I bit out, “You fingered me in my room Sunday night and I don’t hear from you for four days. Then you take me to some hole-in-a-shack and fall asleep. What’s going on with you?”

He’d been exhausted before. He was furious now. The air sizzled from tension as he shot back, “Are you kidding me? We don’t have the type of relationship where we hold hands and have deep conversations on the phone. Now you want that? You told Cord you didn’t care that I hadn’t called you. Are you going back on that too?”

I felt slapped in the face, but I growled back, “I didn’t think I cared. I just need to know the rules here.”

“I didn’t think we had rules.”

“We did. We f**ked when we wanted to forget everything else, but that’s not what tonight was.”

He swerved his car to the side of the road and slammed on its brakes. He was out the car and rounding to my side before I could even start to open my door. He wrenched it open and hauled me out with a tight grip on my arm.

I was seething.

He was livid as he rasped out, “What is your problem? I’ve been keeping it cool with you, especially when you’re the one who walked out on me. Remember that? I don’t hear shit from you for almost a year. Ethan’s anniversary—nothing. Then I hear from Cord that you’re at the house and you’re going to school at Grant West. Fuck me in the ass and finger me sideways, huh? Is that what you intend to do for the next three years? I can’t take this crap.”

“You didn’t call me back! I was told that you knew something about Ethan’s accident, then I called and left how many messages and you never called me back!” I shouted back.

His eyes bulged out. “I lost my phone! I would’ve come to you if I had known, but I didn’t. You left me, Alex. It wasn’t the other way around. I didn’t leave you.”

“But you would’ve!”

I gasped as I heard what I said. I hadn’t meant to let it slip. Clamping a hand over my mouth, I twisted away and stumbled to the back of the car. My heart raced and I felt the world pressing against me. I couldn’t believe I had said that. But then I waited…

There was silence.

One.

Long.

Moment.

Of silence.

My eyes were pressed tight and I bent down. Touching my forehead to the cool metal of the Ferrari, I wanted to take it back. I couldn’t. The words were out. He could see into me now. I had exposed myself with those three words.

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.”