Riding Jamie (Montgomery Dreams #1)

Chapter Twenty

JAMIE

I ignore the sound of the front door slamming open. My dad has been in a rotten mood since he realized my injuries would wind up with me retired instead of in a coffin. There was about a day where he was glad I was alive, and then it shifted to cold, sniping anger since I can no longer ride the circuit.

I damn near jump out of my bed when my bedroom door is pushed open so hard the hinges squeal in protest.

“Oakley?” I ask, baffled. “What’s wrong? I thought you were going to lunch with Phoebe?”

I hiss in a pained breath as I push off the bed, the muscles in my shoulder twinging. Oakley is red in the face and shaking, staring at me like she’s never seen me before in her life. I step forward, holding my good arm out to her.

“Oakley, baby, what?—”

“What the fuck is this?”

The words are accompanied by a stack of papers that get shoved into the center of my chest. The impact forces a wheeze from my lungs, and I stumble back in surprise. Guilt flashes in Oakley’s eyes for just a second as I reach up to fumble for the papers, but her anger returns quickly.

I stumble for words, trying not to let the papers fall, but much more concerned about whatever’s going on with my girl.

“What’s what?” I ask, glancing back and forth between the pages and her face.

It looks like chat messages, something from an old internet messenger that probably doesn’t even work anymore. My brows furrow in confusion when I see my dad’s email linked to half of the messages. The others are listed as coming from David Montgomery.

I blink in shock, bringing the papers closer to my face as I read through the exchanges. They’re marked up with someone’s handwritten notes, dates and legalese that doesn’t make any sense littered around the text. What does any of this have to do with blackmail? Our dads don’t get along, but I’ve never heard anything about the reason behind it. My dad’s always said that David was a thief, but everything here points at my dad being the one who was trying to extort Oakley’s dad.

“I—where’d you even get these?”

She laughs humorlessly, her hands curling into fists at her sides.

“So you knew ?” she accuses. “You knew what your dad did this whole time, and you’ve just let me believe that they had some random feud we’d never get the story behind? What the fuck, Jamie? I can’t be with someone who’d keep something like this from me! How am I?—”

“Whoa, whoa, this is the first time I’ve ever seen this!” I cut her off, trying to stop myself from shouting. “I don’t know anything about—about fucking blackmail . Jesus Christ, Oakley, do you think I’d keep something like that from you?”

The dull ache of my still healing muscles has nothing on the way my heart cracks open in my chest every time she looks at me like that.

She doesn’t answer me, her face twisting into something conflicted and angry. I feel the loss of her eyes on me like a physical blow when she turns her gaze to the wall on the other side of the room.

Is it just going to be like this, over and over? Will I ever get her to trust me?

“Oakley, where did you get this?” I keep my voice even, setting the papers down gently on my bed. My frustration is mounting, but letting myself explode isn’t going to fix anything.

“I ran into Shane,” she admits, still not meeting my eyes. “He said his aunt is a lawyer and she was helping my dad a while back. I guess he decided to drop the case.”

Or he was blackmailed into dropping it .

“ Shane ?” I scoff, taking a step back from her as the frustration in my gut boils over into full blown fury. “Your little boyfriend from New York gave you some weird fucking papers, and you just believed him?”

Oakley turns hurt eyes onto me. Her mouth drops open in shock and anger, but I can’t bring myself to regret the words.

She doesn’t really trust this guy more than she trusts me, does she?

“Are you fucking serious?” Her voice rises closer to a shout with every word, and she advances on me to press a finger into my chest. “This is about us ! You’re really going to try to make it about Shane?”

“You don’t know him, Oakley! You don’t know anything about this guy!” I shout. “What, his random aunt who we’ve never heard anything about just so happens to have paperwork from a case that she never even tried? And she decided to give it to him because, what, he fucking asked? You can’t just jump to conclusions like this!”

My chest heaves with the force of my breath as I try desperately to calm myself down. I don’t want to yell at her. I don’t want to fight with her in the first place, especially not about this. All I want is for things to be easy again, for us to trust each other like we did in high school, to have each other’s backs and never waver for a second.

There are tears in her eyes, and I want nothing more than to wrap her up in my arms and promise to fix this. I know that this isn’t something I can fix on my own.

“There’s something off about this whole situation,” I say, glad my voice is a little steadier. “There’s something off about Shane, too. You have to see that.”

Her face crumples, and my heart shatters at the sight of a tear streaking down her cheek.

“Leave Shane out of this, Jamie. He’s my friend. He may have feelings I don’t return, but he’s proved that he likes me as a person, not just because he wants to date me,” she says staunchly. “No matter what you think about him, the paperwork doesn’t lie.”

I have to turn away to stop myself from shouting in anger, frustrated and hurt and trying to get a grasp on myself. My shoulders shake with agony and defeat, and the realization that all I can do is give up hurts so much more than I thought it could.

I already lost her once. I swore I’d never let it happen again, but here I am.

All I can do is step back, now, isn’t it?

“The paperwork doesn’t make sense,” I say, still facing the wall. “It came out of nowhere, and we don’t know anything about it. We should at least talk to our parents about it.”

Oakley is quiet behind me, but I doubt I’d be able to hear her even if she had anything to say. My heart is beating so loud I can hear the blood rushing in my ears, and I want to throw up and collapse into a pile on the floor.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, about this or about Shane,” I continue. “I love how loyal you are, and how you don’t let anyone talk you out of a decision after you’ve made it, but that’s the problem here. You’ve already chosen what you believe, and you’ll always stand with your dad and with your family.”

It’s a harsh thing to say, especially considering I haven’t done anything to stand up to my dad about his opinion of my relationship. When it comes down to it, I’d pick her over my family in a second. I know she wouldn’t do the same, and that probably makes her a better person than I am, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Wh—Jamie, what is that even supposed to mean ?” she asks. “What are you talking about?”

Her voice is wobbling, and when I turn to face her again, I see the guilt in her eyes. I probably look the same, just as destroyed and guilty and angry at myself.

“I’m never going to be good enough for you, Oakley.”

The words come out of my mouth like shards of broken glass, jagged and raw. I slump back against the wall behind me, all of the fight draining from my body. My energy dissipates with it, leaving me feeling shaky and like I’m seconds from falling to the ground and sobbing.

“You don’t get to make that decision,” she says sharply.

Panic is creeping around the edges of her eyes, lingering on the edge of her words. I never thought things would go this way, but I can’t keep holding her back.

I want my girl to be happy, and if she can’t trust me, she’ll never be happy with me.

“Okay,” she says, stepping back and taking a deep breath. “Let’s just—how about we take a break? We’re both upset. Let’s sit down for a minute.”

I wish I could agree, but I find myself shaking my head before I can even think about it. It’s like ripping a bandaid off, I guess. That’s never hurt this bad, but I can’t back out now.

Oakley deserves a better life than I could ever give her.

“Look at me, baby,” I whisper, my voice shaking as I try to hold my tears back. “I’m barely out of highschool, and my career is already over.”

She shakes her head, tears streaming down her face.

“Don’t say that, Jamie,” she begs.

“Your life is just beginning. You’re going to do amazing things, Oakley.” My words sound so hollow, even though I believe them with my whole heart. Maybe it’s just because I feel like an empty shell. “I wanted our lives to be together. I just—I can’t give you that anymore. I have no idea who I am, I have no idea what I can do. I can’t take care of you, I can’t support you. I have no income anymore, and I have no idea what else to do. The circuit was the only thing I knew how to do, and it’s gone now. I’m not worth it.”

Trying to stop myself from crying proves futile, and the image of Oakley goes blurry as my vision fills with tears. Panic rears its head at the thought that she’ll eventually be nothing more than a blurry memory, and a sob tears free from my throat.

“Wait, Jamie, don’t…” Oakley sounds just as distraught as I feel, struggling for words and choking on the lump in her throat. “That’s not true! I don’t need you to take care of me, but there’s so much you can do. There’s so many things you’re good at, you’ll find something. We can find something.”

My eyes are glued to the carpet, the thought of looking her in the eyes right now utterly unbearable.

“You should…you should go back home, Oakley.”

She sucks in a pained gasp, the sound lancing straight through my heart.

“Are you breaking up with me?” she asks raggedly.

An agonizing breath sears down my throat at hearing those words out loud, but I don’t say anything. I can’t look up, can’t find the words to make her understand that I only want the best for her. All I can do is stand here silently, listening to the love of my life cry, knowing that I’m the reason she’s hurting. It makes me want to vomit.

“Go home.”

The sound of papers crumpling in her hands as she grabs them off my bed followed by her footsteps stomping down the hallway doesn’t register for a long time.

When it does, all I can do is slide down the wall, collapsing under the weight of my own guilt and pain, and finally allowing myself to properly cry.