4. Rosalie
FOUR
Rosalie
I bolt upright, the unfamiliar ceiling spinning above me. My head is pounding harder than a drum line. What the heck happened last night? I’m in a bed that isn’t mine, wrapped in sheets that smell like…like whiskey and beer? Lots of whiskey and beer, and I’m actually not on a bed. I’m on a couch. In Jay’s living room. How did I even get here?
Panic spikes through me as I glance at the clock on the wall. Crap! It’s late in the afternoon…I have to get home and practice. I fling the covers off and scramble, not giving a second thought to the lack of proper clothing.
“Rosie?” Jay stands at the top of the stairs, looking down at me with wide ocean-blue eyes and a coffee in his hands. I’m suddenly conscious that I’m wearing nothing but my underwear. I cross my arms defensively over my chest. “Shit, could you please wear at least a shirt?”
“Sorry,” I blurt out, cheeks flaming. Fuck. I should have…but…maybe I just should go. Yes. Go. “I gotta go—studying—I’m late.”
“Wait!” He’s frantic, too, but for different reasons, maybe. I don’t have time to figure out why, but then I see it.
Jay is limping down the stairs.
He’s struggling to walk.
Shit, I didn’t know…I thought…
I catch myself staring, but I push down the sinking feeling in my stomach—the urge to hug him, to comfort him, to apologize. I know he’d hate it.
“I need my phone.” I’m darting around the living room like a chicken with its head cut off, searching cushions, tabletops, any flat surface. Where is it?
“Here.” Jay hands it over. He’s doing that man-bun, grumpy look thing he does so well.
“Thanks,” I say, snatching it from him. I swipe it open, but then—fuck—the world stops. My screen is plastered with news articles about Kix Lyle getting mugged last night. My heart nosedives straight into my stomach.
“Jay…” The memories hit me right in the face.
And suddenly I don’t care that I stand in nothing but pink underwear in front of my brother’s best friend.
I don’t even care that he’s got a boner. And normally I care a lot about Jay and his boners.
But not now.
I went to a party and…woke up to Kix Lyle. In his car. It looked a lot like I drove into a tree. I never drive. I called Jay and we…we brought him back to his house in fucking masks.
Panic claws at my throat. Shit, I forgot. And there were cameras! “Shit. The cameras!”
“That’s one of the crazy things…the cameras were destroyed. All of them.” He looks puzzled for a moment, then understanding dawns in those deep blues.
“Fuck.”
I slump down on a bar stool and rub my face. It burns like hell.
What did we do? What did I do?
“Rosie, what’s going on?” Jay’s voice is different now. Gone is the edge, the sharpness. All that’s left is concern, thick and heavy, like it’s suffocating him.
“I wish I knew. I really do.”
My mind feels like a storm too—buzzing, chaotic, and pointless. No clarity, just the endless noise of it all.
Then, suddenly, Jay throws a blanket toward me. “Here,” he says. “Wrap yourself up, please. I can’t think straight seeing all of…” He gestures toward me, his hands hovering uncertainly, like he’s afraid of what he might touch. “This.”
I sigh and pull the blanket around my shoulders. But as I do, I catch a familiar scent—alcohol. The kind that clings to everything it touches, like a bad memory that never fades.
“Jay,” I say, my voice smaller than I want it to be. “Why does everything in here smell like alcohol?”
That’s when I finally meet those incredible blue eyes of his. He’s like a husky. All sharp, and mysterious.
He’s showered, his hair slicked back in a neat bun, though some damp strands still stick to his forehead. His skin is still tanned, but there’s something about it today—he’s pale, too pale for someone with an olive complexion like his. And the dark circles under his eyes? They’re deep, far deeper than they used to be.
And…Jay has a limp leg.
Fuck, he’s struggling so hard. All this time and I didn’t know…
“Oh my god, Jay. I’m so sorry,” I blurt out, my heart sinking into my stomach. I clutch the blanket tighter, suddenly feeling all the weight of my mistakes. “I wasn’t thinking yesterday. Your leg must be killing you, and I—”
“Rosie.” He says my name, but it’s not the gentle way he used to say it. It’s demanding, deep, that baritone I’ve always loved, but right now, it’s wrapped in frustration. Anger. And suddenly, I feel like I’m about to crack. Fuck, I messed up. He’s hurt and I messed up. “Come on. We need to sit down. We need to talk.”
I try to breathe, to calm myself, but the breath escapes me in a shaky rush. He places his hand on the small of my back, guiding me toward the couch I had collapsed onto earlier. But as we move, I notice the cans—beer cans scattered across the floor, whiskey bottles carelessly abandoned. I know he has a cleaning lady. So these? These are recent. A day or two old, maybe.
And that’s when it hits me.
There’s a crack in my heart. And another.
Jay’s been…drinking all this time.
I remember asking Riley about him, worrying. But I never would have guessed Jay was this bad. He’s always been the stable one. The one with a plan. The one who knew what to do. The one who knew how to follow rules. He was the rock we both leaned on. Riley and I—well, we were the messy ones. That’s how it’s always been.
And now? Now I don’t know what to do.
I should have—
“Come on, tell me everything,” Jay interrupts my train of thought, his voice sharp, forcing me to meet his gaze. “How the hell did you end up in that car with him, the singer?”
“I can’t remember anything. I just…I just remember that I woke up and called you,” I say again. “One minute, we were partying, and the next…it’s all a blur.”
He sits across from me, one leg bent at an awkward angle on the couch, the other stretched out straight, refusing to bend. There’s a crack in my chest again as I watch him. He’s been alone. All this time. My Jay has been alone.
“Start at the beginning,” he says. “Maybe there are memories that will come back when you talk.”
I clutch the blanket tighter around me, suddenly feeling cold. I hesitate for a moment, my mind racing as I try to piece it all together.
“Charlotte,” I whisper, and then roll my eyes at the way his face falls at the mention. I throw him a sidelong glance, one that carries a warning, and then continue, because I can’t stop now. “She came to Juilliard. Picked me up with Vaughn, and we went to this secret party. It was pretty normal. We—”
“Pretty normal, as in you snorted everything you found and drank everything you got?” His eyes darken, the intensity in them making me shrink back, even though I stand my ground. I drop my gaze to the floor, suddenly embarrassed. But then, something rises in me—a heat, a spark of anger—and I glare at him.
“You know, normally, I listen to you. Because you don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do any of this shit. But now?” I gesture around the room at the mess—the empty cans of beer, the whiskey bottles littering the floor. And while I’m at it, I turn around and my heart sinks when I find another bottle on the kitchen counter, half empty, its label mocking me. It looks new. And then I remember the coffee cup. It’s right there with the whiskey bottle.
“You even drank today, Jay? It’s nine a.m.!” The words slip out before I can stop them. I’m shocked, maybe more than I should be.
“I didn’t,” he says, but the denial doesn’t sit right.
I stand abruptly, my blanket slipping from my shoulders as I move toward him. I lean in close, hoping for a whiff of whatever’s on him, something to prove me wrong. Something that reassures me that my Jay is okay. I inch even closer, and I can finally smell it. My nose wrinkles at the smell of his musky cologne mixed with alcohol.
“Ha,” I say, my voice cutting through the tension. “You’re a fucking alcoholic, Jayce Thornton.”
And just like that, everything freezes.
I freeze because I said it out loud. And I think Jay freezes because my blanket is now a distant memory on the floor, and I’m sitting there, practically naked, on his lap. My heart pounds in my ears as he stares up at me, and I feel a flush of heat rush to my face. I didn’t think this through.
Alcohol or not, that view is enough to stop my breath. Those piercing eyes glisten like a storm about to break. His hair is tousled, a messy bun that somehow only adds to the rawness of him. And his lips—God, those lips—perfectly sculpted, made for nothing but kissing. It’s like I can feel the weight of it, the charge between us, just by looking. I burn the image into my mind, something I never want to forget.
“Get. The. Fuck. Off. Of. Me.”
Oops.
His voice is rough, almost like a growl, and he suddenly stands up as if afraid I’ll continue to push him. I stumble backward but somehow manage to stay on my feet.
I roll my eyes, trying to act unaffected, but I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips. “You’re acting like we’ve never kissed. As if Riley’s in the room. But he’s not. Chill.”
“We never kissed, Rosalie,” he grunts, standing at least three feet away from me now. “That wasn’t a kiss.”
“Well, we never talked about what that was.” I cross my arms, challenging him.
“Because it was nothing.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine. It’s not up for discussion.”
“Says who?”
“Me.”
I glare up at him, but there’s no malice in his eyes, just exhaustion, frustration. It’s like the wall between us is rising higher by the second.
We both know it was a kiss—it wasn’t nothing. But neither of us is ready to talk about it. Not now, not like this. The air has always been heavy between us, but before I can say anything more, he changes the subject, and I’m relieved to let go of the memory. It’s the other thing that happened at my parents’ gala. At first, he looked at me like I was his sun and stars—until he saw that I’d used again…
And now I messed up again.
“Let’s talk about the pressing stuff. You were plastered again, fine. But why would you drive? You never drive,” he says.
I swallow hard. “No, I don’t. I don’t even remember the last time I drove. I usually have Stanley drive me, or take an Uber. But last night…I just—”
“Oh, I remember something. I don’t think you drove that car, Rosie,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “I remember it clearly now—the seat was way too far back for you. Whoever drove that car was way taller than you. I didn’t even have to adjust it when I got in.”
“True,” I say, my eyes widening. “You didn’t complain about that…”
“Good to see your spark coming back,” he mutters, but there’s a hint of something else in his voice, something almost…playful? But it’s fleeting.
“Let’s see how long you think that’s good,” I shoot back, our gazes locking.
Suddenly, I’m thrown back to when I was thirteen, when I first noticed him—when I first had this silly teen crush I couldn’t explain. It grew into an obsession once I turned sixteen and never got any better since. He was always the one everyone noticed, the one who could make anyone feel like they were the most important person in the world. But he never looked at me the way I wanted him too. He was always my brother’s best friend, the older, cooler guy. The one I could never have.
Because I was nothing but a little girl to him.
But that smile of his…that damn smile ruined every other man for me. He’s the only one I’ve ever wanted, but he doesn’t want me.
And maybe he never will.
But I won’t leave him now. Not when he needs me the most.
I grab the hoodie he gave me yesterday, noticing I must’ve thrown it off while I slept, probably because I got too hot, and pull it back on quickly.
“Look,” I say, trying to lighten the moment. “I’m dressed now. You can sit again.”
“I’d rather stay standing,” he mutters, leaning against the wall far away from me, though it’s clear he’s still hurting. It’s stupid, but I know him well enough to know he won’t sit down. And I can’t make him. He may be injured, but he’s still way stronger than me and a hell of a hunk.
My phone buzzes under my ass and I grab it, noticing that I have hundreds of messages. Shit. Oh no. No. No. No.