Page 137 of California Wild

“The opposite.” He turned his head to look at her. “You calmed me down.”

She let out a short, bitter laugh. “That was you calmed down?”

He grinned, but it was brief, fleeting. “Terrifying, isn’t it? The ‘chill’ version of me was still bad enough.”

“To drive me away.” Her voice was softer now. “Jesse, I never told you, but… how many times do you think I was checking your pulse after the bar? How many times do you think I thought you were dead?” She exhaled sharply. “I was losing myself to partying, and I was getting tempted to follow you. I was so young then, so naïve.”

His jaw flexed.

“And then you left,” he said.

“I had to.”

Jesse swallowed. “And then it got worse,” he continued, his voice flat. “Until there was nothing left of me but the craving. The need to disappear. Without you, I hit a point where I was done with life. I was twenty-six and just… done.”

Hayley’s throat burned. “What was rock bottom?”

Jesse exhaled hard, his fingers gripping the sheets. “The answer I should tell you is overdosing in Tijuana. Waking up to Heath dragging my ass out of a drug cave before I got fucking buried there.”

Hayley’s breath hitched. “But?”

His expression turned blank. His voice eerily calm.

“But the truth is… rock bottom for me happened a few days before that.” A long pause. And then—“When I tracked my dad down and showed up in the middle of the night to his house with a gun.”

The breath left her lungs. “Holy fuck.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t kill him—but, fuck, I gave him the thrashing of his life.”

She felt tears prickling again at her eyes, willing herself to un-see the vision of him in such a murderous fury.

“That was it,” Jesse said, his voice hollow. “That was the moment I chose. Either get clean or die. So I chose to die.”

Hayley’s stomach dropped.

“But Heath forced me into rehab.” Jesse inhaled sharply. “Got my ass into AA. NA. Kept me breathing when I didn’t want to. And then I clawed my way back.”

She blinked, struggling to process. “Why?”

Jesse’s jaw tightened. “Because of something Heath said to me.”

Her breath wavered. “What did he say?”

Silence. A long, heavy silence.

And then—Hayley reached for him.

She didn’t think.

Didn’t hesitate.

Didn’t give herself time to process the fact that this—this broken, jagged piece of him—was something he had never given anyone.

Her fingers slid into his hair, her lips brushing his temple, not to fix him, not to take away his pain.

Just to hold him.

Just to let him know he wasn’t alone.

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