43. The Hard Line #2
Two words, and every wall I’ve built to survive his absence shudders at its foundation.
“I gave you everything, Jesse. I didn’t hold a single part of myself back from you, not once. And when I needed you most, you weren’t there.”
I watch him swallow whatever defense he might have offered and let my words land where they belong.
“I know,” he says, raw and unsteady. “There’s no version of this where I deserve to be standing in front of you right now.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and his fingers press against the outside of his thigh in a rhythm only he can hear. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, like he’s reaching for something buried deep and pulling it up by the roots.
“My whole life, I watched my dad carry this guilt for passing something broken inside himself to me. For every hard day I had because of it.” His throat moves. “When you told me about the baby, all I could think was that I was going to do the same thing to our kid.”
The four words he said on that beach sit between us, carved into my chest like a brand.
“Jesse.” I shake my head.
“I had it wrong.” His voice drops to something barely held together. “I had it so fucking wrong, and I said something I will carry for the rest of my life."
His hand lifts, falters—fingers hovering just shy of my arm. He lingers there for a breath before letting it fall, like he’s remembered he doesn’t have the privilege of touching me anymore.
“I want this baby,” he says, and his voice is the steadiest it’s been all night. “I want you. And I want to be the kind of father who shows up, not the version of me who runs when it gets hard.”
I look at him. At the boy who knelt beside me in a tide pool at fifteen, close enough to kiss me before a wave knocked us both down, and who laughed with his whole body like he’d never carried anything heavy.
The man standing in front of me now, terrified and certain in equal measure, offering me the truest version of himself he’s ever let anyone see.
And I understand, in a way that settles somewhere below language, that this is the moment.
Not the song, not the apology, not the words.
This. His hand still warm from the guitar and shaking at his side.
His eyes, clear and blue and holding nothing back.
My good hand grips the front of his shirt, and I pull him to me.
His mouth finds mine and I stop breathing.
Not because I forget—because breathing doesn’t matter when he’s kissing me like this, slow and desperate and shaking with the effort of holding himself together.
His hands cradle my jaw and his thumbs sweep the tears from my cheeks, and I dissolve into him, into the heat of his mouth and the salt on his tongue and the sound he makes against my lips—low, wrecked, like a man surfacing after too long underwater.
I kiss him back with everything I’ve been carrying, every sleepless night and every unanswered ache, and he takes all of it. He takes all of it and pulls me closer.
When we pull apart, his forehead drops against mine. His exhale shakes against my skin.
“I’ve missed you so much.” I press my palm to his cheek. He turns his face into my hand and leans into it with his whole body, like the weight of him has been searching for somewhere to land.
This is the Jesse I have been waiting for.
“If you waver again,” I whisper, “I won’t survive it."
He lifts my knuckles to his mouth and presses his lips there. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life."
We step outside and the salt air hits my skin. Jesse’s hand settles on the small of my back as we walk toward the water, and the steadiness of it makes my throat tight.
His gaze drops to my sling, and his jaw tightens.
“Are you in any pain?” He shakes his head like he’s answering his own question before I can.
“Dislocated shoulder, but we’re fine,” I say. “I’ll heal."
“I was so scared.” His voice is rough. “All I could think about was if you and our baby were okay.”
Our baby.
I hadn’t allowed myself to think that way until now.
I’ve loved this baby since the moment I saw two lines on a test, but I’ve been loving it at a distance—carefully, guardedly, the way you love something you might have to carry alone.
Hearing Jesse say those two words turns it into something else.
Something with a shape. A family. The word blooms in my chest, fragile and enormous, and I let it stay.
We reach a bench overlooking the water and sit. The ocean stretches out in the dark—black and endless, and the sound of the waves fills the spaces between us where words haven’t landed yet.
“I need you to stop protecting me from the hard days, Jesse.” I turn to face him. “If we’re doing this, I need all of you. Even the parts you think will scare me. You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”
He stares at the water for a long moment. When he turns to me, his eyes are glassy.
“You won’t have to do it alone.” He reaches over and covers my hand with his. “I can’t promise I’ll get everything right. But I promise I’ll be there.”
I search his face for doubt, for hesitation, for any trace of the man who stared through me on the beach. I don’t see him. All I see is Jesse—the man I’ve always wanted him to be.
His hand slides into my hair, and I smooth my thumb across his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw. He turns his face into my palm.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you so fucking much, Joey.”
“This isn’t going to be easy,” I say.
“I’d rather do hard with you than easy without you.”
He kisses me, slow and sure, and I sink into it, into him, into the warmth of his mouth and the weight of his arms around me. We have always been permanent.