Chapter Nineteen #2
The whole hallway has gone quiet. Conversations have stopped mid-sentence. Locker doors hang open, forgotten. Everyone is watching us as if we are the main event at some twisted high school gladiator match.
Phones are probably already out, recording this for whatever social media drama will unfold later. I can almost hear the notifications pinging already. Jace Cooper loses his shit in the hallway. Who’s the girl? Is that Lola Bellamy?
Jace holds my gaze for a long moment. His shoulders are tense. His hand remains fisted in Marcus’s shirt. He releases Marcus, shoving him back against the lockers one last time for good measure before stepping away.
Marcus stumbles slightly, catching himself against the metal lockers. His glasses are still crooked, and his shirt is wrinkled where Jace grabbed him.
Jace turns and walks down the hallway as if nothing happened. As if he didn’t slam a harmless guy against the lockers for asking about my dad.
I watch him go, my heart pounding in my chest so hard I can feel it in my throat. Anger, confusion, and something else I can’t name all twist together until I can’t tell which emotion is winning.
And then I see her.
Nicole.
She is leaning against the wall a few lockers down, hips cocked, arms crossed over her chest. Watching me with those sharp, calculating eyes that always make it seem as if she can see straight through to every insecurity I try to hide.
When our eyes meet, she smirks. The kind of smirk that shows she knows exactly what just happened, that she saw everything, and that she’s filing it away for later.
She pushes off the wall with a graceful roll of her shoulder and follows Jace down the hallway, her hips swaying with every step.
Her blonde ponytail bounces behind her. She moves with the kind of confidence that comes from knowing every guy in this school has looked at her at least once. Including Jace.
My stomach hurts because I know where they are headed. I know what happens when Jace disappears around corners and Nicole follows.
I just stand there in the middle of the hallway with my locker door still hanging open and my books against my chest, staring at the spot where Jace disappeared around the corner. With Nicole right behind him.
I get home from the hospital late.
The house is dark as I pull into the driveway. No lights are on in the kitchen. No glow comes from the living room window. There’s no sign of life at all.
It feels wrong somehow.
I turn off the engine and sit there for a moment, staring at the front door through the windshield.
Jace hasn’t responded to my earlier text. The one I sent after school, telling him I was going to the hospital and asking if he needed a ride home.
The text was just marked as delivered. It’s sitting there in blue, mocking me with its permanence.
Message delivered. Person who gives a shit… Not found.
I didn’t see him for the rest of the day after Nicole followed him down the hallway.
All day, jealousy spiked through me like poison. I couldn’t concentrate in class or focus on anything except the image of her blonde ponytail bouncing as she walked after him. The smirk on her face. The way she moved as if she knew exactly where he was going and that she was invited.
I hate feeling this way, sitting here wondering if he hooked up with her, if he touched her the way he touched me.
I know who Jace Cooper is. But a foolish part of me still wants to believe he didn’t.
I searched for him everywhere after that incident—in the cafeteria, between classes, scanning like some desperate clingy girl who can’t take a hint. Even in the parking lot after the final bell, standing there like a fucking idiot while everyone else drove away.
He was nowhere to be found. Or perhaps he was somewhere and simply didn’t want to be seen by me.
This is what Jace Cooper has turned me into. A girl pretending she isn’t searching for the one jerk who decided I no longer exist.
I grab my bag and head inside, flipping on lights as I go—the kitchen, the hallway—each one making the emptiness feel even more obvious.
I drop my bag on the kitchen table and take out my phone, typing another message to Jace.
Lola: Where are you?
I hit send and watch the screen.
The tiny dots show up almost instantly, making my heart jump into my throat.
He is typing.
I wait.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Fifteen.
The bubbles disappear.
Nothing. No message. Just the cruel tease of almost communication and then silence.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I mutter to the empty kitchen.
I toss my phone onto the table and press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see stars behind my eyelids.
I have really good news to share with him.
News that made me smile the entire drive home like an idiot.
The kind that had me rehearsing what I would say, picturing the look on his face when I told him.
Imagining the way his eyes might soften.
The way he might actually let himself believe that good things can happen to him too.
But now it rests heavy in my chest like a stone. Unsaid. Unwanted, apparently.
My dad and I talked for a long time today. It was hard watching him struggle to form words that used to come so easily. But he persisted and pushed through every syllable as if giving up wasn’t an option, even when his body was working against him. And I told him everything.
All about Jace. How he’s been there for me through everything—the way he took me to the hospital the day it happened, how he held me when I fell apart and didn’t let go, even when I soaked his shirt with tears.
I cried when I told my dad about the trailer, about the cold that seeps through the walls, the rust, the peeling paint, and how the whole structure looks like it might collapse in a strong gust of wind.
I also told him how he has been alone since he was nine years old and how he has survived things that would have broken most people into pieces too small to put back together.
I’m not sure if I told my dad all of that because I really needed to talk about it or because a part of me knew exactly what would happen and do what he always does.
See someone struggling and offer help without hesitation because my dad sees people the way I do.
He does not judge them by what life throws at them, where they come from, or their past mistakes.
He recognizes who they truly are underneath all of that.
Not as the kid from the wrong side of town who will never achieve anything, but as someone worth saving—someone who deserves more than a rusted trailer and a life of loneliness.
That’s why he offered without hesitation, for Jace to take the spare room.
I stare at my phone again—at the empty screen mocking me with its silence—and I think about the promise he made me.
Not once, but twice. The one he looked me straight in the eye and asked for, his voice steady and certain, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
As if he was asking me to pass the salt instead of carving out a piece of my heart and handing it to him with a smile.
Promise me nothing will change between us. And like an idiot, I agreed twice because I thought I could handle it. I was strong enough to keep things simple. Uncomplicated. Thought I could have him in whatever way he was willing to give and not need more.
It sounded safe at the time. A compromise we could both live with. But standing here now in this empty kitchen, staring at my phone while he ignores my calls, I realize just how cruel that promise really was.
How cruel I was to myself for making it, because everything has changed.
Somewhere between the hospital waiting rooms and the late-night drives and the way he held me when I fell apart, I stopped being able to pretend.
Stopped being able to separate the physical from the emotional.
Stopped being able to watch him walk away without feeling like he was taking pieces of me with him.
And now I am standing here realizing I did not just lose the rules we set.
I lost him. His friendship. The easy way we used to talk to each other before everything got complicated.
The way he would smirk at something sarcastic I said, that half-smile that made my stomach flip.
How he would sit too close just to get a rise out of me, his leg pressed against mine like it was an accident even though we both knew it was not.
The way he used to look at me as if I mattered.
All of it is gone. Burned up in the aftermath of a promise I never should have made.
That promise was never designed to protect both of us.
It was designed to protect him. To give him an escape route.
A way to keep me at arm’s length while still having me whenever he wanted.
A safety net that only he gets to fall into.
And the cruelest part of it all?
Nothing has changed for Jace Cooper. He still does whatever he wants. Still disappears when things get too real. Walks down hallways with girls like Nicole trailing after him like he is some kind of prize.
But everything has changed for me.
I am not the girl I was before. The one who could laugh it off. Who did not care who he hooked up with or where he went or whether he texted back.
Now I am the girl sitting in an empty house waiting for someone who is never going to show up.
And that promise—that cruel, impossible promise—is the only thing keeping me from telling him the truth. That I am in love with him. And this is destroying me.
I grab my phone and call him.
It rings.
And rings.
And rings.
Then voicemail. His voice, low and bored, like he cannot be bothered to care about anything or anyone.
“Leave a message or don’t. I probably won’t listen to it anyway.”
The beep sounds and I hang up without saying a word, because what’s the point? What could I possibly say that would make him care? That would make him pick up the phone and talk to me as if I am not just another person he can ignore when it is convenient?
I call him a second time, my jaw clenched so tight it hurts. My thumb jabs at his contact photo—the one I took of him when he was not looking with that infuriating smirk on his face. The one that used to make me smile and now just makes my chest ache.
My fingers are shaking now. From anger or fear or some toxic combination of both, I cannot tell anymore.
“Pick up,” I mutter to the empty kitchen, my voice cracking on the words. “Pick up, you fucking asshole.”
This time it rings out completely. No voicemail. Just silence and then the automated message telling me the person I am trying to reach is unavailable.
No shit. Like I needed a robot voice to confirm what I already know.
Jace Cooper does not answer to anyone, or give a damn if I am sitting here losing my mind while he does God knows what with God knows who.
The thought hits me again, sharper this time. More vicious. Nicole’s blonde ponytail swinging as she walked. Her perfect smile that probably tastes like bubble gum and promises. The way she followed him down that hallway like she owned him.
Maybe she does now.
Maybe, while I was at the hospital sitting with my dad, pouring my heart out about Jace and how much he means to me, he was touching her. Doing all the things he does with me but with someone who does not come with complications, feelings, or expectations.
Someone who will not ask him for more than he is willing to give.
I’ve reached my limit with waiting, wondering, and constantly refreshing my phone every thirty seconds like some desperate, pathetic girl I swore I’d never become.
I’m done sitting in this house that feels too big and too empty without him in it, which is completely insane because this is my home and my space.
The place I lived perfectly fine in before Jace Cooper crashed into my life with his smirks and his trauma and his infuriating ability to make me care about him.
I shouldn’t need him here. Or notice the absence of his boots by the door, his jacket on the chair, or the sound of him moving around.
But I do, and I hate myself for it. But here I am. Like every other girl who thought she could be different. The one he would actually stay for.
I grab my keys off the counter and head out the door, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my ears, and in every nerve ending, screaming at me to stop, to think, to not do this.
But I don’t listen.
He’s probably back at the trailer now, hiding out in that freezing rust bucket because it’s easier than facing me. Or maybe he is not hiding at all. Maybe he is exactly where he wants to be.
If he will not answer my calls, then he can damn well answer to my face.
And he is going to tell me the truth. All of it. Where he’s been? Who he’s been with? Whether any of this was ever real or if I have just been fooling myself this entire time.