slow, measured step toward me. “Where did you hear that?”
“It doesn’t matter where I heard it from. I want to know if it’s true. Did you get into a fight at a bar and nearly beat a man to death?”
His throat worked on a thick swallow, the gray eyes growing desolate as he relied on a gruff whisper. “Yes.”
“And that’s why you left. Because Daddy pulled some strings and made the Army an option over prison time?”
“Shane, you have to believe me,” he started desperately, holding his hands out as he moved closer, like he was afraid I’d spook and take off running. “I’m not that guy, I would never—”
I took a step back from him, unwilling to let him touch me. “I know that, you idiot!” I shouted so loudly I could have sworn the glass all around me rattled.
Jensen rocked back on one foot in shock. “Y-you do?”
“Of course I do! I spent more than four years with you. I slept beside you. I had a kid with you! You think I didn’t know the kind of man you were back then?”
“Then . . . if you aren’t scared of me, why are you so upset? Why’d you just move away from me?”
I threw my arms out wide. “Because I’m pissed! You took five years away from me, away from us, when all you had to do was tell me the truth!”
“Okay, I gotta say, that is not the reaction I expected,” I heard one of the guys say from behind me. I jerked my head around and glared at both of them.
“You two can feel free to fuck off at any time.”
“Christ,” Gage grunted. “They’re perfect for each other.”
Before I had a chance to let them have it, Jensen grabbed my arm and started pulling me toward the room he’d just come out of. “You guys are a fuckin’ pain in my ass,” he growled at his friends. “Go do some work.”
As soon as we cleared the threshold, he slammed the door closed and spun me around, backing me up against it and caging me in with his hands on either side of my head. “Sunshine, if you’ll just give me a chance to explain—”
I scoffed, giving his massive chest a shove and ducking under his arm so I could move across the office, putting some much-needed space between us. “A chance to explain what? Why you didn’t trust me with the truth all those years ago? Is that what you want to explain, because I’m all ears.” I crossed my arms and cocked my hip out, closing myself off to an approach with that one move.
“I was scared, Shane. I’d busted my ass to prove to you that I’d changed, and in a handful of minutes, I destroyed all of that.”
“Stop,” I said, lifting a hand to cut him off. “I don’t want to hear your self-loathing. I want the truth,” I demanded. “All of it. Tell me everything right now, Jensen, or I’m walking out that door and this”—I waved my hand in the space between us—“us, it’s over in a way there’s no coming back from, ever.”
He cleared his throat and reached up to massage the back of his neck. It would have easily endeared me to him to see him so nervous if I wasn’t heartbroken and infuriated all at the same time.
“Do you remember that day, when I came home in such a bad mood?”
“Of course I remember,” I clipped. “It’s been burned into my brain for years.”
He nodded, looking completely crestfallen as he said, “Well, I was in that mood because my father had come by the garage earlier that day to let me know what a piece of shit I was, and that I’d never be able to give you and our baby a good life. I shouldn’t have let him get to me. I should have talked to you. Fuck, I should have done a lot of things different, but I didn’t. I came home and took it out on you.
“After you and I got in that fight and you left, I went for a drive and ended up at some shithole bar outside of town. I was fucking trashed and pissed off at myself for how I’d treated you, so when this guy bumped into me, I started talking shit. I kept at him until he took the first swing. He might have been the one to throw the first punch, but I was the one who started