over her breasts, and he did his best not to let his gaze linger there because he’d forget what he was supposed to be doing. Harsh words brewed on his tongue to remind them both, but when she turned to look at him, she looked so utterly fragile that they withered to dust.
“Outside, Bets.” He nodded toward the door to the back patio.
For the briefest moment, he thought she might argue with him, but she stepped toward the door. Once they were outside, she turned to face him.
“What happened just now? Why did you leave?” he asked.
“It was too much like old times. But neither of us is the same person who left.”
“That’s why this wasn’t a good idea.”
“One moment of melancholy doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea.” She’d gone from vulnerable to determined in less than a second.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m going to go. I don’t belong here anymore.”
“Don’t go.” She wasn’t begging or demanding now. It was simply a quiet request that was all the more powerful when she fixed him with the weight of her clear-eyed stare.
“Bets—”
“Maybe you don’t need us, but we need you. I need you. Okay?” Emotion hung on the last word, making it come out like a question that needed an answer, and he had only one to give her.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m not a hero. I never was. When you realize that, you’re not going to need me. You’re not even going to like me.”
“Maybe.” She narrowed her eyes. “So start making it up to me now.”
Christ, but she was like a dog with a bone. He cocked his head to the side. “You never give up, do you?”
“Not when it’s something that’s important to me.”
“Okay, Bets. What do you want?” He’d give her anything if he thought it would erase the guilt, if it would stop twisting up his insides.
“This is about more than dinner.”
“I gathered.” He might have been weak and broken, but he wasn’t stupid.
“That you really give life a chance.”
“This again.” She didn’t know what she was asking of him. Not really. She didn’t know what it was like to wake up from a nightmare and find the scenery hadn’t changed, that she was still trapped. She didn’t know what it was like to be missing a piece of herself, literally and figuratively. She’d always known what she wanted and reached out and taken it.
And of course how could she understand? She’d never had to do the things he had done, witnessed the things he’d seen. Not that he’d want her to. He couldn’t imagine what it would do to her, the way it would change her.
“This, always.”
“I agreed to dinner. What else do you want?” He always felt torn around her, as if he were two people. Part of him wanted to break that air of innocence around her, sully it, so she couldn’t taunt him with it. The other part of him wanted to wrap her in a glass bubble and protect her from anything that could ever touch her or take that away from her.
He was a twisted bastard, he thought yet again.
“I propose a trade. Like dinner. You asked me to come home with you tonight, and I agreed. For every new thing that you do, with minimal complaining, I will do one thing for you.”
The part of him that wanted to sully her, to make her understand, to break that sweet naïveté, reared to the surface. He smirked. “One thing? You should probably specify your parameters.” He knew just how to make her back off from this. Even though they’d shared something this afternoon, he was sure when he started suggesting sex she’d change her mind. This would be too sordid for her. Earlier had been about some girlhood fantasy for her and this...this was the real world. He wasn’t a hero, or a memory any longer. He was a flesh and blood failure.
“There aren’t any. You want me to clean your house? I’ll do it. You want me to bake you cookies? I’ll do it. You want me to give you one day where I leave you alone? I’ll do it.”
Jack knew she’d do all of those things for him anyway. Except leave him alone. That was the one thing that would be a concession. Although none of those things were what appealed to him most. Even being left alone, which surprised him, but it shouldn’t have.
He’d come over to give her the check because he knew where things were headed and also knew that could only end in a fiery wreckage for both of them.
Yet he forged ahead anyway, his mouth moving, speaking words he had no right to speak. Especially in her mother’s house. If he were Caleb, he’d knock out his teeth and leave him to pick them up with broken fingers for talking to his sister in such a way.
But he wasn’t her brother.
“What if what I want is you in my bed?”
Twin spots of color bloomed on Betsy’s cheeks. “Jack, you could have that anyway.”
Her voice was breathy and soft, all sex. He was hard again. His body’s reaction to her surprised him, but it shouldn’t have. Nothing had ever been able to exorcise his fantasies about her. “No expectations, no strings, and it’s my time. No trying to fix me,” he warned.
“I’m not trying to fix you. I can’t fix you. You have to fix yourself.”
“And I don’t want to, but you’re forcing it on me. So I might as well get something I do want out of it.”
He hadn’t realized how harsh his words sounded until the cycle of expressions played out on her face. First, she’d blushed and a secret smile had curved her lips. It made him remember kissing them and being inside her. Her back straightened and the line of her mouth tightened at the no expectations and no strings. He expected her to balk then. Although when he told her he might as well get something he wanted, it was almost as if he’d taken a knife and cut her. He’d basically told her he had no use for her but her body, and that wasn’t what he meant at all, but he didn’t know how to fix it without digging the hole deeper.
Maybe this would be what she needed to see that he was beyond help, that all he would do was hurt her.
Only he’d underestimated her again. “Okay.” Her whisper was barely audible.
His displeasure must have shown on his face, because she spoke again. “What, you didn’t want me to agree? Why ask for it if it isn’t what you actually want?”
He closed the distance between them. “Oh I want it, all right. But I think about another man saying these things to you and the way you just said yes...I’d kill him, Bets. So would Caleb.”
“It’s not Caleb’s business, is it? Not yours, either. You said so yourself. No strings, no expectations. That goes both ways, cowboy.”
He scowled. She’d changed since he was gone. He knew that, but seeing it here in front of him, it startled him somehow. She’d always been headstrong, but
