“Of course not. I’d trust you with my life, Rowen. I trust you implicitly.” His forehead wrinkled, too. “I didn’t tell you right away so you could get to know me, who I am now, before I told you who I was then. I wanted you to know my present before you knew my past. I wanted to know that if you chose to be with me, it was because you loved me. Not because you pitied me.”

I wiped my eyes before the tears forming could fall. “Are you ashamed of it?”

Jesse leaned forward. “No, just the opposite. I’m proud that Dad and Mom saw something in me I didn’t, and they believed in me.” He looked down at where our hands were entwined. He stared for so long, I wondered if he saw something in them I didn’t. “I just don’t see how it’s relevant for every person I come in contact with to know I was adopted. It’s my past. Yeah, I had a rough go of life. But I buried it six feet deep, made my peace with it, and moved on. I’m not going to let my past ruin my future.”

He buried it, made peace with it, and moved on. Could I ever do the same?

Right then, after everything that had happened, it didn’t seem so likely.

“And you had questions?” I asked.

He nodded and his eyes returned to mine. “I had so many damn questions I didn’t know what to do with all of them, but I stopped looking for answers that never wanted to be found and moved on. When the Walkers walked into that adoption agency, they took a huge chance on a troubled boy who likely would have turned into a violent teen. I wasn’t going to repay them for taking that chance by living up to what everyone thought I’d turn into.” He lifted our hands to his mouth and brushed his lips over my knuckles. “You and I are not so different, after all.”

And that was where he was so very wrong.

“Jesse, don’t you see?” I said, my voice high. “Our stories might have started out the same, but that’s the only similarity. You took a bad situation and turned yourself into the person you are today.” I paused just long enough to catch my breath. “I took a bad situation and let it define me.”

Jesse combed his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “No, you took a bad situation, let it define you for a while, and then you decided to overcome it.” He formed his hand over my cheek. “It just took you a little longer than me.”

I wanted to believe that. God, I would have given anything to believe that. But I couldn’t believe a lie. I couldn’t betray myself by accepting a lie.

“That’s the most sugar-coated version of a half-truth I’ve ever heard,” I said, my voice elevating. “Beneath this ‘reformed’ girl you fell in love with is the screwed-up girl I’ve been my whole life. A girl who will always be, no matter how you try to put it, screwed up.” I made myself look away from his eyes. It made what I had to do easier. “A girl with my past doesn’t deserve a guy with your future, Jesse.”

“Oh please,” Jesse said, hanging his head back. “Get over the I deserve this and I don’t deserve this crap and start choosing what’s healthy for you. How about being honest with yourself as to what you want? Because maybe you can have it.” Jesse’s voice had gone up, too. We were both past the point of keeping our cool.

“Healthy? Honest?” I popped up because I couldn’t stay seated any longer. “So easy for you to say. You’re the one living a charmed life with a family who loves you, not the one who will have no one, no one, after this summer! So don’t lecture me on what’s healthy!”

Jesse inhaled slowly and exhaled slowly. “You’re pushing me away again, Rowen. You’re hurting me.” Jesse waited for me to look at him. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t.

I did.

“Who does that sound like in your life? Who’s pushed you away and hurt you? Who’s done everything she can to keep you at arm’s length?” he asked, his voice calm.

I had my answer instantly, but I sealed my lips and shook my head. I swiped a tear. I didn’t like what he was getting at and I didn’t like the comparison he was drawing.

Jesse nodded, accepting I wouldn’t answer his question verbally. “What we’ve been denied is what we deny others. But why? Why do we fall into the same patterns of those people we always swore we’d never be like?”

“Haven’t you heard?” I inserted, wiping my eyes with the back of my arm. “Life sucks.”

Jesse kept going. “We will all, at some point in our lives, fall. Every single one of us.” He hoisted himself up beside me and moved closer. “We shouldn't spend our time trying to avoid falling. We should spend it finding someone who will help us up.”

When he lifted his hands toward my face, I backed away. “I just need to be alone right now.” I crossed my arms and closed myself off.

“No, you don’t,” he said, coming toward me again. “You need to be with someone who loves you.”

“Don’t tell me what I need,” I almost shouted. “You don’t have any clue what I’ve been through.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” His calm and reassuring tone grated on me. I wanted him to get angry. I wanted him to enter into a screaming match with me to make it easier. “But I know I love you and I’m living proof that your past doesn’t have to define you.”

I sighed and headed for the stall door. “And I’m living proof that it generally does.”

Jesse moved 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.