27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mac
Smoke burns its way down my raw throat.
My hands shake. Ribs ache. Legs scream.
And beside me, Toby breathes his cigarette like its oxygen.
“How bad is it?” I risk a glance over my shoulder.
“I am fiendin’ . Bad.”
Taking a final drag, I flick my cigarette to the cracked pavement and push off from the wall to grab his shoulders. “Look at me.”
His jaw tightens, but he flicks his gaze up to meet mine.
“Count the days.”
“Three hundred, fifty. Today. Three hundred and fucking fifty and that fucker —”
I push him back against the wall when he jolts forward, the smell of cheap beer permeating from his shirt.
“That fucker is going to be eating through a straw for a year.” My knuckles throb as proof. “Okay? Now just … gimme your shirt.”
He tucks another lit cigarette between his lips and grips the logo in the center of his chest. The wet material gives away freely to his anger, shredding to pieces and landing among the debris on the ground.
“Fucking metal, Broby.” I snicker and steal the smoke from his mouth. “Now let’s get you to a meeting.”
With my arm slung over his shoulder and our steps syncing up, I pull out my phone to look up the nearest place to take a former alcoholic, only to stop short of hitting the search engine app when a text lights up the screen.
Jordan: Can’t take you anywhere.
My stomach rolls over itself.
There’s a link, the little preview showing a tabloid picture of me and Peach going to blows with some douche that thought it was a good idea to dump his drink on one of my brothers.
My recovering alcoholic brother.
Jordan: Nice right hook.
Me: You should have been there.
With a downturn to my lips, I swipe it away and find us a meeting for my shirtless best friend.
“I’m proud of you,” I say to Toby in front of what I think is a church and he breaks away from my hold.
His nod is jerky, his focus on the doors in front of him.
“You don’t have to come in,” he finally says with a tightness to his features. It’s private. Guarded. So, I nod and squeeze his shoulder.
“I’ll be right here.”
A tilt to his chin leads him into the building and leaves me standing here with nowhere to put my hands.
Another cigarette is between my lips a moment later, my back resting against the brick, a foot cocked up beneath me.
Movement across the street catches my attention, a flash of orange hair shining in the bleak darkness, and I shake my head. How that man manages to seem invisible when he looks more like a rock star than me, I still can’t comprehend.
He doesn’t approach and I don’t call him over.
Things with Peach got weird when we left home and they haven’t gotten any better with each night that I end up in the hallway, asleep but moving, and I can’t blame him for keeping his distance.
He looks as tired as I feel.
Tension in my muscles has me switching to my other foot and flexing my hands, my phone digging into my thigh when I bend it so, I fish it out of my pocket.
The screen lights up some ungodly hour with an a.m. behind it and I silently curse—
It’s ringing.
Well, vibrating because the sound of a ringer drives me fucking insane, but it’s alerting me of the incoming call that’s got my stomach dropping.
Jordan.
I accept before I can think it through.
My gut twists up.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Why did I do that?
“Vida, hey.”
My eyes slide closed at the relief I hear in his tone. “Hey,” I mutter tightly and pinch the bridge of my nose.
I was doing so good leaving him on read the last few weeks. Not responding, mostly. Keeping this distance between us that wounds me as much as it relieves me because if he’s not in my face then at least I can pretend that everything is normal. That he’s just off doing other bodyguard shit and not avoiding being with me.
That there isn’t this awkwardness hanging heavy over the line every time he’s called.
“Clips from your show are already all over the web.”
That clenching in my stomach only gets worse.
Did he see my videos—
I have to stop this.
This unhealthy obsession with someone I’ll never have feels like a pin popping through my chest all hours of the night and day.
This pain that keeps me awake.
The restlessness that never ends.
I’m … tired.
Of pretending like everything is fine. Like I’m not falling the fuck apart with each day that passes, and I have to act like I’m just a rock star with a bodyguard as a best friend. That I’m not desperately looking for his face in every crowded room. Or waiting for every little morsel of communication he’s sparing me. As if I’m not hoping with all of my might that he’ll walk through the door at any moment, just to surprise me.
Wishing he’d fly thousands of miles if only to see me.
Find me.
Dreaming that he’d wake up and be different .
Not straight.
He won’t.
And it feels like shit to think that.
I love Jordan as he is.
I’m in love with who he is.
But that’s all this will ever be .
Unrequited feelings. Longing. Destruction .
“I’m doing something.”
My heart rate kicks up when his statement draws me back and the sounds of his breathing, heavier than normal, registers.
No.
Nononono.
“What,” I croak out even though I know I shouldn’t.
“It’s a surprise. For you.”
The breath punches out of me.
“What?” I ask again, though this one is more of a squeak that works past my aching throat.
“A surprise—You sound like crap, Vida. You okay?”
My heart gives a painful thump in a too-tight ribcage.
Head drops back against the rough brick at my back.
No. I’m not fucking okay.
Because he’s in my ear, hearing me for the first time in weeks and asking me if I’m okay and I’m clinging to his words against my better judgement.
And I’m here. Standing on some random street in some foreign place, in the dark, with busted knuckles and a bleeding heart.
Alone.
So fucking alone.
“Yeah,” I lie and my voice cracks.
My eyes start to sting, and my tongue burns with a big, fat, why .
Why can’t you love me back?
Jordan’s sigh is audible. “Mac—”
“I have to go,” I rush out.
“Wait.” I pause, my composure hanging by the thinnest thread. “Drink some tea. It’ll help.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Right.”
It won’t help this.