Jesse inhaled slowly and exhaled slowly. “You’re pushing me away again, Rowen. You’re hurting me.” Jesse waited for me to look at him. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t.
I did.
“Who does that sound like in your life? Who’s pushed you away and hurt you? Who’s done everything she can to keep you at arm’s length?” he asked, his voice calm.
I had my answer instantly, but I sealed my lips and shook my head. I swiped a tear. I didn’t like what he was getting at and I didn’t like the comparison he was drawing.
Jesse nodded, accepting I wouldn’t answer his question verbally. “What we’ve been denied is what we deny others. But why? Why do we fall into the same patterns of those people we always swore we’d never be like?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I inserted, wiping my eyes with the back of my arm. “Life sucks.”
Jesse kept going. “We will all, at some point in our lives, fall. Every single one of us.” He hoisted himself up beside me and moved closer. “We shouldn't spend our time trying to avoid falling. We should spend it finding someone who will help us up.”
When he lifted his hands toward my face, I backed away. “I just need to be alone right now.” I crossed my arms and closed myself off.
“No, you don’t,” he said, coming toward me again. “You need to be with someone who loves you.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” I almost shouted. “You don’t have any clue what I’ve been through.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” His calm and reassuring tone grated on me. I wanted him to get angry. I wanted him to enter into a screaming match with me to make it easier. “But I know I love you and I’m living proof that your past doesn’t have to define you.”
I sighed and headed for the stall door. “And I’m living proof that it generally does.”
Jesse moved in front of me. “Don’t do this, Rowen. Don’t push me away.”
“I’m not, Jesse,” I said, giving him a cool look. “I’m walking away.”
When I made another move toward the door, he let me by. Walking away from Jesse was the hardest thing I’d done. I also knew it would be the hardest thing I ever would do.
Chapter Eighteen
It was raining, storming, when I rushed out of the barn. Big, fat raindrops drenched me by the time I’d sprinted into the house. When I shoved through the back door and into the kitchen, I found the dinner and whatever mess Jesse and Pierce’s brawl had created.
Rose was at the sink, in her terry cloth bathrobe, drying the last dish.
I thought everyone would have been asleep. It was late, but I should have known Rose would stall, wait for me to finish with “my moment.” I was cold and wet, but I was thankful for it. The rain coating my face disguised the tears.
I wanted to head to my room so badly. I couldn’t talk anymore. A wound I’d been so sure was close to healing had been ripped open that night. Not only that, I knew I’d just given myself another one. Jesse Walker was the kind of wound a girl could never recover from.
Rose placed the platter she’d been drying on the counter and came toward me with her arms opened. I shot a quick glance at the stairs again, wishing I could escape up them.
Then Rose’s tiny arms folded me up into a big hug, and there was nowhere else I’d rather have been.
“I love you, sweetheart,” she said after a while. “We all love you. You are loved.” She smiled up at me through the tears trailing down her cheeks. “Don’t let anyone else, most of all yourself, tell you you’re not.”
She was crying. I was crying. I’d never cried as much in my entire life as I’d cried that summer.
Giving me a moment to let that set in, she rubbed my arms, then let me go. Rose had a sixth sense about what I needed without having to even ask. She knew when I needed a hug, when I needed to be left alone, and when I just needed to think.
That sixth sense made sense. She’d been through it all before. She’d figured it out with Jesse first.
As much as I wanted to sprint up those stairs, I couldn’t. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. Exhausted in the way that sleep wouldn’t cure.
Once I was inside my room, I peeled my wet dress off and changed into a pair of leggings and that old tee of Jesse’s that had become my favorite sleep shirt. I made sure my window was closed and locked before I tucked myself into bed.
It was the first night I’d kept my window closed since I’d climbed up into Jesse’s room. I never thought I could cry as much as I did over a window, but my sobs ripped through me so long and so hard that, after a while, they rocked me to sleep.
A CLAP OF thunder shaking the farmhouse jolted me awake. It was still dark and my eyes still felt puffy, so I knew it couldn’t have been all that long since I’d fallen asleep. After fumbling around for my phone, I saw it was just past midnight.
Another crack, that one shaking the house even more, and I instinctively reached for the space beside me on the bed.
I found . . . nothing. Just an empty space and a cool to the touch sheet.
Jesse wasn’t lying beside me. He wasn’t here to wrap me up in his arms, whisper in his sleepy voice that everything was all right, followed by a yawn, before we fell back asleep.
Jesse was gone because I’d pushed him away. Like I always knew I would. Like I knew I had to. For reasons I couldn’t quite remember in my sleep stupor, but for reasons that had seemed important earlier.