Page 136 of California Wild

She swallowed. The weight of that word settled over her like a slow, creeping tide.

“Jesse…”

For a moment, he hesitated, his grip tightening slightly on her waist. Then, as if making a decision, he exhaled slowly and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

“You keep saying you don’t know this version of me,” he said, voice low. “But I don’t think you knew the old me as well as you think, either.”

Her stomach twisted, something sharp and defensive rising in her chest, but before she could speak, he cut her off.

“Look, that’s on me,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “I get it. I don’t talk.” His lips twitched in something almost like self-loathing. “Not about the shit that matters.”

Hayley swallowed. “Then tell me. What should I know?”

Jesse let out a short, humorless laugh, staring back up at the ceiling. “I was bad, Hayley.” His voice was lower now, edged with something dark. “Worse than you knew. Worse than anyone will ever know.”

She felt her chest tighten.

He had never talked about this.

Not once.

Not even after.

Not when she found him wasted in the back of a club, getting grinded on by women he probably didn’t even know the names of. Not when he disappeared for days on end, not when she finally left and never looked back.

She curled onto her side, watching him. “Tell me.”

Jesse let out a rough laugh, but there was no humor in it. Just something raw and broken.

“Sometimes I think the only reason I didn’t die was because I had you,” he admitted, voice so quiet she barely heard him. “A reason to stay alive.”

Hayley’s stomach twisted.

She waited. Listening.

“You know, I started drinking as a pretty young teen. Maybe thirteen.” His voice was steady, but the weight of his words slammed into her like a sledgehammer. “My dad had been gone a few years. My mom was drowning herself in booze. For me, even then, it wasn’t just alcohol,” he admitted. “It was everything. Every. Fucking. Thing. Whatever I could use to feel nothing.”

Her breath caught. She had known—on some level—but she hadn’t known.

“And then it calmed down for a bit when my mom kicked me out and I joined the Navy. Training for the SEALs gave me anew kind of high. I wasn’t clean, but I was… manageable. I was functional. But then came the deployments. The rotations. The missions.” He swallowed. “I’d rotate back and party hard. Real fucking hard. That’s when it got bad.”

Her chest ached. “How bad?”

He let out a sharp exhale. “Years before I met you? I was into heroin. Tequila. Strippers. Sex workers. Anyone. Anything. Extreme was the preference.”

Hayley’s stomach lurched.

She knew it had been bad. But hearing it—this—was like being sucker-punched in the ribs.

“And then I met you,” Jesse continued, voice quieter now. “I was twenty-five when you walked into my life. Twelve years deep into addiction. And suddenly, I was too fucking high on you to think about anything else.”

She inhaled sharply.

“But then things got real,” he continued. “And I’d never had a real relationship before. Everything before had been transactional. Temporary. But with you… it was like fucking real.” His voice turned rough. “And I didn’t know how to handle that.”

Her chest squeezed.

“So I made you worse?” she challenged. “Is that what you’re saying?”

---