Chapter 37
Magnolia
“Is it time for dinner yet?” Jace hollered out from behind me, shaking me out of my trance from watching Sloan walk away. I didn’t need to respond because Lexie took care of that for me instead.
“Lunch and dinner, Jace?” She cocked an eyebrow at him, even though she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.
“I can’t think of a better way to spend my evening.” He grinned back at her and followed her like a lost puppy toward the kitchen area. I couldn’t help but think how screwed Lexie was; it was clear he was smitten with her and vice versa.
“You don’t have to hang out here, Jace. Lexie and I are totally capable of protecting ourselves. You don’t need to stay if Sloan threatened you into it.”
He gave me a sideways glance but kept the primary of his gaze on Lexie while she hunted through the refrigerator, looking for something edible, knowing that she shouldn’t be allowed near the stove if we wanted to make it through the night without catching a case of food poisoning.
“I’m staying.” His eyes were still firmly planted on Lexie, watching her move around the kitchen.
I knew he wasn’t staying for me; he was just using all this as an excuse to spend time with Lexie.
“Well, I see nothing.” Lex threw her hands up in frustration. “Guess that means we just have to order something.”
“Does anything in town deliver?” I questioned.
“Yeah, Montgomery’s.” He winked at me, and I smacked his arm.
“Good thing Sloan is covering Yuliana’s tonight, huh?” Lex shouted from behind him.
“You’re in luck hotshot; I’m in the mood for a greasy bar burger. I can go pick it up once it’s ready instead of waiting for them to deliver it,” I offered, deciding I definitely wanted some space between Jace and Lexie and the looks they were giving each other.
“I’ll call it in. What do you want, babe?”
My head swiveled at the term he called my friend, and I saw the hesitation from her.
“Uh…the same is fine,” she croaked out.
He promptly walked out, either not realizing what he called her or not caring.
“What’s going on with you two, Lex? I know you said nothing, but this sexually charged air in here is not nothing. It’s stifling; I feel like I should open a window.” I dramatically fanned myself, hoping that would ease some of the anxiety that was showing on her face.
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “I keep trying to keep it friendly, but there’s just something about him… It’s like I can’t help but turn into a pile of actual goo, and I lose all sense of right and wrong around him.” Her emotions were clear on her face, and she was struggling with this.
“And going to work for him is the right thing?”
With everything going on, I had forgotten that she had taken a job with him.
“I’m supposed to start in a week,” she whispered, her face paling with the reminder.
It was so unlike my best friend to seem unsure of herself, and I couldn’t help but wrap her up into a hug.
Damnit, this town was turning me into a hugger now.
“You know you’re a millionaire, right? You could always turn the job down.” I squeezed her shoulders, and I backed up to take in her features, but she looked completely lost in her own thoughts.
“Lex?” I tried to use a soothing tone to bring her back to the conversation.
“Not working for him scares me more than working for him does,” she said, barely above a whisper. I could feel her distress but before I could question her more about what she said, Jace had returned.
“Food has been ordered! It’ll be ready in thirty minutes or so. But I don’t think you should go get it alone, Magnolia; I should go with you. Or I should just be the one to go.” He frowned while looking down at his phone like Sloan was about to call him and chew his ass out for even thinking of letting me go pick up the food alone.
“You mean in my car? Then into a completely populated restaurant, and then back here? It’ll be fifteen, twenty minutes tops.”
The worried look on his face still didn’t lessen, so I took a cheap shot and played on some of his clear emotions as well. “Plus, you don’t want Lexie here all alone, do you? At least I have a shotgun in my truck…”
He glared at me, knowing exactly what I was doing. “Fine, twenty minutes though, Magnolia, or I’m calling Sloan, and you’ll have to deal with him.”
“Ooh, I’m shaking in my boots,” I retorted with an eye roll, and I heard Lexie snicker, but Jace’s usually carefree demeanor changed as he looked me in the eye with a very serious and very unlike Jace expression.
“Sometimes I forget you weren’t here…” The minute the words were out of his mouth, he looked like he regretted them.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s nothing, never mind.”
“No, explain.” I all but demanded, and I heard Lexie chime in from behind me.
“Yeah, Jace, explain to my friend what you mean.” I heard the humor in her voice, and for that, I was thankful—it was much better than the despair and anxiety that was pouring off her minutes ago. I made a mental note and put it at the top of my to-do list to have a serious conversation with her once we were finally alone.
“I’d really rather not.”
The look on his face was almost comical as he looked between the two of us. Both of us must have held matching stern, no nonsense looks on our faces because he finally sighed, signaling that he was caving.
“Fine, but I’ll need a beer.” He huffed and made the quick distance to the fridge to pull one out, then turned to us again. “Sit.”
Deciding not to push my luck, I sat down and looked over at Lexie. I had a sneaky feeling that she already knew what Jace was about to share with me, but she claimed a seat on one of the barstools next to me while Jace stood, facing us from across the island.
“I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this; I still don’t think I should.” Now his gaze pointed directly at Lex, and I knew she was already well aware of what he was about to say. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated that I’d clearly been left out of the loop.
“Continue,” I bit out and he sighed in resignation.
“Look, it was a weird time when you left without telling anyone, Magnolia, and now that all the information has come to light about you and Sloan and what you overheard, I understand now, and so does Sloan… But he didn’t before… It was a rough time.”
He ran his hands through his hair, clearly uncomfortable telling me this, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. I just wanted to have all the answers.
“Sloan…well, he went off the deep end for a while. When no one could find you, he went door to door looking for you. I think he must have called your cell phone once every thirty seconds for days. One time, his phone died because he had forgotten to charge it, and instead of waiting for it to charge, he just went and bought a new one.”
I felt my heartbeat increase at what Jace was telling me, and a small blanket of shame coated over me again for how I had left.
“Once he found out that you were fine and left of your own accord, he…well, he disintegrated.”
“Disintegrated?”
“I don’t know a better word to use, but yeah, disintegrated. It was like he fell apart before anyone could stop it. He stopped laughing, stopped caring, and was just going through the motions of everyday life with zero emotion. Cassie latched on to that with full force, shoving all this fake love toward him in hopes that he would one day decide she was the one for him.”
“But he chose her; he chose her, knowing how she treated me, Jace…for a year. While I’m an adult now and I understand why and his reasoning, it still doesn’t change what he did.”
“Yeah, I know, and believe me, he knows . Especially now that you laid it out for him on why you left, but Magnolia, he was a barely eighteen-year-old kid who didn’t know how to handle what was going on. I’m not excusing him because his actions were deplorable, but when I tell you he fell apart when you left, that’s the truth. Cassie brought out the worst in him, and he was broken from your departure. He had no fight left in him. He drank away your memory every day, and slept with your ghost every night.”
“Tell her what you told me,” Lexie encouraged, and he shot her a rather scathing look, which was almost a shock due to the looks he was normally tossing her way.
“Toward the end of him and Cassie, we went out one night, and I asked him what he was thinking about being with someone like that…”
I couldn’t bring myself to ask what he said, but of course, Lexie had no qualms about it. “And he said?” she asked, and he rolled his head back in resignation.
“He told me that once you lose the love of your life, nothing else matters; you do what you have to do to get through the day and what you need to do to get out of bed the next morning.”
I think my jaw hit the floor. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not, but I’d never seen someone so broken as him.”
“But Cassie…” I was still finding it hard to let that go, even with all the information I had got.
“Cassie saw an opportunity to get what she wanted, and when you left, she saw an even bigger opportunity and took it with no remorse. She never cared how she got Sloan, just that she had him.” Jace shrugged.
“That doesn’t explain the before, though.”
“He was seventeen, Magnolia. He was just a kid. Do you remember all the bad decisions we used to make? But we aren’t kids anymore, you either buck up, forgive him, and work this out and move on together, or you move on without him. It’s that simple.”
I couldn’t ignore the way my heart stopped and what felt like physical pain shot through it at the mention of moving on without him. I was ready for my drive; I needed the silence to think about everything Jace had let come to light.