“What?” I said even though I’d heard him clearly. I needed time to process it.

He waited, watching me.

How does someone react to being cheated on by sleeping with the enemy? An image of him being with her, naked, skin to skin, flashed through my mind, making me wince. Obviously, I knew he’d had sex with her to have thought the baby was his. But not when. And I knew he’d been with other people before me, it wasn’t about that. But in this image it wasn’t a faceless girl. I knew Audrey. I knew her beauty. And now that I’d read Jack’s pages, I knew her ugliness at threatening me to get to Jack. But to sleep with her, knowing she’d just been with someone else? I saw them together in my mind, imagined he must have been … angry while he did it. My stomach rolled.

I felt disgusted. And dirty … like he’d transferred her on to me. “Unprotected?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

He nodded.

I curled my arms around my middle.

Unwrapping the wrist-strap on the fingerless boxing gloves he had on, he straightened to his over six-foot frame and pulled them off. This Jack, this wary Jack, that seemed as if he was bristling with armor, was new to me.

“What do you want, Keri Ann?” He asked me again and threw the gloves to the side. “I know you’re disgusted with me. I knew you would be. You should be. I am.”

I dropped my eyes to his sculpted chest as it heaved.

A few hundred yards from where we stood, the sound of waves crashing incessantly against the shore vied for attention against the sound of his still irregular breathing. Waves that were constantly changing and renewing the sand, bringing beautiful things and also ugly remains, and then washing them away again without regret. I sighed and looked away. There was dust floating in the beams of sunlight, a few boxes were piled up haphazardly in a corner next to me. I laid the journal pages down on one.

“You hurt me,” I whispered and looked back at him.

He pursed his lips and squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds then nodded once. “Yes.”

“And I hurt you, too.”

He didn’t respond.

“I didn’t …” my throat was dry again, felt clogged. “I didn’t know I was able to do that.” I hadn’t really believed him until I saw it written in his almost illegible handwriting. “I’m scared, Jack.” I inhaled deeply and steadied my voice. “Like I told you last night. I’m not ready to be out there with you, to have that define me. To have you define me.”

He nodded and swallowed, wincing as if in pain. “I know.”

“I’ve barely discovered myself,” I whispered. “Who I am. What I’m capable of. What I want.”

Tension radiated off him in physical waves, steeling himself against my words. He was so successful, so strong, so larger than life when the world turned its camera lens on him. But with me he needed to protect himself?

God, how did I have the power to make someone like Jack Eversea so vulnerable?

I held the power to crush him right at this moment. The knowledge was humbling and terrifying. Didn’t he know I’d rather drown myself in the ocean than use that power?

Walking forward, my pulse beating a wild rhythm with every step, I stopped right in front of him. I breathed him in, all his sweat and salt and exertion mingled together.

His jaw was tight and his vivid eyes flickered once as he held my gaze.

Moments stretched out, and our breathing became joined in rhythm. His finally slowing, mine catching up.

I had nothing left to ask him that would make me feel better about trusting this. Trusting him. This was the leap right here. This was the moment where I wondered if history was always doomed to repeat itself, and why I would make the same mistake again. I wished I could see the future in the depths of his green eyes, in the dilated pools of his pupils. I couldn’t, so I dropped my attention to his full mouth, the curve of his lips, softly set against his hard, rough jaw.

“If you touch me right now,” Jack rasped, cutting through the silence, “I’m taking it as a yes to us.” He leaned his sweat-slicked body closer, and my heart fell right though me. “And I’m never,” he drew the word out, “letting you go.”

I absorbed his roughly uttered words, their echo weaving its way around us, and my body began a distant throb. “Is that a promise or a threat?” I managed softly and raised my hand up between us. Heat flowed off his chest onto my palm as it hovered right over his heart.

He looked down at my hand, then back up at me.

I almost expected to see a quirk of his dimple, a Jack-ism to lighten the moment. I fully expected him to step forward into my hand and force us to make contact.

He did neither. “Both,” he whispered. “But you have to make the choice, Keri Ann.” His eyes grew fierce. “You have to know there’s no going back. Don’t do this unless you can take all of me. You know who I am. What I do. I can’t hide it from you, and I’m not sure I can hide us. I’ll try. But you have to give me all of you. If you’re still with Colt, I need you to step back and leave. Don’t come here unless you’re free. I need you to be mine. Fully. All the damn way. Because I’m yours,” he finished harshly. “Do you understand?”

God. How could I do this? How should I go forward? I couldn’t agree to everything he was asking, could I?

My hesitation was reflected in the grim firming of Jack’s mouth. His eyes clouded over.

“Wait,” I managed before he took my hesitance as a negative. “I’m not with Colt. And nothing … nothing ever happened with him,” I added. Not that it should matter.

A rush of air escaped him.

“But …” I dropped my hand away from where I’d been about to touch him.

Jack’s jaw clamped down hard again, and he took a step back, before running a hand through his damp hair.

My palms itched to do the same. “You can’t ask me to go out there, and … and own this with no thought for myself. Please … God, I know there are a thousand, thousands,” I amended, “of girls who’d want to take my place, and wouldn’t care … would crave what you’re offering, but …”

“But I don’t want them. I want you,” he said, finally looking at me.

“I know,” I whispered.

“Do you?”

I nodded.

“I’m talking about you and me. That’s it. Just you. And me. There has never been a simpler,” he shook his head and sighed, “yet more … impossible concept in the universe.” He reached up and roughly grabbed two fistfuls of his hair before abandoning them in an unruly wet mess. “And you, Keri Ann? What do you want?”

You. “I want … I want to be more than I am now, on my own merit. I want not to be afraid that Joey and I will be the generation to lose the family home. I want to be respected and not pitied. I want to feel proud of myself and my abilities. I want to live a life where people are not watching and judging every action I take. And that’s your life in multiples.” I inhaled deeply. “I don’t want people looking at you and wondering why you’re with me. But, mostly, I don’t want to imagine my life without you in it.”

He blinked, seemingly processing each aspect of what I said, storing it away, but I knew what he heard was that I was saying yes. And I was. There was no way I was walking away from this. From him. I couldn’t if I tried.