We need to talk.
A slow smile spreads across my face. The first real smile in days.
She wants to talk. That means she's not done. That means there's still something to fight for.
I type my response carefully, measuring each word.
Anytime.
Then I set the phone down and pour myself another drink. Not to drown my sorrows this time. To celebrate.
She thinks she wants to talk. To negotiate. To set boundaries and establish rules for how this relationship will work going forward.
She has no idea.
I've spent five days in hell, and I've emerged with perfect clarity about exactly what I need. What we both need.
Jade Catalano is mine. She's always been mine. And when she walks through that door, I'm going to make sure she never forgets it again.
Whatever it takes.
CHAPTER 16- JADE
Sleep doesn't come.
I lie in my childhood bed, staring at the ceiling I memorized when I was twelve, counting the cracks in the plaster the way I used to count sheep. The quilt my grandmother made is pulled up to my chin, soft and familiar, smelling faintly of lavender and the cedar chest where my mother keeps it stored. Everything about this room should feel safe. Comforting. Like coming home.
Instead, I feel like I'm suffocating.
My mother's ultimatum echoes in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull until I want to scream. Him or me. The Crawfords or your family. As if love can be divided into neat categories, weighed on a scale, measured and compared.
I turn onto my side and stare at the window. The streetlight outside casts long shadows across the floor, and I watch them shift as cars pass, their headlights sweeping briefly across the glass. Boston sounds different than Malibu. There's no endless rhythm of waves against the shore. Just traffic and sirens and the occasional bark of a dog.
I miss the ocean. I miss waking up to the smell of salt air and the cry of seagulls. I miss the way the morning light pours through Phoenix's bedroom windows, turning everything gold.
I misshim.
The admission feels like a betrayal, lying here in my mother's house, surrounded by memories of the life I had before he existed. But it's the truth. I miss his hands on my body, his voice in my ear, the way he looks at me like I'm the only thing in the world that matters. I miss the weight of him next to me in bed, the steady rhythm of his breathing when he finally falls asleep.
I even miss the intensity. The possessiveness that should terrify me but instead makes me feel wanted in a way I've never experienced before.
What does that say about me?
The clock on the nightstand reads 3:17 AM. I've been lying here for hours, running through the same arguments over and over, trying to find an answer that doesn't exist.
My mother is all I have. She's the only family I've ever known. Her parents, my grandparents, are strangers to me. Wealthy strangers who live somewhere far away, who cut my mother off when she refused to marry after getting pregnant, who've never once tried to meet me. Mom walked away from all of it. The money, the comfort, the life she could have had. She chose to raise me alone, working double shifts, skipping meals, wearing the same clothes for years so I could have what I needed.
She gave up everything for me. And now I'm choosing a Crawford over her.
The quilt wrapped around me is one of the few things she kept from that old life. Her mother made it before I was born, before the estrangement, before everything fell apart. Sometimes I wonder if Mom looks at it and feels the same ache I do now. The weight of loving someone and losing them anyway.
She is my mother. My family. My home.
But Phoenix is something else entirely.
I close my eyes and let myself remember. The cabin. Marcus's hands around my throat, the certainty that I was going to die. And then Phoenix, appearing like an avenging angel, fire poker in hand, rage burning in his eyes. The sound of metal meeting bone. The spray of blood across the wooden floor.
He killed for me. Without hesitation, without remorse. He looked at the man who was hurting me and he ended him, and when it was over, he held me like I was made of glass and told me everything would be okay.
