Give Me Forever Love (Give Me Series Book 3)

by Paige P. Horne

  I walk over to the counter and grab my keys before exiting the apartment.

  I climb into my car, rolling my windows down to let some of the heat out. I slide my shades on and pull out onto the street.

  It’s a normal day for everyone else. They’re just going about their everyday lives, while I’m walking around with a heart that weighs enough to snap me in two.

  I pull the visor down, blocking rays that threaten to blind me. I’m headed to track down my boyfriend’s brother and make sure he hasn’t drunk himself to death and in a little while I’ll get to see if Bryce can come home from jail.

  What a fuckery all this is.

  I pass through red lights and turn a few turns before I’m in front of Red.

  The doors are locked, the basement shut down.

  I turn the car off and step out. Leaning against my door, I stare at the building, remembering a time when I stood out here in a line that was too long, in shoes that were too high.

  I cross my arms as my eyes roam over the structure. Yellow leaves roll over the sidewalk, tumbling without a choice.

  Did I have a choice in any of this?

  If I could go back to that moment when Claire and I stood here, would I change anything knowing what I do now?

  So much has happened. How simple things were. God, so much has changed. How can someone so important to me now, not even be a blimp on my radar before?

  But he was. I just didn’t know it. I’ve thought about the boy I gazed at through my old bedroom window. I wondered what his story was, as his dad pulled his mom from my broken home.

  And our paths finally crossed again, but in such a different way. We were no longer kids under our parents’ control. We were adults, so broken at the time. Neither of us realized how much we needed one another.

  When I looked at him, handsome and mysterious on that staircase, I didn’t say to myself, this is the person who will heal me.

  This is the man whom I’ll be forever grateful for.

  He saved my life in more ways than one.

  This man has flipped my world. Everything I knew then seems so far away and useless.

  He gave me a bigger picture.

  He made me see how great things can be, but now I’m completely lost and he may be choosing this place over me.

  I sigh and push off the car, walking toward the alley. Taking the stairs, I knock on the door once I reach the top.

  Moments later, Jace answers with bed hair and no shirt.

  He eyeballs me. “Hey,” he says sleepy-eyed with a smoke behind his ear. I miss his short buzzed hair and funny jokes. I miss how things were before.

  When I met Jace in Mug & Books, he was so full of life even though his had already been falling apart.

  I know it was because he was with his brother. Jace needs Bryce. He’s his stabilizer.

  I pull my shades up. “Hey,” I say.

  “Get out,” Jace says. I blink, but when he moves to the side, I see a woman in the bed, and I realize he isn’t talking to me. “Now.” He grabs the smoke and pulls a lighter out from his black sweats pocket. The girl scrambles from the bed, hurrying to get her things as Jace lights his cigarette. Sleep lines web out on the right side of his face.

  He looks tired.

  He looks like I feel.

  The woman looks at me like I’m Jace’s girl and she’s sorry she slept with my boyfriend. I want to laugh—I feel it swirling in my lungs—but nothing happens. I’m not this boy’s girlfriend. I’m in love with his brother, and it’s killing me.

  Food is my enemy, and our bed gives me zero comfort.

  Jace hits his smoke. “Come in,” he tells me. How kind of him to invite me inside my own home? There’s that chuckle again, begging to bubble up. But my heart snatches it back.

  “We don’t laugh,” she says.

  He walks over and grabs a shirt from the top of the dresser before reaching over and starting the record player sitting on top. I slide my hands into my jeans pockets as he places the cigarette onto the aged wood, letting the burning end hang off the side as he pulls the shirt over his head and Bon Iver sings “Skinny Love”. It sets the tone in this loft.

  Sad and hopeless as fuck.

  My eyes go to the cocaine and empty beer bottles. I see he’s doing exactly what I thought he was. He leans down, picking up the rolled bill. He breathes in the white powder before tilting his head back and wiping his nose. Grabbing his smoke, he puts it between his teeth. There was a time when he didn’t even want me to see his habit.

  Ah, well, he says it’s not, so we’ll call it his pleasure.

  What the fuck ever.

  “Glad to see you’re alive,” I say. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  “Broke it,” he says. “Gotta get a new one.”

  I exhale and look over the room, feeling weird for being in here without Bryce. While his apartment in the sky is nice and comfortable, this feels like him.

  It’s laid-back cool, yet stylish. It’s decorated to match the man who lives here. Dark wood and framed photos of bands that were once on top of the world. Just like my guy.

  Time has a way of changing everything.

  Every. Single. Thing.

  We have control over little in this life. Our choices are our own, our feelings. But time…

  Time is untouchable.

  Part of me wants to curl up on the couch and breathe in this whole room.

  Even if Jace has been here with a woman, I can still smell Bryce, feel Bryce.

  “Bryce’s hearing is in an hour.”

  Jace holds his smoke between his lips. “I’ll clean up and wash the sheets.”

  “You think he’ll come home?”

  “I don’t see why not. He isn’t a flight risk. He got into some shit as a kid, but Pops helped with all that.”

  I nod as my eyes go over to the bottle of bourbon on the counter. “Can I have a drink?”

  He runs a hand over the back of his neck, lifting his brow. “Yeah.” Walking over, he pours both of us a glass before handing me mine. I look down at the brown liquid.

  “To life,” Jace says, holding up his glass. “May it fuck you less than it’s fucked me.”

  I smirk. “You obviously don’t know anything about mine.” We toss back the drink, and I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and look over at Jace. He’s pale, skinnier, and has dark circles under his eyes.

  And suddenly I forget about my own shit and realize this boy is heartbroken. The first girl he falls for turns out to be an undercover cop, lies to him, and sends his family off to jail.

  “You all right?” he asks. While I’ve been looking at him, he’s been looking at me.

  I’m sure I look just as defeated.

  “I should be asking you that,” I say.

  He takes a drag from his smoke. “It hasn’t been a good few days.”

  My eyes bounce back to the cocaine. “This all you been doing?”

  He shrugs, sniffing as he sits down on the arm of the sofa, propping his bare feet up on the coffee table. Coasters go unused and ashes are sprinkled over the top. The rotating fan above feathers them across the table.

  “I’m not judging you. I haven’t been doing much better.”

  He lifts a brow and rubs under his nose before taking another hit.

  “We were in a good place, ya know?” I shake my head, bunching my eyebrows together as I stare at the table. “I’d never been there. Never stepped foot in the basement. He was excited for me to see it. And even though I knew what he was doing was illegal, I just let it be.”

  “Because you love him.”

  My eyes go back to Jace’s face. I roll them as I lean my head back and exhale, scanning over the ceiling. “Yeah. I’m sick in love,” I spit.

  Love is looking past things that you shouldn’t. I walk over and pour another glass of bourbon.

  “Bones came by to visit, Bryce,” I tell him.

  “Really?” He looks as surprised as I was.

&nb
sp; “What was that about?”

  “He wants to buy Red and Bryce’s contacts.”

  “You’re kidding? In exchange?” he asks.

  “For Bryce’s freedom.”

  Jace looks off for a moment, but then looks back at me. His sapphire eyes scan me over. “He won’t do it, will he?” he says as if he already knows the answer.

  I bring my glass to my mouth, my silence giving him the answer he already knows.

  “Damn, Harrison.” He exhales and rubs his chin.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Damn.”

  Bryce’s decision has the power to make or break me. With a single no, he can take away a future I was so sure of only days ago.

  “Your mom is at the apartment,” I tell him.

  He brings the cigarette to his lips. “The fuck she doing there?”

  “Lee called her.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.” I take another sip, wincing as I say, “She’s been trying to feed me and shit.”

  He scoffs, but doesn’t say anything. He leans up and flicks his ashes into an empty beer bottle before getting off the arm of the couch, lifting the ash filled bottle and a few others from the table.

  “You heard anything from Michelle?” I ask. He stops over the trash.

  “You mean Harlow?” he answers.

  “Harlow?”

  “Yeah.” He drops the bottle; it clashes with the others before settling in the bottom of the trash.

  “She was using a fake name. Go figure. Her real name is Harlow Dalton.” He continues cleaning up with the smoke resting between his lips.

  “So, you have spoken to her?” I cross my arms, holding on to the glass with my fingers, noticing a few holes in Jace’s shirt, like he doesn’t have money to buy clothes. Both Bryce and Jace come from money. While they didn’t start out that way, Lee has given them a good life and both boys are fucking it up.

  Have fucked it up.

  “You thought I wouldn’t?” he asks, dropping takeout boxes into the bin.

  I think about that for a moment before I conclude my answer.

  Yeah.

  Yeah, I thought he wouldn’t. I assumed he’d forget she ever existed for what she did to us.

  “What she did was unforgivable. I get you had some feelings for her, but there are other women out there you can catch feelings for.”

  He takes a drag from his smoke, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Do you agree?” I ask.

  He gives me a sideways glance. He looks so much like his brother and yet so different. Where Jace is I go with the flow and have no rules, Bryce is steady on his feet and follows his own rules. He’s honorable and someone you can count on.

  Jace is a flight risk and, sorry to say, but a fuck-up.

  And I have a sick feeling he’s about to screw up even more.

  “You say it like it’s that easy,” he says.

  “What the hell do you mean? She put Bryce in jail. He may be going to prison. How much easier could it be?”

  “She was doing her job,” he says.

  I cough laugh, anger making my body hot. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  I can’t believe this.

  He’s taking up for her?

  “Are you not mad?”

  He turns his full attention to me. “Oh, I’m mad,” he says dangerously. “I’m so goddamn mad I can’t see straight.”

  “And yet you’re defending her?”

  “Don’t do that,” he says, shaking his head, removing the smoke between his lips. “Don’t stand there and fucking judge me when you and my brother can’t get your shit straight to save both of you.”

  My fingers squeeze the glass in my hand, and before I can think, I throw the thing. Glass shatters and brown liquor splashes against the red brick. Jace doesn’t flinch. He watches it all happen like he almost expected it.

  “Fuck you.” I point toward him. “What Bryce and I do… The shit that’s between him and me, it doesn’t hurt other people. This relationship of yours did.”

  “Harrison, I don’t give a shit if you’re the girl who stole my brother’s heart, you don’t get to tell me how to live my life. You’re standing by a felon.”

  “That felon is your brother!”

  “Yeah. Fuckery, ain’t it? My brother is sitting in jail with a possible prison sentence, and I’m in love with the woman who took him down.” He walks over to the fridge and grabs two beers.

  I shake my head.

  I don’t know who I pity more.

  Him or me.

  He slides a beer across the counter before he twists the top off his. “I’ll hurt no matter what I do. So, what the fuck do I do?”

  I twist the cap off my own, chugging it before I slam it down on the counter. I wipe my mouth and grab my keys from my pocket.

  “I guess you’ve got some thinking to do, huh? I’ve got to get to the courthouse.”

  He leans back against the fridge; I turn and walk out of the door.

  Pissed and hurt, I head to my car, popping a piece of gum into my mouth after I climb inside.

  Chapter Seven

  Kathrine

  I walk back into the apartment, finding Lee standing outside on the balcony having a cigar and Mary sitting on the couch.

  She looks over at me. “Did you find him?” she asks, sitting up, dropping her foot from the sofa.

  “Yeah. He’s fine. I’m going to freshen up and then we can go.” I have no desire to talk about my argument with Jace. That’s the first time we’ve ever had one, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

  Shitty.

  I feel shitty about it, but I can’t think about anything but Bryce right now. If he doesn’t get to come home, then what the hell am I going to do?

  I hear Claire in the back of my mind. “You’re going to put on your big girl panties and live your life.”

  I roll my eyes. She’s right as always.

  I run a brush though my hair before wrapping it up and pulling a few pieces out around my face. I change my T-shirt and jeans for a black blouse and a black pencil skirt. I swap out my Chucks for some strappy heels that don’t hurt my feet too bad. I have no desire to dress up, but I’m representing Bryce and I don’t want to embarrass him by looking homely. Obviously, my mood has changed from earlier.

  Earlier I didn’t care what Bryce thought.

  Now I can’t wait to see him, and I don’t want him looking at a pathetic version of me.

  I run some mascara over my lashes and dab a little bronzer on. With a final once-over in the mirror, I look back at the girl staring at me.

  We got this.

  He’s coming home, and tonight we will breathe a little better.

  With a nod, I flick the light off and exit the bathroom.

  __________

  The ride to the courthouse is quiet. Each of us is in our own heads wondering what’s going to happen. We’re told where to go, and once we walk through the double doors into the small courtroom, the smell of Murphy oil soap hits my senses as the all-wooden room shines. My heart perks up as we search for him, but disappointment sinks in when we don’t see him yet.

  Lee notices. “He’ll be out in a minute,” he says.

  I don’t respond and my eyes land on someone else.

  My legs move on their own accord. My heart puffs out her chest, pushing blood through my veins. She runs shoulder first into my chest wall, trying to get us to go faster. I walk down the aisle Harlow is seated behind.

  I stop in front of her, my blood pumping through my veins, showing through skin. “You bitch,” I say slowly.

  She blanches. “Kat,” she says, her eyes looking around.

  “How could you?” I grip onto the bench. “How fucking could you?”

  She holds up her chin. “It’s my job.” On the outside this girl tries to prove that was the only option she had.

  But I’m no fool.

  She’s got a battle going on inside those green eyes. She’s not convinced what she did was the righ
t thing.

  I scoff. “Who are you trying to persuade? You or me?”

  Her eyes jump up to mine.

  Gotcha.

  I smirk, leaning in. “You fucked up.”

  She tilts her head. “Do I need to remind you that

  I’m a cop and you’re causing a disturbance.”

  I look at her with disgust. How did I not see this?

  At the pool when she asked me all of

  those questions about Red. I should have known something was off. I was so happy. So blind. I’d just spent an amazing night with my guy, and everything was perfect. I let my guard down and she snaked her way in.

  “Harrison.” My head jerks back at the sound of

  Jace’s voice.

  When did he get here?

  “Come on.” His eyes dart down to her, but only for a moment, and then he looks back at me.

  He tries to act like seeing her doesn’t affect him, but it’s as clear as the stretched pupils in his eyes.

  “Stay away from us,” I say. “Don’t come near my family again. Whatever your little heart is feeling toward Jace, let it burn out. He’s dead to you.” I push off the bench and walk toward fucked up and trying.

  He gently grabs my arm, and wanting to put aside our fight, I don’t brush him off.

  I look over and see Lee talking with the lawyers. It’s hush-hush and Lee looks distraught, which makes me uneasy.

  Jace grabs my attention. “Go in front of me,” he says, looking to where Mary is seated.

  My eyes bounce back to Harlow. She’s looking down at the papers in her lap. I clench my jaw before walking forward, taking a seat beside the boys’ mom.

  Mary looks ahead, but I hear her speak. “Good job,” she says. I look at her for a moment, and then she turns her head to me with a hint of a grin.

  I exhale, returning her smirk before looking away. I sit with a bouncing knee, picking at the skin beside my thumbnail.

  Nasty habit.

  It’s sore, and yet I keep it up. I’m crippling with anxiety, anxious as fuck to see Bryce. I haven’t spoken to him since our argument. It was only yesterday, but damn if my heart isn’t suffering from withdrawals. She needs to see him.

  My eyes scan the small room. I look over everyone else here.

  Not one smile, only hope.