Chapter 7
Jenna
I wake up with his voice vibrating in my chest like a tuning fork struck hours ago.
Reaching for my phone on the nightstand, I see it’s only 4:30 a.m. The guest room is gilded silver in the early light. The house is quiet, except for the sounds I’m beginning to recognize as safe: the fridge humming in the kitchen below, the meow of a cat in the hall, and the familiar creak of the third floorboard, signaling that someone is awake but not in a hurry.
I lie in the guest bed and replay the words of a man who wanted to touch me but chose not to because I hadn’t said yes.
I press my fingers to my lips. They’re still warm from his kiss, or perhaps it’s the lingering memory my body clings to. I’ve kissed men before, but only a couple: a boy from my sixth placement, who tasted like cafeteria pizza and regret, and a coworker at my first job who kissed me at a holiday party and never mentioned it again. Both times, my body remained behind a glass wall—present yet protected, engaging from a safe distance, like I do everything.
Last night, there was no glass.
Last night, I kissed a man who has been quietly removing every sharp edge from my world since the moment he carried me out of a ditch. My body didn’t stay behind; it moved toward him as if it had been waiting for permission my whole life, and he’d finally given it.
My forearms itch. I look at them in the low light, the patches flushed pink from sleep, the skin tight where yesterday’s cream has dried. He knows about this. He’s seen the worst of it. He stayed in the hallway while another woman touched my body because consent mattered more to him than proximity. Learning about that single act of restraint has dismantled more of my defenses than anything anyone has ever done to breach them.
I run through the foster kid’s arithmetic one more time. The calculation I’ve been doing since I was six: what’s the risk of wanting this? What happens when it’s taken away? How bad will the hurt be, and can I survive it?
The answer has always been the same. Don’t want it. Don’t reach for it. Keep your expectations at zero, and the fall won’t kill you.
But the answer is different now. The answer is Ethan Sutton, who swapped the soap, stayed in the hall, and saidmineas if it were something he’d been carrying for six months and had only just set down.
The risk of wanting him is enormous.
The risk of not telling him is worse.
I’ve been careful my entire life. But being careful hasn’t kept me safe; it’s kept me small.
I push the covers off, drag on a shirt and jeans, and stuff my phone into my back pocket. I’m not sure what my plan is. Knock on his door? And say what? Maybe I don’t need words. Maybe actions speak louder right now.
But whatever vague plan I had evaporates as I step into the hallway and find Ethan outside his room, as if he were just leaving. He’s wearing his glasses, his hair damp and curling slightly at his collar. A gray kitten is tucked inside the open neck of his flannel shirt, which is unbuttoned one lower than yesterday, revealing the hollow of his throat, the beginning of chest hair, and the tanned skin of a man who works outside in all weather.
He stops when he sees me. “Hey.”
I don’t return his greeting. My carefully chosen words are gone. “I need to say something before I lose my nerve.”
He gives me his full attention, his blue eyes reflecting the morning light, the scruff dark along his jaw.
“No one has ever fought for me.” My voice cracks. “Until you.”
His jaw works. The tendon in his neck pulls tight, a cord of muscle that runs down into his shoulder, into the body that hauls fence posts and throws hay bales, that held me on that porch like I was something precious.
“Jenna.” My name hangs in the air. The pause is heavy. But what comes next isn’t steady. “I’ve never let myself want something just for me. The ranch needs me. Gabriel needs me. My father needed me to be fine after my mother died, so someone could hold it together. Wanting you feels—” He stops, his hand going to the back of his neck. “Selfish. And I don’t know how to be selfish.”
“You’ve spent your whole life being the one whogives,” I say, the words spilling from my lips. “When does someone give back to you, Ethan? When do you get tohavesomething?”
His hands drop to his sides, his eyes bright and devastated, revealing that no one has ever said this to him. I close the distance between us, my body no longer waiting for my brain to authorize my actions.
My hands find the soft flannel of his shirt, worn from countless washes, and I pull him closer. His mouth finds mine, and whatever restraint we’ve held disintegrates.
His stubble scrapes against my chin, cheek, and the corner of my mouth, sending sparks cascading down my spine. This is what I imagined during all those late-night phone calls. This is what I couldn’t let myself picture too clearly because wanting it would have broken me.
His hands—God, his hands—grip my waist and pull me into my room. My back hits the door as it closes behind me, and I don’t care. I want the solid surface behind me and the solid man in front of me because the space between careful and this is a canyon I’ve been standing at the edge of my whole life, and I just jumped.
“God.” The word punches out of him against my mouth.
His hands slide down to my hips, fingers digging in, pressing me harder against the door. I can feel him now, the thick, undeniable evidence of what I do to him straining against his jeans. The knowledge that this quiet, controlled man is hard for me,desperatefor me, sends something molten through my center.
