifted an eyebrow and grabbed hold of one of his hands.
“You were most definitely not pushing me away just now,” he said, staring at my mouth. “And I approve of that.”
I laughed and pulled him away from the window. The way he continued to stare at my mouth made everything from my waist down constrict. “I’m glad you approve because not pushing you away when you’re kissing me like that is really difficult for a girl to manage.”
He let me pull him along. I loved the sound of his bare feet padding along the old wooden boards. It was comforting, somehow.
“Why do you push people away, Rowen?” His voice was gentle, but of course the question hit me in anything but a gentle way.
I knew if Jesse and I would make it with any kind of duration, I needed to be honest about the dark pieces of my past I kept locked away. I knew the sooner, the better. If anyone could handle the demons of my past, it was Jesse.
I also knew that if Jesse had asked me the same question just weeks ago, I would have told him to go screw himself and made avoiding him a top priority. But a lot had changed in a few weeks.
I was starting to be honest with myself. I’d give him the same.
I came to a stop a few feet in front of his bed, nothing more than a mattress laid out in the middle of his room and covered with a couple blankets. For some reason, my eyes locked on his pillow. The place his head rested every night as he dreamed.
“I push people away because I don’t want them to see who I really am,” I started. Jesse padded closer until his chest was against my back. His arms wound around my stomach, and he held me close. “Because if people know the real me and still choose to walk away, I’m not sure I could really take that.” I focused on his pillow and the strong arms holding me tight. “So if anyone starts getting too close to figuring out that my act is a bunch of bullshit, I push them away before they can search for what’s hiding behind the B.S.” I paused to breathe and collect my next thought, but really, I’d just summed it all up. When that settled in—that I’d just bared my soul, my real soul, to Jesse Walker—I waited for the panic attack.
When he was quiet for a few more moments, I actually felt it coming on.
“I see the real you, Rowen,” he said at last, tucking his chin over my shoulder, “and I like who you are.”
I closed my eyes to keep the tears from forming. “I know you do, Jesse. Although I can’t figure out why the hell you do like me. Sometimes I think if you watched a movie of my life . . . The drinking. The drugs. The guys.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wouldn’t let the honesty run dry. “You’d run away screaming like everyone else has. You’d give up on me, too.”
After a moment, Jesse sighed. “I don’t know what to be more sad about. That you feel this why about yourself, or that you have so little faith in me you think I’d leave if I knew every last detail about your past.” His head shook against my shoulder. “Would you leave me if you were able to know everything about my past?” He didn’t give me a chance to reply. “I know enough, Rowen. I know the woman you are now. I don’t need to know every dirty secret to make up my mind.”
The theory of keeping my eyes closed to keep tears from forming was nice. It just wasn’t a factual theory. Jesse hadn’t even flinched at what I’d just said. He hadn’t run away screaming. He’d said some of the kindest things I’d heard. Words were just words, but not those ones. Jesse had proven those words before he’d said them. I’d just been blinded.
“I don’t deserve you, Jesse,” I whispered, never knowing anything more true. “There’s nothing I ever could do to deserve you.”
He bent his face into the curve of my neck. “We don’t deserve anything, Rowen. We don’t deserve punishment, we don’t deserve happiness, life owes us nothing. Realize that.” His voice wasn’t gentle anymore; it was as strong as I’d ever heard it. “So we have to take what we want because life sure as shit isn’t going to freely hand it over.” He kissed the skin just above my collar bone. “And I want you.”
I wasn’t sure if his words or his touch affected me more, but everything inside of me, the ice, the walls, the fences, everything I’d built to protect myself crumbled. “I’m a huge failure. But I want to be better. You make me want to be better. I know you might disagree, but I know you deserve better.” Oh, God. I was a runaway train. After years of keeping it all shut inside, it was flooding out of me. “But I love you.” And there it was. Most vulnerable feeling ever. “I love you so much it scares me.”
Jesse didn’t move, and again, he didn’t flinch. He just held me, almost like he knew I needed someone to help keep me together. “Are you done?”
It seemed the flood had come to an end, for the moment, so I nodded.
“Good,” he said, his breath warm against my neck. “Because I love you, too.”
The first tear I’d cried in a long, long time leaked out and rolled down my cheek. I’d associated crying with sadness, so I’d avoided it. I didn’t need tears to remind me of pain. I hadn’t expected them to come with happiness.
Happiness wasn’t exactly the right word, though. No word in my vocabulary bank quite worked. Whatever that emotion was, it was the best damn feeling I’d ever had. I wanted his love more than anyone’s . . . I had it.
I didn’t know how to respond with words, so I used my actions. Twisting in his arms, I looked into the face of the guy I loved. I didn’t wipe away my tears because, right then, I didn’t mind being vulnerable.
“Do I need another invitation if I want to kiss you again?”
“No. You pretty much get to kiss me whenever you want now,” I said, forming my hands over the grooves of his shoulders.
“Good to know.”
Jesse might have been about to say something else, but he’d said everything he needed to. Everything.
He liked the real Rowen Sterling. He even liked the one I pretended to be. My past and all the dark parts of it didn’t matter to him. He loved me.
Oh, yeah. I felt the exact same way about him. In all regards.
Nothing more needed to be said.
My mouth crashed into his and took him by surprise. His shoulders tensed for the shortest moment. It took all of one heartbeat for my lips to melt his. Before long, I was struggling to match Jesse’s force and pace. He kissed me in long, hard pulls, literally leaving me breathless. His skin was hot and his shoulders rolled beneath my hands as his hands explored my body.
He kept to the “safe” areas: my arms, my back, my hips. After a minute of that, I wanted him touching me in the not-so-safe areas. I wanted it so bad, I grabbed his hand from the small of my back and slid it around to my stomach. Weaving my fingers through his, I guided his hand up. Past my navel, over my ribs, until it covered my breast.
Jesse’s shoulders tensed again and his mouth slowed its pace against mine. He didn’t seem uncomfortable, just unsure. His touch was hesitant at first as his hand moved over me. I left my hand over his, encouraging him as his exploration shifted away from hesitancy.