Chapter Ten
Lola
Idon’t expect to see Sam’s car parked in front of my house.
For a second, I wonder if I’m just hallucinating.
Maybe exhaustion and emotional whiplash have finally pushed me over the edge, and my mind is creating illusions now to fuck with me.
But no, it’s real. Her blue hatchback, parked crooked against the curb, the way she always does when she couldn’t care less about being straight.
My stomach drops as I slow the car and pull into the driveway, my pulse quickening for reasons I can’t quite name.
The house looks the same as it did when I left it last night—curtains drawn tight, porch light still on.
The whole place has that abandoned quality to it, that empty feeling of a home that’s forgotten what it’s supposed to be.
Jace shifts beside me when he sees Sam’s car.
He hasn’t said anything since he got in.
Not a damn word. Just silence that hangs between us, heavy as a corpse, filling all the space until I can hardly breathe around it.
My chest is sore from it, tender and aching in a way that has nothing to do with physical pain and everything to do with the fact that he’s right here but might as well be a thousand miles away.
Sam and Aubrey are standing on the porch facing the door, in a way that shows they’ve been knocking for a while without getting an answer.
They turn at the sound of my engine, and for a suspended second, everything freezes.
They see me, then they see Jace sitting next to me in the front seat.
Sam’s expression shifts from relief to confusion to something sharper in less than a heartbeat.
I observe it happening in real time, watching her face cycle through emotions faster than I can follow.
Aubrey’s eyes narrow almost immediately, her jaw tightening as she forms opinions, none of which are good.
I turn off the engine and the silence that follows is suffocating.
Neither of them waves. Neither of them smiles.
They just stand there on the porch, staring at me through the windshield with matching looks of “what the hell is going on.” Sam crosses her arms over her chest. Aubrey shifts her weight, her gaze flicking between me and Jace with the precision of someone cataloging evidence.
My stomach knots up.
This is going to be a whole thing. I can already feel it building in the air, that particular kind of tension that shows up right before your best friends demand answers you don’t know how to give.
Answers that involve explaining why I’m with Jace Cooper and why the hell he’s sitting in the passenger seat.
I feel Jace’s body go still beside me, tension radiating off him in waves. “I can go if you want,” he says.
His voice is cautious. The first words he speaks are an offer to leave, to make things easier for me by disappearing.
I grip the steering wheel too hard, my knuckles aching from the pressure.
“No, stay here,” I mutter.
I don’t know why I say it. Maybe because a small, petty part of me wants my friends to see that I’m not completely falling apart, that someone cares enough to be here even if he can’t quite figure out how to be truly present.
Or maybe I just don’t want to be alone when I face whatever fresh disaster awaits me when the hospital finally calls to tell me about my dad.
I open the car door and step out.
The cold air hits my face, but it’s nothing compared to the heat crawling up my neck as Sam and Aubrey’s eyes lock onto me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice already defensive and prepared for impact.
Sam steps down from the porch, her face tense with worry and something else I can’t quite understand.
“We’ve been texting you,” she says, and there’s an edge to her tone that makes my stomach clench. “You didn’t answer.”
“I know. I’ve been busy.”
The words come out clipped and dismissive. I hear how they sound, and I hate it, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
Aubrey’s gaze flicks to the passenger side of my car, sharp and assessing.
“With him?” she asks flatly.
There it is. No easing into it. Just going straight for the jugular.
I turn slightly to see Jace still sitting in the car through the windshield, staring out his side window with his jaw clenched tight. He’s trying to make himself smaller, invisible, and the sight of it does something complicated to my chest. It makes me angry, protective, and exhausted all at once.
“Yeah,” I say, turning back to face them. “With him.”
I won’t elaborate. Don’t explain. Don’t apologize.
Sam and Aubrey exchange a look that speaks volumes, one of those silent conversations between friends that cuts deeper than words ever could.
Sam crosses her arms, her face tightening with a mix of concern and accusation.
“Why?”
The question lingers there, loaded and impossible.
Because when I was falling apart, he was the only one who gave a shit.
Because when I couldn’t breathe, he held me.
Because you weren’t there.
“You don’t get to interrogate me,” I say instead.
“We’re not interrogating you,” Sam shoots back, her voice rising. “We’re worried about you.”
“Oh, now you are,” I say. That comes out sharper than I mean, cutting through the morning air with all the bitterness I’ve been carrying for weeks.
Aubrey’s brows furrow, confusion and hurt flashing across her face.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” I say, my voice trembling now not from fear but from anger that’s been building brick by brick until I can’t hold it back anymore, “that when my dad had a stroke two days ago and I was sitting in a hospital room by myself, you were too wrapped up in your own bullshit to notice.”
Sam recoils slightly, her arms dropping to her sides. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out. Aubrey goes completely still, shock written across every feature.
“What?” Sam breathes.
“Your dad...” Aubrey begins, but the words die.
“Yeah,” I say, and I detect the tremor in my voice, the way it threatens to crack wide open. “My dad had a stroke. He’s in the hospital. Has been for two days. And neither of you knew because you’ve been too busy playing happy couples with your boyfriends to notice that I’ve been drowning.”
“That’s not fair,” Sam says, but her voice wavers, guilt already creeping into her eyes.
“Isn’t it?” I fire back. “When was the last time we hung out without your boyfriends? When was the last time you spoke to me at lunch? When was the last time either of you asked how I was doing and actually waited for an answer?”
Aubrey opens her mouth, then closes it. She can’t answer because we all know the truth.
They’ve been wrapped up in their happiness, and I’ve been on the outside looking in for weeks. Feeling myself fade into the background of their lives while they make plans that exclude me and forget I exist unless they need something.
And then when I pulled away, they still didn’t notice.
“We didn’t know,” Sam says weakly.
“Exactly,” I say, and the word tastes bitter. “You were unaware because you weren’t paying attention.”
I can sense Jace watching from the car, a silent witness to my life unraveling on the front lawn. Part of me wishes he’d leave to spare himself this mess, while the other part is grateful he’s stayed—that someone is here, even if he’s just watching it all go to shit.
Sam’s gaze shifts back to him, her eyes narrowing with that specific kind of suspicion.
“Lola, he’s not the guy you turn to when your life is falling apart.”
I feel something break inside me. The last thread keeping my composure intact.
“He was the only one there,” I say, louder now, my voice carrying across the yard. “When I couldn’t sit in this house anymore, when the silence was suffocating, and I needed someone, he was the one who didn’t let me fall.”
“That doesn’t mean—” Aubrey says.
“It means he showed up,” I cut her off, my hands balling into fists at my sides. “Which is more than I can say for either of you.”
Sam’s eyes widen, hurt flashing across her face.
“You don’t even like him,” she says.
“No. I didn’t like the way he said those things about you,” I correct, and my voice drops, going quiet in a way that somehow sounds louder than shouting.
Aubrey’s expression hardens, her jaw setting in that way that means she’s about to go for blood.
“Have you slept with him?”
The question hits like a slap to the face.
I stare at her, disbelief and fury warring in my chest.
“Wow,” I say.
“That’s a yes,” she says, reading my silence as confirmation.
“It’s none of your business.”
“Lola—”
“No,” I snap, taking a step forward. “You don’t get to judge me. You don’t get to show up here after ignoring me for weeks and act like you have any right to an opinion about my choices.”
“We’re trying to look out for you,” Sam says, her voice pleading now.
“By what? Slut shaming me on my own front lawn?” The words taste acidic. “By making assumptions about someone you don’t even know?”
“We know enough,” Aubrey says coldly. “His reputation. What everyone says about him.”
“And I know what he did when I needed someone,” I fire back. “Which is show the fuck up. Something you two seem to have forgotten how to do. So stop judging me.”
“We’re not judging you,” Sam insists, but her voice lacks conviction.
“You are,” I fire back. “You’ve decided he’s trash. You’ve decided he’s a walking red flag. But you weren’t there.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Aubrey demands, her voice rising. “He fucks anything that moves.”
“And?” I shoot back, refusing to flinch. “What does that have to do with how he’s been here for me?”
They don’t have an answer, because they didn’t see him sit on the edge of his bed, battling with himself over whether to let me stay. They didn’t see him freeze when I touched his back. They didn’t see him sit with me in silence because he knew that sometimes words are useless.
They only see what everyone else sees. The rumors. The reputation. The surface-level bullshit. Not the boy beneath all the shitty things that have happened to him to make him that way.
“You don’t know him,” I say, my voice quieter now but more steady and confident.
“We are aware of his reputation,” Sam says, and she sounds almost desperate, grasping for solid ground.
“Reputations are easy,” I reply. “Showing up isn’t.”
Aubrey shakes her head, frustration and fear mixing in her expression.
“He’s going to hurt you.”
The certainty in her voice makes my chest tighten, but I keep my expression steady.
“Go back to your perfect little lives,” I say, exhaustion bleeding into my tone, weighing down every word. “Go back to posting cute photos on Instagram with your boyfriends and pretending everything’s fine.”
“That’s not fair,” Sam whispers, and there are tears in her eyes now.
“Neither is sitting alone in a hospital room wondering if your dad’s going to wake up,” I say, and my voice cracks on the last word.
“Neither is feeling invisible to the people who are supposed to give a shit about me.” I pause and swallow hard.
“Jace has been there each day at the hospital with me. So you can judge him all you want. But he’s the one who has been there for me. Not you.”
Sam’s face crumples and Aubrey looks away, her jaw working.
What can they say to that? What defense do they have?
A long silence hangs over us. Heavy. Uncomfortable. The kind of silence that feels like the end of something.
Finally, Sam exhales, her shoulders dropping under the weight of it.
“We should have been there,” she says quietly. “You’re right. We fucked up.”
Aubrey’s gaze flicks to Jace one last time, lingering on the car where he sits still, pretending he can’t hear every word of this conversation.
“This isn’t going to end well,” she mutters.
“Maybe,” I say, and I’m surprised by how calm I sound, how resigned. “But it’s my mistake to make.”
Their expressions shift at that. Sam flinches. Aubrey’s face hardens even more, hurt flashing across her features before she can hide it.
Because calling him a mistake means I already know how this story ends. It means I’m walking into it with my eyes open, choosing the crash anyway. And that scares them more than anything else I could have said.
It probably should scare me, too.
But right now, standing here with my whole world falling apart around me, the only thing that matters is knowing Jace showed up when no one else did.
That he walked in with me through sterile hospital hallways and didn’t ask questions I couldn’t answer.
That he gave me space to break without trying to put me back together.
Even if it ends badly, even if Aubrey’s right and he hurts me, at least he was there.