Page 38 of XO

“Like a relationship?”

“Nothing less.”

“But what if you change your mind? Like you come to your senses or something?”

“Rosie, you’re the only thing I’ve ever been sure about. I just never knew how to get you. Nothing and no one will ever come between us.”

“Nothing can ever tear us apart?”

He smiles. “Nothing can ever tear us apart.”

My heart swells, and I tremble, Jacob holds me tighter. A single tear slides down my cheek, and he must see it glisten, tenderly kissing it away. We’d been fools for denying ourselves so long. We’d made a sport out of putting roadblocks up, that we ignored what we’d both wanted all this time. Each other.

“Do you believe me?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Jacob takes my hand and upturns it, gently drawing an X over my palm. “You have my word, Rosie Reign.”

I take his hand and hold it the same, drawing an O instead. “And you have mine, Jacob Lynch.”

“Rosie,” comes a booming voice from out in the hall. I startle, feeling a sense of panic. “Rosie, where are you? Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

“Is that Kevin?” Jacob asks, listening closer.

“Rosie!”

“That’s him.”

“Fucking prick,” Jacob seethes, flinging the door open so hard the handle smashes into the wall. I reach out to stop him, but he’s too quick, catapulting himself into the hall and tackling an unsuspecting Kevin to the floor.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kevin yells, unsuccessfully fighting off his friend.

Consumed with rage, Jacob doesn’t hesitate swinging a punishing blow to Kevin’s eye.

Hearing the commotion, Chelsea runs back up the stairs and looks on with horror.

“Why the fuck are you hitting Kevin, Jacob?” she screams, and then her eyes find mine. She looks between me and the boys wrestling and pieces it together, her eyes narrowing into razor-thin slits. “You fucking whore,” she spits. “I knew you were after him right from the beginning.”

“What the fuck, man,” Kevin says, his pride wounded.

Jacob grabs him by the scruff of his shirt and pulls his head off the floor, a finger pointed in warning. “That’s for laying your fucking hand on Rosie. Don’t you ever fucking go near her again, and if you so much as say her name, I’ll come back for round two. Do you fucking understand me?”

Kevin seems genuinely perplexed by his friend’s reaction. “I don’t know what she’s told you, but she’s a fucking nobody, Jacob. She’s fucking lucky I even looked her way.”

Roaring with rage, Jacob takes another swing, this time splitting Kevin’s lip.

“You’re a dog, man,” he moans through the pain. “You’re a fucking dog choosing her over me.”

“I’ve never chosen you over her, and it’s not about to start now. We’re done. We’re fucking done.”

A crowd of stunned onlookers has gathered on the stairs behind Chelsea watching in horror as two friends came to blows over a ‘nobody girl.’ I feel their incredulous stares eyeing me up and down, then I hear their nasty, gossiping whispers.

“You’ve just made your life a fucking living hell,” Chelsea warns with a cruel sense of victory.

“Nobody cares what you think, Chelsea,” Jacob warns as he rights himself. “So stop pretending that people should be scared of you.”

“Why are you doing this, Jacob?” Her eyes soften as she pleads with him. “You and I belong together. You don’t belong with someone like her.”

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