This isn’t about me. Not everything is about me.
I need to find Jesse. Talking to him feels more urgent than ever. The thought of him hurt is turning my insides into knots.
“How can I help you?” says the guy behind the desk, who’s multitasking with the phone receiver held between his ear and shoulder, typing something on the computer and looking at me in the friendly yet dazed way of someone about to tear at the seams.
“I’m looking for Jesse Lee. He came in…” I gasp, because from the corner of my eye I see the exact person I’m looking for coming out of an office.
I’m sure it’s him, tall and broad-shouldered, his full lips set in a flat line, those stunning eyes dull.
Then he turns, and I stifle a gasp as I move toward him. He looks terrible, his jaw swollen, one eye black and swollen shut, dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
He’s beautiful.
“Embers,” he whispers, his voice choked, and it breaks me out of my trance. “You came.”
I want to ask a million questions—what happened? Who hurt you? Are you okay?—but I don’t. Not when he looks so utterly shattered. His eyes are suspiciously bright, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought Jesse Lee is holding back tears.
So I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him. He hisses and flinches, and I belatedly realize he’s also hurt in places I don’t see, but when I try to pull back, he holds on to me and won’t let go.
As if we aren’t standing in the middle of the waiting room, with dozens of people milling around us. As if we are alone and the world has ceased to exist outside of him and me.
“I believe you,” I say against his chest, inhaling his scent of cinnamon and smoke and musk, sighing in pleasure. Under my arms, under my hands, he is as I remembered—no, better than I remembered, strong and good and real. “About Cassie at the wedding. About everything you have told me. I trust you.”
He groans as if my words are burning him, but he nuzzles my hair, peppers my forehead with tiny kisses, murmurs my name.
When he lets go at last, I look up at him.
“You’re all I want,” he says, his heart in his eyes. “Other girls don’t matter. It’s only you.”
“Why?” I ask, the word leaving my mouth before I can rein it in.
“Because you haven’t given up on me. Because you’re here, trusting me although everyone says I’m not to be trusted. Because you’re the prettiest girl in the world. And because…” He sighs. “I’ve never felt this way before.”
What way? I open my mouth to ask, but it has other ideas, so all that comes out after his confession is, “I brought you something.”
He dips his head until our lips almost touch. “What are you talking about?”
“Close your eyes.” I don’t expect him to, not really, but he does, and my heart breaks all over again at the sight of his hurts, and at way he places himself in my hands, no questions asked.
I fumble in my purse, unwrap the pendant, and pass it over his head to let it hang around his neck. The small stone lion gleams in the harsh fluorescent lights, resting against his dirty, blood-spattered white T-shirt.
“Okay,” I whisper. “You can look.”
He blinks, his hand grasping the pendant, lifting it. He swallows, the knot in his throat rising and falling. “Why?” he asks in his turn, his voice so low it’s barely audible.
“Because sometimes we need a talisman to help us believe in ourselves. You gave me yours,” I show him the leather bracelet. “I haven’t taken it off since you gave it to me. I feel you in it, always close to me. So I’m giving you mine, to protect you and tell you…” My mouth is bone dry. I have to lick my lips before I can speak. “That I’m in love with you.”
“God, Embers.” He pulls me back to him, crashes me to his chest, his heart booming against my ear. “Won’t you ask me? Ask the last question?”
Dammit, I have tears in my eyes, and I have no clue what he’s going on about. “What question?”
“I promised to answer three questions. Go on. Ask.”
“I don’t…” I sniffle in his T-shirt. “I don’t have any more questions.”
“Come on, Embers.”
I don’t reply. Can’t speak. I shake my head.