Braydon(94)

That was a question only Brendon could answer, but Braydon did his best to offer as much enlightenment as he could. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him this way, but I think it all started back when he met Cheyenne.”

It was a truth Jessie probably didn’t want to hear, but he put it out there anyway.

“When did he meet her?”

“Before you.”

“Oh.”

Yeah. Oh. Clearly that upset Jessie, but Braydon refused to sugarcoat it. There were so many things that the three of them should’ve talked about long before things got this out of hand, and this was only a small portion. It wasn’t quite the conversation he’d wanted to have tonight, but it was already out there, lingering in the air between them.

“Are you planning to talk to him?” she asked softly.

“About?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Braydon,” she said hysterically. “The alcohol. Drinking and driving. Us.”

“Is there an us, Jess?” he asked seriously, jumping right to the most critical subject at the moment. She was packing, which meant with her gone, there certainly wasn’t going to be an “us.”

After last night, he wanted to believe there was. But after her little stunt tonight, he wasn’t sure that he was going to like her answer. Last night, and that morning, had been the most incredible experience of his entire life, but that didn’t mean it was going to last. Part of him was surprised she hadn’t kicked him out of her bed at dawn.

“Never mind, I shouldn’t have asked,” she blurted as she tried to sidestep him on her way out of the room.

Braydon stepped in front of her and reached for her hands. He held them firmly but not roughly, not allowing her to pull away. He felt her eyes on him and he decided to go all out.

“Jess, I don’t know what this is between us. I know it’s more than just sex. At least for me. I want to be with you every waking moment. Hell, I want to spend every single night with you in my bed. I don’t know how to make any promises though. Not today, not tomorrow. And yes, I have talked to Brendon. Not much, but we did have a conversation. He knows how I feel about you. He’s always known. But I’m not sure what you want me to say to him. I don’t intend to hurt him.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she interrupted.

“I know you wouldn’t. That’s not what I was saying.”

“What are you saying then?”

“Why do we always have to do this? It’s like we take two steps forward and one giant step back every time we see each other. It’s become a pattern, and heaven help me, Jessie, I don’t know what you want from me.”

Again Jessie tried to pull away from him, and this time Braydon let her go. She seemed a little surprised by that.

“I’m not gonna coddle you, Jess. I want you, there is no doubt about that.” He wanted to go so far as to tell her that he loved her, but for whatever reason, it didn’t seem like the right time. He didn’t want his next attempt to convince her to be during the heat of an argument. And he damn sure didn’t want her to think he just said the words so she wouldn’t run away. “But you can’t keep second-guessing everything. It won’t work if you do.”

The conversation died on that statement as Jessie stared back at him. He couldn’t help but wonder whether the two of them had sealed their fate long before they’d ever even given themselves a chance.



JESSIE WANTED TO curse a blue streak.

For a night that should’ve ended better than the day had been, she’d gone and started a fight with Braydon that was doomed from the start. She knew it even before she started talking, yet she did it anyway.

And now Braydon was pacing back and forth across her bedroom. He looked angry. No, maybe not angry. He looked upset.

Not that she could blame him. She had well and truly screwed up tonight. Because of all her stupid insecurities, she had gone and made a serious assumption that, yes, made her look like an ass.

The moment she’d seen Cheyenne, Brendon, and Braydon on that couch, she’d fought the urge to throw up. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been able to see them completely; her mind had conjured up the image of what she’d anticipated all along. Even as she had walked back to her house, she had been fighting through the tears, trying to rationalize what she thought she saw.

And of course, Braydon’s response had made perfect sense. Only now she was worried about Brendon, but not for the reasons Braydon obviously thought. She didn’t care about him that way. And she sure didn’t give a damn if he hooked up with Cheyenne Montgomery. In fact, she hoped he did. Maybe that would change this path of destruction that he seemed to be on these days.

But, God, she felt as though she were on emotional overload.

She wasn’t equipped to deal with these types of emotions. It was the reason all her relationships failed in the past. Instead of taking things one day at a time, just the way Braydon had requested, she was the type of woman who wanted to dig into a man’s psyche and figure out what made him tick.

She knew Braydon well enough that she shouldn’t have needed to hear his explanation. She should’ve trusted him. He had never given her a reason not to. But from the moment he’d stepped through her door, she had riddled him with excuses, trying to push him away. Then, to top it all off, she had tried to get him to tell her that he loved her again. She needed to hear it, needed some sort of reassurance because nothing was working out the way she had hoped.