Shaking her head, Josie stood, grabbing her purse and first aid kit. “You want a ride home? Now that I’m dateless and covered in your blood, this girl’s Friday night is a wrap.” Josie smiled at me, that same gentle ghost-of-a-smile she’d given me the second day of kindergarten when I realized I was either going to marry her or no one. It took me until the end of the school year to realize I’d never marry Josie Gibson. For all of the reasons I was being reminded of.

Just like that, I dropped the curtain on those memories and the small part of me that didn’t feel permanently hardened. It had become like second nature over the years. I gave Josie a slow, crooked smile. I don’t know why I even gave her that smile anymore. She’d seen through it the first time I’d tried it on her. She was immune, unlike the rest of the girls. “What kind of a ride are you asking about?”

“When you find that guy who had my back instead of plotting for ways to get into my panties, let me know okay?” I was still in my seat, but she gave my chest a solid shove. “I’m sick of being treated like the other girls you’ve banged. I might have made a mistake, but I still deserve your respect. Until you figure that out, I don’t want to be around this new Garth. I’m not so hot on him.” Sweeping her eyes over me, she shot me one last glare before marching toward the door.

“You call the sex we had a mistake? Because the first word that comes to my mind is mind-blowing,” I called after her. I was partly hoping she’d come back and give me one more shove and partly hoping she’d keep on marching. “The kind of sex that makes a man keep his fingers crossed for an encore production.”

That stopped her in her tracks. She spun around, crossed her arms, and lord . . . If I thought I’d seen fire in her eyes before, I’d been wrong. “It wasn’t just a mistake. It was the biggest one of my life. I lost two of my best friends in exchange for the asshole with his nostrils packed with tissue in front of me now.” She didn’t give me the chance to reply before shoving through the door and out of the bar. Which was good, because I didn’t have a fucking clue how to respond.

Garth Black. Brought to his legendary, come-back knees by a few words from Josie’s mouth.

“It looks like you need another shot.” Brandy stopped beside me and slid a glass in front of me.

“No, I don’t need a shot. I need the whole fucking bottle.”

HALF A BOTTLE of whiskey later, I’d closed down the bar. After telling her three times that I didn’t want to pay for my night of drinking with her in the back room, Brandy finally took my money. She called me a name even I wouldn’t dare repeating that close to Sunday and told me to get out and never come back.

I wasn’t planning on it. At least not until next Friday night.

Brandy’s bar was a fifteen-minute drive from my place, but it took a little longer since I probably had about as much alcohol in my bloodstream as I did white blood cells. The general consensus was that a person shouldn’t get behind a steering wheel after drinking a bottle—or was it closer to two?—of whiskey, but I had a tolerance that would put the Irish to shame. I wasn’t seeing double, my vision wasn’t blurred, and my reflexes weren’t sluggish. I was good.

Of course, if I got pulled over and tested, I’d be up shit creek without a paddle. The one and only positive thing about having Clay Black as a father was that the cops and the law gave us both a wide berth. The cops had had enough experience with my dad to know they didn’t want a repeat, so they turned a blind eye on our minor law breaking and basically forgot the two Black men were part of their jurisdiction.

I’d lost count of how many times that unsaid agreement had kept me out of jail.

About the time I turned down the overgrown drive leading back to the trailer, the alcohol had worn off just enough that thoughts of Josie were returning. Well, they were flooding back. Whatever curtain I’d dropped, whatever dam I’d built, whatever I’d constructed to keep her out of the forefront of my mind crumbled. I was swimming in thoughts of her. The way she’d chewed her lip as she doctored my face. The way she looked at me with disappointment on her whole face before walking out. The way she’d felt that night a couple years back.

After pounding the steering wheel with my palm, I slapped both of my cheeks. Josie Gibson was off limits, and if I kept thinking about her, I would have to find someone who could remove the part of my brain that kept long-term memory in good working order. So what did my mind go and skip to after issuing that ultimatum?

The last day of kindergarten. The bus had just picked me up, and I was furiously wiping my nose with my sleeve, hoping my nose would stop bleeding before my sleeve got soaked through. I’d accidentally woken Clay when I’d been checking the cupboards for something that could constitute breakfast. I’d finally settled on a dry package of ramen noodles. My punishment for rousing the sleeping bear had been the backside of his hand across my face. It had caused a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop.

The bus driver barely noticed. He’d grown accustomed to my bloody noses and swollen lips, along with the rest of the kids on the bus. For some reason, that morning, someone noticed and scooted into the seat next to me.

“Here. Use this.” Josie, complete with her pigtails, had pulled a napkin out of her lunchbox and held it out for me. A note was written on the napkin, along with a few hearts. At the end, it said, Love, Mom.

“I’m not using your special note to wipe my blood off,” I’d said, trying to will my nose to stop bleeding.

“It’s okay. She leaves me one every day in my lunch.” Josie’d shrugged, holding the napkin out for me again.

I remember being shocked, floored by the fact that Josie had someone who loved her so damn much that not only did they pack her a lunch every day, but they actually took the time to write a note on the napkin. I wasn’t familiar with that kind of love. It was a kind I didn’t even know existed. That day, Josie had opened my eyes to the realization that love wasn’t just a bullshit concept. To some people, it was so much more than circumstance and disappointment.

After the napkin had remained in her hand for a few more seconds, she lowered it to my face, holding it just below my nose. When my hand replaced hers over the napkin, she leaned in and kissed my cheek.

“What was that for?” I’d demanded, so shocked I almost leapt out of my skin. That had been my first kiss, at least the first one I could remember, and not the romantic kind a person means when referring to a “first kiss.” My mom had been gone for too long to remember if she’d ever kissed me, and the only affection my dad showed me was slowing his fist just before it landed on me. It was the first time I’d ever been kissed, and even though I was only six years old and I had a lot of life still ahead of me, I knew no matter who or how I was kissed in the future, nothing would compare to that one on the bus.

None never had.

“It looked like you needed one,” she’d replied before moving back to her seat up front.

Slamming the brakes, I pounded my forehead against the steering wheel. “Fuck me.” I’d turned into the bleeding heart, nostalgic chump I’d had nightmares of becoming. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d managed to repress all of those memories and feelings for so many years I’d almost convinced myself I’d forgotten them. Boy, had I been wrong.

So why now? Why those memories? Why couldn’t I contain and control them? The longer I thought about it, the more questions cropped up. Loads of questions, zero answers. If Jesse wasn’t two states over, I might have raced to his place and forced his ass out of bed to keep me company and get my thoughts off their current track. But no, the pussy-whipped sucker was probably cuddled up beside his girlfriend—correction: fiancé—having pussy-whipped sucker dreams about white picket fences and honeymoon destinations. As much as I wanted to tell him he was making the biggest mistake of his life marrying Rowen Sterling, I couldn’t. Marrying the woman he loved at twenty-one wasn’t a mistake for a guy like Jesse Walker. Shit, Jesse could have married the woman he loved at any age and it wouldn’t have been a mistake. Jesse was the marrying, loyal, loving type.