Page 72 of Second Chance Saloon

He hummed under his breath, pushing both his hands into his thighs. “Likely, yes.”

Her chin jerked up as she forced her gaze not to stray. “I saw your scar.’’

Mitch stilled. He swallowed audibly, pulling a breath through his nose. “I was wondering when it would come up.” Resignation and sadness tinged his voice.

“Why were you hiding it?”

“I wasn’t. Not really. I hate looking at it myself. Reminds me of a very dark time in my life.”

A muscle in her jaw ticked, her gaze still firmly locked on the road ahead. “What happened?”

Mitch laughed darkly but it soon cut out. He didn’t say anything for a minute, like he was gathering his thoughts.

Jackie waited, her heart flailing uselessly inside her chest. They rejoined the main road leading back to the hotel but neither reached for the console to turn on the radio. The uncomfortable silence bounced between them like electric shocks pinging back and forth.

“It was stupid. I got drunk, got on a motorcycle and crashed into a wall. I was lucky I didn’t break my neck. Thankfully, I’d drunk so much that I couldn’t go very fast or it would’ve been much worse,” he said slowly, weighing up every word. His hand smoothed the linen material over the scar. “I was young and thought I was invincible. I never got on a motorcycle again.”

Anxiety burned a trail down to her heart. “When was it?”

He cleared his throat, straightening in his seat. “A long time ago. Years now.” He paused. “That’s when I stopped swimming competitively. I never got back to my baseline from before the accident. And I couldn’t do flips. Whenever I come to the wall, I … can’t do it.” He shook his head. “I don’t like talking about it.”

Jackie considered that for a beat. It was an evasive response but given how many of these she’d given him herself, did she have the right to push for more? Probably not. Maybe he’d tell her another time. For now, this was enough. It had to be.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He nodded in acknowledgement and turned his head to look out of the window. “The scar reminds me not to make rash decisions. And that there’s usually a good reason people tell you alcohol and vehicles don’t mix.”

“I have a small scar above my eyebrow from face-planting into a sidewalk when drunk in Madrid. Luckily, it healed well,” she tried to lighten the mood.

Mitch looked at her profile, his eyes darkened by the shadow cast by his hat.

Heat licked her cheeks under the weight of his searching gaze. “It’s my left side. You won’t see it from here.”

“I’ll have to look later.”

Jackie pushed her tongue into her cheek. “Not much to see, I’m afraid. At the time, it looked worse than it was. Lots of blood. I panicked, shouting I was bleeding out.” She shook her head, pink coloring the tips of her ears. “It was embarrassing and stupid.”

The corners of his lips turned up. “I can imagine.”

Jackie hit the blinker to turn onto the driveway leading up to Mexican Jewel. She worried her lip between her teeth, her heart thumping in her chest with every heartbeat.

Tell him. You need to tell him, an insistent voice crooned.

“I tied my tubes six years ago. That’s why I can’t have children,” she blurted out on a single exhale, before she could talk herself out of it.

Mitch didn’t say anything right away. His broken breathing filled the inside of the Jeep, like his whirring mind couldn’t find the right words. “Why?” he asked, his voice muted and uncertain. Like he didn’t think he had any right to hear her answer.

Her nails pushed into the leather of the steering wheel, the stitching making her palms itch. She should stop the car—surely, she wasn’t a safe driver right this second, even though they were already on hotel grounds. “It doesn’t matter. But I know how much you wanted kids. I need you to know that it could never be with me. Even if—”

“Even if what?”

“Even if something was to happen between us,” she whispered.

“Would you want something to happen?” Mitch whispered back.

Dozens of thoughts and unspoken questions saturated the atmosphere in the car. Like maybe if they spoke quietly enough, they wouldn’t tip the scales of their fragile feelings.

Did she want something to happen between them? Since he’d arrived, her body and mind turned to autopilot. Logically, she knew how she should be feeling, what she should want: for Mitch to go far, far away, leaving her free to continue her ordered existence.