He might be brave in gunfire, but when it came to surrendering his heart? Forget it. Jessie had assured he would never love again.
Lord, he wanted to go to her, drawing her into his arms—not just to stop her tears, but figure out the reason behind them. But what good would that do? They were no longer friends any more than they were lovers. They were nothing. Strangers who’d happened to meet under difficult circumstances.
In stealth mode, using the shadows to his advantage, he crept from her line of sight.
But before retreating around the backside of the house, he made the mistake of taking one last look at her defeated form.
She sat sideways on the swing and hugged her knees to her chest. Moonlight shone in her teary eyes. The effort it took to stop from running to her damn near killed him. But for his own self-preservation—hell, self-respect—he had to avoid her like poison. Because to him, to his ego, to his carefully walled-off emotions, that was exactly what she was.
Jessie raised the hem of the old high school softball T-shirt she’d changed into to dry her eyes. Crying about not having a baby wasn’t going to get her one, and those extra few tears shed over what might’ve been with Grady were just plain wrong. He wasn’t even worth her tears. He was a cocky cowboy-turned-SEAL who never would have settled for a broken mess like her.
She forced a deep breath and pulled herself together.
Before Grady’s arrival, she’d never been prone to crying jags—although, to be fair, she also hadn’t dealt with her entire town and life being blown to smithereens.
A coyote’s lonesome howl summed up her feelings.
“I hear ya, bud.”
Back in the house, the TV erupted with a WWII battle. From upstairs came the baby’s now frantic cries.
Jessie wandered into the laundry room for peace, only to encounter Grady sneaking through the back door.
She jumped. “Jeez! I didn’t even know you were outside.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t know I needed your permission to leave the house.” Then he winced. “Is it always this loud around here?”
“Yes, on the TV. No, on the baby. Wanna go grab a beer?” Jessie didn’t know why she’d asked the question. But standing close in the confined space, she realized that after all these years her racing heart still recognized the scent of his breath, and she’d go anywhere with him if for no other reason than to escape the current chaos.
“I’m down. Only, since I’m already on my second, think you could drive?”
“Deal. I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed her wristlet wallet and keys, then dashed upstairs for a quick change into hip-hugging faded jeans, a white tank and cowboy boots. After yanking out her ponytail to finger-comb her long hair into messy waves, she added lip gloss, then rejoined Grady in the laundry room so the two of them could slip out before their parents had even noticed they were missing.
Twenty minutes later, they occupied two stools at the bar of the Dew Drop Tavern over in Schilling—also unaffected by the storm. The few times Jessie had been there on dates, it hadn’t been this crowded, but then there had also been a dozen other establishments for folks to gather that no longer existed.
After their on-tap Buds had been delivered, along with a basket of hand-cut fries to share, Grady said, “Last time I was in this place was after that homecoming game our sophomore year when it rained the whole damn night. Allen and I thought we had it won, then lost in, what? Like the last ten seconds?”
“Technically, there had been three seconds left on the clock.”
He winced. “Thanks for reminding me. Pretty sure my back still hurts from that game.”
“So this is where you guys went, huh?” Jessie grinned, running her index finger around her glass’s rim. “Corny and I waited for you two losers thirty minutes outside the locker room. When you never showed, we went to the dance alone and pissed. Come to think of it, your whole flat-tire story was pretty dumb, considering you could have just walked to the gym from the field.”
“Sorry. Allen and I needed a guys’ night, so we snuck out of the locker room through the coach’s door.”
“Creep!” She pummeled his chest, never meaning her actions as anything other than playful fun. But when Grady trapped her hands squarely over his heart, she discovered it beat as fast as her own. Suddenly he leaned in for what she hoped, thought, prayed would be a kiss, and she thought her heart would stop altogether.
And then he abruptly backed away to down the remainder of his beer before signaling the bartender for another.
For the second, maybe even third, time that night, Jessie’s eyes welled, but she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of knowing she still cared. She didn’t. It had been a good long while since she’d been kissed, and that craving—no, more like yearning—tugged at her heartstrings. Nothing more. If he were to dare claim otherwise, she’d slap his no-good, whisker-stubbled cheek for sass.
But he not only didn’t make claims, sassy or otherwise, but wouldn’t even look her way until after she’d eaten all the fries and he’d finished his third beer.
Mortification and loneliness didn’t begin to cover the way she felt all crammed in next to him in the crowd, with their thighs, hips and shoulders brushing, and that achingly familiar attraction she held for him humming, when he seemed oblivious to her. In fact, when he went so far as to ask an old classmate of theirs—who’d wedged in on his other side in her too-tight jeans and a rodeo buckle practically bigger than her pile of fake red hair—to dance, Jessie threw up a little in her mouth.
After the twosome left, she might have gained breathing room, but she’d lost her ever-loving sanity.
The dimly lit joint was humming with energy as the whole place sang along to Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup.” The air was thick from smoke and far too many tall tales.
“Hey, little lady.” A cowboy sporting a brown leather hat and obligatory Wranglers held out his hand and smiled. “Wanna proceed to party?”
“Sure.” Why not?
It wasn’t as if she had any reason to stick around the bar. She only carried her wristlet wallet, into which she’d stashed her keyless remote, credit card, cash and lip gloss—not that she’d even had need for the latter, since her first coat of the night was sadly in place even after munching all those fries.
She took the cowboy’s hand, letting him guide her through the crowd to the dance floor, where she spied Grady and his redhead. He held his hands low on her hips, and had hooked his thumbs over the top edge of her leather belt. The girl from high school, whose name Jessie couldn’t even remember, had tucked her hands into Grady’s back pockets.
“What’s your name?” the stranger asked.
Jessie told him, and they somehow made small talk over blaring, old-school Johnny Cash.
At the end of the song, her stomach sank when she realized that Grady was no longer on the dance floor. Had he taken the redhead outside for air? The very thought of him kissing another woman turned her stomach almost as much as thinking of herself lip-locking with another man did—ridiculous, in light of the fact that unless she intended to die alone, one day she would kiss another man and like it!
But not tonight...
“Thank