Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Jade
When I got into Monroe’s car the next afternoon, I could feel her gaze burning into the side of my face, but I refused to meet it. I knew she’d want to know why she had to go back early. Instead, I stared at the front door of my parents’ house as she backed out.
“So…” she said.
“So, what?”
“So, are you going to tell me why you begged me to go home early and give you a ride, when you could have gone with Wolf?”
I really wasn’t in the mood to discuss the whole Wolf thing, but the arch of one red brow said I wasn’t getting away with that. “Would you want to ride with your ex-boyfriend?” I said.
“You rode up here with him.”
“That was different.” That was before he’d kissed me, for a third time, and confused the situation further. “I didn’t have any other choice. My tires were slashed.”
“What?” She stopped at a four-way and stared at me. “Who slashed your tires?”
At least the topic had shifted away from Wolf. “I don’t know. Maybe Brent…”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Since when was Monroe in Brent’s corner? She hated him.
“Then who did?”
“Could have been anyone, I guess.” She shrugged. “Cassie told me you slept in Wolf’s bed.”
Seriously. She was more concerned with Wolf than my flattened tires. “Cassie is a gossip, and it was one time. I was upset…”
“About what?” She pulled off and took a left onto the two-lane highway that cut through Dayton.
“It doesn’t matter! It’s…” I dropped my head against the seat, frustrated at everything. Him, me, Cassie, Monroe. “Living with him is just hard. And confusing.”
“Well, yeah. He’s your ex-boyfriend, who you’re still in love with, Jade.”
“I’m not?—”
“Please, you can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me.”
Silence fell between us, and I was forced to face the truth she’d just dared to voice. “Love doesn’t matter, Monroe.” It was as much of a confession as she was getting out of me. “I don’t need to confuse the situation more.”
“So, riding up with him didn’t confuse anything, but riding back would…” The click, click, click of her blinker sounded. “And Wolf disappeared from that party last night, so I can only conclude?—”
“He kissed me.”
In my periphery, I caught her slow nod. Nod but not say anything.
“What? What does that nod mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s an acknowledgement.”
“Well, when your friend tells you she kissed her ex-boyfriend, maybe they’d like more than?—”
“Are we considering the kiss good or bad?”
“Bad! He broke my heart, and he doesn’t actually want me.”
He definitely hadn’t wanted me in that hay barn.
“You’re the one who wanted the break. And if you think Wolf doesn’t want you, you haven’t paid attention, Jade. He kissed you, didn’t he? He’s just as in love with you as you are with him.”
“I hurt him.” And set into motion a chain of events that had left scars on us both. But I’d made the first cut.
“And you’ve hurt yourself plenty. Haven’t you had enough?”
This was why I’d never admitted my lingering feelings for Wolf.
Because he was the hill I had chosen to die on for the past year and a half, and she’d witnessed said dying.
In all its bloody glory. I was on the same damn campus as Wolf.
I could have swallowed my pride and appeased my obliterated heart by going to him.
But I’d been too scared of his rejection, of discovering that I really didn’t mean as much to him as he did to me.
And his dating Nora had just confirmed that.
“Look, I think it’s written somewhere in the girl code—thou shalt always call your girlfriend’s ex an asshole. I supported your choice to take a break from him. You had a lot going on with your dad’s illness, and everything just got on top of you.”
Maybe if I’d leaned on Wolf, it would have gone differently, but I’d just needed a break, that was all.
“But honestly, I don’t think you two ever should have broken up.”
Annoyed at what felt like her disloyalty, I redirected my attention through the window, watching the strip mall of pawn shops and liquor stores whizz past.
“And I didn’t think you’d actually stay broken up.”
Neither did I. Guess that was the na?vety of young love. Me thinking that Wolf and I would always come back to each other. Brent had played his part, but the fact was, Wolf hadn’t fought for me. And I hadn’t fought for him. Both too hurt to just face each other.
“Yeah, well, he moved on with Nora, so he can’t have been that in love with me.”
“You don’t think you going away with Brent for the summer had anything to do with that?”
“We were friends!”
“He loved you, Jade. Really loved you.” She pulled into the middle lane to pass a truck. “Losing you broke him. Nora was?—”
“Fucking his tears away?”
“Men are idiots. They get over heartbreak by trying to fall in love again.” She fiddled with her air vent, as though there were a way to cool down her sweatbox car. “He never looked at her like he did you. He looked at her like…well, a faceless bit of meat? Only with a side of guilt, maybe?”
I didn’t want to think about how he’d looked at Nora. Even hearing her name had hurt feelings churning in my stomach. “Is there a point to this conversation?”
“Yeah, I want to know why, when Wolf clearly still loves you, and you clearly still love him, you’re riding in this damn car with me instead of off into the sunset.”
I squirmed at that question. It was never that black and white. “I told you?—”
“I swear to God, if you say he doesn’t want you again…” She shook her head. “That must be why he rejected all the ditzy blondes Hendrix invited over for him last night and left the party to see you. Why he got you out of that auction and drove you home yesterday.”
She didn’t even know about him helping me.
“But you’re right, he clearly doesn’t give a shit.
Doesn’t want you. Definitely doesn’t love you.
” She reached for the radio like she was done with my shit.
“You two are the most frustrating people. Do yourselves a favor and open your damn eyes before you spend another year being butthurt and stupid.”
With that, she turned the music up. When she put it like that, it did all feel kind of stupid—and terrifying.
All I could think of was the way I’d felt when he’d turned me down on Tuesday night in that barn.
If I admitted I loved him, that I thought everything had been a mistake, and he rejected me…
it would be one hundred times worse than that.
But what if he didn’t? What if he felt the same?
Cassie was already at work for another double when Monroe dropped me off at the frat house. None of the guys were around while I did my stupid chores—how they’d made so much of a mess with just the three of them, in barely thirty-six hours, I could not fathom.
When I was done, I changed for work and caught the bus into town.
The red glow of the Roller Burger sign spilled over the street, like some poor attempt at the Red Light District of Amsterdam. Although, I was fairly certain the scantily clad blonde leaned against the streetlight on the corner was actually a hooker.
The parking lot was empty, the same way it always was on a Sunday night.
No one wanted to work this shift, but I always said yes.
Even if I got no tips, the crappy hourly rate was something.
Plus, all the Sunday staff felt the same, and no one cared if I did some schoolwork between the rare customers.
I clocked in, plopped down onto one of the benches under the awning, and changed into my skates.
“I hate a Sunday double.” Cassie rolled to a stop beside me and sat down. “Guess how many Jesus flyers I got today?”
The post-church crowd always came in for an early lunch.
Again, only one reason anyone came to Roller Burger, and being a pervert wasn’t very Godly.
But oh, how they liked to ram it down our throats while checking out our asses.
They “tipped” with the holy spirit and church leaflets. Cheap assholes.
Cassie pulled at least five crumpled leaflets for the same church out of her apron pocket.
“Well, at least you’ll have lots of sky daddy points.”
“Only one way I’m going when I pop my clogs.”
“Pretty sure the devil will send you back, Cass.”
“He can try.” She grinned. “I reckon he’s hot though, so…”
“My mother would say you need Jesus.” She needed something, that was for sure.
“Mine too. How was it? Going home?”
I knew she was asking about my dad without asking. “Good. Same old.” In more ways than one. Same old dad refusing to be reasonable. Same problems. Poverty, illness, Wolf. Same old making out at The Lookout like we used to when we were teenagers…
“I wish I could have come with you guys,” she said on a pout. “That party looked fun.”
“Wouldn’t know. I didn’t go.”
“Obviously.” Everyone knew I hated parties. She took her phone from her pocket and tapped the screen a few times. “Seriously, though, Hendrix is so hot. If only?—”
“Gross. Even if he were single, trust me, you wouldn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole. He’s a man whore.” I held up my hand. “Excuse me, a rehabilitated man whore.”
Behind us, the grill sizzled, the scent of frozen patties thawing wafting over my shoulder.
“Wolf was a man whore, too. Didn’t stop you, little Miss Don’t Date Bad Boys.”
He was a six-foot-three high schooler with more muscle than most fully grown men. There wasn’t a girl in Dayton who didn’t want him—yeah, myself included. Of course he was a whore. She lifted a Judgy McJudgerson brow at me. “Monroe told me all the stories about those Dayton boys.”
What happened to girl code, or what happens in Dayton stays in Dayton? Monroe was giving confusing messages in our co-management of Cassie. “And from the sound of it, Wolf was Grade-A bad.”
“Yeah, well, learn from my mistakes.” Guilt niggled at me for calling Wolf a mistake.
A look of what could only be described as pity crossed Cassie’s face. “I guess you saw Wolf was with that girl on Saturday night?”
Girl? What girl? He was with me on Saturday night. Something in my chest sank, like a foretelling of things to come.
Cassie must have seen something on my face shift. “I did tell you not to get attached to him again. To throw your words back at you, you should stay away from bad boys. And seeing as he literally blackmailed you, I’m thinking you’re drawn to extra toxic?—”
“What girl?”
She pulled her phone from her apron. “I saw it on Hendrix’s InstaPic.” Then she tapped over the screen and held it out to me.
I’d deleted social media after Wolf and I broke up. I could have just blocked him, but I didn’t even want to catch a glimpse of him in the back of someone else’s picture, the way he was now in Hendrix’s story from last night.
In the Hunt brothers’ backyard, Hendrix, Lola, Zepp, and Monroe stood in a group, smiling at the camera. But my focus quickly shifted to the background.
My heart sank at the sight of Wolf sitting on the trampoline with Nora. “That’s his ex,” I said, all too aware of the bitter tone of my voice.
He was with her on Saturday, right before he had walked to my house. I didn’t know how to feel about that. He’d chosen me over her, but the way she was looking at him—like he was the only thing she’d ever wanted. I knew that feeling well.
Just when I thought I could finally be brave and admit my feelings for him, when I had hope, doubt shoved its bony fingers in the old, barely patched cracks of my heart and pried them open.
I passed Cassie’s phone back as sirens rang out somewhere in the town. “Why would I care who he talks to?”
“Because you do.”
“I don’t?—”
“Not according to the heartbroken expression on your face right now.” She shoved her phone back into her apron pocket. “Look, he’s your ex. I get it. But have you thought that maybe he’s leading you on as some kind of payback?”
Everything in me recoiled at the prospect of Wolf even being capable of something that cruel. But I didn’t want to admit that, yes, I had considered it. “He’s not leading me on.” It was a weak defense.
“Sharing a bed with you isn’t leading you on?” She ticked off her fingers. “Driving you to school, breakfast, taking you to Dayton…”
I felt like Monroe was the angel on my shoulder, and Cassie was the devil. Or was it the other way around?
“It’s not like that.”
“I’m just saying, the guy hated you two weeks ago. Like, major lingering butthurt. He blackmailed you, Jade.” She shrugged a shoulder. “And he was hanging out with his ex last night.”
She was right. When we’d first moved into the house, I had felt the hatred pouring off him.
Who was I to say what a person was capable of when hurt?
I’d been absent from Wolf’s life for a year and a half—a stranger.
I couldn’t trust my own emotions where he was concerned, everything felt through the hazy warmth of first love.
I loved him, and probably always would, but by the looks of it, he could just as well love Nora. And she hadn’t broken his heart.