Her lips parted,
And she waited.
"Joey,"
I whispered.
And then
The tears
Came.
Chapter 12
Charlie
The whole world stopped and completely vanished the second he spoke the name. My eyes welled with almost a decade worth of tears, and my hands balled into a lifetime worth of angry fists.
Dressed all in black with those silent, watchful eyes, was Jase Delaney, and he was all man. There was no more roundness of childhood; just all hard, tight angles and ridges and muscles. His striking blue eyes studied me with the same intensity they held for me when we were kids, only now they seemed full of sadness and disappointment. So much disappointment. His eyebrows knitted together with thousands of questions that I would never want to answer.We weren’t seventeen anymoreI repeated in my head to save myself from wrapping my arms around him and clinging to him for the rest of my life. We weren't seventeen. I was different. He was different. And there were too many lies and secrets between us.
Yet, I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe.
For years I’d practiced in my head what I would say to the first boy I ever loved if our worlds collided again. What I came up with made me want to run away. Jump in front of a fast moving train.
I just told Jase Delaney that he didn't know me. I walked away from him without acknowledging him, without running and jumping into his arms and crying and gasping for air. I lied straight to his face and threw away any chance I ever had of him understanding.
I blinked back the tears and wiped at my cheeks, realizing for the first time how my life felt as if there were a thick layer of dust covering it since the last time I'd seen him. Its joints were rusted; its tears were dried up and stained along my surface, not having been truly alive since the last time I looked into his eyes.
Panicking, I wanted to leave. Run. Save him from all the pain that I held secret from him. Yet, I found myself following everyone up into Bren's apartment. I had worked out most of my demons in the last seven damn years of my life, and for the most part, I survived. I survived it all, right? I could get through this. He was my past. Past.
Past.
Past.
Over. Done.
Then why the hell? Why the hell did I feel like those blue eyes just yanked me out of the grave that I’d unintentionally dug myself into all those years ago? Why the hell was I freaking out about seeing him again? Why was my heart threatening to beat out of my chest at the mere thought of being in a room with him?
Goose bumps scattered across my skin and my lungs ached, realizing I’d been breathing shallow breaths of air since the last time I had seen him. That's right, I hadn't been breathing correctly since I was seventeen.
Everything I had built in the last seven years of my life completely shattered into millions of tiny pieces of dust the minute he walked through the door and his fingers touched my skin. Where his hands touched the back of my neck, I was on fire. How the hell did I ever think I could want anyone else, be with anyone else, love anyone else, was beyond me. There was never any other; there would never be any other. Everything since him was stale, make-believe, soft, nothing. And I hated Jase's father even more, for not only making my skin crawl from his touch, but also taking away the life I so badly wanted with this man.
I stormed into Bren's apartment with teary eyes. The chaos inside was nothing new to me. Bren would never change. There was a mountain of white powder piled on his dining room table, and Jett was cutting it into lines as Bren ran his nose along the wood.
I shivered in disgust. I needed to get the hell out of there.
Bren caught me as I walked toward the bedroom to use the fire escape. Grabbing me by the waist, he tugged me against his chest. "Why the fuck are you crying? You said it was over, right? That means, baby, that I can do all the blow I want." He bit into my shoulder, hard, then shoved me away. "You'll see; you're nothing without me, Sage. Nothing."
I stumbled away from him, throwing his hands off me. "Then I’d rather be nothing," I snapped.
Over my shoulder, I could see Jase right behind me, barreling through the apartment, hot on my heels. Bren grabbed a handful of my ass, hard. "This ass belongs to me, baby. I own you. I own that shop. If it wasn't for my mother, you'd be sucking dick on the corner."
I pushed off of him again and he and Jett stumbled into each other, laughing and falling over one of the dining room chairs. Panicking, I ran into the hallway. I didn't care about Bren. He could have the shop; he could have it all. He just couldn't have me anymore. But right then, I needed to get away from Jase. Lying to him was easy through texts, but having him look at me with his father's eyes–I just couldn't. In the hallway, I slammed into Violet and that guy that was with Jase. "Hey, what's going on? Are you okay?" Violet called after me.
"Yeah. Just going to climb down the fire escape."
Carter's eyebrows arched, "What? Where is JD?"
