Broken and Screwed 2 (The BS Series) (8 page)

Luke’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Is there going to be food?”

Jesse’s grin turned into a smirk. “Lots of it. You guys should come, the whole band. Brielle too.”

A smile had been growing on Luke’s face, but it froze at the last words. “Why Brielle?”

Giving me a tired smile, Jesse seemed oblivious to the sharpness from his friend now. “She’s part of the band, isn’t she?”

“Since when do you care about who’s in the band or not?”

Jesse turned, frowning now. “What?”

“Nothing,” Luke bit out, taking a deep breath and loosening the tight grip he had on the table. “Nothing, man. Sorry. Yeah, maybe we’ll check out your picnic.”

Jesse started to chuckle.

“But only if you come to the feast that night.” Luke glanced at me. “And bring
your
girl.” From how he stressed that word, he was either fishing for information or he wanted to remind Jesse that he was taken. My eyes slid over his shoulders to Brielle. She was behind the counter again, trying to pour drinks for the band but the drummer kept poking her in the shoulder. She would swat at him, but he’d dance back two steps and when she went back to pouring, he’d poke her again. After a few more pokes, she set down the pitcher of beer and whipped around. Her fist was cocked and she punched him in the shoulder. Howling, he fell back, but he still couldn’t contain a wide smile. She rolled her eyes. When he poked her again, she went back to swatting at him. The rest of the guys ignored the commotion. But then Brielle glanced at us and her features tightened for a moment. Her eyes narrowed, but then she forced a friendly grin at me.

I lifted my hand in a friendly wave.

Luke caught the motion and twisted round to see who I was waving at. When he did, his shoulders stiffened and his hands clenched around the table in a death grip.

Jesse frowned as he saw the same reaction and gave me a questioning look. Luke was still turned away so I jerked my head in Brielle’s direction. Understanding flooded him and he jerked his shoulder towards the door. I knew what he meant so I started to stand as he spoke up, “Luke, I think we’re going to head out.”

The lead singer turned back and stood with us. His grey eyes had darkened, but the easygoing smile on his face never gave anything away. He patted Jesse on the shoulder. “It was nice seeing you. I’ll let you know about the picnic, though knowing how Braden works, we might just show up.”

Jesse shrugged. “Good entertainment for me if you do. My buddy’s girlfriend is something else. She wants everything to go how she wants, but if your band showed up, she couldn’t kick you out. Damn funny to watch.”

“And we’ll see you for the feast.” He nodded to me. “Your girl too.”

Jesse nudged me out the door with a hand in the small of my back. “See you then.” When the door closed behind us, I told him, “I don’t think they would mind if I didn’t go. I think he was only pushing that ‘your girl’ part so you’d stay away from
his
girl.”

Jesse frowned, but flashed me a grin as we got into his car. “Nah, he was trolling for information. He probably wanted to hit on you.”

I didn’t think he was right, but I let it go.

When he
pulled the Ferrari back on the highway, he rolled the window down and asked, “Did I fall asleep in there?”

“Only for a little bit.” Screw it. I just asked, “So what’s their story? Do you go out there a lot?”

His eyes remained on the road as he mused, “Not sure about their story. I’ve gone a few other times. It’s interesting.”

“Why do you go out there?”

“To relax.” The corner of his mouth curved up. “They don’t give a shit who I am. Luke likes me because I had his back that night before I knew who he was. When he found out that I didn’t care who he was, he told me about The Shack and invited me out whenever I wanted. He sent me a text tonight saying they had a few more practices before they go on tour.”

“Yeah, they’re huge.” Did other people know he knew them? Or was I special?

Jesse answered both my questions without knowing it. “I shouldn’t have invited them to the picnic. Everyone would flip if they knew I knew them. I knew you wouldn’t care, but the other girls and Jamie?” He shook his head. “I’m going to have to text him that the picnic was canceled. I don’t want Jamie latching onto those guys, he’ll think he’s King Tut being on the basketball team and knowing those guys.”

So I wasn’t special. I was…easygoing? That didn’t feel any better. I couldn’t contain the annoyance anymore so I tried to divert it. “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been all week?”

“What?”

I bit out, “You fingered me in my room Sunday night and I don’t hear from you for four days. Then you take me to some hole-in-a-shack and fall asleep. What’s going on with you?”

He’d been exhausted before. He was furious now. The air sizzled from tension as he shot back, “Are you kidding me? We don’t have the type of relationship where we hold hands and have deep conversations on the phone. Now you want that? You told Cord you didn’t care that I hadn’t called you. Are you going back on that too?”

I felt slapped in the face, but I growled back, “I didn’t think I cared. I just need to know the rules here.”

“I didn’t think we had rules.”

“We did. We fucked when we wanted to forget everything else, but that’s not what tonight was.”

He swerved his car to the side of the road and slammed on its brakes. He was out the car and rounding to my side before I could even start to open my door. He wrenched it open and hauled me out with a tight grip on my arm.

I was seething.

He was livid as he rasped out, “What is your problem? I’ve been keeping it cool with you, especially when you’re the one who walked out on me. Remember that? I don’t hear shit from you for almost a year. Ethan’s anniversary—nothing. Then I hear from Cord that you’re at the house and you’re going to school at Grant West. Fuck me in the ass and finger me sideways, huh? Is that what you intend to do for the next three years? I can’t take this crap.”

“You didn’t call me back! I was told that you knew something about Ethan’s accident, then I called and left how many messages and you never called me back!” I shouted back.

His eyes bulged out. “I lost my phone! I would’ve come to you if I had known, but I didn’t. You left me, Alex. It wasn’t the other way around. I didn’t leave you.”

“But you would’ve!”

I gasped as I heard what I said. I hadn’t meant to let it slip. Clamping a hand over my mouth, I twisted away and stumbled to the back of the car. My heart raced and I felt the world pressing against me. I couldn’t believe I had said that. But then I waited…

There was silence.

One.

Long.

Moment.

Of silence.

My eyes were pressed tight and I bent down. Touching my forehead to the cool metal of the Ferrari, I wanted to take it back. I couldn’t. The words were out. He could see into me now. I had exposed myself with those three words.

Then he asked, quiet and strained, “What did you say?”

I shook my head.
Nothing. I said nothing. Please let it go.

The gravel ground under his feet and I knew he was coming. I tensed, unsure what he was going to do or say. When his hand touched the back of my elbow, I pulled away and rounded to his side of the car. Running away was stupid. I’d need to deal with this, but I couldn’t look at him. There’d only be rejection in his eyes. I couldn’t see that, rejection and pity. My heart withered up. It would completely shatter me if I saw it, but I already knew that he pitied me. He had to.

I was pathetic.

“Look at me, Alex.”

My shoulders stiffened. I couldn’t do it. Nothing would be the same after that.

He stepped closer. I heard the gravel once more, but I kept myself firm. I couldn’t keep running. I was going to see what I was going to see. If he rejected me, if he pitied me, I’d deal with it. I had to. Going in circles around the car was only putting it off.

Slowly, so slowly, as my heart pounded, I forced my neck to turn. Then I saw him, but there was nothing.

He was bristling in anger. His hands were in fists pressed to his legs and his jaw was clenched tight while his eyes were glistening with repressed emotion. He wrung out, “You must have an extremely low opinion of me if you think that.”

This wasn’t right.

I shut up. What the hell?

My heart was pounding like crazy, but what he said didn’t make sense. “What do you mean by that?”

He threw his head back and barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“You think I’m going to leave you. You’ve always thought that. What’d your friend say, that I’m not going to treat you right? Oh, wait. That’s right.” His eyes hardened and he clipped out, his tone ice cold, “That I’m not going to be patient with you, that I wouldn’t go the extra mile. The best one was that I’m not boyfriend material.” He frowned as his jaw clenched. “No, I have a better one. That I wasn’t a good guy, your friend, Angie, said I wasn’t a good guy. I might not say nice things and I might not do nice things all the time, but I don’t think that makes me a bad guy.”

Oh. Goodness. My heart began thumping against my chest. I knew he had heard, but I hadn’t thought about it. He was right. Angie had said all those things about him and I hadn’t defended him.

I hung my head. “I’m sorry, Jesse.”

“No, no. Don’t do that. Don’t apologize to someone like me, who’ll treat you like dirt. It’s a shame I’m not like Eric Nathans, right? He’s the good guy. He’s going to treat you right.” He took a step closer. His eyes were gleaming at me. “He’s boyfriend material. He’s going to be patient with you. He’s not going to do the shit things I did to you. Right?”

He bit out that last word and I flinched from the intensity behind them.

My throat started to burn as I remembered that day. I couldn’t bring myself to defend what I had done or defend what Angie had been saying. She’d been wrong. I’d been wrong.

The burning turned into liquid pain. It flowed everywhere in me.

Jesse wasn’t done. He ground out, “What the hell did I ever do to you?”

My head snapped up then. Baring my teeth at him, I couldn’t hold back the anger anymore. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.” He never flinched.

“You ignored me.”

He flinched now. “I didn’t—”

“You did!” I took two long steps and shoved at him. The small ball of control in me snapped. I kept shoving at him. “Ethan died and a week later you took my virginity. You never called me after that. You never called at all. You fucked me and you walked past me at school. You didn’t even look at me, you asshole. You just walked away.”

The pain was agonizing. I wanted to bend over, maybe that would ease it. I pushed past it, so much damn hurt blazing inside of me. I reared back to shove him again, but he caught my hands. Trapping them against his chest, he turned so I was pushed against the car. Then he crowded me in, his thighs on either side of me and his chest was pressed against me. I tried to shove him back, but the fight was leaving me.

An image of that day was on repeat, playing over and over again in my head.

We were in the hallway. Angie had been talking to me and I looked up. He was there with two of his buddies. I opened my mouth to call out to him, but he went past. I was air for him to walk through, a ghost that he couldn’t see. He made me feel like that for the rest of the year until Ethan’s birthday.

The fight suddenly left me. I was weaker because of it.

He came to me the second time. His touch made me alive. I’d been starving for it. I continued to hunger for him until the next summer, until the anniversary of Ethan’s death. Jesse found me again. Then again in August. He came to me. And again. And again. He kept coming for me, but I hadn’t been the only girl. He told me there’d been others and I had heard about the ones in high school. He told me about the ones during his freshman year at Grant West.

I couldn’t handle that, not again.

“Hey.” He captured the side of my head and lifted up. “I’m sorry. I was a mess that first year.”

“So was I,” I said.

“I know.” His chest lifted up and down. “Shit, I know. I’m sorry.” Pressing a soft kiss to my forehead, he moved to my eye and pressed another one. The other eye got a kiss, then my nose, then both sides of my cheeks. He lingered above my mouth, whispering against them, “I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to stay away from you.”

My heart clenched. I couldn’t believe him. It’d hurt so damn worse if I did…

His lips moved against mine. “Your friend was right. I wouldn’t have been a good boyfriend. I was hurting. I was stupid. I was an asshole. You’re right about all of that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care. I did care. I cared too much.” His hand pressed against my hip as he ground into me. He began to breathe heavily. “I still do. Only you can reduce me to this.”

“To what?” I asked, my breath held in my throat. My heart was a continuous pounding now. I wondered if he could feel it. I could feel his. It was racing.

A dry chuckle left him. “To trapping you here. You make me crazy. You might not know it, but you do.”

Hope kindled in me. It was starting to build. I couldn’t let it so I shook my head. “Stop, Jesse. We should stop this before it gets worse.”

“Worse?” He cupped the back of my head and pulled away. His eyes held mine, searing into me. “I tried to give you space. I did. I stayed away from you after Vegas. I was tempted not to get a new phone, then I would have to leave you alone. But you came here and all I wanted was to see you every single night.”

I closed my eyes. The hope had mingled with another emotion, one I didn’t dare let myself feel. It was too dangerous. “Stop, Jesse.”

“No.”

“It can’t get worse than that. I’m not trying to be crude, but my dick’s been twitching since I heard your voice on the phone. I’ve been hard for six fucking days.”

Everything went flat for me. “That’s what this is about?”

“What?” He edged back a step. His eyes widened when he saw the anger in mine. “No. I meant—my dick has been hard, but this is more. I promise.”

I shoved him back. Damage done. “Can you take me back?”

He didn’t argue, but watched me warily. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Why lie? There was nothing to lose.

“Really?” His voice hitched on a note.

I frowned. That couldn’t have been panic. Jesse Hunt did not panic. He did not grovel. He did not feel anything except for lust. The memories of two years ago flooded back to me. Every time he looked away, every time he walked past without a hello, every time I saw him touch another girl, all flared in my memory. I cringed and clenched my teeth to keep from sobbing before I could stop the memories. They were haunting me.

“Alex?”

“Just take me home.” I’d been put through the emotional wringer. I wasn’t about to sign up for round two.

For the ride over, he kept looking at me. Every look sent my nerves on edge. My blood was already boiling, but if he kept that up, I was going to snap again. The only thing that held me back was the car. I didn’t want to die in a car accident like Ethan. A harsh laugh ripped from me at that last thought. Just like Ethan. God, Ethan.

Paralyzing pain filled me again. I hadn’t thought about Ethan in so long. He’d been buzzing around me at home. All day long, every day, every night, I felt his presence. I hadn’t felt him once since coming to Grant West.

I missed him.

Closing my eyes, I bit down on my lip and tried to keep from crying. I hadn’t let loose tears over him since coming here. I knew that if I did now, I wouldn’t be able to stop. Too much else was going on. I was barely holding it all in.

The ride took too long and not long enough. When Jesse got to my dorm, he had to go to the front door. The backdoor was locked from midnight to six in the morning.

He parked and started, “I know that I haven’t—”

I clambered out of the car and shut the door before he could say anything more.

Hurrying into my dorm, I ignored the startled front desk clerk and shot up the stairs.