So I was leaving. I wouldn’t make Mr. Gibson throw me out. I’d pack my bags and leave until I figured out what needed figuring out. Which, when it came to me, was like saying I needed to figure out everything. I hadn’t decided what I’d say to Josie yet, or if anything I could say would explain it all to her. How could I express to her that I was leaving her for her own good? Especially when I knew neither one of us would feel good about it. That was the question I was stuck on when my body finally gave in and gave up to sleep.
It wasn’t the dreamless kind of sleep either . . .
A couple summers ago, Josie’s brother was turning twenty-one. Jesse was out of town at some rancher’s convention with his dad and had asked me to tag along with Josie and keep an eye on her. Not because he didn’t trust her—because he was Jesse Walker and he gave trust like it was in limitless supply—but because he knew there’d be alcohol and a bunch of Luke’s frat brothers who had a thing for his little sister. Even if Jesse hadn’t asked me to hang with Josie at the party, I would have. I didn’t trust those U of M frat boys as far as I could throw their hillbilly deluxe trucks.
The party was at Luke’s frat house. After Josie had drained a couple of shots, every time I turned around, some other frat douche was handing her another. I don’t know how many she had total, but I’d counted seven when I finally called bullshit. I shut the music off, climbed up on a table, and warned the next son of a bitch who slipped her a drink that he’d leave there with my boot up his ass. The drinks slowed, but they didn’t stop. Thankfully, she stayed glued to my side unless she had to go to the restroom, which I stood outside of and guarded like a fucking Rottweiler. Luke drank himself into a mini coma halfway into the night, so I was literally the only guy in the room not trying to lure Josie into some dark room. It got old. Fast.
I was about two seconds away from driving my elbow into a guy’s jaw—the one who kept grinding up against Josie when we weren’t anywhere close to the thrown-together dance floor—when Josie threw her arms around my neck, looked up at me with those green eyes of hers, and grinned.
“Ever since that first dance we had back in high school, I’ve always dreamed of dancing with you again.” Before her words had registered, she tucked her head beneath my chin and swayed against me. “Tonight, I finally get to live that dream.”
I’d been conflicted in my life plenty of times and to varying degrees, but that dance with that girl . . . there was no word for how conflicted I felt right then. Conflicted didn’t even come close to describing it. I knew my arms didn’t belong around her, and I knew my body didn’t have a right to respond to her the way it was, but my head and heart never aligned when I was with Josie. I danced with her. That first dance, and a second, and a third. After the fifth one, I lost count. Dance after dance didn’t make it any easier to drop my arms and let her go. She’d wandered into them of her own accord, and I wasn’t sure I could ever let her wander out.
The party was in full swing, and everyone was plastered enough that it wasn’t just a roomful of lowered inhibitions—it was a roomful of no inhibitions. The only thing more on my mind than never letting our dance end was protecting Josie. I was about to finally let her go so I could get her out of there when her mouth moved just outside of my ear.
“Take me home,” she whispered, her breath warm against my skin.
Grabbing her hand, I led her out of that frat house, lifted her inside of my truck, and didn’t touch the brake until we were in front of the Gibsons’ house. Her parents were at the same rancher’s convention as the Walkers, but the fact that Josie and I had a big, quiet house all to ourselves wasn’t even on my mind when I helped her through the front door and carried her to her bedroom when she tripped over the first step. The most I’d seen Josie drink was a couple of a beers, and the girl had a low tolerance. Given the number of shots she’d had, it was a miracle she was still able to talk.
After getting her laid out on her bed, I’d told her I would run and grab her some water and pain reliever to help with the morning-after effects. I fumbled through her parents’ medicine cabinet for a while to find what I needed. By the time I returned with the pills and water, I expected her to be passed out and snoring. I certainly didn’t expect to walk in and find her dress on the floor and her standing in front of an open window wearing nothing but her underwear and bra. She held a frame with the picture of her, Jesse, and me as children. Her thumb circled my scowly face. I dropped the glass of water, and it shattered when it hit the floor.
Josie had spun around in surprise, but when she saw it was just me, she smiled. Josie being next to naked and smiling at me as the moonlight streamed onto her skin . . . that would have been enough to drop me to my knees if I wasn’t already moving in her direction.
“You dropped something,” she’d said, setting down the picture.
“Joze?” I’d swallowed, knowing I should look away. Knowing but not able to. “Why are you in your underwear?”
My throat had already felt dry, but by the time she stopped in front of me and pressed against my body, it went something else entirely. “I told you. Tonight, I get to live my dream.”
I’d smelled the alcohol on her breath and I saw it blurring her eyes—I knew she was in no condition to make decisions—but when her hands worked the buttons of my shirt loose, I basically said Fuck it, shut my brain off entirely, and went with what my heart and body were telling me to do.
Once she’d peeled off my shirt, Josie unfastened her bra. When she pressed her bare chest into mine, I had to bite my tongue and close my eyes to keep from coming right then and there. I’d been with plenty of women, and plenty of women had shoved their chests up against mine in a similar way, but never, never had I almost fallen apart when one did it. Not that I needed the reminder, but Josie’s touch did things to me I’d never experienced before.
I don’t know who was the first to kiss the other. All I remembered was that when it happened and whoever had made the first move, I knew I wouldn’t make the last one. I wouldn’t be the one to ever stop kissing her because I simply couldn’t. When I laid her back onto her bed, while I was busy unfastening my fly, she slipped out of her panties. Just as I was about to lower myself into her, that picture on her dresser caught my attention. From across the room, a smiling blond boy watched me. I’d muttered a curse, and just as I pulled back, Josie wrapped her arms and legs around me and pulled me to her.
When her eyes locked onto mine, she smiled, then whispered, “Finders keepers.”
Whether it was her hips that took me in or my hips that took her, I knew one thing—things would never be the same.
They never had been.
THAT WAS THE dream I bolted awake from. While I didn’t consider it a nightmare because of what had happened that night, it became a nightmare when I realized that was possibly the first and the last time I’d experience Josie that way. I’d had that dream before, but until Jesse and Rowen had gotten together, I’d burst awake from it drenched in sweat and guilt.
Before long that night, Josie and I had been digging our fingers into the other’s backs and screaming each other’s names, but unlike Josie—who’d fallen asleep immediately after—sleep never found me. Instead, I went from staring at the girl I’d always wanted and now had to the boy in the photograph. What we’d done that night was the ultimate betrayal. Jesse was a good man, the best man I’d ever known. That he openly admitted to being best friends with the town drunk’s son was something I’d never felt worthy of. That night, I understood why.
I wasn’t worthy of his friendship. I sure as hell wasn’t worthy of the girl lying next to me with a peaceful expression on her face. I’d taken Josie from him, and even though I’d felt exactly that way back in high school when he asked her to Homecoming, I’d never planned on repaying him. Especially not by having sex with her while he was out of town and he’d asked me to watch out for her.