He stared at her, aching that she believed that she wasn’t meant for love. But he wasn’t either, so he wasn’t one to talk. “I learned that walking away was bullshit. I went to see my mom and ran into Hud before I could call him.”

“How did it go?” she asked, looking like she already knew the answer.

“Not well,” he admitted. And how did you expect it to go, genius? You didn’t even call him. You just happened upon him at the hospital.

It’d been cold. And wrong. “So actually, no, I haven’t learned from my mistakes, but that’s going to change.”

“How?” she asked.

“You know, you’re a little…”

“Pushy?” she asked. “Annoying?”

“Different,” he corrected. “In a good way.” A very good way…He paused. “You said you can’t do love, not ever again. But for me, it’s not that I can’t. It’s that I won’t.” He thought of how it felt to walk away from his family. Like he’d ripped off a limb. And losing Brett had nearly killed him. He shuddered. “Love isn’t for me, never will be.”

She took that in, looked like maybe she’d argue the fact, but then changed her mind. “So are you going to go away again?”

“I’m on leave,” he said. “I still have to go back to finish. I don’t have a choice there.”

“And then what? After you finish? And truth,” she said with a small smile. “Or you’ll owe me.”

He wouldn’t mind that one little bit, but he surprised himself by answering honestly. “I’ll be back. To stay.” He met her gaze. “Now you. Why do you stay here, in a town where you were so badly hurt? What holds you here?”

She hedged, biting her lower lip, tipping him off to yet another truth.

She hadn’t told him her entire story.

Somehow she’d pulled off what no one else could, getting him to let down his guard and open up. A little terrifying. “Where’s your family?”

“Dallas.”

He smiled. “I knew I heard the South in you.”

“You do not,” she said with a definite twang.

He smiled. “It comes out when you’re especially irritated.”

“It does not,” she said, twang heavier now.

He laughed, and she crossed her arms. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said.

“Of course not. And the accent’s hot.”

She looked torn between being embarrassed and pleased.

“Tell me about your family,” he said.

She reached for the bottle. He obliged.

She tossed back another gulp and then proceeded to nearly cough up another lung.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Never better.” She let out a long exhale. “Okay, let’s see. My mom and dad live in a house they got from my grandparents, who also grew up in Dallas. My sister lives close by with her husband and two kids. She’s a nurse and has the perfect life. My mom’s a saint who takes care of my dad.”

“He sick?”

“Depressed,” she said, surprising him. Her voice had changed to practically a whisper, like it was hard to say. Hard and painful, and he wanted to pull her in close and hold her. Not because he wanted to bury himself inside her—which, for the record, he did—but because he felt compelled to ease her pain.

“It’s debilitating,” she said, “and he can’t take care of himself.”

She’d already told him she’d been unable to please the guy, and he ached for the little girl she’d been, for the young woman who’d been further hurt by the next man in her life because her husband hadn’t given her himself either. If she were his, Jacob thought, he’d make damn sure she felt loved. But she wasn’t his. And given that he’d told her he didn’t do love, she never would be.

And she told you she couldn’t love. But he didn’t want to believe that, didn’t want to think of her so beautiful, so animated, thinking she was incapable of love.

“My dad worked for NASA as a physicist,” she said. “He was under a lot of stress. Something cracked deep inside him at all the pressure, and now he does…well, nothing, really.” She shrugged again. “I think that’s why I stay on the boat for now. I’ve learned that when you don’t know what to do, you do nothing. Otherwise you get yourself in bigger trouble. The boat…me living on it…it’s me not doing anything until I know exactly what to do.”