Chapter 16- JADE
Sleep doesn't come.
I lie in my childhood bed, staring at the ceiling I memorized when I was twelve, counting the cracks in the plaster the way I used to count sheep.
The quilt my grandmother made is pulled up to my chin, soft and familiar, smelling faintly of lavender and the cedar chest where my mother keeps it stored.
Everything about this room should feel safe. Comforting. Like coming home.
Instead, I feel like I'm suffocating.
My mother's ultimatum echoes in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull until I want to scream. Him or me. The Crawfords or your family. As if love can be divided into neat categories, weighed on a scale, measured and compared.
I turn onto my side and stare at the window.
The streetlight outside casts long shadows across the floor, and I watch them shift as cars pass, their headlights sweeping briefly across the glass.
Boston sounds different than Malibu. There's no endless rhythm of waves against the shore.
Just traffic and sirens and the occasional bark of a dog.
I miss the ocean. I miss waking up to the smell of salt air and the cry of seagulls. I miss the way the morning light pours through Phoenix's bedroom windows, turning everything gold.
I miss him.
The admission feels like a betrayal, lying here in my mother's house, surrounded by memories of the life I had before he existed.
But it's the truth. I miss his hands on my body, his voice in my ear, the way he looks at me like I'm the only thing in the world that matters.
I miss the weight of him next to me in bed, the steady rhythm of his breathing when he finally falls asleep.
I even miss the intensity. The possessiveness that should terrify me but instead makes me feel wanted in a way I've never experienced before.
What does that say about me?
The clock on the nightstand reads 3:17 AM. I've been lying here for hours, running through the same arguments over and over, trying to find an answer that doesn't exist.
My mother is all I have. She's the only family I've ever known.
Her parents, my grandparents, are strangers to me.
Wealthy strangers who live somewhere far away, who cut my mother off when she refused to marry after getting pregnant, who've never once tried to meet me.
Mom walked away from all of it. The money, the comfort, the life she could have had.
She chose to raise me alone, working double shifts, skipping meals, wearing the same clothes for years so I could have what I needed.
She gave up everything for me. And now I'm choosing a Crawford over her.
The quilt wrapped around me is one of the few things she kept from that old life. Her mother made it before I was born, before the estrangement, before everything fell apart. Sometimes I wonder if Mom looks at it and feels the same ache I do now. The weight of loving someone and losing them anyway.
She is my mother. My family. My home.
But Phoenix is something else entirely.
I close my eyes and let myself remember. The cabin. Marcus's hands around my throat, the certainty that I was going to die. And then Phoenix, appearing like an avenging angel, fire poker in hand, rage burning in his eyes. The sound of metal meeting bone. The spray of blood across the wooden floor.
He killed for me. Without hesitation, without remorse. He looked at the man who was hurting me and he ended him, and when it was over, he held me like I was made of glass and told me everything would be okay.
That's not normal. I know it's not normal. But nothing about my life has been normal since that check arrived in my mailbox, since I cashed it and flew to California and fell into Phoenix Crawford's orbit.
He's controlling. He put a tracking app on my phone. He blocked the door when I tried to leave. He hovered and watched and suffocated me until I couldn't breathe.
But he's also tender. The way he touches my face when he thinks I'm sleeping. The way he brings me coffee exactly the way I like it without being asked. The way he reads over my shoulder when I'm writing and asks questions about my characters like they're real people he wants to understand.
He's dangerous. He has darkness inside him that scares me sometimes, a capacity for violence that most people never see.
But he's also devoted. Completely, obsessively, terrifyingly devoted. He would give up everything he has just to keep me safe. He would destroy anyone who tried to hurt me. I know this not because he's said it but because I watched him prove it.
Can I really walk away from that?
The question haunts me as the hours crawl by. I watch the shadows lengthen and then slowly fade as the first pale light of dawn seeps through the curtains. My eyes are dry and gritty from lack of sleep, and my body aches with exhaustion, but my mind won't stop spinning.
Finally, around six, I hear movement in the kitchen. The creak of the old floorboards. The clink of a coffee mug. My mother is awake.
I lie there for another twenty minutes, gathering my courage, trying to find the words for a conversation I don't want to have. Then I push back the quilt, pull on the sweater I brought from Phoenix's house, and walk down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Mom is standing at the counter with her back to me, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. She's wearing the same clothes she had on last night, wrinkled now from sleep or lack of it. Her shoulders are tense, her posture rigid. She doesn't turn around when I enter.
"Have you made your decision?"
Her voice is flat. Empty. Like she already knows the answer and is just waiting for me to confirm it.
I take a deep breath. The kitchen smells like coffee and something burning, toast left too long in the toaster. The refrigerator hums in the corner, a familiar sound that takes me back to a thousand mornings just like this one, sitting at this table, eating breakfast with my mother before school.
"Mom." My voice cracks. "I love you. More than anything."
She doesn't move. Doesn't turn around. "But?"
The word hangs in the air between us, heavy with everything we're not saying.
"But I love him too." The tears are coming now, sliding down my cheeks, dripping off my chin. "And I can't just walk away. I can't pretend he doesn't exist, that what we have doesn't matter. I tried. I spent five days trying to imagine my life without him, and I can't do it."
Finally, she turns. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her face pale and drawn. She looks older than she did a week ago, like our fight has aged her in ways that time alone never could.
"So you've chosen."
"I've chosen to try." I take a step toward her, desperate to make her understand. "I'm not choosing him over you. I'm choosing to give us a chance, to see if what we have is real. That doesn't mean I'm abandoning you. That doesn't mean I don't love you."
"It means exactly that." Her voice is quiet now, barely above a whisper. "You're walking into the same trap that swallowed Olive whole, and you're doing it with your eyes wide open. How am I supposed to watch that happen? How am I supposed to pretend it's okay?"
"It's not a trap. Phoenix isn't Nicholas."
"You don't know that." A single tear slides down her cheek, catching the morning light. "You don't know what he'll become. What you'll become."
"You're right." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. "I don't know. But I have to find out. I have to give this a chance, or I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what if."
Everything is quiet. I watch my mother's face cycle through emotions. Anger. Grief. Resignation. And finally, something that looks almost like defeat.
"Then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other."
"Mom, please." I reach for her, but she steps back, putting the kitchen island between us. "Don't do this. Don't make me choose between you."
"I'm not making you do anything." Her voice is cold now, controlled. "You've already chosen. You made that clear."
"I chose to try. That's all. Can't you just give me time? Give him a chance? You haven't even met him."
"I don't need to meet him. I've seen what his family does to women. I've watched my best friend disappear piece by piece until there was nothing left but a shell." She shakes her head slowly. "I won't watch that happen to my daughter."
"So that's it? I either leave Phoenix or I lose you?"
"Go." The word comes out as barely a whisper. "Just go."
I want to argue. I want to fight. I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she understands that this isn't the same, that Phoenix and I are different, that our story doesn't have to end the way hers and Olive's did.
But she's already turned away, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs that she's trying to hide from me. And I realize, with a pain that cuts deeper than anything I've ever felt, that there's nothing I can say. Nothing I can do.
She's made her choice too.
I walk back to my room. I pack my bag slowly, mechanically, folding clothes I don't remember wearing, collecting toiletries I don't remember using. The quilt is still tangled at the foot of the bed, and I take a moment to straighten it, to smooth the fabric with hands that won't stop trembling.
When I'm done, I take one last look around the room. The posters on the walls. The books on the shelf. The window where I used to sit and dream about a life bigger than this house, this city, this small existence.
I have that life now. It's just not the one I imagined.
I pick up my bag and walk out the door. Down the hallway. Past the kitchen where my mother is still standing with her back to me, still refusing to turn around.
"I love you, Mom."
She doesn't answer.
I step outside and close the door behind me.
The morning air is cold and sharp, a reminder that Boston is still caught in the grip of late winter while California is already warming toward summer.
I stand on the porch for a moment, breathing in the familiar smells of my old neighborhood, listening to the sounds of a city waking up.
Then I pull out my phone and text Chloe.
I need to see you. Are you free?
Her response comes almost immediately.
Always. Get your ass over here.
I flag down a cab and give the driver Chloe's address. As we pull away from my mother's house, I turn to watch it shrink in the rear window. The white siding. The blue shutters. The garden that my mother tends every spring with such care.
It looks exactly the same as it always has.
But nothing about it feels like home anymore.
Chloe opens the door looking exactly like I remember her.
Dark hair piled messily on top of her head, oversized sweater falling off one shoulder, coffee cup permanently attached to her hand.
She's thinner than the last time I saw her, the stress of law school carved into the shadows under her eyes, but her smile is the same. Warm, genuine, a little sardonic.
"You look like hell," she says, pulling me into a hug. "Get in here."
Her apartment is small but comfortable, filled with mismatched furniture and towering stacks of law books.
A half-eaten bowl of cereal sits on the coffee table next to a laptop covered in sticky notes.
The place smells like coffee and old paper and the lavender candles Chloe has been obsessed with since college.
"So." She settles onto the couch and pulls her legs up underneath her. "Let me get this straight. Stalker billionaire, fake girlfriend scheme, cabin kidnapping, and you're still with him?"
I sink into the armchair across from her, suddenly exhausted. "It's complicated."
"Girl, that's not complicated. That's a true crime documentary."
Despite everything, I laugh. It's the first time I've laughed in days, and it feels strange, like a muscle I've forgotten how to use. "I know how it sounds."
"You know how it sounds? Jade, when you told me what happened at that cabin, I was ready to fly out there and murder him myself. And now you're telling me you're going back to him?"
"He saved my life, Chloe. When Marcus was attacking me, Phoenix killed him. Without hesitation. He killed a man to protect me."
Chloe's expression shifts, the sarcasm fading into something more serious. "You told me that. You also told me he put a tracker on your phone and wouldn't let you leave the house."
"I know." I stare at my hands in my lap. "He's not perfect. He's controlling, possessive. Sometimes he scares me."
"Then why are you going back?"
I look up at her, searching for the words to explain something I barely understand myself. "What if I'm making the same mistakes my mom's friend made? What if Phoenix is just like his father?"
"Is he?"
The question hangs in the air. I think about everything I know about Phoenix, everything I've seen, everything we've been through together.
"I don't know," I admit finally. "He's intense. Possessive. But he also saved me. He'd do anything for me. When he looks at me, I feel like the most important person in the world."
"That's either romantic or terrifying." Chloe takes a sip of her coffee.
"Maybe both.”
She's quiet for a moment, studying me with those sharp eyes that always see too much. "You love him."
It's not a question, but I answer anyway. "Yes."
"And your mom gave you an ultimatum."
"Yes."
"And you're choosing him."
I close my eyes, feeling the weight of the choice pressing down on my chest. "I'm choosing to try. I'm choosing to find out if what we have is real. Is that so wrong?"
Chloe sets down her coffee cup and leans forward, her expression softening.
"Jade, you're my best friend. I've watched you play it safe your entire life.
You dated the boring guys, never took a single risk that might blow up in your face.
And now you're telling me you've found something that makes you feel alive, even if it's messy and complicated and a little bit terrifying. "
"That's one way to put it."
"I'm not going to tell you what to do. You're a grown woman, and you know this situation better than I do.
" She reaches over and takes my hand. "But I will say this.
If Phoenix Crawford hurts you, if he turns out to be anything like his father, I will personally fly to California and cut off his balls. "
I laugh again, and this time it doesn't feel so strange. "I'll hold you to that."
"You better." She squeezes my hand. "Now. When's your flight?"