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Sawyer
This all felt so surreal.
Everything about this entire day had been unexpected. While there was a part of me that wanted to celebrate the change in the rapport between Jesse and me, there was another part of me that was feeling incredibly uncertain.
That was something I wasn’t used to feeling. For so much of my life, I’d been confident in who I was, what I wanted, and things I planned to do. That wasn’t to say that I hadn’t had moments of doubt over the years. I had. But this was different.
This was all about Jesse.
This was about me not fully understanding where things were in his mind.
For the most part, he’d been mostly all business. He focused on what was happening and getting the facts.
On the other hand, there had been a few moments that really caught me off guard, and I was struggling to cope.
I was currently in Jesse’s vehicle as he drove us to a restaurant for dinner. I never thought this would ever happen in my whole life. He’d given me two choices at his house, and I found myself needing to pinch my arm repeatedly just to confirm that I wasn’t dreaming, or that I wasn’t simply making it all up in my head.
Jesse Hale wanted to either take me out for dinner, or he wanted to cook for me in his own kitchen.
It was, by far, one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make. Because when I boiled both of them down, there was one pro and one con for each that would help in making the decision.
On the surface, either option might have seemed great. In one case, Jesse would be taking me out for dinner. In the other, Jesse would be cooking dinner for me. If he’d offered to do either of these under any other circumstances—particularly ones that didn’t involve me being responsible for the death of his cousin—I would have jumped for joy.
Since that wasn’t the case here, I figured it was better to consider the best and worst of each option.
If Jesse took me out for dinner, I’d be able to get some fresh air, out of his personal space in his home. I desperately needed that. The downside to going out was that I’d be in public in Steel Ridge for the first time since I left years ago.
On the flip side, if we stayed in and he cooked for me, I would have been able to avoid the public setting, but I’d have to endure being in that confined space alone with him.
Considering I was now sitting in his truck as he drove us to a restaurant, I’d clearly decided that staying in that confined space with him was a much bigger risk.
And that was because he wasn’t exactly making things easy for me from the moment he showed up at the cemetery.
It wasn’t necessarily his words that were the problem for me. I could talk to him. I didn’t have a problem going toe-to-toe with him if the situation called for it.
But Jesse had done things to me that I struggled to remain unaffected by.
He engulfed me in his arms in the cemetery when I broke down sobbing. He held me tight while I cried. Then, he touched my bare wrist in his house, and it was everything I could do not to recall the memory of his hands on my thighs when we’d played chicken fight in Faye’s pool years ago. Worst of all, he smiled at me. When I was feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, Jesse found a way to be playful.
If only I had allowed myself to let go of the walls I’d built to keep me safe and give in to something that used to feel natural around him.
Truth be told, after our encounter in the Harper Security Ops parking lot a couple days ago, I hadn’t expected any of what happened today, nor did I think I’d wind up here with him.
Granted, I was well aware of the fact that there was still far too much baggage between us for it to ever be anything like I had hoped it would be for years when I was younger. Even if I knew that was the case, it still didn’t mean that I wasn’t affected by how much was happening between us now and how quickly it was happening. I felt like I could hardly keep up.
Because it was all so unexpected. So much of what Jesse was showing me was the Jesse that I believed him to be before Faye died.
At this point, I was nothing if not confused.
Worse yet, as Jesse turned into the parking lot at the restaurant, I started to have second thoughts. My nerves skyrocketed, and a wave of nausea came over me.
I thought this was the best option. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
No matter how much pressure I felt in his house or how much air I thought I might have needed, I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t now feeling absolutely terrified about this.
I’d left town so many years ago, but I was convinced that people hadn’t forgotten me or what I’d done. Surely, if Jesse had been as upset about it as he was days ago, the rest of the town wouldn’t have simply forgiven me.
What if someone saw me and recognized me?
