His statements were little iron hooks digging into her organs. “Don’t make promises in the heat of the moment. You’re too good a person not to keep them.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that.” A line formed between his eyebrows. “What about the part when I told you I love you, Jas? Let me know if you’re planning on ignoring it, so I can say the words again. And again. Until you can’t.”

He wasn’t going to make this easy. Had there been any doubt of that? Since he’d arrived, he’d come at her like a freight train, giving her no escape paths or places to burrow. “I heard you. I also heard you say always.”

“That’s right.”

Jasmine expelled a quick breath, immediately wanting to draw it back into her lungs. She couldn’t spare any oxygen when Sarge was sucking it all up. “You’ve been gone for four years. I’m not the same girl you think you love.”

“Bullshit. You are that girl. Just like there’s still some of the old Sarge still trapped inside me. We don’t get away from our pasts, and if I’ve learned one damn thing, it’s that we shouldn’t always try. Not when they’re the only thing that ever made you feel right.”

“No!” The word emerged as a shout, laced with panic. Everything he said was designed to pull her under the surface, but she needed to kick for them both. Sarge was too young, too good, too everything to realize he was trying to doom himself. “I can’t live up to the idea you have of me. I’m sorry, but you want something I can’t give.”

His hands slid down her arms and crashed onto the metal buffet. “Dammit, Jasmine. You’re not giving either of us enough credit. You are that girl I loved. But you’re also this woman I love, and I want her, too. This woman who doesn’t blink at a bar fight. This woman whose voice got even more beautiful than the one I hear in my dreams. This woman I’m looking at right now. I need her.”

Jasmine respected him all the more for making the point, but his astuteness did nothing to aid her cause. She couldn’t allow his convenient logic to penetrate. There would be other logic later. Different points. But one truth wouldn’t change—she didn’t belong with him. “You should have told me from the beginning how you felt. This isn’t fair.” Sarge held fast when she tried to slide off the buffet. “You let me think this was casual, but it wasn’t. Not for you.”

“You’re right.” His thumb brushed over her knee. “You’re right about that. I should have been honest. I can’t find it in me to be sorry, though, Jasmine. Not when I know you feel something. Not when I know staying is the right thing.”

Staying. The right thing. That’s what it all came down to. Sarge’s heart had always been on display, so apparent in everything he did. She would be no different. A responsibility he smiled through. People would laugh at their age difference, call him a fool for giving up the musician lifestyle to be with a woman seven years his senior. Eventually he would listen to the naysayers. No matter how well he hid his resentment, it would be there. Over turning down the contract, tossing away his chance at even greater success. God, it would kill her knowing she’d held him back. Forced him to squander his potential. The way she’d done.

“I’m sorry, I…” The words got lodged in her throat. He wouldn’t listen to reason, so she had to be firm. Harsh. Already what came next haunted her, even with their bodies still joined. Swallowing the broken sound shivering up her throat, Jasmine wrestled with his grip until she could bypass Sarge, stooping down to pick up her jeans. “I’m sorry, I’m bowing out. I never would have let this happen if I thought you would want a relationship out of it.”

When Jasmine straightened, Sarge was right behind her. “You don’t think I see what you’re doing?” He dragged her back against his chest, mouth pressed to her ear. “The man who loves you isn’t afraid of a fight. Just tell me what I’m up against so I can knock it the fuck down.”

It took a strength of will she’d never experienced to remain upright. To resist turning in Sarge’s arms and confessing her doubts. Laying them on his doorstep and seeing what he could do with them. As if she didn’t know. He would obliterate them somehow. For the moment. But they would grow back stronger and more insistent once time had a chance to pass. Once the outside world began to intrude. “Let me go.”

“Never.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob, then pulled away with one remaining ounce of resolve. “I didn’t mean for it to end like this. I would never intentionally hurt you…or River.”

He stabbed the air with a finger. “We’re the only two people involved here.”

“That’s not always how things work.” When Jasmine finished pulling on her jeans and boots, it took her a minute to face Sarge. His face was grim, hands pushed into his pants pockets. Still as stone. Maybe she’d finally gotten through? Why did that possibility make her want to die? “I’ll go out through the bar…there are probably a couple of cabs waiting by now. Do you mind going out the back?”

His laughter was sharp. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”

Jasmine’s face grew hot. “People shouldn’t see us walking out of this room together. People’s opinion of me is all I have. I have to live here, Sarge.”

Two booted strides and Sarge was pushing into her personal space. “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. I want to face them with you. I want to live here with you.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me.” She was fading, fading. It hurt to stand and talk and think. “That’s n-not what I signed up for.”

“Right.” But she must have shown a dent in her armor, because a spark appeared in his eyes. A glimmer of the man she’d spent the day with, laughing and ignoring anything resembling the future. Sarge reached out and cupped her cheek and everything inside her went still. “I know it’s a lot. I just told you I love you. That it’s always been this way. Maybe you’re even right to be scared, Jas, because this love is rough. It’s sharp and sweet and dirty and jealous. It wakes me up in the middle of the night thinking I’m in the wrong place because you’re not there. It believed you were mine before you saw me as a man, and the waiting…the waiting made this love bigger. It’s so big and I understand why that’s scary. I’ve had time to stop being scared of it, and you haven’t.” His hand slipped into Jasmine’s hair, drawing her close so he could brush their mouths together. “I’ll keep waiting. I’ll wait out the fear.”

She couldn’t speak around the crushing sensation behind her ribs, so she simply shook her head, loosening tears that tracked down her cheeks.

The pull between them stole her breath, so intense there didn’t seem any choice but to meet each other halfway. But Sarge tightened his grip on her hair and stepped back, pain evident in his handsome features. “Christmas Eve at the church. Will you be there?”

Two nights away. “Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll see you then.” Attention locked on her, Sarge headed for the party room’s back exit, pulling it open and pausing in the doorway. “At the very least, Jasmine, I just need to see you.”

When the door clicked shut, Jasmine fell into the closest folding chair. With the failure of her musical aspirations, getting stuck in a town she’d always imagined in her rear view, Jasmine had always thought of her life as a tragic series of disappointments. But as she sat in the still room listening to the rasp of her own breath, it became obvious she’d never understood tragedy until now. To have a man like Sarge and feel him waiting, feel him wanting, but not answer that call? It might very well stop her heart from beating.

At once, her bones ached. A tapping pain had started behind both eyes, forcing them shut. Home. If she didn’t get home soon, she’d never find the willpower to move again. With a fortifying breath, Jasmine pushed to her feet, leaning down to fix her mussed hair in the reflective metal buffet. Wondering how in God’s name she would talk to anyone and form complete sentences on the other side of the door, Jasmine nonetheless removed the metal chair poised beneath the knob and stepped out into the dim hallway.