Fake smile firmly in place, she tipped up her chin. “Fine. Leave me alone. Not sure how I’ll survive without you. Maybe there’s snacks or something to entertain me.” She pecked me on the cheek and nudged me toward Lacey.
“Be right back.” I followed Lacey around to the side of the house farthest from the party. “I swear Mom was the other way.”
“She is, and we’ll get there.” Lacey flipped her hair over her shoulder and bit her lip, casting a glance the way we’d come from. “Why isn’t Jenna talking to me yet?”
This was better than I could have hoped for. Jenna could work the Adam angle while I chipped away at Lacey. “Last weekend upset her pretty bad. She almost didn’t come today because of it.”
“What is she saying happened? She wouldn’t tell me.”
I gritted my teeth, my hands tightening into fists as I remembered what she’d described. “What did Adam say?”
“Only that he was talking to her and she bolted.” Lacey twisted a lock of hair around her finger.
I caught her wrist and held it up. “Your tells haven’t changed since you were six. Why are you lying?”
Lacey jerked away from me. “Because I know you like her, and he’s her ex, which changes the dynamic in a lot of ways.”
“I’m aware. What did he say?” No one else was gathered on this side of the house, so I stopped and waited.
It took three steps for her to realize I wasn’t with her. She sighed and returned, shrugging. “You really want to know? He said she came on to him, and when he told her he was engaged to me, she freaked and ran off.”
Which angle to poke at first?
“Funny, she told me the exact opposite. He came on to her.” The wind whipped up for a second, sending the skirt of Lacey’s dress twisting around her ankles. After a minute, I plowed ahead with the second barb. “And you seem awfully calm for someone whose friend supposedly went after her fiancé.”
“She’s hurting, Sutton. It’s going to take time before she’s completely over him, regardless of if she’s with you now.” Her hand strayed toward her hair as she said it. The words weren’t an outright lie, but she didn’t believe them. Not really.
“And he’s a cheat. I tried to tell you before, and you wouldn’t listen. How can you expect her to be comfortable with you and Adam if he’s always pushing to see if he can’t have the both of you?” My phone buzzed, and I ignored it. This was the conversation that could change everything. If I answered the phone, Lacey would walk away and the opportunity would be shot. Besides, it was probably another damn Chicago call I didn’t want to deal with.
“He would never.”
Maybe it was shot anyway. “Are you kidding me? The guy is a tool. He already cheated on Jenna—more than once—what the hell makes you sure he won’t do the same to you?” Why was she being so difficult? All the facts laid before her painted the ugliest picture in the world, and she wanted to see sunshine and rainbows.
“I get it, Sutton, I do. It’s not that simple. I need Adam—that’s the long and short of it.”
“Lacey, there are a lot of things you need, but I promise you, Adam isn’t one of them.”
She shook her head and blew out a breath, her eyes shining—far too close to tears. “Why don’t you go rescue your fair maiden from the beast, then? That’s what you want anyway. Play the hero like you always do.”
Anger for me, and none for him. She’d made it perfectly clear I couldn’t even save my sister from the beast, and Jenna had never needed saving—not by me or anyone else.
I wasn’t anyone’s hero, but I could sure as hell be the guy who put Jenna first. Lacey had chosen her fate. Maybe it was time to give Jenna and me a real chance.
Chapter Fifteen
-Jenna-
When Sutton left with Lacey, I kind of thought I’d get out of the gig easy, especially since Adam hadn’t bothered to come down and say hello when we arrived.
Lucky me, he just wanted to wait until we were alone. “Have a change of heart over the week?”
“Nope, you’re good for my diet plans though. Last week you made me sick. This week, I’ve lost my appetite. I’d say thank you, if I didn’t think you’d see it as encouragement.”
“The way your nipples are puckering is the only encouragement I need.”
Eww.
And stupid me, I looked. My nipples were totally unaffected by him, but I’d checked and that was enough.
Adam laughed loudly enough to grab a few people’s attention. An audience would be a good thing—too bad they’d only heard the aftermath of the nipple comment.
“I’m…going to get some punch. Would you like some?” Because I’d love to shove my fist through your nose. In that moment, it didn’t matter that he’d dumped me or that I had no desire to have him back.
The mortification I felt over falling for another of his typical ploys revealed every corner of the hollow that he’d left in my heart. No pain. Just…emptiness. All I wanted was to run and hide from the darkness lingering there before it decided to devour me.
His fingers twisted around my arm as I turned to go. “You can get punch later. We need to catch up.” Of course he wouldn’t be stupid enough to blatantly hit on me with people watching. That would have made things too easy.
Still, I looked toward the crowd, desperate for an option that didn’t include me screaming for him to leave me alone. Then, as if he’d read my mind, his voice was in my ear. “Now, Jenna, you don’t want to cause a scene, do you?”
“I’m not here for drama, Adam. Lacey’s my friend.” Unlike his whisper, I’d raised my voice enough to be heard by every one of the people near us.
His grip on my arm tightened. “Great. Then let’s go discuss how you can be the best friend ever.”
While I was busy trying to figure a way to stick to the no-drama thing, he dragged me to the door and into the kitchen. No witnesses and it’d be his word against mine, no matter what happened in here. Not good. In desperation, I thumbed on my phone, hoping I could redial Sutton by touch. Even if he didn’t answer, part of the conversation would record on his voicemail—proof for Lacey.
“What do you want from me? I’m not interested anymore. You made your choice, and I’m doing my best to be supportive.” Okay, that last bit was a lie, but whatever.
“I know you’re only involved with Sutton to try to make me jealous.”
Not only. “Sure. That’s it—nothing to do with him being a great guy. Let me know when my nefarious plan starts working.” I stepped toward the door, and he raised an arm, blocking the exit.
“It’s working. And I know he can’t possibly make you feel the things I did.” Still blocking my path, he moved forward and ran his hands down my arms. “The things I still make you feel. You never really wanted to get married anyway.”
What I did want was to throw up. How had I not seen how vile he was? “What are you getting at?”
His fingers reached the side of my neck and started to comb through my hair. “I could make your single life a lot less lonely. Lacey would never need to know.”
Oh my God. Come back, Sutton. Please come back, because I can’t handle this alone. At all. There was no movement outside the house though. No raised voices. No anything that signaled rescue. I jerked away from Adam. “You’ve always been a cheater, Adam, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to help you do it to my best friend.”
As much as I wanted to smack him, I wanted escape more. I spun and ran deeper into the house, past Mrs. Bell’s antiques and collectible figurines. Past the piano Lacey had spent hours practicing.
It wasn’t until I was upstairs, sucking in breath after breath, that I realized I’d trapped myself up here. I yanked my phone from my pocket, planning to text Sutton and let him know where to find me, when the sound of footsteps drew my attention to the stairs. Adam wasn’t going to let this go.
My heart started racing, and the urge to flee took hold again. He was blocking my escape route, and I ran in the direction I’d always gone in
this house.
Straight to Lacey’s room. The instant I shut myself inside and faced the reality of her bed with its mass of pillows and the stack of beauty magazines on the nightstand, I realized my mistake. This was exactly where Adam would go, too.
I punched in Sutton’s number, but there was no way he’d be here before Adam. My eyes darted around the room, landing at last on her window. The lock on the door wouldn’t hold Adam long, and I was out of options.
I could only hope Lacey had never told him about how she used the balcony to get away from her parents to drink or smoke or have private conversations about the politics they didn’t approve of.
Mr. and Mrs. Bell had warned us that the little balconies were old and only made for decoration. We’d never cared and, as long as we stayed away from the railing, the one outside her bedroom always seemed sturdy enough.
As soon as I heard Adam rattling the door handle, I cranked the window open just wide enough to sneak through. I couldn’t exactly shut it behind me. Hopefully he would give up or not notice the gap. Though I did mentally curse myself a little for never losing the freshman fifteen—even if it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. My boobs hadn’t exactly changed size, and they were big enough to make me open the window wider than I wanted.
I pressed the phone to my ear, but it had gone to voicemail. Shit. No Sutton rescue incoming any time soon. I whispered into the phone as I edged as far from the window as I could go. “A little help. I’m stuck on your sister’s balcony.”
Adam’s voice jolted me so badly I bumped the railing—it gave a little, swaying, but held. “For the girl who’s not interested, you couldn’t exactly have lured me to a more secluded spot.”
“Trying to get away from you doesn’t mean I wanted you to follow. Kind of the opposite, in fact.” My voice was louder than I’d intended. Hell, I was practically yelling at him, but I couldn’t help it. This was the first chance I’d had to attack him for what he’d done, and I had to play nice. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand here and let him get close to me again. I inched farther from the window as it cranked open more, my spine touching the railing.
“Don’t be stupid, Jenna. Get in here.” He poked his head through the opening and cocked it to the side, looking at me like I was an idiot. I wasn’t, though. I knew damn well the ability to fit his broad shoulders through meant the rest of him could follow any second. “Look. If you’re seriously not interested, we can pretend it never happened. Come inside and we’ll talk—come up with a great story for why we were off by ourselves.”
I’d let him lead me inside. People had seen us. If I walked out with him, Lacey would never believe me. “There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t care about you. I’m here because of Lacey—and Sutton—that’s it. You’re nothing more than the guy I have to deal with because you’re here, too.”
The only thing I wanted was for him to leave me alone, leave Lacey alone, and get the hell out of every facet of my life. “I’ve found my happiness. You’re my past; Sutton is my present and future. I’d like to get back to that part of my life now.”
The crazy part was, as soon as I said the words, I knew exactly how true they were. I didn’t give a shit about this revenge plan, not really. Sutton had chased the anger and hate from me. It wasn’t like I wanted to plan a euchre night with Adam and Lacey or anything, but if she still refused to believe us, they could have each other.
All I wanted was Sutton.
“Are you really that stupid? I know about Chicago. He’s no better than I am.” Adam twisted his shoulders through the opening, and I took a step backward. One step.
One tiny, ridiculous, stupid step.
The posts behind me gave way, and with my weight against the top rail, I was screwed. I pinwheeled my arms, trying to right myself. It didn’t do any good—it only bent everything farther. The posts tumbled free and the rail cracked.
And then there was nothing except air. Air beneath me and air rushing from my lungs as I screamed.
People like to say that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re certain you’re about to die—and considering there was nothing to break my fall, I wasn’t holding on to much hope.
Those people lie.
It wasn’t my past that played on fast-forward; it was a future I’d never get to see. A home. Kids. Love. Oddly, my brain hit pause on the last image.
Then, like that, it was over.
I was on the ground—or parts of me were; others were covered in cake and frosting from the collapsed dessert table. At least I wasn’t dead. I was, however, staring directly into the same eyes I’d seen when my mind had stuttered on that one image.
Sutton’s arms wound tighter around me, holding me close as we sat on the lawn, catching what breath we could as other people rushed over, oohing and ahhing as they came.
I didn’t care about them. Not one bit. All I cared about was the man beneath me and leaving the rest of this mess behind.
“Are you okay?” he whispered into my hair, smearing frosting into it with the way he brushed the strands from my face.
It was the best thing I’d felt the whole day. I nodded, clinging to him like he could keep me from falling again. “You?”
“Yeah—I got you. That’s all that matters.”
It was, too. He had me, and I had him. This other shit—we needed to let it go before it killed one of us. It was time to grow up. Footsteps rushed toward us, and I caught the frantic voice of his mother.
Or maybe growing up could wait a few more minutes.
I couldn’t deal with any more of this today. And we both needed showers. Badly. “Can you get me out of here?”
“Definitely.” He eased me off his lap and knelt in the mess, cradling me in his arms once more before he stood. Normally I’d have argued, but I wanted him close. No. I needed him close. And I needed it to mean something more than I needed to breathe in that moment.
People didn’t part to let us through exactly, but they didn’t stand in his way, either. And no one bothered following the trail of cake pieces falling off his ass. When he came upon his parents, the only thing Sutton said was, “She fell. I’m taking her to make sure she’d okay. I’ll call later.”
They didn’t argue, and we were almost free of the party when Lacey stepped in our path. Sutton stopped, and her eyes met mine. “Lace. I…he…”
“I heard.”
Nothing other than those two words before she stepped aside and let us go.
I wished I had the energy to talk to her, tell her I’d been doing my damnedest to avoid a confrontation. It wouldn’t have mattered, though. She knew. My heart understood the truth of it—she’d always known.
There was nothing left for Sutton and me to do. If she still wanted Adam after this, we weren’t going to change her mind. I was over it. Done. The only thing I wanted from this mess was Sutton.
Time to grab hold of that before I did something stupid and lost him, too.
Chapter Sixteen
-Sutton-
I didn’t want to think about what it was going to take to get the frosting off my seats. At least Jenna was mostly clean. Yay, sticky driver’s seat. I was behind the wheel as quickly as I could manage and peeled off down the road before anyone tried to stop us.
I was still seething over Adam when I pulled from the neighborhood. Jenna fell off a balcony because of him. Because my stupid sister refused to see him for what he was—and because I’d gotten her message too late.
Jenna tentatively touched my arm. “First, slow down. Second, where are you going? Third…I can’t do this anymore.”
I’d left on autopilot, driving through a haze of anger. I’d said I was taking Jenna to get checked out, and that’s what my body had decided to do. “I won’t ask you to do any more. I should have known things would escalate. As for our destination, apparently the hospital.”
“I’m okay, you know. We don’t have to go there—unless you’re hurt. Shit. I landed on you. Are you okay?” Her
eyes roved over me like she was looking for protruding bones or blood or something worse.
I took her hand in mine and squeezed. “Relax. I fell against the table when I caught you. There might be some bruises, but it isn’t like you were some boulder the evil cartoon villain dropped on my head.”
“What?”
I pulled into a Taco Bell and slid into a spot to let my irritation dissipate a bit before I kept driving. “Adam. You’re telling me you’ve never looked at him and pictured him as a cartoon character? The square jaw, muscles, and perfectly styled blond hair? Hero or villain, he looks like he’s animated.”
Jenna’s infectious laughter rang through the car, and I couldn’t help joining her. “Oh my God, I’d never thought about it. Though in fairness, you have better muscles and a much stronger jawline than he does, but you’ve also got the killer cheekbones and dimples. Totally destroys the cartoon image.”
“Great. Is that how you see me? Cheekbones and dimples?”
“No,” she said, her face going serious with the dying of her laughter. “I see you as a lot more than that.” Then she tore her gaze away and looked out the window as if she’d said more than she meant to.
People pulled into the next spot and gave me a weird look as they walked past. This wasn’t a Taco-Bell-parking-lot discussion. Seemed like none of ours were. “Do you want food? I can grab something here or wherever on the way to your place.”
She shook her head, frosted hair leaving streaks on the headrest. “I don’t want to go home. At least not my home.” She turned to me, and her lips twitched into a nervous smile. “Take me to your place?”
Definitely a better option for talking but not ideal. “You know it’s not—”
Her fingers pressed against my lips. “I don’t care what it’s not. It’s yours.”
“Okay.” I nipped at her fingers. “But if we’re playing lick off the frosting, maybe we could make a post-shower grocery run. Pretty sure this stuff has grass in it.”
Laughter echoed through the car again as I steered onto the road, but it all came from her. Stupid as it was, I’d never taken a woman to my new place. In Chicago, none had spent more than one night in my apartment. Almost as if once I showed them my inner sanctum there was nothing left to bother with.
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