24. Jasmine #2
I twist up my face, trying to gather the little bit of anger I can muster. “I don’t care who the hell you think you are, Landon. You can’t just drag me wherever?—”
I hear a sharp inhale and my eyes dart up to the balcony—then my heart basically stops in my chest. My platonic soulmate. The love of my fucked-up life. The only person I wanted to call when Tommy died is staring at me with her big hazel eyes, already welling up with tears.
“Jasmine?” she whispers my name like it’s a prayer, and I answer it by smashing her body into mine.
We collide in the center of the room, arms wrapped around each other in a tangle of desperation and disbelief.
Her fingers grip the lapels of Landon’s leather jacket.
My arms crush her closer. A sob rips through my chest, raw and ugly, and she’s crying too—but it’s the kind of crying that’s so full of relief it makes you dizzy.
“God, I’m going to kick your ass,” I choke into her shoulder. “You—Willow, you can’t just disappear like that.”
“Don’t,” she whispers, voice breaking. “Please. Just let me have this.”
She nods against me, and we hold on tighter. It feels like home. It feels like a part of my soul that left when Tommy died—and I failed to kill Marcus—came back to me. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a long fucking time, and it hurts. It feels like a collision.
When we finally pull apart, I drink her in like I’ve been drowning.
She looks older, but not in a tired way.
Like she’s earned every edge. Her curly hair is shorter, and she looks like she’s seen things.
She doesn’t look like my innocent Willow who freaked out about a mini skirt just two years ago.
She looks so strong, I can barely stand it.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispers in a choked voice.
I take a step closer, my fingertips tracing the smooth curve of her jaw, as if I have to make sure she is real. “I didn’t think I’d see you either. But here you are. And that’s enough for me.”
She nods, pulling me in to bury her face in my hair, and I inhale sharply to get that purely Willow scent of coconuts during winter.
After a moment, she pulls back and analyzes my face.
Her eyes take in my hair, the bags under my eyes—if I wasn’t such a good liar, she would be able to smell the depression on me.
But luckily for me, I don’t want her to look too close.
To see how her being gone broke me so much.
So I arch a brow and try to suck in the tear curling around my eyelashes.
“What? Never seen a badass before?”
She sniffles out a laugh and shakes her head. “Not one who still dresses like she’s about to fight the Devil and win.”
I push out a laugh and tug Landon’s jacket tighter. “Damn right.”
Landon sighs, followed by his shitty little snort, and I turn around to growl at him. Because did he take care of me for the last month? Yes. But does that make me any less of a badass ready to win against the Devil? Fuck no.
I narrow my eyes on him. “Jackass. You are so on my shit list.”
A snort escapes Willow and I turn to see her rocking on the balls of her feet. “Um… so, life updates, yes?”
My eyes widen—because fuck, how do I tell my lifelong bestie, who knew I was a lesbian since middle school, that I’m not a lesbian anymore?
More like bisexual, but that shouldn’t matter.
Sexuality is a spectrum—constantly changing and evolving—and Willow is my bestie, so I can tell her everything.
Like how Landon is my new maybe-boyfriend, I’m having a minor affair with my cop professor Conner Kilgore, and oh yeah—I’m completely obsessed with Brooke du Pont, despite not seeing two out of three of my people in the last three weeks.
I have no doubt they’re mine. Even if we haven’t talked about it yet, because it feels true. It feels right.
I take a deep breath and point to the smug British bastard. “Landon, meet my runaway bestie, Willow. Willow, meet one of my partners, Landon.”
She blinks, smacking her lips twice before saying, “Excuse me?”
I roll my eyes at her dramatics, because this girl has three guys. Three guys who tormented her in high school. Three guys she tried to rob, and I am a hundred percent sure one of them—Damien—just hate-fucks her. So there should be, like, zero judgment.
“Don’t start?—”
“No, hold on.” She cuts me off, pointing between Landon and me. “He’s a guy. And last I checked, you were a lesbian. Like, from birth. You swore off men before we even knew how to spell compulsory heterosexuality.”
I snort, crossing my arms, because of course my bestie would never judge the poly thing—more the you’re not gay thing, which would shock most people. “First of all, rude. Second of all, I was bicurious —” I wiggle my fingers dramatically, “—which means I had a question, and I sought an answer.”
She tilts her head, a small smirk of judgment on her lips. “And?”
I sigh. “And then your asshole of a man?—”
“Jasmine,” Cast growls, but I flip him off and continue while making eye contact.
“Asshole,” I repeat. “Assigned this guy to shadow me, like a bodyguard or some shit, which means I had to deal with him all the time. And one thing led to another… I tried it out, and surprise, surprise—I liked it.” I let out a rushed sigh and shrug, shooting a sideways glance at Landon, who just grins like the fucking smug bastard he is. “Well, him and Conner.”
Conner Kilgore, who is avoiding me like the plague, and who I have not fucked yet—but I’m pretty sure my underwear being his main jerking-off pal constitutes a sexual relationship. Right?
She blinks again, shaking her head. “So, no girls?”
I grip my chest and gasp. “Yes girls! Do you think I could ever abandon the fairer sex? The last and love of my life is Brooke.”
Landon raises a brow, his smug smile deepening. “Hey, I thought I was your favorite.”
“Not right now, Lan.” I hiss, narrowing my eyes on him and placing my hands on my hips. “You are ridiculous. And pushy.”
Landon just chuckles and reaches out, curling a hand around the nape of my neck, his fingers threading into the short undercut—which makes every spark of electricity there fire off like it’s the Fourth of July.
He leans in, murmuring in my ear, “You weren’t saying that when you were begging me to fuck you deeper and harder against the kitchen table. I think I was your favorite then.”
The air catches in my throat and I jerk back, smacking him in the chest. “Company, Lan!”
He laughs, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Right, right. Behaving now.” But the wink he gives me makes my thighs clench, because three weeks of depression means three weeks with no sex—and I am regretting that choice very much right now.
“See, this is why I need Brooke.” I turn back to Willow and roll my eyes. “Anyway, you need to tell me everything—like, I literally want to know every time you pissed. Everything.”
She giggles. “That may be TMI, but I’ll tell you just about everything.”
“Good enough.” I lace her fingers with mine and pull her in the direction of the stairs. “No boys allowed!”
We disappear up the stairs like we’re teenagers again, like nothing and everything has changed. And rush to her bedroom, which strangely looks like a copy of her childhood home, and I file that to ask about later.
We collapse onto my bed like we used to—legs tangled, hair messy, laughter still echoing in the bones of the room. I don’t even care that there are unfolded clothes on the duvet or that my bra is poking out from under a pillow. It’s just us, like always.
Willow lies back, arms flopped out like a starfish, and I follow suit, turning my head toward her on the pillow. The silence that settles now isn’t awkward. It’s familiar. A quiet only best friends understand. This feels like home.
Her eyes flick toward me, and I see it—the crack beneath the smile. The place where grief lives when you’ve shoved it too deep to speak aloud. It’s like the giddy humor of seeing each other has faded and the reason why she is home, and I have been distraught is coming to a head between us.
I push up slowly, resting on one elbow. “I didn’t know if they told you but--” I say softly.
“I know,” she whispers. Her voice is so hollow it sounds like it’s been rung out and hung up to dry.
Willow curls into herself in the middle of the bed and doesn’t look at me. Just keeps staring at the ceiling like it might swallow her whole, or resurrect our father. I mean I know he’s not my real father but he is as close as I will get.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper back, trying to catch her eye.
I reach for her, slipping an arm beneath her neck and pulling her close until her temple is tucked against my collarbone.
I hold her there, tight. A fierce, protective hold.
My chin finds the top of her head and I don’t realize how tightly my eyes are squeezed shut until my throat threatens to collapse.
“He was like--” I whisper ready to call him mine too, but the words die on my lips. “I’m sorry about Tommy.”
“You can say it, you know?” She doesn’t move from my embrace.
I shake my head no. “He was yours, and I-”
“You are his daughter as much as I am…was.” I let out a shaky breath as she quickly exhales.
God, my chest caves at that. Tommy will never know how much he means to me. I never told him that he was like a father to me. I never said I love you to him, like really said I love you to him.
Willow kisses my knuckles. “He loved you.”
I inhale sharply, and Willow turns around, cooing as her arms wrap around my neck. “No more crying. You know Dad hated to see us cry, and I physically think I can’t cry anymore.”
“I don’t know how to stop,” I say, a light chuckle comes through the thick line of tears.. “It just… it won’t stop.”
I swallow against the lump rising fast in my throat and press my mouth to Willow’s hair.
“He would’ve been proud of you,” I whisper. “You hear me? Tommy would’ve been so fucking proud of you.”
Willow shudders in my arms, and I feel the breath stutter out of her. Not a sob. Just a fragile, broken kind of exhale. Like she’s been holding in something sharp for too long.
I hold her tighter, and for a long while we don’t cry, or talk. We just hold each other, two daughters mourning the death of their father. My father . God, I never thought I would say that -- my father.