“No,” she confirmed. “Kenzie is my family, and one of my best friends. I’m not going to stop hanging out with her just because you don’t like her boyfriend.”
“Her boyfriend is a pompous asshole,” Silas said through clenched teeth. “All hockey players are.”
“Don’t talk about Aiden like that. In fact, don’t talk about hockey players in general. Are you forgetting that my brother-in-law is one of the most talented and decorated professional players of our generation?”
“I know exactly what kind of man your brother-in-law is,” Silas said.
“What’sthatsupposed to mean?” Jessica asked, not missing the sharpness of his tone.
“It means that your brother-in-law is a fuckboy.”
“Take that back!” she yelled, sounding like a petulant child but unable to care.
Jessica was many things, but the one she took most seriously was how loyal she was to her friends and family. Silas was skating on very,verythin ice. One more wrong word and she’d shatter it beneath them both.
“Keep your voice down!” he hissed, reaching out to clasp her biceps again.
She yanked free and crossed her arms over her chest, staring him down.
They’d played this little battle of wills game many times before and, at this point, Jessica was unsure of the tally. But she wasn’t backing down this time, and Silas knew it.
He blew out a breath through his nose, his tensed shoulders dropping away from his ears. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, though she could tell he didn’t really mean it.
Stepping closer, she leveled her finger in his face and said, “Never insult my family again.”
“I get the point, Jess. Let it go.”
“Fine,” she said, the fight leaving her. All she wanted to do was go home and crawl into the bath with a bottle of Rosé, but for the sake of moving past this, she asked, “Do you want to come over?”
“Can’t, babe,” he said as he turned them off the lawn and toward the path that wound around Munn. “Frat thing tonight.”
“Just the frat?”
“Nah,” he said casually. “We’re going out with the DG girls.”
“Of course you are,” she mumbled under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing!” she said brightly, looking up at him with a feigned smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow then? You’re still coming with me to brunch, right?”
“Sure, babe,” he said, and she never knew four letters could grate on her so much. Shehatedbeing called “babe,” but he’d so far ignored every attempt to get him to stop.
After a quick, passionless kiss, Silas loped off toward the stadium, presumably to meet his brothers before heading toward Grand River and the bars.
With a sigh, Jessica turned in the direction of the Breslin Center, where she’d loop around to Michigan Avenue and her house a few blocks down.
She chuckled softly to herself at the memory of eighteen-year-old Jessica setting foot on this campus for the first time. Traverse City wasn’t a small town by any means, but Michigan State’s student population tripled that of her hometown and then some. In her freshman year, Jessica barely liked to use the community restroom in her dorm by herself let alone walkacross campus and the city in the dark. She’d heard horror stories of girls who didn’t travel in packs, and the last thing she wanted was to become another headline.
Now, she felt more safe in East Lansing than just about anywhere else in the world. This city, these buildings and walkways, the people—it was all home to her now.
The further she walked, the more irritated with Silas she became. There were nights like tonight when she wondered why she stayed, why she continued to put herself through these arguments when it was clear what they had wasn’t working anymore. But she loved him…or, she thought she did, and it wasn’t so simple to walk away from something she’d devoted the better part of the last three years to.
Although, seeing Jack today had shaken her, and she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t considered what her college experience would’ve been like if she and Jack decided to have that conversation about the future in Mexico, if she’d given them the chance to make a go of things in the real world.
With a rough shake of her head, she tossed that thought aside. There was no sense in playing the what-if game, because she couldn’t go back and change it now. All she could do was move forward and, for the moment,forwardincluded Silas.
But damn…Jack. She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact that he was here. That he had been here this whole time.
