Jamie’s breath felt like it had been sucked from her body. “Oh... I...”

“And then her period was late and she thought she might be pregnant, and do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to run. As far and fast as I could.”

She swallowed hard, trying to collect herself. “Gabe, anyone would want to do that. I would want to do that if I found out I was... I mean, let’s not even talk about that. But I think everyone gets scared when something like that happens.”

Her heart was pounding hard and she was fighting against the fierce need to demand the details of what had happened.

She felt scarred and battered from just hearing he’d had unprotected sex with someone else. She knew he had a past, but he was hers and she didn’t like thinking about it.

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t get down on one knee. A few days later she got her period. False alarm. And I was so damned relieved. She was devastated. The fight we had... That girl kicked a dent in the side of my truck that someone her size shouldn’t have been able to accomplish. I screamed at her because she was being crazy, and before I knew it, I was...standing out of my body looking at my parents. And that was when I knew. I was just...I was just gonna be part of that cycle. I’m not different. I’m not better.”

“You are, though,” she said. “You are. Look, you made this whole life for yourself...”

“Because my mom told me about my dad’s other kids, and coming off what had happened with Trisha, I wanted to make him pay. Because you hate the ugliness you see in yourself most of all, don’t you? I’m not any better than he is.”

“Yes, you are, but you’re bizarrely committed to the idea that you aren’t. You’re scared,” she said. “So I want you to just be honest about that. You don’t want to do it because you’re scared. And I understand that, Gabe, because it’s a whole hell of a thing. But pushing me aside isn’t going to help you. Not in the long run. Hiding from it all... It’s not going to make anything better. Believe me. I know.”

“You’re going to lecture me with the best wisdom of your twenty-six years and one lover, Jamie?”

That hurt. Stabbed her right in the heart and made her eyes sting. “How dare you use that against me? You experienced all this with me. How dare you minimize it? And make me into...just a twenty-six-year-old virgin, or whatever. It was more than that. This is more than that. And you know it. And you never saw me as somebody beneath you in experience, or silly because of my age, and you never acted like I was. So don’t go pull it out now when it’s convenient for you. I want... I’m so tired of this. I’m so tired of living a life that makes me feel alone. I just want... I don’t want to stay the same. I want to change. You changed me. And that’s what I want. And I want...I want to change you. The way that you did me. It’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to have lost all my armor. To be all cracked open, and crying all the time, and for you not to have changed at all.”