He had not brought pajamas. He didn’t own pajamas.

He kicked his boots off, pulled his shirt up over his head and stripped off his jeans. She looked up at him, her eyes still a little bit red from crying earlier. “She died two days after I was born,” Jamie said.

His gut seized up tight. He had known she died when Jamie was a baby, but he hadn’t known it was so close to her birthday.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me, too. Really sorry. And I think I’ve been sorry for a long time, and didn’t really let myself feel it. I was afraid because somewhere in all of that I’ve...I’ve blamed myself. And I...I feel like I can deal with it all better now. There’s something about you that makes me want to...feel things.” She laughed, a watery sound. “That sounds really cheesy. But...it’s true. It’s weird. Nothing like I thought it would be. This whole thing. This whole physical thing.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

He didn’t know why, but the way she said that made his stomach get all tight.

“Is everything all right with you? With your family?”

“Yeah,” he said.

He brushed that off, and she looked hurt. And it made him miss the Jamie she had been a few weeks ago, who would have probably just taken him at his word, and not notice that he was holding anything back.

He had liked that about Jamie. That she seemed invincible.

She didn’t now. And she was blaming him for that. And he wasn’t sure he was up to the task of handling the responsibility of Jamie when she wasn’t made of Teflon and bravado. But then she was crossing the space between them and kissing him, and he couldn’t think. This woman... She knocked him on his ass. She wasn’t like anyone or anything that had come before her.

“You’re like Annie Oakley,” he said.

He felt her mouth curve against his. “Straight shooter who never misses?”

“Yeah. Like some kind of strange that only comes around once every hundred years. Some kind of magic.”

She looked dazed, and again, he had to wonder what the hell he was playing at. Same as he had wondered when he’d taken her down to the river. Danced with her in the water.

She made him feel like he had just been introduced to a part of himself he didn’t know existed. But he knew it was alive. All that romance and shit wasn’t in him. Not really. Not sustainably.

That was the problem. He knew better. Knew people didn’t change without putting themselves and those around them through a lot of broken glasses, sweat and tears.

And that what was in your blood... Well, it stayed.

His father might have changed, but his mother was a liar.

He didn’t know what the hell his life was.

Then she stripped her shirt off, and he couldn’t think.

Her breasts were small and perfect, so close to his chest, he wanted to crush her to him so that he could feel her body in that way.