Page 86 of False Confidence

“I don’t even want to look at you right now, let alone talk to you. What the fuck were you thinking? Oh wait, you weren’t thinking, because you had so much to drink you couldn’t fucking see straight.”

Jasmine reared back, as if Maggie had physically slapped her with her words. “I fucked up, okay? I’m sorry. But it’s really not that big of a deal. They’re not pressing charges and I’ll pay for the damages and?—”

“YOU WORK FOR A FUCKING LAWYER, JAZZ.” Maggie sucked in a breath, angry tears springing to her eyes. “At any point, did you stop and consider how this might look for Cal if people found out his assistant and his wife were arrested for getting so drunk they caused property damage?”

“Maggie, love?—”

But Maggie was on a roll, and Liam didn’t think she even heard his dad saying her name. “Or did you think about how this might look for me and my business if people found out I’d been arrested? I’m barely established. I can’t afford bad publicity right now. I have employees fucking depending on me. This is my livelihood, Jazz.”

“I said I was sorry!” Jasmine shouted at her, throwing her hands up. “What else do you want from me? It’s not like I can turn back time and drink less.”

“I want you to grow up,” Maggie said through gritted teeth, and Liam winced. “You’re thirty years old. I want you to act like it. We’re not twenty-one anymore. There are actual real life consequences to the shit you do now. It’s time to grow the fuck up.”

Shit. Liam couldn’t blame Maggie for being angry. He couldn’t even blame her for saying what she’d said, but it was, arguably, the worst possible thing to say, given everything that Jasmine was struggling with. And Liam knew, no matter how angry she was, Maggie would never have said it if she’d known. Which meant Jasmine hadn’t told Maggie she was struggling.

And he saw in Jasmine’s face the second she decided she’d made the right call in keeping shit from her best friend. Fuck.

“You know what, Maggie? Get off your fucking high horse. Just because you decided to settle down, get married, and start a business so you could do the same old shit of taking on too much responsibility and lashing out when you can’t handle it, doesn’t mean the rest of us want such a boring fucking life.”

“Jasmine.” Liam stared open-mouthed at her, but she refused to look at him. She didn’t mean it. Fuck, they all knew she didn’t mean it. She didn’t even sound angry, just tired and sad. But even though Liam knew that Maggie knew that, she still looked absolutely gutted by her best friend’s words.

She looked down, staring at her shoes. “Can you open the car, please? I want to go home.”

His dad fished his keycard out of his pocket and held it up to the car door until the lights flashed. Maggie wasted no time pulling the door open and disappearing inside. His dad rounded the car and jumped into the driver’s side. Though the windows were tinted, Liam was close enough to see him immediately reaching across the center console for her.

Jasmine loosed a long, watery breath.

“Darling…” He stepped toward her, but she held up a hand, looking up at him with tears streaking down her cheeks.

“Please don’t touch me. If you touch me, I’m going to fall apart and I can’t. I just… I can’t.”

“Okay. It’s all going to be okay. Let’s just get you home and into bed, and everything is going to be better in the morning.”

She nodded, and he reached for the back passenger’s side door handle. “Liam?” she whispered, and his hand stilled.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know why I said all of that. I didn’t mean it. Any of it.” Her voice was barely audible, cracking as more tears spilled down her face.

It took everything in him not to just pull her into his arms and wipe her tears away.

“I know, darling. And Maggie knows too. She’ll cool off and you can talk things through when you’re both feeling better.”

He opened the door and closed it gently behind her once she was settled, then rounded the car and got in the other side. Bray, who they’d had to bring along because they couldn’t trust him not to piss Peach off too much, was standing on Jasmine’s lap. He was wagging his tail, clearly happy to see her, but staring up at her with his head tilted, as if he couldn’t quite understand why her cheeks were wet. Jasmine’s hands shook as she scratched behind his ears.

His dad cleared his throat and turned back to look at him. “You’re staying at our place tonight.”

Both Maggie and Jasmine piped up in protest, but his dad interrupted them both. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve both had a lot to drink and the officers we spoke to said you fell. Liam and I have been worried shitless since you called us and we’re both going to sleep better knowing we’re all under one roof.”

Jasmine nodded, staring at her lap, and Maggie just stared out of the window, her mouth in a thin line.

It would be fine. They would talk in the morning and make up and everything would be fine. It had to be.

The amount of alcohol in her blood should have knocked her out the second her head hit the pillow, but Jazz didn’t sleep a wink. Though they didn’t talk, Liam stayed awake, clutching her hand, until his grip loosened and his breathing evened out around four.

Jazz watched him sleep, memorizing the lines on his face, each individual hair on his mustache, the errant freckles dotted around his nose. He was perfect in heart, and soul, and body, and mind, and she was a fuck up who said shitty things she didn’t mean to the one person who had been on her side forever.

How the hell had everything gotten so messed up?

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