India
He left me.
Asa left me alone with the last person I wanted to come face-to-face with. Reason argues that the hurt throbbing in my chest like a toothache is unreasonable. Any witnesses for this long-time-in-coming confrontation would be awkward as hell for all parties. And it’s not like Jessie is a stranger—well, he didn’t used to be.
But my heart is telling that reason to go screw itself. I need Asa’s quiet, stalwart strength behind me as I stare into my past. As I meet the green gaze and beautiful face of the man I believed would be my future, my forever. I need Asa’s presence that both stirs and calms me.
I need him.
And fuck him for leaving me. Proving once again where I fall on his list of priorities.
If there’s one thing my mother’s death, working two jobs to pay for college, and surviving Jessie’s betrayal has taught me, it’s that I can’t count on anyone but myself. And I’m more than enough.
Squaring my shoulders, I hike my chin up, not flinching from Jessie’s unwavering inspection of me. He’s so… familiar. A pang echoes in my chest. Once, he was my shelter, my safe place. Until he became the storm that ripped away the moorings of my life.
I mourned that more than anything. After Mom died, I lost my security, my rock. And then he came along, and I lowered my guard to trust again, to believe again. And losing him—that haven—thrust me back to when I was sixteen, grieving, disillusioned, and alone.
Now, I’m no longer in that dark place. And I will never allow anyone to drag me there again. Giving someone that kind of control over my heart, my world?
No. Only I can be trusted with that kind of power.
“India.” He shakes his head. “Jesus, I can’t believe you’re here in front of me. That it’s really you.” His emerald gaze roams my face, lingering on my mouth. I wait for the flare of heat, the old desire that used to fill me whenever I was within four feet of him.
But… nothing. Well, it’s not his lips I’m recalling. Not the memory of his kiss that flickers across my mind, that has desire licking at my belly and between my legs. It’s his best friend’s.
Guilt slicks across my chest, and I turn away from Jessie to signal the bartender and order a glass of red wine. Maybe I can get a two-fer, and the alcohol will help wash away the guilt and the memories of Asa’s taste—and the remorse that had darkened his eyes.
Because you’re looking at me like my dick is already filling up that undoubtedly tight as a fucking fist pussy… Your eyes are begging me to push into you until you can’t take anymore. They’re begging me to break you, mold you. And depraved fuck that I am, I want to give it to you.
His filthy, insanely hot words from that night whisper through my head as if he’s standing behind me, uttering them in that gravel-roughened voice, and my sex clenches as if pleading for him to do just what he described. My thighs tremble, and I’m getting wet from the memory alone.
God, how many times have I imagined him pushing, breaking, molding, while I tired my clit out with my hands, my vibrator? Cruel of him to plant that image in my brain and then reject me.
Again.
Hurt and anger mingle with the lust. When am I going to learn when it comes to him? Pathetically, I have no answer. Especially with his best friend, my ex, sitting next to me, his gaze on me. Shit. Only when my glass is set in front of me and the cool, dry wine is sliding down my throat do I return to face Jessie.
“You look well, Jessie,” I say, shoving the words past my constricted throat. “I was sorry to hear about your injury and early retirement. I know how much the game meant to you.”
All true. I didn’t blame football or his love of it for the ending of our relationship. He got caught up in the trappings that came with it. And hadn’t been strong enough to keep his dick in his pants and some random chick’s mouth off it.
“Yeah, it was hard, but with the sportscasting, I can still enjoy it. Just in a different way. Truthfully, India,” he huffed out a low, rough laugh, tunneling his fingers through his dark-blond hair, “after you left, my heart wasn’t in it like it used to be. Knowing I’d allowed it to fuck up what we had—”
“No, Jess,” I interrupted, holding up a hand to stop the excuse hovering on his lips. “The game didn’t fuck us up. You did. Own it.”
“India…”
“No,” I say again, shaking my head. I told myself I was coming over here just to speak, so the cold front that stretched from the table to the bar didn’t leave me with frost bite. To show him and myself that I’m over him, that he no longer possesses any power of me or my feelings. Not to crawl through my past with this man, to resurrect old shit. But the words churn inside me, gaining speed and strength, and they break free like swollen rapids contained behind a steadily splintering dam. Words I didn’t get to say because I’d left this town and him in the dead of night. “The game wasn’t engaged to me. The game didn’t promise to love me, to stay faithful to me. The game wasn’t my best friend, my lover, my everything. You were.”
Pain slashes across his handsome face, and an instinctive apology dances on my tongue. Deliberately hurting him is not my aim, and the part of myself that still recognizes him as the man who once held my heart yearns to comfort him. But I lock that half down.
“I didn’t come over here to rehash our history. Or to throw blame in your face, Jessie. And honestly, I don’t hate you anymore. I let go of that a while ago. For myself. Because I couldn’t start a new life still holding on to the old one.”
“You mean still holding on to me,” he adds, a strain of bitterness threading through his voice.
“Yes.” There’s no point in denying it.
“And what if I wanted you to hold onto me? To us?” he demanded, leaning toward me, that same intensity that used to radiate from him when he played football pinned on me. Who am I kidding? That intensity had been for me, too. As much as I preferred to forget it, when we were together, I used to be on the receiving end of all his focus. And I’d loved it. A faint echo of how much I’d loved it rippled through me now. But not strong enough to make me fall back into the lovely black hole that had been Jessie Reynolds. “You never gave me a chance to make it right. To fix us. One mistake. One, out of the four years we were together. I deserved the chance, baby.”