“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.