“Okay, but first I need to show you something.” He pulls me behind him across the grass. Straight toward the worn bench under the bare magnolia tree.
My eyes are drawn to Jesse’s back as he walks a step in front of me.
Over the last few days, I’ve studied the ink across his body, and my heart aches remembering the magnolia tree tattooed right over his heart.
He sits on the bench and gently pulls me down next to him. I swivel so I can look at him.
“Our bench,” I say softly, running my cold fingers over the wood slats beneath me.
Jesse’s legs sprawl out in front of us, long and sturdy, and his arm rests on the back of the bench behind me. I’m cocooned in him.
“When I came back to North Carolina,thiswas the first place I stopped,” he says.
My gaze snaps up at his admission.
“Really? Why?” I breathe out.
Without breaking eye contact, he narrows his eyes like the answer should be so obvious. “It’s the place where my life changed,” he replies, the corner of his lips pulling up.
I nod, understanding. It feels like everything big that happened to me as a teenager happened right here. Meeting Jesse for the first time. Realizing I loved him. Asking him to move in. It’s where I ran away to when I found out about Danny and Jesse’s arrest. It’s where I sat for hours after Nan’s funeral.
“I brought you here because I wanted to give you your Christmas gift.” Jesse’s hand fishes into his pocket. Deja vu comes over me like a veil.
I kick the dead grass under my feet with the tip of my black boot.“I didn’t know we were exchanging—”
But he cuts me off, placing a large, warm hand over mine. “We weren’t.” He pulls his hand from his pocket, but his fingers are clenched in a tight fist. “But…this is…well, you’ll see…”
My heart is doing weird things. If he doesn’t show me soon, I think I’m going to end up right back in the hospital.
Jesse hooks a finger under my chin, tilting my face up. He places his lips on mine, kissing me slowly before pulling away.
“Last week, when I was certain you hated me, and I didn’t know if there was any chance in hell of redeeming even an ounce of what we once had, I found this in my room.”
I look down as his fist opens, and in his palm sits a silver ring with a green sea glass gem. My eyes widen, and tears well on my rims, but this time, I don’t try to hide them.
“What? You found it…” My voice is scratchy as I look up at him through misty vision.
He holds the ring up, and it looks tiny in between his inked fingers.“I saved for a month to buy you this, and I made a promise of forever with it. You made me feel like the luckiest guy alive the day I slipped this on your finger. Do you remember?”
“Like it was yesterday,” I breathe out.
It’s a memory I’ve long pushed away, but here it is, replaying right before me.
“Penny…I know life is really messy right now,” Jesse begins, still holding the ring up. “I know showing up here threw a wrench in your plan. And you love your plans.” His arm on the back of the bench snakes around, his hand cupping the back of my neck gingerly. “You don’t owe me anything, not a moment of your time. But when you asked the other day if I lived with regrets and I said I try not to—that’s the truth.”
It feels like if I even draw a breath, I’ll miss something. So I stay incredibly still, watching him fumble over words in his head before speaking again.
Jesse bites his lower lip, voice strained. “I don’t regret saving your brother’s life. I don’t regret falling in love with you when we were too young to know what that meant. And I don’t regret coming back either. But, Penny, I will regret it if I don’t ask you something.”
I stay still, stuck on this bench like glue as he slips off it and onto his knee in the grass in front of me. The drumming in my ears gets so loud, all I can do is focus on him and the eyes that feel like safety.
“We’ve changed a lot since we were eighteen. But one thing hasn’t changed for me. I still want forever with you. I still want the chance to be the man youdeserve.”
His words hit me square in the chest, and I suck in a breath, inching forward until we’re close enough to touch.
“Jesse, I don’t know what to say…” Tears run down my face freely, and my heart splits open in a way I didn’t know it could.
In a way I haven’t let it for ten years.
