Page 131 of California Wild

No dots. No read receipt. No response.

She hit call before she could talk herself out of it.

Straight to voicemail.

Her throat tightened. She pressed the phone to her chest, breathing hard through her nose.

No. No. No.

This wasn’t happening again. She wasn’t doing this again. Not with him.

She wasn’t going to stand in another kitchen, in another city, with another version of Jesse Navarro’s ghost echoing through empty rooms.

But she was.

Six weeks back in her life, and it was already happening. Her worst fucking fear, unfolding in real time.

She stared at the front door, arms wrapped around herself, like maybe he’d walk through it any second and say something stupid, something casual. Like it didn’t matter that he’d disappeared into the night without a word.

You were supposed to be different.

The thought came unbidden. Sharp. Real.

Because she had changed.

She wasn’t the reckless girl who chased chaos anymore. She wasn’t the one who drank to numb things or laughed her waythrough pain. She had a body that didn’t just belong to her now. A heart that beat for two.

And Jesse?

God, he had changed—she saw it. She felt it.

But the parts of him that still broke her?

They were still there too.

And right now, they were louder than anything else.

She didn’t cry. Not yet. She just stood there, her hand resting low on her stomach, fingers trembling.

He was real.

He had come back.

But maybe… he hadn’t come back all the way.

The door clicked.

Hayley’s head snapped toward the sound like it was a gunshot.

There he was.

Jesse stepped inside like nothing was wrong—drenched in sweat, hoodie half-off, breath coming fast like he’d gone for a run, like he hadn’t just vanished into the night and left her behind. His curls were damp, sticking to his forehead. He wiped his face with the hem of his sweatshirt, tossed it over a kitchen chair, and kicked off his sneakers like it was any other night.

Like she wasn’t standing there.

Like she hadn’t been searching the fucking city in her mind wondering if he’d relapsed. If he’d left. If this—whatever this was—was already over.

He didn’t look at her until he was halfway into the kitchen.

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