Was he being purposefully obtuse? The night was suddenly still, a calm before the storm, but Betsy wanted the storm. She needed it more than her next breath. “Would I make you happy?”

“Jesus, Bets.”

That was not the response she’d been looking for, but she forged ahead. “What I wanted to tell you is that I’m in love with you.”

He propped himself up on his elbow and he studied her a moment before he spoke. “I know you think you feel these things, but it’s only because I’m going away. You’re scared because things are changing, and that’s okay. I may be leaving here, but I’m not leaving you.”

“Things have already changed, Jack. I will admit that I’m scared, but it made me realize I want to spend every day with you. Every night.”

His face was unreadable. “You don’t know what you’re saying, what you’re asking for.”

He was determined to be the good guy. She’d known this part would be difficult, but that was part of why she loved him. Even if she had to work harder to get what she wanted—happily ever after with Jack McConnell. “Don’t I?”

Being bold was easier now that she’d already said she loved him. Betsy looped her arm around his neck and pulled him down to her. She tilted her mouth up to kiss him, and as soon as their lips met, lightning coursed through her veins and she swore that for the briefest millisecond, the spark between them stopped her heart.

His kiss was everything she’d hoped it would be. Strong and sure, but passionate and tender. She knew the stars burned brighter and hotter because she could see supernovas behind her eyes.

He became the aggressor, shifting his hard body on top of hers, his fingers tangled in her hair. Betsy loved that he was touching her, but she wanted him to touch her everywhere. Not just her hair. The fire of her need burned her from the inside out.

This was sheer bliss and just as she’d imagined, she committed every sensation to memory. The exploding stars, the scent of him, the texture of his shirt under her palms and the taste of the cordial on his mouth, which was more potent than she could’ve imagined. They’d drink this at their wedding.

His hands wandered down to her hips and slid beneath her dress and up her thigh. Betsy couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think; she could only feel. He broke the kiss, his mouth trailing down the column of her throat.

This was actually happening. “Yes, Jack. Please,” she urged.

He stopped all the delicious things he was doing and stared at her as if she’d morphed into a two-headed dog.

“Betsy! I’m so sorry.” He scrambled away from her, his breathing ragged.

“Don’t you dare be sorry!” Betsy straightened herself. “I have my own brain, which works just fine, and a mouth to say what I do and do not want.”

“You’re only sixteen.”

“I’m not a kid anymore, Jack. I may be a young woman, but I am a woman.”

“I’m not talking about your body. I’m talking about your life. Your experiences.”

“So give me some,” she blurted.

He closed his eyes, his jaw clenched. “You can’t say things like that. Someone will take advantage of you.”

“Obviously not.” She eyed him expectantly and all of her bravado melted away as that tiny voice whispered doubts in her head. “Unless you don’t, you’re not...” She pursed her lips and shook her head, unable to finish asking if he wasn’t attracted to her.

“You’re beautiful, sweet thing. Your letters during basic and BUDs kept me sane.” Jack paused. “I’ll admit I thought about you more than I should have. In ways I shouldn’t have. But, Betsy, you’re Caleb’s little sister and where I’m going, I can’t put that life on you.”

Betsy accepted what he said, but it wasn’t surrender. Fate didn’t make mistakes. She grabbed his hand. “Then I’ll wait for you. Just promise you’ll always come home no matter what it takes.”

He took off the tags from around his neck and pressed the warm metal into her hand. “I promise.”

She knew there was nothing else to say then but goodbye.

They drove to the station in silence, and when it was time for him to board, Betsy gave him a fierce hug.

Rather than tell him she loved him again, she whispered in his ear, “Don’t forget your promise.”

“I won’t.” He brushed his lips lightly over the crown of her head and boarded the bus without looking back.

Betsy stood alone in the pale, sodium light of the station with his dog tags clutched in her fingers and kept her own promise. She didn’t cry until the bus was gone.

* * *

THAT WAS THE last time she’d seen him, before todday.

Now he was back and her stupid heart didn’t understand how much things had changed. How much he’d changed.

Betsy knew the only way this could end was badly—that was one thing her heart did understand.

And it didn’t care.

CHAPTER FOUR

JACK COULDN’T FACE HER after what had happened.

He’d been so weak, so powerless, so broken. His failure had been splayed wide in front of her like an autopsy, but she hadn’t turned away from him, which was worse somehow. Maybe because it was obvious she thought he could be fixed.

But some things, once broken, couldn’t be pieced back together—parts were missing.

Like Jack. He wasn’t whole, and he never would be.

Despite what had happened last night, he had to face her again, if only to make her take that check. Jack knew he owed her, and the money was the only thing he had to give.

A small voice reminded him that wasn’t quite the truth. He had his wreck of a body, and if her kiss was any indication, she seemed to want it. She couldn’t look at his face, but she’d pressed herself up against him, her sweet, lush curves so inviting.

He knew she was still in love with the idea of him, still wanted the golden boy he’d been when he left. Maybe that was what she needed—the ugly truth to crush the fantasy.

So maybe she’d let him go. The fire in her eyes, the determination...

Now he was lying to himself. He wanted Betsy, and as far as he’d fallen, if she’d have him, he wouldn’t be able to say no. Touching her was bittersweet because it was the only time he could feel anything more than pain.

He eyed the whiskey bottle on the table, and when he would have reached for it, he stopped. Next to it was the envelope that held Betsy’s check, and it sat there like an accusation.

Jack swore and picked up the envelope instead of the bottle. He’d need it when he got home anyway.

It occurred to him that rather than see her again, the embodiment of the life that was lost to him, he could simply give it to Betsy’s mother and leave. He’d promised Betsy he’d come back, and so he had. Their accounts would be as even as they ever could be.

Yes, he’d leave before he shattered the image of the hero she believed him to be, and the heart of the girl who’d loved the man he’d been.

His decision made, he grabbed the envelope and headed to his car. Driving with the prosthesis wasn’t a challenge, and he knew that he’d fared better than most with the cutting-edge technology of the endo/exo implant—the titanium mesh implanted in his femur having actually become part of him. He’d had less downtime, fewer struggles, and logic told him that he had a lot to be grateful for.

But logic wasn’t there with him in the dark. It should have been; he’d been a SEAL—the best of the best. He stared death in the face and dared it to come take whatever it thought it could, and yet, when the flames came and he could smell the stench of his own burning flesh in his nose— He pushed the thoughts away, unwilling to face his cowardice.

When the house came into view, a sickening wave of nostalgia washed over him and turned his stomach. He remembered every night he’d spent in that house. The tree house at the back of the property where he and Caleb had hidden out from India when she was on a tear, his first real kiss in the closet in the downstairs family room during a middle school party, and Lula Lewis’s fried chicken on a Friday night after a home football game.

The house lived and breathed with memories that were better left undisturbed.

A sudden dread hit him. As if, if he took those last few feet, everything would change, but that was stupid. There was nothing behind door number one that could change what he’d come to do—what he had to do.

He moved forward, one foot in front of the other.

The brightly painted red door opened, and rather than Lula, it was Betsy standing there.

Her features were drawn and tight, some heavy burden tugging her shoulders down, the corners of her mouth, and the weight extinguished the light in her eyes.

Seeing her like that tore at him with sharp claws. That was exactly what he feared he’d do to her. He realized Betsy wasn’t the only one attached to an ideal. Jack needed to believe nothing could touch her, that she was safe from all the bad things in the world. Especially him.

“I came to give you this.” He thrust the envelope at her.

She drew her gaze up slowly, her regard burning him through to his bones. Suddenly he felt even worse about offering her the check than he did not reading her letters. She hadn’t said anything, hadn’t been angry, but it was all there in the pools of her eyes. The acknowledgment of everything he hadn’t wanted to say to her, but somehow she knew.

“I don’t want your money.” Betsy turned away from him, but he grabbed her wrist.

Jack found himself watching the scene from a place outside time. A place where his rational mind could protest what his body wanted and no one would hear it. Instead of releasing her when she turned, he pulled her into his arms.

She came to him easily, all soft sweetness. Betsy clung to him like a life raft in a hurricane—and he thought the description apt because he was ravaged by the storm the same as she was.

Touching her felt as if all of his nerve endings were on fire at once when before, they’d been numb. It was pain, it was bliss. It was everything he wanted and everything he feared.

If he could feel all of this from a simple embrace, what would it be like if he kissed her again?

The moment hung between them, gravid with everything they’d left unsaid and undone. The weight of a semi crushed down on his sternum, and the envelope burned his fingers.

She pulled away from him slowly as if moving through water. Betsy slipped her hand into his. She led him inside and toward the stairs.

Toward her bedroom.

Toward something he knew was wrong but wanted more than his next breath.

If he’d taken her that night under the stars with whispers of love and blackberry cordial on her breath, it would have been more forgivable than what he was about to do.

She pushed the bedroom door open silently and he followed behind her.

The room was still pink, her sheets still white, just as they’d been when she was a girl, but all of the pictures and posters had been taken down and there were boxes stacked in the corner. Two lone pictures had been stuck to the mirror. One of Betsy with two friends with the Statue of Liberty in the background, and one of Betsy with a man. They were standing behind an array of pastries, both of them with a certain glow to their cheeks. Accomplishment. Camaraderie. Something else Jack didn’t want to name.

Betsy reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck again and he looked away from those pictures of another life, turned his mind away from the questions that bubbled up inside him. If he spoke, he knew the spell over them would shatter.

It was the right thing to do, to stop this before it went any further, but Jack was tired of the right thing.

Even though it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her she didn’t want this with him and all of the reasons why:

That he was broken.

That he was ugly inside and out.

That he had nothing to give her.

That even these moments would only be a hungry shadow of what she deserved.

He said none of them. Instead he kissed her. Jack crushed his mouth to hers and he wasn’t sure if it was because he needed to taste her again or if he was punishing them both.

Her for making him feel, making him want, and himself for not being able to deny the pull between them.

She melted under the onslaught, her body molding against his. There was no shy confession from her, no demure invitation like before. She was bold, her hands moving under his shirt, over his chest, his shoulders, his back.

While scarred, he knew that part of him was well made and pleasing. He was strong; he had to be to lift himself. He could lift her, too. Jack remembered that was something Betsy had always liked, to be picked up. To be shown that her curves weren’t too much for a guy to handle. To be reassured that petite wasn’t the only definition of sexy.

When he would have hauled her up and wrapped her legs around his waist, she was too busy tearing his T-shirt off him, her fingers on the button fly of his jeans.

Stark terror coursed through him and he stumbled away from her.

Because she’d see. The ugliness would be right there in her face. There was no hiding it under a pant leg; there was no pretending he was whole.

What the hell had he been thinking? It was the middle of the day, the sun high overhead, and there was no darkness for him to hide in, no shadows.

His dick withered at the thought. He couldn’t let her see.

Yet his eyes were drawn to her mouth, the rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to catch her breath.

She still didn’t speak but turned her back to him and pushed her hair to the side, exposing the zipper on the back of her dress. Betsy stepped out of her vintage shoes and nudged them out of the way with a stocking-covered foot.

Everything about her was seductive, every gesture and every breath.

Against his will, he found himself drifting toward her, his hands on her zipper, sliding it down the length of her back. He drank in the sight of her creamy skin, her bra and panties a splash of delicate pink lace against perfection.

He pulled her back against him hesitantly, his arm around her waist, and fastened his lips to the swan arch of her neck. Even her skin tasted sweet. If he thought he was broken before, Jack knew she was going to wreck him.

He could still stop. He could pull away from her; he could—

Betsy drew his hand up from her waist to cup her breast. He could do none of those things because he was lost in the undertow. Instead of drowning in the dark, he was drowning in her, in the inky black waves of her hair, in her creamy skin. He never wanted to surface; he wanted to fill himself up with her until there was nothing but Betsy.

She was warm, safe—she was all things good.

Until she tried to turn in his arms again.

“I don’t want you to see,” he confessed in a harsh whisper, sure that the spoken words would rip like daggers through the haze of need over them.

Betsy turned anyway and for a moment, he thought there would be pity on her face, but there wasn’t. Her dark eyes were half-lidded, her lips swollen from his kisses, and she was the embodiment of desire.

“There’s so much you don’t want, Jack. Tell me, what is it that you do want?”

“To stay lost in you,” he answered honestly. “But I haven’t touched a woman in two years.”

“What about yourself? Have you touched yourself?”

“Bets—” He was torn between being even more turned on that she asked, that she thought of him like that, and the shame that he hadn’t had the desire since his injury. He couldn’t stand to look at himself, let alone bring himself pleasure.

And the whiskey...he was surprised he could maintain an erection.

“This isn’t going to be good for you.” Another confession torn from him. He meant for more than the here and now, more than just fleeting bliss he might have been able to offer once upon a time, all those years ago.

Her hands slid down to his button fly again. “Yes, it will. You’re good at everything. You’re Jack McConnell.”

When her fingers closed over his length, he still had his doubts. “This is going to be over before it starts.”

“And yet it still will have happened.” She tilted her face up to his and feathered another kiss across his mouth. It was nothing like his cruel mastery, but it punished him all the same.

“Why do you want it to?” He breathed against her lips.

“Because if all we have is ashes, we should at least get to burn in the fire.”

He could understand that, process it. Her words made much more sense than the idea that she actually wanted him. He didn’t know where things had gone wrong for her, but obviously they had if all she had to do on a Sunday afternoon was him.

She was right. They both wanted this and it didn’t matter that he wasn’t whole, that he couldn’t spend hours worshipping her body, bringing her off time and again, even though he wished he could. This was about the moment, about burning to nothing. About feeling something more than pain.

For all that he thought she didn’t understand, with that simple sentence, he knew that she did.

If she could lose herself in him the same way he could be lost in her, he could give her that.

He tangled a hand in her hair and surrendered.

* * *

BETSY DECIDED THAT was nothing compared to what it was like to have his hands on her body, his mouth on hers, and the sure knowledge that she’d finally experience this with him. It was the culmination of a fantasy, of a schoolgirl crush, but it was something more, too.

This joining was a haven against everything wrong in the world, against all their shattered dreams.

It was only right that the first time would happen in this room where she’d spent so many hours dreaming of him. Of course, when she’d imagined giving herself to him, it was all fey bubbles and breathy sighs. He’d been kind and patient in her fantasies—gentle and tender.

The reality was nothing even close to that. His hands were rough and calloused, his kisses were more like a battle than a seduction, but it was still everything she wanted because it was real.

She angled him back on the bed, still stroking him. Betsy didn’t want him to think about anything other than how good this felt.

Part of her was still afraid he’d try to be noble or maybe that he just didn’t want her. Even with the hard evidence of desire in front of her, that fear was still present that he’d said no all those years before and used her age, her brother, his nobility as an excuse so he didn’t have to tell her that her stomach wasn’t flat enough, her face not pretty enough...

Marcel’s face bloomed like a rancid flower in her mind. You could be so lovely if—

No. She wouldn’t do this to herself.

“It’s okay if you changed your mind.” His voice was ragged and low, as if every word cost him something vital to speak.

Betsy realized she’d stopped her caress and was leaning over him with his jeans halfway down his hips. Low enough to reveal only what he wanted to share, but would still hide what he didn’t want her to see.

He thought that was why she’d stopped. Nothing could be further from the truth—it was only her own insecurities, but she was determined to face them.

“Just a bad memory.”

“Then I’ll give you a better one.” He slipped the straps of her bra down her shoulders and made quick work of the thing, discarding it on the floor. Her panties were next and she shivered with anticipation.

When she straightened to step out of the lace, she reached into the nightstand to grab a condom but found her fingers closing over his dog tags. Betsy didn’t want him to know that she still had them, and she snapped the drawer shut as soon as she found the foil packet. They’d been there for a few years, the condoms. She’d stolen them from Caleb’s room in hope that some day, she’d be exactly in this position. Alone with Jack, and he’d want her.

Even though they were here in this room, in this tribute to days gone past, the tags belonged to the man who’d left. She knew they didn’t belong to the man in front of her, and she didn’t want him to doubt that she did.

He took it from her but dropped it on the bed next to him. “Oh no, sweetheart. Not yet. You can’t burn with only kindling.”

The expression on his face was familiar, the look he always wore when he met a challenge he was sure he’d defeat. From silly bets to when he told her he was going to be a SEAL.

To have all of that intensity focused on her made her bite her lip.

“You did say you wanted to burn, didn’t you?”

She nodded, breathless.

“Then come here.”

Betsy leaned into him, suddenly shy. When she’d been pursuing him, it gave her focus and made her forget everything but the goal. Now the goal was in sight and she was afraid to reach for it. She wanted to hide from him and her own desire.

His arms closed around her waist and he dragged his stubbled cheek across her skin. She shivered again and pushed her fingers through his close-cropped hair. He turned his face into her and kissed the soft curve of her stomach.

“I haven’t been able to taste anything, Bets. Not for so long.” His tongue darted out against her flesh. “Except your skin. Your mouth. You taste as good as you smell.” Jack’s hands wandered the curve of her hip, the dip at the base of her spine, the round globes of her bottom. “And I can’t help wondering if you taste as good everywhere.”

His words sent shudders through her body and she clenched, imagining what it would be like to be tasted everywhere.

“Show me,” he said as he leaned back on the bed and dragged her with him. Jack splayed his hands on the backs of her thighs and pulled her forward.

She obliged him, sliding up his body until her knees were positioned on the outside of his shoulders. Betsy felt vulnerable, exposed, and she kept waiting for him to say something about needing to adjust their position because of her weight, but he didn’t.

He didn’t say anything at all.

Jack tightened his grip and anchored her against him, his mouth too busy to form words.

At the first caress, Betsy cried out and fisted the duvet. A myriad of sensations bombarded her. The intimacy of their position, the feel of his tongue curving around her swollen nub, and the sure knowledge that all of her fears had been for naught because he loved this. If there was one thing Betsy understood, it was the palate. No one could use their mouth so diligently if it wasn’t the most decadent of delights.

His touch sent her spiraling higher and higher until she was up in the stratosphere with no way down and begging for more anyway. She fought the sensation he wrought in her until she was mindless with bliss. Something hot and sharp exploded into thunder and lightning through her veins, and that ecstasy shot through her body.

But he wasn’t done. While she shuddered and quaked, the rip of the foil was a distant sound. He maneuvered her easily with his great strength, shifting her down his torso until she was positioned over him, his erection poised at her channel.

Jack pulled her down so that his lips were a breath from hers. “You were sweeter than I ever could’ve imagined. And believe me, Betsy, I imagined it time and time again.” He kissed her hard and gave her no time to process his words, his actions.

All she could do was feel.

Then he was inside her, and even though she was on top of him, he was still very much in charge of their encounter. He set the pace by rolling her hips to meet his thrusts, moving her as he would.

Nothing had ever felt this good. Not getting accepted to the institute, not getting out of this town, and not even her first time with Marcel. Only this.

The aftershocks of her orgasm still ricocheted through her even as he continued.

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