Chapter 57 Jace
JACE
Present Day
Forty-five minutes on this fucking bike, and I’m still just as angry as I was when I dropped Kieren off at Sigma.
He’s out of his mind and in over his head.
He knows it too, but Kieren Hunt will never admit defeat.
I’m not sure he’s even still human underneath his shell of narcissism.
It would do him good to lay off the pain pills and drugs.
I know he has chronic jaw issues from when he wrapped his car around a tree in high school, but he’s well past the point of using prescription medication for its intended purpose.
Monroe destroyed him when she left, but in fairness, they destroyed each other.
Kieren has always been controlling, but the extent of cruelty he put Monroe through was hard to bear witness.
The black eye he got from Knox this past summer was more than deserved.
I still can’t believe Kieren had the balls to publicly brag about his inhumane treatment of her.
He’ll never conceded his true feelings, and certainly not now.
He’s too far gone at this point. Maybe at first he acted out of desperation because his inheritance was on the line, but now he wears his psychopathy with pride.
The Hunts are a fucked-up bunch of people, more so than my family, and I thought no one could top the cold brutality of my father.
I suspected one day Monroe would come back, but never did I see her returning as a bloodthirsty vigilante. How the fuck do you even pull off something of that severity?
Kieren, like a fucking dog with a bone, is convinced it’s Monroe because he wants it to be her.
But, I’m not completely convinced. I saw the fear and horror in her eyes when she was locked up.
He’s going to do something stupid, I can feel it, in the name of luring her to Sigma, where he’ll have the home turf advantage.
My bike idles to a stop at the red light on College Avenue. I hadn’t intended to come this way, but now that I’m here, the need for peace of mind overrides all other thoughts. Hopefully, she locked her window like I fucking told her to, which means I’ll have to use the front door.
The downstairs door of her apartment building is ajar. Not surprising. Apartments in College Town aren’t exactly known for their world-class security, even if hers is on the nicer side. A mix of my own musk and sweat fills the narrow space of the stairwell as I trudge up to the second floor.
I bang loudly on the door and wait. She might not be home, but it’s Friday and typically seniors have this day free. When no one answers, I bang again, my frustration growing with each collision of my fist against the heavy red door.
“Open up,” I shout, and finally, someone on the other side turns the deadbolt lock.
“Can I help y… What are you doing here?” Gabi’s roommate asks, glaring at me from inside their apartment.
“Where is she?” I demand, but I don’t bother waiting for an answer. I push past the woman blocking the doorway, practically body-checking her on my way through.
“Where are you going? You can’t go back there! She’s not here!” the woman calls after me as I stalk down the hallway. I’ve technically never entered this apartment from the front door, but I have a guess as to which room is Gabi’s based on the fact that I know her room borders the alley.
Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit the amount of time I’ve spent standing in the grime behind this apartment.
At first, I didn’t know which room was hers, but when I happened to be walking through the alley at the start of my junior year, I saw her changing through the window.
That’s how I knew which window was hers when I paid her a visit a few days ago.
I can’t recall why I was in the alley in the first place, but for a period of time, voyeurism became my favorite late-night hobby.
There’s nothing like leaning against a filthy brick wall with a bottle of cheap whiskey in your hand, waiting to see if your ex-girlfriend has another man in her room to satiate your relentless spiral of depression.
Thank God that time of my life is behind me.
Say what you will about Kieren, but when he came back, he gave me purpose.
Obligation to Kieren pulled me out of the well, even if he was the reason I fell in the first place.
Maybe, though, things would have always ended as they did.
Now that I’ve seen Gabi’s true colors, video or no video, our breakup might have been inevitable.
I can practically feel the burn of whiskey in my throat as I stop in front of the bedroom door I assume belongs to her.
“She’s not here!” her roommate wails, who unknowingly just confirmed I’m standing outside the right room. “You need to leave, Jace. You’re not welcome in this apartment.”
The look I give this woman when she tells me I’m not welcome could burn down a house. To her credit, she holds her ground. I contemplate knocking but quite frankly, I’m sick and tired of fucking waiting.
“Jace!” her roommate screams when I kick down Gabi’s bedroom door.
The door bounces off the adjoining wall with a crash.
I march inside to find the room eerily empty.
I know I was just here, but it feels different – like I didn’t notice any of the personal details before that make this room uniquely hers.
Looking down at my boots, it feels wrong to trek in dirt from the outside into such a pristine space.
I scan the small area. Feminine but not girly with a faint hint of her floral perfume.
Seeing her room when she’s not here feels wrongly intimate.
The heathered violet comforter is neatly tucked under the matching decorative pillows at the top of the bed, a bed that I was on twenty-four hours ago, kneeling between her legs with a knife to her throat like a fucking lunatic.
I’m so… lost.
A hard lump rises in my throat, pressing painfully at my esophagus.
“Where is she?” I grumble, turning around to face the menacing stare of her roommate, the one who I believe is named Ele.
“Not here,” she says through clenched teeth as she crosses her arms in front of her chest. “Her dad is ill. She went home.”
My eyebrows raise in disbelief. “When?” I demand.
“This morning,” Ele hisses.
“You saw her leave?” I press, still unable to process the truth I’ve uncovered.
“No. She left at the crack of dawn, but I saw her packing a bag last night. What’s this about, Jace?”
“Nothing,” I say curtly as I sidestep her clearly pissed off roommate. I don’t even make it out of the apartment before I break into a run.