Chapter 21
Jason couldn’t help smiling as he looked down at his little grasshopper. Not only had he proved that Haley loved him, but that had been the best sex of his life. She’d been so unbelievably hot and wet and so fucking tight he’d almost exploded when he’d entered her.
The last two months had definitely been worth the wait. Sex had never felt so good before. Just thinking about how good it was had his cock hardening for more.
“Please get off me,” Haley mumbled sadly, pushing against his shoulder.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, shifting his weight off her so that he could-
“You had sex with me to prove someone wrong?” she asked, looking hurt as she sat up.
“No, it wasn’t like that,” Jason said, realizing how bad that sounded.
“You just said that someone told you that I wouldn’t have sex with you,” she mumbled hollowly as she stood up.
He ran a hand through his hair, wondering how this had gone bad so fast. “Look,” Jason sighed, “maybe we should go inside and talk about this.”
“Now? Now you want to talk about this?” Haley asked, trying to walk past him and almost falling into the pool in the process. He quickly caught her. As soon as she was steady, she pushed his hands away and cautiously walked around the pool.
“I can’t believe you did this, Jason.”
That caught him off-guard. “What the hell are you talking about? How exactly was this a surprise? I’m your fucking boyfriend, Haley. This was bound to happen sooner or later with the way we were going at each other.”
“Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean I was going to sleep with you,” she said, looking a little lost.
Holy shit...
They’d been right.
“You were never planning on sleeping with me, were you?” he demanded, not bothering to hide how pissed he was.
“Up until tonight, I hadn’t made up my mind.”
He rounded the pool just as Haley found her glasses and put them on.
“You were fucking playing me?” he demanded, making her frown.
When she didn’t answer, he continued. “Your friends were right. This was a fucking game to you?” he yelled at her for the first time since he’d met her, not caring that he’d made her flinch.
“Did you brag that you brought me to my knees and kept me panting? Was this payback for all the bullshit that I put you through over the years? Did you even care about me?”
“You think this was a game?” Haley asked, wiping away tears that Jason wouldn’t let affect him. She was upset? Too fucking bad, because he was pissed. She’d played him so fucking well.
“You’re actually yelling at me when you just took my virginity to prove something?” Haley demanded, shaking her head in disbelief.
He froze.
A virgin?
She’d been tight, but...
“Oh, God…”
“I didn’t want to make the same mistakes that my sisters and cousins made. I didn’t want sex to be meaningless. I just wanted it mean something,” Haley said, clearly trying to fight back tears.
Just like that, all the anger inside him drained away. He moved to pull her into his arms only to have his hands weakly slapped away.
“You were so damn eager to prove something that you didn’t even stop to think about what you were doing,” Haley said with a sad shake of her head.
“Baby,” he said, keeping his tone gentle, “if I had known you were a virgin, I would have done this differently, but I can’t regret it.” He took a steadying breath. “I’m in love with you, Haley.”
“Ow!” he said when his little grasshopper kicked him in the shin. “What the hell was that for? I told you I love you and you kicked me?”
“That’s for being a jerk! You wait until you screwed up to pull out the big guns? How about telling me that and making love to me because you love me and not because you felt you had something to prove?” Haley demanded, shaking her head in disgust.
He nodded solemnly as he reached out for her again. “That sounds reasonable. Let’s go inside and I’ll do this right.”
“Are you crazy? You think I’m going to let you touch me after what just happened?” she asked, blinking up at him.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Jason said, reaching for her again as the first tear rolled down her face.
“No. You actually thought that I would ever hurt you like that? When have I ever done anything to make you believe that I could do something like that? It should have been more than obvious that I loved you, Jason,” she mumbled, wiping frantically at the tears streaming down her beautiful face.
Jason felt his heart break as he watched her. “Haley, I’m so sorry.”
Haley ignored his apology and he couldn’t say that he really blamed her. “You were so busy trying to prove something that you didn’t think.”
“What are you-”
“Jason, I’m not on birth control and you didn’t wear a condom,” she said, cutting him off.
“Oh, shit,” Jason mumbled as her words hit. He’d fucked up in so many ways tonight, he wasn’t sure where to start, but he knew which fuck up was the most important.
“Oh, shit is right,” Haley snapped, opening the sliding glass door and stepped inside.
He’d never forgotten to wear a condom before. Not once. He licked his suddenly dry lips. “Haley, we have to talk,” he said, even though he had no idea where to start or what the hell he was supposed to say to make this right.
“You should have thought about that before,” she said, turning her back on him.
“Haley, please don’t do this.”
“Just leave me alone, Jason,” Haley said, her words broken by a sob as she closed the door and locked it.
She was just mad, Jason told himself as he waited for her to come back and give him another piece of her mind.
He’d fucked up big time, but they both knew from the beginning that he was probably going to do that.
Telling himself that she just needed a few minutes to cool off, he stood there, waiting, and when a few minutes turned into thirty minutes, he forced himself to move.
He needed to apologize to her and tell her how much he loved her He hopped over the small picket fence separating their properties and made his way to her window. He was more than ready to beg if that’s what it took to get her to listen to him when the sound of her quiet sobs caught his attention.
“Haley?”
No answer.
He stood there, wondering what the hell he should do. Suddenly crawling into her room and begging her to forgive him didn’t sound like such a good idea anymore. She needed time to think, probably more time than he’d given her.
“I’ll be in my room when you’re ready to talk. So, just yell or call when you’re ready,” Jason said loudly, feeling like a useless idiot and having absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do to fix this. He left, hoping she came to him when she was ready.
Haley spent half the night crying and waiting for Jason to crawl through the window and hold her. When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she grabbed a pillow and a throw blanket and headed for the living room couch, unable to sleep in her own bed without Jason.
She couldn’t believe how much this hurt, Haley thought, wondering why she ever thought that she could prepare herself for something like this. She knew from the beginning that this probably wasn’t going to last and told herself that it didn’t matter, but she’d been wrong.
In one night, she’d lost everything, her best friend, boyfriend, her virginity, and her heart.
On top of that, it appeared that she’d lost a few of her friends, which she really couldn’t care less about if she was going to be honest. There was a reason why she’d kept putting off girl’s night and it had nothing to do with Jason.
They were a part of the old Haley’s life, the pushover version of herself, the Haley that never spoke up for herself and let other people push her around.
A few months ago, when they’d let her know that they couldn’t believe that Jason settled for someone like her, she should have cut them out of her life, but she’d hesitated.
She didn’t like hurting anyone’s feelings and apparently, Jason didn’t know that about her.
How could he have ever thought that she would do that to him?
She could only imagine what they said to him.
What she couldn’t understand was why he didn’t talk to her first. He should have told her what they said, asked her why she didn’t want to have sex, but instead, he’d allowed himself to be manipulated into doing something that he should have known was going to hurt her.
He should have…
Done so many things differently, but when it came down to it, this was her fault. She knew better than to fall in love with Jason, and now, there was nothing that she could but hope that having her heart broken didn’t destroy her.
“You’re out of eggs!”
“I don’t care,” Jason said, never taking his eyes away from Haley’s front door.
Around three this morning, he’d realized that he’d fucked up this situation even more by not going to her.
He’d spent the next two hours going over every single minute from the night before, trying to figure out exactly when he’d fucked up, and made a list. After he made sure that he hadn’t missed anything, he folded the three-page list, front and back, and stuffed it in his back pocket and came outside to wait for Haley so that he could start apologizing.
He’d contemplated waking her up, but then he’d have one more thing to apologize for, so he settled for waiting on his front step.
A half-hour ago, Mitch decided to join him after he’d spotted him waiting outside when he drove by.
It hadn’t taken long for the other man to figure out that he’d fucked up.
“Are you going to sit out here all day?” Mitch asked, stepping outside. “I’m starving. Let’s go get something for breakfast. By the time we get back, Haley should be up and you can go grovel.”
Jason stubbornly shook his head. “I’m not leaving until I talk to her. Besides, I’m not hungry.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mitch mumbled, crossing himself.
He ignored Mitch and focused on Haley’s front door.
A few minutes later, it opened and Haley stumbled out.
Jason was on his feet within seconds and heading towards her.
He really wasn’t sure how much longer he would have been able to wait before breaking into her house and begging for her forgiveness.
“Haley, I...” His words trailed off when he spotted the large duffle bag that she was dragging behind her. “What’s going on?”
For the first time in months, Haley’s face didn’t light up when she saw him. She pushed her glasses back up her nose and went back to pulling the bag.
“I’m going away,” she said, sounding sad.
“For how long?” Jason asked, feeling as though his entire world was crashing down around him.
“A week,” Haley said, walking past him as she dragged that damn bag.
A week? No, they couldn’t be apart for a week. That was too much time. A week of thinking about just how badly he’d fucked up and how much better off she was without him was not what they needed. They needed to work this out here and now so he could get on with the groveling.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Haley,” he said, automatically lifting the bag and placing it in her trunk for her when she struggled to pick it up. “Why don’t we go inside and talk this over?”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t. If I don’t go, I’ll be out a thousand dollars.”
He waved that aside. “I’ll reimburse you. Just stay here and let me explain what happened last night.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Jason. I think it’s for the best if we end things now,” she said, not quite able to meet his gaze as she broke his heart.
“You’re just mad, Haley. Maybe...maybe you’re right.
Maybe you just need a week to think things over,” Jason said quickly, desperate to do or say anything that would make her take it back.
“Take a week, think it over. We both knew that I was going to fuck up at some point, my little grasshopper. After you think about it, you’ll realize that’s all it was.
Then you’ll come back, I’ll grovel, and we’ll move past this. ”
She couldn’t even look at him as she said, “I’m really sorry, Jason.”
Jason couldn’t move, could hardly breathe as Haley stood up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jason. We’ll always be friends,” she said, delivering the killing blow.