by Cassie James
I try not to stumble over myself as Ace leads me down a small staircase into a lower section of the cabin that I didn’t know existed. It’s quieter down here, and the lights are dimmed, but you can feel the charged energy in the air. This has to be where people are coming to hook up. I can feel Ace tense as we travel further into the dark. Something in me is drawn to the door on the end. I step out of Ace’s grip while he’s checking one door and use the wall to hold me up straight as I head for the door that’s caught my eye. The handle opens easily in my hand, my eyes adjusting to the dark as the door opens with only the smallest squeak of the hinges.
My eyes are playing tricks on me. That’s the only explanation I can think of for what I’m imagining in front of me. Because there’s no way that’s Kathryn sitting topless on the bathroom counter. Just like there’s no way that’s Sadie’s blonde head buried under her skirt. Kathryn’s eyes were closed, but they pop open as I stand gaping in the doorway. She tilts her head, a grin spreading from cheek to cheek as she takes one hand and strokes it over Sadie’s hair. It has to be Sadie’s hair. There’s no one around here as blonde as she is—other than her brother, but this is obviously not him.
Ace reaches me, glancing into the room from over my head. He goes still the same way I did, and that’s when I know I’m not imagining anything. He doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as I am, though. Kathryn closes her eyes again and leans her head back against the mirror over the sink. She lets out a low, throaty moan that only sounds half real. She knows she has an audience and she’s putting on a show.
Sadie’s done nothing but talk about boy problems for the last two weeks. This feels like it’s coming from way out of left field, and I don’t have nearly enough brain power to wrap my mind around it. Sadie warned me to stay away from Kathryn that first week, that she was an untrustworthy bitch, but now I’m questioning if that was the real reason she warned me off. Maybe she just didn’t want me to know about this. Not that I understand why. I don’t care if Sadie’s a lesbian or bisexual or whatever. What I do care about is that she dragged me to this party only to leave me to fend for myself. And she did it for Kathryn.
Ace reaches around for the door handle and pulls it closed. For a second, we both stand there staring at the closed door. “Can you take me home?” My voice sounds distant and distorted to my own ears, like I’m trying to talk underwater.
“Yeah.” He sounds relieved. I’m not sure if it’s because he thought I was about to freak out about what we just saw, or if it’s because he can tell I’m barely holding on at this point. Either way, Ace is only person left here that I trust to get me home in one piece. Of course ridesharing isn’t a thing in Patience, where people that don’t want to drive hire full-time drivers.
Ace puts his arm around me again and leads me off. I barely manage to hold on to consciousness as he weaves us through the least crowded points of the party up to the main deck and back onto the dock. Another dumb rich people thing. A party on a boat and we didn’t even leave the dock. It seems to me like that defeats the whole point of being on a boat in the first place if your plan is to stay still.
I sink into the warm leather seat in Ace’s car as he helps me in, already forgetting how we got here. I manage to keep my eyes on Ace as he walks around the front of the car to the driver’s seat. Jax might have some secret muscles under his clothes, but Ace has his muscles on full display. He looks like he could Incredible Hulk right out of his clothes if he wanted to.
“What?” Ace asks as he climbs into the driver’s seat and pushes a button to start the car’s engine. I blink at him a few times before I realize I’m still staring at him. That still doesn’t stop me.
“You have really nice eyes.” Green eyes are my favorite, I decide in that moment. I can’t think of a single other person I’ve ever known that had green eyes. Wait, I have green eyes. I chuckle to myself and Ace’s eyebrows shoot up. I think he asks me what I’m laughing about, but my brain is too foggy to answer.
I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know the car is in park and Ace is leaning over me from the passenger side door trying to wrestle my seatbelt off of me. I absently click the button, releasing the seatbelt so it slowly retracts between us. Ace turns his face towards me, putting us nearly mouth to mouth at this angle. I lean in.
Ace hesitates, but that doesn’t stop me. I’ve somehow developed a one-track mind, my lips parting to coax his open so I can kiss him deeper. I tell myself it’s just a thank you kiss. It doesn’t have to mean anything. The words dance around my brain, but they don’t feel the slightest bit true. I kiss Ace with everything I have in me, giving more when it feels like he’s ready to pull away. I’m not entirely in control of this kiss but neither is he. We’re floating together is some kind of in between space where kissing is easier than breathing.
He does pull away eventually. “Okay, that’s…” He clears his throat uncomfortably. “Now’s probably not the time for that.” I must look put off, because he reaches out and caresses the side of my face. It’s a nice gesture, but it feels a little empty. Ace just looks guilty. Probably because I’m drunk off my ass. He’s so goddamned nice. The nicest.
He helps me up out of the car and I stare up at the daunting walk from the driveway to the front door. There are a lot more stairs than I remember. Ace must recognize the same problem, because he swings me up into his arms bridal style and ends up carrying me to the front. “Do you have a key?” he asks as he moves up the stone steps. I shake my head and he curses softly under his breath. It doesn’t end up mattering though, because the front door swings open as soon as Ace’s feet his the welcome mat. Well, hypothetical welcome mat. Lexington Estate doesn’t actually have a welcome mat. That would be pretty tacky, I think.
“Mr. Van Doren. This is unexpected.” I snap my eyes shut, wondering if I can get away with feigning sleep. “I suppose I won’t ask,” she sighs that deep sigh that older people get when they’re being super judgey. Not that I can blame her for it at the moment.
I feel Ace shuffle uncomfortably from foot to foot. As an added bonus, the movement shifts my head to a nice comfortable spot near his shoulder. I automatically snuggle closer, appreciating the sharp, clean scent of him that I didn’t notice before. Oh hell, I’m pretty sure I just smelled him. “I’m only bringing her home. I had nothing to do with the, uh, state that she’s in.” What a freaking tattletale.
“Duly noted.” I’m not sure what’s happening exactly, but Ace does start moving again, over the threshold and into the house. It’s particularly jarring when his feet hit the steps, so I bury my face even more into Ace’s shirt. Can’t wait to face him on Monday after this whole debacle.
For a second, I’m weightless, floating through the air, and then I land on the soft mattress of what I’m pretty sure is my bed. It’s not nearly as sexy as Ace’s chest, but the bed is admittedly more comfortable. “I should get her some water,” Ace offers.
Pearl sounds awfully suspicious as she stops him. “I’ll get her a glass. You stay here and keep an eye on her until I get back.” I’m listening to all of this even though my brain is struggling to keep up. Twice as confusing as the conversation is the fact that the bedroom door clearly shuts a few seconds later. Did this lady seriously just close the door on me alone in my room with a teenage boy? I know she never had kids of her own, but this feels like a no-no straight out of Parenting 101.
“This was a mistake,” Ace says. My lips part, and I want to ask him what was a mistake, but I’ve finally hit a wall. Everything slowly fades until all I can focus on anymore is the spinning. Lots and lots of spinning.
Chapter 9
Waking up with a hangover is every bit as bad as I expected it to be. I do have a slight headache, yes, but more than that, I have vague memories of doing some really stupid shit last night. As long as I keep my eyes squeezed closed tight, I can almost still imagine what it felt like to kiss Ace. Which is actually a really terrible idea. Ace is one of the few people here that’s be
en a friend to me. I don’t need to screw that up the way I’ve apparently screwed my friendship up with Jake.
Still, I don’t regret doing those shots in Cece’s place. Anyone with half a brain could tell she couldn’t handle anymore. Jax was taking advantage by letting her continue to drink. His tolerance was obviously on a different level than hers. I hope someone made sure she made it home safely.
Three solid knocks hit my bedroom door. “You have a guest.” The disgust in Pearl’s voice surprises me. She sounds even less impressed than when she said the name Harrington. I can’t imagine who she would consider lower than the Harringtons, especially now that I know the family feud is over a land dispute. It’s not hard to figure out that people take their estate sizes seriously around here.
“I’m coming,” I call back, the words sounding frog-like as I force them out of my scratchy throat. I pry open my eyes one at a time. Groaning, I somehow manage to pull myself out of the bed. I’m still in my jeans from the night before, and as I stand up my phone dings several times in a row. I ignore it, too curious about the supposed visitor to pause and check my notifications. It’s probably just telling me to do an update or something anyway. Or it’s Sadie checking on me. I didn’t think to send her a message giving her a head’s up when I left last night. Whoops.
I drag myself down the stairs, confused when no one is waiting in the entryway. “In here,” Pearl’s voice calls, still just as displeased as before. I follow her voice into the formal living room at the front of the house. Pearl is sitting in a fancy old chair. It takes my eyes a second to seek out the other person in the room. He’s standing with his back to me, admiring a portrait of my grandfather that’s hanging over the fireplace.
“Jake!” My hangover is fully forgotten as I launch myself at him, jumping into his arms with an enthusiasm I haven’t felt since I stepped foot in this town. He puts his arms around me in a hug that feels forced. I pull back, looking him in the eyes, and the way he looks back at me puts a stop to all the warm fuzzy feelings I was having. “What’s wrong?” Jake has never looked at me like this. This is how Patrick looks at me. Like I’m beneath him.
He looks over my head at where Pearl is still sitting. “We should talk alone.” His voice is tight, completely unlike him. I let go because it feels weird to be touching him when he so clearly doesn’t want me to.
Pearl is still eyeing Jake with a skepticism that he doesn’t deserve. Jake is one of the good guys, unlike the assholes here. Pearl’s made it pretty clear, though, she’s a traditionalist like my grandfather was. Jake, like me, doesn’t fit in here. The difference is that this was my birthright. I can tell that as far as she’s concerned, I belong here and he doesn’t.
“Let’s take a walk,” I suggest. I nudge him towards the doorway, ignoring the unhappy expression on Pearl’s face. She’s been pretty hands off with me outside of buying me things I didn’t ask for and giving me some limited family history. She can hardly step in and play the parent over my childhood friend visiting, not after turning a blind eye to me coming home wasted last night.
I lead Jake outside, desperate for things to feel normal. He steps down the drive, as if he’s going to head down the court, but I don’t want to pass by the Harrington house if I can help it. “The view is nicer out back,” I suggest, nodding towards the side of the house. I’m relieved when he doesn’t raise a fuss. I hate that I’m basically hiding him away—I’m not ashamed of Jake in the least—but I can’t imagine he would mesh well with the new life I have here. There’s plenty of weirdness already with Jake, running into Smith would only make it worse.
“I’ve been calling you.” I try to keep the accusation out of my voice, but it’s hard when I’ve spent the last couple weeks being ignored. “I even left some voicemails, but I never heard back from you.”
Jake stops cold in the middle of the yard, slowly turning to me with confusion written all over his face. “I called you back. You’ve been rejecting my calls. And I’ve been texting you like fifty times a day.”
I shake my head. “No. I haven’t gotten any calls from you. No texts either. I thought you were ignoring me after…” After we got dangerously close to turning our friendship into something else.
Jake shakes his head twice as furiously as I did. He yanks his phone out of his pocket and opens it to his call log. Almost every call is my name, and he’s right, the calls go back all the way for the last two weeks. But I know in my gut something isn’t right with this, there’s no way I would have missed that many calls without noticing. I take the phone from him, opening the contact information for myself.
I only have to read the first few numbers to see what the problem is. “This isn’t me. Where’d you get this number?”
“You texted it to me.” He’s looking at me like I’m being stupid, which I don’t appreciate. I close out of the contacts sheet and open his texts. I’m the last person he texted, supposedly, but I know now that he wasn’t contacting the right number. I scroll all the way up the text thread, past all the messages he’d tried to send me in the last two weeks. He wasn’t kidding. There are a lot of them. The message I’m looking for is all the way up at the top. Hi, It’s Jess! This is my new number!
“Jake, this wasn’t me.” I definitely would have remembered sending a message like that, and there’s still one glaring inaccuracy. “I’ve been going by Juliet ever since that night I got here. I can’t think of myself as Jess anymore if I want to survive here. I would never have texted you calling myself that. It would have been too confusing.” I can’t believe this is happening. “Didn’t you think it was weird that the number I was calling from wasn’t the number you were calling back?” He looks sheepish, glancing down at his feet to avoid meeting my eyes. Something hits me. “I know this number.” I open the contacts list again. Nine of the numbers that make up the phone number are familiar, but the last number is different. It’s one digit away from being Sadie’s phone number. I recognize it easily because it’s one of the few numbers I’ve put in my phone that I didn’t already have memorized.
“Okay, well, it’s good to clear that up, kind of, I guess. But that’s not why I’m here.” He grimaces as he leans towards me to open something else on his phone. A picture. Of me. I raise it to get a closer look as if that will change what I’m seeing. It’s me in my bra, looking up at the camera with a soft, barely there smile. My comforter is in the background, the floral purple proving that this picture is real. It’s obviously from last night, I’m still wearing the same red bra from this photo. I can also tell by my unfocused eyes that I have no idea what’s going on even as I stare straight up at the person taking my picture.
I shake my head. Blink. Anything to try to erase this nightmare Jake has just dropped in front of me. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s online. All over social media. Someone showed it to my brother, and he showed it to me.” I’m going to be sick. I thrust Jake’s phone back at him just in time to kneel into the bushes to puke. Nothing can hold back the tears that start streaming down my face, and I can’t even bring myself to care that I’m crying in front of Jake. He’s not done, either, because of course that’s not all. “They’re posting your address, too. That’s how I found you. It’s… It’s not good, Jess.” I don’t bother to correct him because I’ve never felt more like the Nikon Park trash I was raised to be than I do right now.
With nothing left in me to throw up, I stay kneeling on the ground and bury my face in my hands. This picture… it’s captured me in one of my most vulnerable moments, and it’s made to look like something it’s not. Like it’s sexual. Worse than that is I have no choice but to face the realization that Ace did this. He’s the only person that was with me last night besides Pearl, and I vaguely remember her leaving the two of us alone in the bedroom. What I don’t remember is taking my shirt off or putting it back on, but I sure did wake up wearing it this morning. So, it wasn’t enough for him to violate me taking a picture like that, but he puts his hands on
me when I was obviously so out of it I can’t even remember.
“I should never have come here.” A group home is starting to sound pretty damn appealing. “I thought I would feel like I belonged, but the people here—they’re pure evil. They’ll do anything to make sure I don’t feel like I deserve what’s mine. Maybe I don’t.” Being born into white collar royalty apparently doesn’t mean anything if you don’t grow up with the same privilege as all the other white collar kids. “I didn’t take that picture, Jake. I would never have done that. Someone brought me home last night from a party. I thought we were friends but now…”
I can feel the tension dissolve between Jake and me. He moves closer until his familiar worn out work boots step into view. He reaches a hand down, and I take it because even though he’s just delivered the second worst news of my life, he’s Jake. And while all the people here might have had me fooled, Jake has never been anything but in my corner. Hell, he came all this way for me even though he was obviously mad thinking I’d been the one ignoring him while I was posing for sexy pictures for someone else. He still came.
“I don’t know what to do for you right now,” Jake admits as he pulls me to my feet. He wraps his arms around me, and I let myself sink against him. I barely have the energy to hold myself up.
I breathe him in, trying to ignore the way my mind automatically wants to compare the smell of Jake’s laundry detergent to the way Ace smelled last night. I fucking hate that I can feel that smell seared into my memory. “Can you take me home?”
Jake pries himself away from me so he can look directly into my eyes. “Is that really what you want? Because I’ve got my brother’s car and there’s nothing I’d like more than to put you in the middle seat where you belong and get us both the hell out of here.” I’ve always sat in the middle seat when Jake’s borrowed his brother’s truck. I like the way it feels to lean into him as he rests his arm on my thigh in between moving the gearshift.
