Chapter Twenty
Jace
Istare at the bottle of Jack on the crate. The one I stole from the corner store on the way home today. The shop assistant was too busy scrolling through his phone to notice me slip it under my jacket.
It sits half empty now. Or half full, depending on how optimistic you are feeling.
I’m not optimistic.
I reach for it, my fingers brushing against something else on the crate. It’s something I should have thrown away years ago but can’t seem to let go of, no matter how many times I tell myself it doesn’t matter anymore.
The photo.
Creased and faded from being shoved in pockets, backpacks, and whatever crappy drawer I had at the time. The edges are worn soft from the many times I pulled it out and looked at it, like some kind of masochist who enjoys pain.
It’s like if I stare at it long enough, I can go back to that moment—back to when things were different, when she was different. When I still had hope. There’s that fucking word again.
In the photo, I am maybe five or six at most. Small enough that my arms barely reach all the way around her waist, but I keep them wrapped tightly, like I’m holding on for dear life. It’s as if some part of me knows she’s slipping away, and that if I let go, she might disappear.
I was right.
I’m actually smiling, one of those big, silly kid smiles that says I still believed the world was good. That people stayed. That mothers didn’t leave their children behind like forgotten trash.
That love was real, permanent and something you could count on.
God, I was a fucking idiot back then.
My mom looks beautiful in this photo. Her blond hair catches the light, falling in waves around her face. The identical blue eyes I see every time I look in the mirror, but hers are bright—alive—full of something I can’t quite name, yet I remember feeling safe in. In the photo, anyway.
Before the pills and needles. Before whatever the hell she was chasing became more important than the kid clinging to her in this picture.
More important than making sure there was food in the fridge, I got to school on time, or that I wasn’t sitting alone in a dark apartment, wondering if she was ever coming home.
Before she stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped being anything resembling a mother and became a ghost living in our apartment. Pale and thin and hollow-eyed, moving through rooms like she was not really there. Like I was not really there either.
I remember trying to talk to her near the end. Tugging on her sleeve, asking if she was okay, if she needed anything, or if she wanted to watch a movie with me like we used to.
She would look at me—through me—and nod. Say something like “later, baby” in that distant voice that meant she had already forgotten I existed.
But later never came.
I remember making her food she wouldn’t eat. Drawing pictures at school that I taped to the fridge, hoping she would notice. Hoping she would smile, ruffle my hair, and tell me I did a good job like she used to. But she never looked at them. Not even once.
I swallow hard.
Why couldn’t you love me enough? The question rips through me like a knife. Why wasn’t I enough to make you stay?
I was six years old, and I tried. God, I tried. I made her breakfast even though I could barely reach the counter. I stayed quiet when she had her friends over—the ones who looked at me like I was an inconvenience. A mistake.
I did everything a kid could do, and it still wasn’t enough. She still chose the drugs over me and left me alone in that apartment for days while she chased her next high.
Tears burn behind my eyes and I blink them back hard. But they come anyway, hot and unwanted, blurring the photo in my hands until I cannot make out the lie of that smile anymore. The illusion that we were ever anything close to happy.
I grab the bottle off the crate and take a long pull, letting the burn chase away the ache in my chest.
It doesn’t work. It never fucking does.
What I did today was wrong. I shouldn’t have lost my shit on Marcus just because he was talking to Lola. But something inside me snapped like a rubber band pulled too tight for too long.
He was looking at her as if she hung the damn moon, as if every word she spoke was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard.
And when she smiled at him. God, that smile. The one that makes her eyes crinkle at the corners and her whole face light up. The one I have been chasing since the first time she aimed it at me and made me feel maybe I wasn’t a complete waste of space.
Only now she is giving it to him.
Jealousy doesn’t look good on me. Hell, feelings in general are not a good look on me.
Except she matters so fucking much, my chest caves in every time I see her, and I don’t know what to do with that. I can’t be that guy who admits he’s terrified of losing her because everyone he’s ever cared about has left.
Watching Marcus move towards her—close enough that I noticed the way her breath hitched just slightly—made me want to put my fist through a wall. Or through his face or anything that would stop this feeling tearing through me like broken glass, shredding everything in its path.
I laugh under my breath, and it comes out bitter and harsh.
Who would have thought I would become the jealous and possessive type? But here I am, losing my mind over a girl who smiled at another guy. Acting like some unhinged psycho who can’t handle the idea of her talking to anyone but me.
I am completely fucked up when it comes to her. Totally and utterly destroyed by the way she says my name. I am so in love with her that I can’t figure out how to handle it.
I have no idea how to be the guy who admits that out loud. Who tells her that she is the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing before I pass out at night. That the thought of losing her makes me feel like I am drowning. As if I cannot breathe.
And as for Nicole showing up after that incident in the hall. She knew exactly what she saw.
Me losing my shit over Lola and Marcus. She still followed me out of the building and across the field toward the back gate like some pathetic puppy who doesn’t know when to quit. Believing that because I am pissed off and spiraling, I will fall back into old habits.
“Jace, wait—” she said.
I didn’t stop or slow down. I just kept walking because I needed to get the hell out of there before I went back inside and finished what I started.
But Nicole, the stupid bitch, persisted. She caught up to me, grabbed my arm, and spun me around with a look on her face as if she thought she had some claim on me.
“What the fuck do you want, Nicole?”
“I just thought maybe you needed—”
“What?” I yanked my arm out of her grip and laughed. “That I needed you to what? Comfort me? Make me feel better?”
She bit her lip, trying to look all innocent. Attempting to appear that she gives a shit instead of some fucked up thing spiraling in her mind.
“I just wanted to talk. You looked upset and I—”
“No. You saw me pissed off and you thought you could swoop in and get what you always want. Well, newsflash, Nicole, I am not fucking interested. I have never fucking been interested in you.”
“We had fun before—”
“Fun?” I stepped closer, and she actually looked excited for a second as if I was going to change my mind. “You want to know what you were to me? You were a wet hole for my cock when I was bored. That is all you ever were. A distraction. And not even a good one.”
Her face went pale, all that fake confidence draining away. Good. Maybe now she’ll finally get it through her thick fucking skull that I’m not interested.
“And just so we are crystal fucking clear, I will never fuck you again. Not now that I have had better.”
I saw it click. The exact moment she figured it out. The shock first, her eyes widening. Then that damn smirk spreading across her face like she just got handed the juiciest piece of gossip this school has seen all year.
“Lola,” she breathed, and the name sounded like poison coming out of her mouth. “Oh my god, Lola Bellamy.”
“Stay the fuck away from me, Nicole.” My voice came out low. “I mean it. You’re so pathetic you cannot take a fucking hint.”
“You are such an ass—”
“Yeah, and you’re a clingy bitch who needs to learn that no means no. Now we both understand where we fucking stand.”
I turned and walked away, leaving her standing there with her mouth open and that calculating look in her eyes that told me she was already planning her next move.
“Fuck you, Jace.” she yelled after me.
“Already did that. It wasn’t that memorable.”
I have replayed that moment over in my head a hundred times since I walked away from her. And every time, I’m fucking certain that is not the end of it.
Nicole is the kind of person who won’t let this slide. Her ego won’t tolerate it. Girls like Nicole never back down. And the fact that it is Lola, well, that’s really going to eat at her.
I place the bottle back on the crate and lean back in the chair, my head resting against the worn cushion.
My eyes find the photo again sitting in my lap, mocking me.
And then the door to my trailer swings open. I jerk upright, my hand instinctively grabbing the photo and moving it beside my leg, so that whoever the fuck is coming in doesn’t get to see this part of me.
It’s Bells, standing in the doorway like some kind of fever dream I have conjured up from too much whiskey and not enough sleep.
The cold air rushes in behind her, but she doesn’t seem to notice, or she’s too pissed to care.
Bells steps inside and slams the door shut. Her eyes are filled with anger and I can see the hurt on her face.
I sit forward on the couch, carefully slipping the photo into the side cushion where she won’t see it. So she doesn’t ask questions I do not know how to answer.
“What the fuck do you want?” I ask, my voice coming out harsh, because it is easier this way than to tell her the truth.