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.
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.
I tried lying back down. That lasted for all of two seconds before it became clear I couldn’t fall back asleep with the thoughts raging through my mind.
How could I let Jesse go? How could I let the Walkers go? How could I simply cut the best things in my life loose? Would I really walk away because things got hard? Would I really push the people who loved me away because they’d gotten too close?