RECKLESS - Part 4 (The RECKLESS Series) (7 page)

I awoke in the middle of the night, a cold sweat covering every inch of my body. A nightmare, that’s all it had been. Jace hadn’t left me, hadn’t found someone else, hadn’t stopped loving me, or been in a car accident. It was nothing more than the fears and worries working overtime, bleeding into my sleep. Yet, I couldn’t shake that feeling, that sense of dread, like there was something wrong and I needed to see him right that very second, or, at the very least, hear his voice.

I glanced at the clock on my bedside table. Almost six in the morning. A call was definitely more feasible at that hour, especially if he was still asleep and I paid for a cab ride for no good reason. I tried to call him, but again, his phone went to voice mail. I called one more time, just for good measure. Still no answer so I put my phone on the charger and tried to go back to sleep.

Only I couldn’t.

So instead, I got up, powered up my computer and pulled up the campus website. I searched the forums for missed assignments. I tried to concentrate on doing some of the work I’d missed while gone in Seattle. When that didn’t pan out so well, when my brain refused to focus, I started looking for potential internships back home. An hour passed and I tried to call Jace again.

Still no answer.

I got dressed, brushed my teeth, and then started a load of laundry. Another hour down so I tried calling again. This time, there was an answer... only, I had to have the wrong number. Because the person on the other end of the line was a woman. I hung up quickly and then pulled up my call log to see who I might have called by accident, but there it was, staring me right in the face. His name. I’d called him.

Everything in me stopped. My heart. My lungs. Everything but that brain of mine.

He’d moved on? In three days? Or had I been the back-up? Had I been the other woman, the one he’d had on the side? Could I have missed something like that? Something so damn obvious?

My phone rang and vibrated in my hands. I couldn’t answer it. Couldn’t face the voice on the other end of the line or the possible accusations that might be getting thrown at me. What if I really was the back-up? That would mean having some crazy girlfriend or fiancé, or wife, ready to claw my eyes out. I would if I were in her shoes. Fuck, I was in her shoes.

Still numb, still not breathing, I silenced the ringing and then shut my phone off and crawled back into bed. As the depression, exhaustion, and tears pulled me under, back into a fitful bit of sleep, I told myself that it must have been a mistake, that there had to be some sort of an explanation for it all, that I’d see him in the morning and we’d sort it all out.

This couldn’t be it.

This couldn’t be the end.

By the time I woke up around noon, I’d found my pissed off. Screw wallowing around like some pansy chick that needed a man to feel like she meant something in this world. I might have thought I loved Jace, but, in all reality, we hadn’t had more than a couple of weeks together. I wasn’t about to let my life fall apart over him. Sean might have had some sort of rights to screwing up my life. Jace? He hadn’t earned that right.

I was going to get up, shower, make myself look hot, head over to his place, and remind him of what he’d given up, or maybe was about to. If it turned out that it had all been a misunderstanding, if it turned out that his phone had been stolen, or that he’d left at someone else’s house, or some other crazy mishap... there was still the matter of why he hadn’t shown up for my homecoming.

In other words, I needed answers and I was going to look hot getting them, if for no other reason than to make him squirm. I was a firecracker, not this pansy-ass lovesick puppy I’d been acting like since I’d started seeing him.

It was damn time I started acting like it.

I went for the outfit he’d given me, the high-low dress without the leather jacket. I styled my hair into loose waves, put on my knee-high boots, applied just enough make-up to look like I actually gave a shit about myself and then plowed my way out the door.

Only, as I climbed into the back of the cab, as we drove down his street, I started to second guess myself. Maybe this wasn’t the way to go about things. I had classes in an hour. I had a life to get back to. What was I going to do if it turned out that he really had moved on? I didn’t have time to be a wreck, not after falling apart after Sean, not after spending more than a week back home dealing with all the family stuff. I needed to focus on the last two months of college before I ended up having to repeat an entire semester.

If Jace had moved on, if he’d made me the other woman, I couldn’t deal with that. I figured it was better just not knowing, avoiding the problem. Whatever his excuses, whatever his reasons, the truth was staring at me in the face; it was over. So, just before the cabbie stopped at his house, I had him turn around, had him drive me back to campus.

“Change your mind, missy?” the man asked, flipping a U-turn at the end of the street.

It didn’t sound like there was any judgment in his voice, but I still couldn’t help the guilt flooding through me. Apparently, I was even more of a lovesick puppy than I’d thought because I just wasn’t brave enough to try and face the truth.

That would be the theme of the day.

I avoided the coffee shop. Turned off my cell phone. When someone started knocking at my door—probably him--I ignored it completely and pretended like I wasn’t home. And when Becca finally showed up, I declined her offer of heading out to see the band. Jace hadn’t shown up to see me. What made him think I was going to show up to see him?

“Okay, Andy. Last chance,” Becca said, standing in the doorway, ready to leave. “You know that man is going to show up here and drag you out of that bed.”

“No, Becca, he’s not,” I said, turning away from my studies to glare at her. “And I don’t want him knowing I’m here.”

Her brows creased in concern and confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“A woman answered his phone last night, Becca. A woman.”

Her head shot back in shock and disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“Am I sure it was a woman? Of course I’m fucking sure! I’m not an idiot, Becca. I can tell the difference between a man’s voice and a woman’s voice. Besides, he hasn’t shown up to see me, so why the hell should I go?”

“But, Andy, there has to be a good reason. He wouldn’t just not show up for no reason.” Becca started playing with her lip ring. I could tell that something was off, that she didn’t know any more about Jace’s strange behavior than I did.

“Do
you
know what that good reason might be?” I asked, calling her out.

Becca’s eyes fell to the floor as she released a heavy sigh. “No,” she admitted. “Honestly, I’ve been a little confused myself. Before you left, while you were gone, he was all about spending every minute with you. You’ve been back for more than twenty-four hours and he hasn’t even bothered to show up. He called me and I told him to come see you, but I didn’t ask why he hadn’t already. I figured you two had talked about it. When you didn’t answer the door, he called me to ask why. I hadn’t seen you other than last night, so I didn’t have an answer.”

“Well, now you do,” I said, going back to the studies that I had been trying to catch up on before all the arguing had started. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell him anything. Let him worry. Let him figure it out for himself. He—he promised me more than Sean had to offer. And I thought that he had it. I thought—“ My voice cracked. I shook my head to dispel the depressing train of thought. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. It’s over and I’m done. I have a life and I’m ready to fucking live it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly shutting the door behind her and leaving me in peace.

But what I had wasn’t peace at all.

It was anger, overwhelming sadness and pain, and a broken heart. But life had to go on. There had to be life after the sexy rocker god, even if it felt empty without him in it, even if my heart told me that nothing would ever feel the same.

For two days, I’d managed to avoid Jace completely. I hadn’t answered any of his calls. I’d pretended I wasn’t there every time he showed up at the dorms. I skirted to and from classes like a stealth ninja. And I hadn’t had anything but stale cafeteria coffee because I refused to go to the coffee shop.

But day three was when it all came crashing down around me.

I was on my way back to the dorms, trying to make it there as quickly as possible. But, as I crossed the commons to try and make my way to the dorms, I spotted him in the courtyard, just outside the coffee shop, in all his tattooed, ratty jeans, sexy haired glory. And he was laughing. With his arm around the waist of a woman. A little girl, no more than maybe four-years-old, hanging on his leg.

I must have choked on my own heart because I was pretty sure I’d died right then and there. But I couldn’t die. I had to get out of sight. I needed to know who this girl was. I had to know how I could have been fooled for so long, how he could fuck me behind speakers and run away to Seattle with me for a week, tell me he loved me in the shower when he had this beautiful, dark-haired beauty and a
child.

So, instead of falling to the ground and letting the ambulance take me away after declaring me dead on arrival, I took my dead body and forced it to slink across the courtyard. I forced myself to edge up to the side of the coffee shop, just out of sight, but close enough to hear. As painful as it was, I strained to listen to their conversation, forced my ears to hone in on his heart-fluttering laughter that was now making me sick to my stomach. Made myself listen to her perfect fairy laugh of the woman on his arm and the laughter of the child tugging at him, begging for another ride.

“Maybe in a little while,” he told the girl, leaning down to ruffle her hair. “I need to talk to mommy for a minute. Why don’t you go hide and I’ll come find you in a bit. Just don’t go too far.”

“Can I hide over there?” the dark-haired child asked, pointing over in my direction.

My heart reminded me that I was, in fact, still breathing because it skipped a few beats as I shoved myself against the wall. Had he seen me? Did he know I was there?

“No, that’s a little too far,” he said. “How about over there, by the trees.”

I waited a few minutes to see if he would come around the building. I needed to be sure he hadn’t seen me before I started eavesdropping again. When he didn’t, I went back to peering around the building.

The little girl wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding; I could see her over by the tree, her legs poking out from around the trunk. But she wasn’t the object of my attention; I was more concerned with the woman Jace was talking to. Tall, slender, perfectly shiny dark hair, clothes that screamed money.

I needed a picture. Becca would never believe me if I just told her. This was... not even I would have seen this coming, him flaunting his indiscretions, right out in the open like that. I slid back into hiding to unearth my cell phone from my purse and then opened up the camera application. When I popped back out, phone poised and ready, I saw exactly what I already knew... I had been the standby, the other woman.

His lips were on her cheek. Those lips that had kissed me with such passion, such fire, so much emotion. Those lips that had professed love for me were telling this woman, a woman that I’d never met and had known nothing about, the exact same thing.

“I’ll see you back at the apartment,” he told her, his smile unmistakably made just for her. “I love you.”

I never took the picture. I just fell against the wall, slid down it onto the concrete beneath my feet. Sobbed quietly to myself, arms wrapped around my legs, head resting on my knees, as I waited for them to leave.

I never wanted to see Jace Richardson again.

Not only had I been lied to, not only had he broken my heart, he’d made me the other woman. He was just like his dad, only I was the vixen that he’d abandoned his family for, that he’d gotten his kicks from, only to be tossed aside. And she—she was oblivious. She had to be. Because a woman that looked like that wouldn’t have ever put up with that kind of behavior.

Part of me wanted to chase after them, tell her the truth, expose Jace for the lying, cheating bastard that he was. But I just didn’t have the energy in me. I couldn’t force my broken heart to care enough about her. She was the one he was with, and she’d find out eventually.

I hoped.

Because no one deserved this. Not me, and not any other woman that he might run to down the road. Women that were nothing more than mere playthings. Women that were disposable. Women that he could woo and sweep off their feet, only to leave them reduced to nothing more than an empty, sobbing mess. He really was the misogynistic bastard that I’d thought he was in the beginning. I’d been right all along, right from the beginning.

If only I’d listened to my instincts. If only I’d told him no when he asked for six weeks of my life.

If only...

I could have built my life around if only.

But that’s the thing about hindsight, isn’t it? It’s always crystal clear.

End of Part 4

To Be Continued in Part 5…

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