19. Chapter 19
Chapter 19
B y the time they got back to his place, Hayley was swaying on her feet.
She didn’t say much. Just blinked at him like she was trying to keep her world in focus, like she was willing herself to stay upright. She was running on fumes. He could see it in her eyes, the way she clung to the last bit of energy like she was trying to prove something.
“You good?” Jesse asked, catching her elbow when she stumbled on the top step.
She leaned into him, her forehead pressing into his shoulder. “Barely.”
He grunted, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Yeah. That tracks. Pregnancy is rough.”
“I’m just so drained all the time.”
She didn’t fight him when he guided her inside—just sighed, soft and warm against his chest.
Once they were through the door, she kissed him and drifted toward the bedroom. No final word. Just barefoot silence and the sound of clothes dropping to the floor.
Jesse stood in the kitchen, watching the empty space she left behind.
He exhaled through his nose. Part of him wanted to follow her. Kiss her. Fuck her. Hold her. The other part knew she needed rest. She’d pushed through the whole night—smiling, laughing, pretending everything was fine. But he knew better.
She was unraveling, too. Just in a quieter way.
He opened the fridge, pulled out a protein bar and the last of the grilled chicken he’d made earlier that day. His body was trained to function like this—eat when you can, sleep when you can, shut your mind down in between. It was easier when you treated life like another deployment.
He didn’t even realize he was chewing until he was finished.
“Babe, you want anything?” he called out.
Silence.
He waited, then shook his head.
Of course not.
When he stepped into the bedroom, she was already out cold. Curled on his side of the bed, wearing his shirt—like she couldn’t even help it anymore. Like her body knew where it was safe.
She looked young like that. Bare. Small. Fragile in a way she never let herself be when awake.
Jesse’s chest tightened. That old instinct—the one to protect, to shield, to fix—surged in his gut.
But what the hell was he even protecting her from?
Himself?
He stripped off his shirt, slid into bed beside her. His body curved to hers like a reflex, one hand resting lightly on the swell of her hip, his face in her hair.
The second his skin met hers, she shifted. Her body melted into him like she’d been waiting for it. No hesitation. No question.
Jesse lay there for a long time, listening to the rise and fall of her breath, trying to sync his own with it.
But sleep didn’t come.
The ceiling blurred above him. His thoughts wouldn’t quiet. And when she rolled over and stole all the damn blankets—twisting herself into some chaos of limbs and cotton—he couldn’t even muster a smirk.
He was too far gone.
The nightmare hit fast.
One second he was staring at the shadows dancing across the ceiling, and the next—he was back in Banda.
The burning.
The blood.
The kid. Small hands clutching that soaked stuffed animal. Eyes wide. Blank. Empty.
His eyes.
The jungle disappeared and became a living room. His mother screaming. His father’s voice like a blade. A belt in one hand, Jesse’s shirt in the other.
He heard the crack before he felt it. Then tasted blood.
And then the boy was back. Standing in the wreckage, silent and still.
Alone.
Jesse shot up in bed, gasping. His lungs scraped against the inside of his chest. 2:15 a.m.
The room was dark. The air too still. Hayley lay beside him, peaceful. Untouched.
She hadn’t heard.
But his body didn’t know that. His body still thought he was under fire. Still thought it was him or the dirt.
He sat there for a long moment, hands braced on his knees, drenched in sweat, heart trying to punch through his ribs.
And then—
It hit.
That hunger.
The kind of pull that started low in the gut, ugly and familiar. That need. That quiet voice whispering just a little bit would help. Just a drink. Just a line. Just something to take the edge off. Something to shut down the noise.
It was always louder after nightmares.
Always crueler when things were good.
Because good meant he had something to lose.
And Hayley? She didn’t know half of it. Not really. Not the pills. Not the needles. Not the one-night blackout fucks that never scratched the itch.
He pressed his palms to his face. Dug his thumbs into his eyes until colors bloomed behind his lids.
No.
He wasn’t that guy anymore.
But the beast never left. It just waited.
And it was waiting now.
Jesse forced himself out of bed, careful not to jostle her. He grabbed a pair of joggers, pulled on a hoodie. His hands were still trembling as he stepped into his running shoes.
One more glance.
She was still curled in the sheets, one hand tucked under her cheek, lips slightly parted. Innocent in a way that wrecked him.
Don’t wake up.
Because if she did, she’d see it in his eyes.
The war.
The guilt.
The part of him that still wanted to disappear.
He stepped out the front door, shut it behind him, and locked it.
Then he ran.
Fast. Hard. Like he could outpace it.
Like he could outrun the man he used to be.
And the truth he was too scared to tell her.
That loving him came with a cost.
And sooner or later, Hayley was going to pay it.
* * * * *
Hayley stirred sometime around three, her body stiff, too warm. Her bladder ached—the kind of ache that came from pregnancy, the kind she was learning meant no more full nights of sleep. She groaned softly, rubbing her eyes, reaching blindly across the bed—
Cold.
Her fingers touched nothing but wrinkled sheets and a tangle of fabric.
No Jesse.
She blinked hard, still half-dreaming, still somewhere between the haze of sleep and the thick pull of exhaustion. Her hand patted the mattress again, slower this time, like he might just be hiding under the covers, like she hadn’t missed him the first time.
Still nothing.
Her brows drew together. Maybe he went to the bathroom. Maybe he couldn’t sleep and was raiding the fridge. Maybe he was—
She sat up too fast.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
No hum of voices from the living room. No shifting footsteps. No open cabinet doors or running tap. Just stillness. That hollow kind of silence that wrapped around you when you were alone.
Hayley swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her bare feet hitting the hardwood.
The apartment felt too big all of a sudden.
She moved slowly, instinctively holding her belly—though it wasn’t showing yet, it was there. It was always there now. A soft flutter of weight and fear beneath her ribs.
The bathroom light was off. She peeked in anyway.
Empty.
Her heart started to beat faster.
She wandered down the hall toward the kitchen, one hand pressed to the wall like she needed something to hold her up.
“Jesse?” she called softly.
No answer.
The kitchen was dark.
No open fridge. No Jesse leaning against the counter with a glass of water and a crooked grin, saying, What’s with the face, babe?
Just stillness. Stillness and cold countertops and the low hum of the fridge.
She stared at the space where he should be.
And suddenly—panic.
It hit hard. Fast. Like a memory that stabbed instead of bloomed.
He wasn’t here.
Again.
And her mind, traitorous and tired, whispered the worst thing it could:
Maybe this never happened.
Maybe the past few weeks—him coming back, holding her, making her breakfast, singing on that fucking stage—maybe that had been the dream.
Maybe she’d imagined the way he held her like she was his. The way he whispered stay with me like he meant it. The way he touched her like it wrecked him.
Maybe she’d made it all up to cope with being alone.
Because that’s what she was now.
Alone.
The bathroom light flickered behind her as she leaned against the counter, grabbing her phone off the charger with shaking fingers.
She opened their thread. Nothing new.
Typed:
Where are you?
Waited.
No dots. No read receipt. No response.
She hit call before she could talk herself out of it.
Straight to voicemail.
Her throat tightened. She pressed the phone to her chest, breathing hard through her nose.
No. No. No.
This wasn’t happening again. She wasn’t doing this again. Not with him.
She wasn’t going to stand in another kitchen, in another city, with another version of Jesse Navarro’s ghost echoing through empty rooms.
But she was.
Six weeks back in her life, and it was already happening. Her worst fucking fear, unfolding in real time.
She stared at the front door, arms wrapped around herself, like maybe he’d walk through it any second and say something stupid, something casual. Like it didn’t matter that he’d disappeared into the night without a word.
You were supposed to be different.
The thought came unbidden. Sharp. Real.
Because she had changed.
She wasn’t the reckless girl who chased chaos anymore. She wasn’t the one who drank to numb things or laughed her way through pain. She had a body that didn’t just belong to her now. A heart that beat for two.
And Jesse?
God, he had changed—she saw it. She felt it.
But the parts of him that still broke her?
They were still there too.
And right now, they were louder than anything else.
She didn’t cry. Not yet. She just stood there, her hand resting low on her stomach, fingers trembling.
He was real.
He had come back.
But maybe… he hadn’t come back all the way.
The door clicked.
Hayley’s head snapped toward the sound like it was a gunshot.
There he was.
Jesse stepped inside like nothing was wrong—drenched in sweat, hoodie half-off, breath coming fast like he’d gone for a run, like he hadn’t just vanished into the night and left her behind. His curls were damp, sticking to his forehead. He wiped his face with the hem of his sweatshirt, tossed it over a kitchen chair, and kicked off his sneakers like it was any other night.
Like she wasn’t standing there.
Like she hadn’t been searching the fucking city in her mind wondering if he’d relapsed. If he’d left. If this—whatever this was—was already over.
He didn’t look at her until he was halfway into the kitchen.
And when he did?
He blinked like she was interrupting him. Like she was in his way.
Then—flatly, casually—he said, “What?”
Hayley’s heart detonated.
She saw red.
No—she saw black.
Her voice came out low. Controlled. Lethal. “What?”
He blinked again, confusion giving way to something tighter. Defensive.
“Hayley—”
“Where the fuck were you.”
He exhaled hard, already walking past her like she hadn’t just been up for an hour losing her mind.
“I needed some air.”
He grabbed a glass, filled it with water. Drank. Like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.
Hayley stared at him. Stared at the muscles in his back flexing with every movement. The same body that had curled around her just hours ago. The same hands that had touched her like she was sacred.
Now?
He couldn’t even bother to look at her.
“You needed air,” she repeated, each word sharper than the last. “At two in the goddamn morning.”
“You were asleep.” He said it without turning around.
She wanted to scream. Wanted to throw something. Wanted to slap that indifference off his face.
“So?”
She could barely breathe. Her voice was shaking now, her chest rising too fast. “You left me. Alone. Again.”
Jesse turned finally. His jaw was tight. “I didn’t think I had to check in every time I stepped outside my own apartment.”
And that—that—was what broke her.
She actually stumbled back a step. Like he’d hit her. Like the air had been punched out of her lungs.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, her hands going to her temples. “You really don’t get it.”
“Then help me get it.”
“No. No. I’m done helping you understand basic fucking decency.”
She stepped closer, her voice rising, cracking. “You used to disappear all the time, Jesse. You’d vanish. For hours. For days. And you know what I’d do? I’d lie awake, sick to my stomach, wondering if you were dead or if you were just too high to answer your phone—or too busy fucking someone else to care.”
His face went still. His entire body froze.
“I’m not that guy anymore,” he said tightly. “I haven’t touched another woman since you came back.”
She laughed. A short, bitter sound. “Yeah? And I’m just supposed to believe that? After everything? After what you did to me back then?”
Silence.
Dead, suffocating silence.
The kind that made you want to rip your own skin off just to feel something.
She turned on her heel before he could answer. Before he could lie. Or worse—say nothing at all.
She stormed out of the kitchen, her vision swimming, her hands clenched so tight her nails dug into her palms.
Fuck him.
Fuck this.
If she stayed another second, she was going to cry.
And she refused—refused—to let Jesse Navarro see her cry again. Not after everything.
Not now.
Not when she was pregnant.
Not when she had so much more to lose than just him.
In the bedroom, Hayley yanked open her overnight bag with shaking hands.
She didn’t care what she grabbed—didn’t matter. She just needed to move, needed to do something before the feeling swallowed her whole.
The feeling of being so fucking stupid.
Twenty-four hours. That’s all it took.
Twenty-four hours of pretending this was something real. Of letting herself believe that maybe—maybe—he had changed. That she could trust him.
But here she was again. Zipping a bag with trembling fingers, her throat tight, her heart trying to convince her it was fine even as it cracked wide open.
She tugged the zipper closed and slung the bag over her shoulder with more force than necessary, jaw clenched.
And then—she felt it.
The shift. The weight of him behind her.
Jesse stood in the doorway, silent. Watching.
The air thickened between them, charged, crackling with things they’d never said.
She didn’t turn.
Didn’t trust herself to look at him. Not without losing the anger that was the only thing holding her together.
“Say something,” she said, her voice hoarse, nearly breaking. “Fucking say something, Jesse.”
He exhaled. That was it. A slow, pained breath.
But no words.
Of course not.
Hayley let out a bitter laugh. “Right. There it is.”
“Hayley—”
“No,” she cut in, spinning to face him, fury flashing in her eyes. “You don’t get to stand there and watch me walk out. You don’t get to leave in the middle of the night and come back like it’s nothing, and then just stand there. Silent. Like I’m supposed to read your mind.”
Jesse’s jaw clenched. His hands curled at his sides like he didn’t know where to put them.
“You disappeared,” she snapped. “And I laid there thinking I was crazy. Again. That this—whatever the fuck this is—was just something I made up in my head.”
His eyes didn’t flinch, but something flickered behind them. Pain. Shame.
“Every time I think you’ve changed, you prove me wrong.” Her voice cracked, quieter now. “You keep saying you’re not that guy. But you keep being that guy. And maybe I’m the idiot for still believing you want to be anything else.”
She shifted toward the door.
One step.
Another.
Then—
His hand caught her wrist.
Firm. Solid. Present.
Her whole body tensed.
She looked up, and he was right there. Right there. Closer than she could handle, looking at her like she was slipping through his fingers and he didn’t know how to stop it.
His hand wasn’t pleading. It wasn’t rough.
It just held her. Quiet. Unshakable.
She should’ve ripped her arm away.
But she didn’t.
She couldn’t.
He stepped in, pressing her gently into the doorframe. No force. Just gravity. Just Jesse. And she hated how much her body remembered him. How much it still wanted him. Even now.
His fingers lifted to her jaw, brushing her cheek, tracing her lips. Memorizing.
Always silent.
He never said the things she needed to hear.
He just stood there, forehead against hers, eyes shut like it was killing him to breathe.
And when his arms wrapped around her—tight, all-encompassing, like he was holding the edges of himself together with her—something inside her broke.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t try to explain. Didn’t give excuses.
He just held her.
Like that was all he knew how to do.
And it wasn’t enough.
It was never enough.
But god, it was still everything.
Her fists stayed clenched against his chest, her forehead against his, breathing his air, caught in his silence.
Do better, she wanted to scream.
Say something.
But Jesse never had the words.
He only had this—his touch, his hold, the way he gripped her like if he let go, he’d unravel completely.
And Hayley—fucking Hayley—just stood there.
Held by a man who never knew how to keep her.
Loved by someone who didn’t know how to say it.
And still—still—she leaned into him.
Hayley didn’t fight him when he led her back to bed.
She should have. Should have resisted, should have held onto the anger burning through her veins like fuel, should have clung to the reminder that this—this cycle, this pain, this endless loop—was exactly why they didn’t work.
But Jesse didn’t take from her this time.
He didn’t push, didn’t crush her with his weight or drown her in kisses meant to erase the damage rather than fix it.
He just pulled her under the covers, wrapped her against him like it was the only thing keeping him sane, and held her.
No words. No apologies.
Just silence.
He kissed her shoulder, his lips warm, lingering, sending a shiver down her spine, but he didn’t try to go further.
She lay stiff in his arms, her mind spinning. It felt wrong. But it felt right. The heat of his bare chest against her back, the slow, steady rise and fall of his breathing, the strong, calloused hand that drifted absently over the curve of her stomach.
His fingers traced soft patterns there, reverent. Like he was memorizing the life growing inside her.
Like he was grounding himself in something real.
Hayley pressed back into him, waiting for him to escalate things, to close the distance between them the way he always did. But he didn’t.
Her brows furrowed, lips parting as she glanced back at him. “This is new… not trying to fuck me?” Her voice was teasing, but underneath it, there was something real. Something raw.
Jesse exhaled roughly, his breath warm against the nape of her neck. His fingers traced slow, lazy circles over her stomach.
“Because,” he said, voice hoarse, “It used to be how I fixed things with us. I don’t want it to be that way anymore.”
Hayley stilled.
That was new.
She turned slightly, just enough to meet his gaze in the dim light. “What’s changed?”
Jesse’s expression was unreadable. Heavy. “Everything.”
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 a new 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?”
“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 na?ve.”
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.
Jesse let out a slow, shaky breath.
And for the first time since she had come back into his life—since their whole world had turned upside down—he let her in.
He kissed her long and slow. “He said something that woke me up.”
Hayley didn’t push.
She could have. She could have pressed him, demanded to know exactly what Heath had said that pulled him back from the edge, but Jesse had already given her more than she’d ever expected. More than he’d ever given anyone.
And she knew him well enough to recognize that he was at his limit.
So instead, she let the silence settle between them. Let it wrap around them like the darkened room, the soft hush of the ocean outside, the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest against her back.
Jesse tightened his grip around her, pulling her in, as if grounding himself in the feel of her, the solid weight of her in his arms. His breath was steady now, warm against her shoulder, his heartbeat finally slowing from the memories he’d unearthed.
Hayley stared into the dim light filtering through the window, processing everything.
She had thought she knew him. Thought she had seen the darkest parts of him. But now, the full depth of it sat heavy in her chest.
And yet, even knowing the worst, even feeling the weight of his past pressing between them, she still didn’t move away.
Jesse shifted, pressing his lips to her bare shoulder, lingering there. Not asking for more. Just being. Just holding.
She swallowed. “Are you okay?”
He huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head against her skin. “I don’t know if I ever will be.”
Hayley turned in his arms, shifting so she could face him. His golden eyes were dark in the shadows, unreadable, but she reached up anyway, smoothing her fingers through his curls, letting the gesture say what words couldn’t.
He let out a slow exhale, closing his eyes at her touch, and when he opened them again, something in them had softened.
“I’m still figuring this out, Hayley,” he admitted, his voice low, rough. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be good at this. There’s a monster that lives in me… and I’m always fighting it.”
She studied him, his face inches from hers, his hands resting low on her back. The boy she once knew had been reckless. Wild. Addicted to destruction. But this man? This man was trying.
“I don’t need perfect,” she said. “I just need honest.”
Jesse swallowed hard. He didn’t promise her anything. Didn’t give her words he wasn’t sure he could keep.
Instead, he just pulled her closer, pressing his forehead to hers, his breath unsteady.
And for now—that was enough.