Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Fingers in her soft hair, tongue sweeping hers. Time hadn’t done jack shit to the way I felt about her. It hadn’t diminished that peace I had only ever felt with her.
Just as my hand dropped to her waist, Jade pulled away. Wrapping her arms around herself, her attention back on her feet. “I should…get back.”
Reality slammed into me like an eighteen-wheeler. She wasn’t mine anymore. Whatever had happened between us in that barn, whatever happened tonight, we both had barricades up. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to trespass.
I rubbed a hand over my neck before snatching my beer from the ground. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll walk you home.”
Twenty-One
Jade
When I got into Monroe’s car the next afternoon, I could feel her gaze burning into the side of my face, but I refused to meet it. I knew she’d want to know why she had to go back early. Instead, I stared at the front door of my parents’ house as she backed out.
“So…” she said.
“So, what?”
“So, are you going to tell me why you begged me to go home early and give you a ride, when you could have gone with Wolf?”
I really wasn’t in the mood to discuss the whole Wolf thing, but the arch of one red brow said I wasn’t getting away with that. “Would you want to ride with your ex-boyfriend?” I said.
“You rode up here with him.”
“That was different.” That was before he’d kissed me, for a third time, and confused the situation further. “I didn’t have any other choice. My tires were slashed.”
“What?” She stopped at a four-way and stared at me. “Who slashed your tires?”
At least the topic had shifted away from Wolf. “I don’t know. Maybe Brent…”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Since when was Monroe in Brent’s corner? She hated him.
“Then who did?”
“Could have been anyone, I guess.” She shrugged. “Cassie told me you slept in Wolf’s bed.”
Seriously. She was more concerned with Wolf than my flattened tires. “Cassie is a gossip, and it was one time. I was upset…”
“About what?” She pulled off and took a left onto the two-lane highway that cut through Dayton.
“It doesn’t matter! It’s…” I dropped my head against the seat, frustrated at everything. Him, me, Cassie, Monroe. “Living with him is just hard. And confusing.”
“Well, yeah. He’s your ex-boyfriend, who you’re still in love with, Jade.”
“I’m not—”
“Please, you can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me.”
Silence fell between us, and I was forced to face the truth she’d just dared to voice. “Love doesn’t matter, Monroe.” It was as much of a confession as she was getting out of me. “I don’t need to confuse the situation more.”
“So, riding up with him didn’t confuse anything, but riding back would…” The click, click, click of her blinker sounded. “And Wolf disappeared from that party last night, so I can only conclude—”
“He kissed me.”
In my periphery, I caught her slow nod. Nod but not say anything.
“What? What does that nod mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s an acknowledgement.”
“Well, when your friend tells you she kissed her ex-boyfriend, maybe they’d like more than—”
“Are we considering the kiss good or bad?”
“Bad! He broke my heart, and he doesn’t actually want me.”
He definitely hadn’t wanted me in that hay barn.
“You’re the one who wanted the break. And if you think Wolf doesn’t want you, you haven’t paid attention, Jade. He kissed you, didn’t he? He’s just as in love with you as you are with him.”
“I hurt him.” And set into motion a chain of events that had left scars on us both. But I’d made the first cut.
“And you’ve hurt yourself plenty. Haven’t you had enough?”
This was why I’d never admitted my lingering feelings for Wolf. Because he was the hill I had chosen to die on for the past year and a half, and she’d witnessed said dying. In all its bloody glory. I was on the same damn campus as Wolf. I could have swallowed my pride and appeased my obliterated heart by going to him. But I’d been too scared of his rejection, of discovering that I really didn’t mean as much to him as he did to me. And his dating Nora had just confirmed that.
“Look, I think it’s written somewhere in the girl code—thou shalt always call your girlfriend’s ex an asshole. I supported your choice to take a break from him. You had a lot going on with your dad’s illness, and everything just got on top of you.”
Maybe if I’d leaned on Wolf, it would have gone differently, but I’d just needed a break, that was all.
“But honestly, I don’t think you two ever should have broken up.”
Annoyed at what felt like her disloyalty, I redirected my attention through the window, watching the strip mall of pawn shops and liquor stores whizz past.