Jensen Rose blew into my life with the force of a category five hurricane and ripped my carefully constructed life to shreds. I didn’t have a choice when it came to falling in love with him, he’d made damn sure of that. He’d pursued me relentlessly, with a single-minded determination I couldn’t help but admire. He made me want more. He made me dream of a different kind of life. But worst of all, he made me hope I was enough, that I was worth sticking around for.
As it turned out, I wasn’t.
He’d given me everything I didn’t know I was missing. He made me realize how lonely and closed off my world had been. He swooped in and filled it with color and laughter. With him, the ideas for my future changed. Jensen took over my mind, leaving no room for thoughts of independence. He was all I cared about. He became my future.
Then he ripped it all away.
I’d given up everything for him, becoming dependent on him for my very happiness. But I wasn’t enough. Just like everyone else, he’d walked away. However, unlike all the others, he’d at least left me with a gift: something more precious than anything else in the world. There wasn’t much I was willing to give him credit for, but at least, thanks to him, I had my son. Brantley was the most important person in my life. I loved him with everything I had, and as much as it irked me, I couldn’t help but be thankful to Jensen for giving him to me.
It had taken every single day of the four and a half years he’d been gone for me to mend my broken heart, trying to piece it together with bits of tape and string until it was a poor reflection of what it had once been. However, it still didn’t work quite right.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was finally able to go longer than a handful of hours without thinking about him. I’d finally felt like I was in a place to start moving on. I’d begun to date casually. Brantley was my sole focus, so there wasn’t room in my life for serious relationships, but it was nice to have bits of male attention every once in a while.
There were even some that I took to bed. Those experiences might not have rocked my world to its foundation, but they’d been pleasant enough. After all, I wasn’t looking for that kind of chemistry. I’d had it once before, and it had destroyed everything. I’d never again make the mistake of tying myself to a man who made my heart race, my breath quicken, and my skin tingle with just a single look. Men like that were dangerous. But it was still nice to have the occasional reminder that I was a woman and there were men out there who found me desirable.
Life was moving forward, and I had no choice but to move with it. It might not have been what I’d imagined it to be when I was younger, but I was learning to make do with my lot and I was finally happy.
Then, a few months ago, Jensen came back, and once again, my world was flipped upside down.
The boy I’d given my heart to, the man I’d planned a future with before he disappeared, had come back to Redemption, and it hadn’t just been for a short visit.
Much to my displeasure, he’d returned for good.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
The sound of my friend Farah’s voice pulled me from the unwelcomed trip down memory lane and back into the present.
Lifting my attention from where I’d been pinning her long, silky blonde hair into a loose, artful chignon behind her right ear, I caught her gaze in the reflection of the vanity mirror and gave her a curious look. “Huh?”
“You’ve been really quiet. I can only assume it’s because I screwed up majorly by inviting Jensen today. I’ll get Cannon to go down there and ask him to leave. I’m so sorry, Shane—”
“Farah, stop.” I smiled into the mirror and placed my hands on her shoulders. “I’ve already told you, I’m totally fine with it.”
“It’s just . . .” She paused to chew on her bottom lip. “After everything he did—”
“Stop biting your lip. You’re messing up your lipstick. And I get it, believe me. You don’t have to explain.”
The truth was, as much as I hated to admit it, Farah inviting Jensen to her and Cannon’s wedding had been the right thing to do. If it hadn’t been for him and his two Army buddies, our other friend Poppy might not have been with us today. When she’d been abducted and held for ransom by a hitman a while back—long story—Jensen and his friends had stepped in and saved the day.
I might have hated Jensen Rose to my very bones for abandoning me—plus, the whole crushing my heart thing—but I was eternally grateful to him for helping save a woman I thought of as a sister. I hadn’t had many friends growing up, what with keeping myself closed off and all, but Farah and Poppy had wormed their way under that protective wall I kept up around my heart, and now I couldn’t imagine not having either of them in my life.
The woman inadvertently at the center of our conversation came scuttling into the bridal suite looking slightly mussed and glassy-eyed. It didn’t take a genius to realize she’d snuck off somewhere to neck—and probably a whole lot more—with her insanely sexy husband and Farah’s big brother, Jase Hyland. “Don’t have to explain what?”
“Where you’ve been for the past twenty minutes,” I answered, giving Poppy a teasing wink. “Judging by your smeared lip gloss and sex hair, we already know.”
Poppy’s large blue eyes got wider as she lifted her hands to pat her long red hair. “Shut up,” she grumbled good-naturedly while moving to the mirror to fix the damage her man had done. “Now what are you really talking about?”
I shoved the last bobby pin into Farah’s hair and stepped back to view my handiwork as I answered, “Farah’s still worrying that I’m upset with her for inviting Jensen today, even though I’ve already told her a million times that I’m totally cool with it.”
I wasn’t, not really, but this was her day, and I wasn’t going to do anything to ruin it. Farah Hyland—soon to be Banks—had a heart of gold, and it didn’t surprise me in the slightest that she’d want to show her gratitude to Jensen for all he’d done by trying to include him in something like this.
“Besides, the whole town’s gonna be here today, so I probably won’t even see him.”
Avoidance was the name of the game. Sure, the idea that I had to share my town with him rankled, but there was nothing I could do to change that. We’d only had a handful of conversations since his return, and that was more than enough, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, one of those conversations had involved him wanting to get to know Brantley. If I thought sharing my town with him sucked, the thought of sharing my son tore me to shreds. I’d fought it for a while, refusing to let him anywhere near my son. After all, it wasn’t only me he’d left behind.
It was Caroline who helped me see past the haze of rage and pain to reason.
“Your uncle and I did the best we could, honey pie, but we were only fill-ins for the real thing,” she’d said. “You know what it’s like to grow up without your folks. If Brant has a chance to know his daddy, you need to let him.”
“What if he leaves again?” I’d asked, my heart in my throat at the thought of my boy being hurt.
“You can’t protect your baby from feelin’ heartbreak, Shane. All you can do is help him past it if it happens.”