Jasmine waited for doubt to kick in. Waited for visions of Sarge touching someone else to play out like a grainy homemade movie in her head. But they didn’t. Instead, she felt his mouth moving as it whispered promises against her ear. She saw him smiling at her across the car, both of them huffing into their hands to beat the chill. And underneath it all, there was bone-deep security. In them. Even if there couldn’t be a them—a them would be selfish on her end—a them would be a united front against assholes like this. Carmine didn’t know Sarge. He didn’t know her, either. Not the Jasmine who straightened her spine and laughed.
Oh God, the laugh felt phenomenal. It twirled and waved pom-poms as she tried to move past Carmine in the hallway. When he stepped right to block her path, it reversed directions and cemented her hands into fists. “Back off.”
“Last chance, Jasmine.” He pinched a strand of her hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “You had your fun, now stop being unrealistic.”
Carmine took one step closer, knocking her heels into the wall. In the space of a split second, a rebellion took place in her breast. Denial, anger, frustration welled and she embraced it. Embraced this part of her that had gone missing somewhere over the years. A gust of breath whooshed from her mouth, her closed fist lifting to sock Carmine in the jaw. She watched with openmouthed shock as he stumbled back with a wounded sound, hitting the opposite wall. But the shock turned to relief in a giant rush. There. There she was.
Jasmine heard a collective silence from the bar and turned, noticing the sea of attention they’d attracted. A week ago, she might have ducked and hightailed it out of the bar. Not tonight, though. Tonight, she calmly zipped her coat, smoothed back her hair and marched through the onlookers without so much as a blink. Just before the exit, a group of young women—the same ones who’d been taking pictures with Sarge—presented their palms for high fives, which she completed with a satisfying slap.
When the door closed behind her, she smiled. She smiled so wide it broke apart into a belly laugh as she climbed into the driver’s seat of her car.
In that sweet, sparkling pocket of time, she wasn’t a woman who could hold anyone back. Wasn’t a woman who could cause anyone regret.
And she had some serious thinking to do.
Chapter Fourteen
Sarge pulled open the double doors of his rented van, surveying the hundreds of packages that required unloading. To anyone else, carrying Christmas presents into the church event hall without help might resemble work. To him, it was pure saving grace. Distraction. One that would simultaneously prevent him from going to Jasmine’s apartment and camping outside until she spoke to him, while doubling as a happy surprise for the kids of Hook. Hopefully. Buying a vanload of musical instruments had seemed like a great idea at the time, but now he kind of wondered if he should have gone with a sports theme.
Distracting thoughts were good.
They were also running short. Okay, they’d been running short for almost two days, since he’d left Jasmine at the Third Shift. He’d watched from across the street until she pulled away in her car, before taking a cab to Manhattan. An expensive drive, but a necessary one. Jasmine needed time to process the love-bomb he’d detonated. If he waited around in Hook, nothing short of imprisonment would have kept him from trying to dig out the shrapnel he’d sent flying. So he’d spent two days on the phone with a Realtor, looking for a place to buy in Hook. Then he’d gone shopping for child-friendly instruments. And drinking. He’d done some drinking. The way a man did when his happiness hung in the balance.
Already his back muscles were tense, his palms damp, just knowing he would see Jasmine soon. Not kissing the crap out of her on sight was going to be some serious bullshit. It might actually kill him resisting that mouth now. Now was not like before. Before, he’d had fantasies. Now he had truth. And the truth was, her mouth spoke words he needed to hear. Gave pleasure he needed to receive. Could deny or approve the future he craved with his goddamn soul.
“So let’s unload some fucking ukuleles, huh?” Sarge muttered, planting a fist against the van’s metal door with a loud whap.
“Sounds like a party,” came a familiar female voice behind him.
Sarge turned to find Lita perched on the hood of James’s Mustang, threading neon-green shoelaces through the holes of a boot, leaving one of her feet bare. Already knowing he’d find his manager in the driver’s seat—where Lita went, so followed James—Sarge sent him a wave without looking. “What are you doing here?”
“Heard you lined up a gig tonight.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“TMZ.”
“Jesus.” Sarge dragged a hand down his face. “I’m just playing a couple Christmas songs. Doesn’t really qualify as a gig.”
Lita shoved her foot into the freshly laced boot. “We’re a band, Sergeant. It’s kind of a package deal.”
Too exhausted to give the drummer a hard time about the nickname, Sarge unloaded a crate of maracas. “If we’re a package deal, where’s our bass player?”