Page 47 of The Fire Walker
Jessie
The door slammed closedbehind me, the boom echoing into the mostly empty lot. When the dead bolt drove home, I squeezed my eyesshut.
He looked rough. The fact that his shirt was crumpled and he hadn’t shaved in a while, paired with the tang of scotch made me realize just how deeply he’d felt it. I’d walked away from something that could’ve been epic, and I didn’t even know it. Zoe had said he was taking it hard, and it wasn’t until the moment he opened the door that I realized how true that statement was. She’d also said that she thought I had a chance of winning himback.
Maybe Zoe waswrong.
The anger in his eyes, the hurt that was there, split me in two. I knew he wouldn’t lift a hand to me, but the memories that had flooded back when he hit the wall…I couldn’t help shrinking away. It was like an automatic response had been ingrained into my very soul. Someone got angry, so they had to hurt me. Dee wouldn’t hurt me. Not likethat.
My entire body flamed with embarrassment, shame, regret…all of that and then some. I was a fucking idiot. A scared, cluelessidiot. The split second our eyes connected was the moment I released what I’d thrown away. The moment he’d kissed me, heat had flared so hotly it almost overwhelmed everything coherent. It was still there. Thespark.
With a shaky sigh, I walked back down to the dingy motel office intent on renting out a room for the night. I never realized how many crappy motels were on the highway out of Denver when I looked at the map on the way over here. This seemed the worst of the bunch, but it would do for anight.
There was no doubt I had to formulate a plan. A way to try to fix this thing. No way was I going to give up after one attempt, not after coming all this way. Zoe and Will had altered their trip to convince me to come, and if that wasn’t an omen, I didn’t know what itwas.
Her belief in Dee was the thing that had given me the courage to try to overcome those past fears. It was time to finally step up and be the better person I’d been trying to become for the past fiveyears.
Pushing into the motel reception, I rang the bell, my mind ticking over different scenarios. Only one kept coming back to the surface of the whirlpool that was my thoughts. The only way Dee was even going to begin to forgive me was if I gave him no other option but to take me on his road trip to hell. If I forced him, then he would have to face me. He would have to listen. Spending time together was the only way I could even try to make this thingwork.
I would spend the night and face him in the morning. He’d obviously been drinking, and trying to convince a drunken man to stop hating you was near on impossible. Better to wait until he was sober andcoherent.
Ringing the bell again, I tapped my fingers on the counter. There was no going back now. New York wouldn’t be the same after the way I’d left everything, and the only thing that was certain right now was that I wanted Dee in my life. Ineededhim like a flower needed the sun. I would walk over a pit of fire to win himback.
I’d done some pretty screwed-up things in my life, and letting Dee Cosgrove go was the worstone.
