Page 27 of Wasted Memories
God, I hated seeing her sitting there like that. Her hair was still dripping while she noticeably shivered. I wanted to go back out there and give Jett a piece of my mind. I should’ve done it that night at the bar. When he put his hands on her, the only two thoughts in my head were to get him as far away from her as possible and make sure she was okay. I didn’t know her past with Jett, but I knew she didn’t deserve this. No one did.
I slipped inside the room, clicking the door shut behind me. I walked over to the bed she was sitting on and grabbed a blanket.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her glassy eyes on the blanket in my hand as she splayed her hands on the comforter on either side of her.
I tossed the blanket on her lap and paused, wishing I had some way to make this better for her.
“I can talk to him if you want me to,” I suggested.
“No. No, please don’t. It’s okay. I’ll get it sorted out. Elijah will take it out of my paycheck for now.”
“I didn’t mean the bills, Emerson.”
She fisted her hands in the blanket, looking away from me as she unraveled it to wrap it around herself.
I couldn’t tell how she felt about any of this. She looked more disappointed in herself than anything. It was almost like she was used to this kind of shit happening and would take the fall for it time and time again.
“You’re okay with that?”
She sighed. “How else am I supposed to feel? You saw how he can be. He’s not going to stop, neither will his friends. They’re trying to prove some point to Elijah.”
“What would they need to prove a point about?”
Her body tensed and she froze for a split second before continuing. “I don’t know. Jett doesn’t tell me. I don’t ask.” She was holding something back, that much was clear, but I wouldn’t press her on it.
I stood there a second longer, taking her in. Even soaked and upset, she was still gorgeous. Her walnut hair was starting to frizz around the frame of her face and her mascara was slightly smudged beneath her eyes from the rain, but that was all surface level. I was quickly learning that Emerson was more than just pretty dresses and flirty smiles.
I turned to leave, making my way to the bedroom door. Before I closed the door behind me, I looked at her one last time, her eyes catching mine. She looked so damn sad, and it hit me right in the gut.
“You don’t need to stay with someone who treats you like that, you know.”
I didn’t think she’d reply so I went to close the door, but then she whispered, “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
An hour later, after watching the end of the game, I made my way back to my truck. I sat in the driver's seat, listening to the rain pelt the windshield, when I vowed to myself that I’d help her in any way I could if she’d let me.
Chapter Twelve
Emerson
Blinkingthesleepfrommy eyes, I saw that the clock on my nightstand read half past midnight. I knew the house would be a mess and I didn’t want to have to clean it before work in the morning, so I forced myself out of bed.
My eyes were swollen from crying. The rush from confronting Jett in front of everyone got to me the most. I probably could have waited to talk to him, but I wanted all of his friends to hear that it had to stop. Everyone in that room saw how he talked to me, how he disregarded everything I said. Sometimes it felt like Jett lived in an entirely different world, following his own rules and not giving a damn what anyone else had to say about it.
In the beginning, I was attracted to that side of him. It felt like I was living in a fairytale when we first started dating. He swooped in and rescued me from the big, bad wolf, a.k.a. my mother. Because of that, it just felt right to continue being with him, even if a small part of me questioned it sometimes. Everyone goes through their bad boy stages, I guess I just never grew out of mine. I often wondered what it would be like if I hadn’t moved into his home. Would I still be with him after all the hard times? The arguments? The disagreements? Or was the house we shared the reason I didn’t leave?
Despite all of that, he still chose to be with me. I knew why I questioned our relationship sometimes; I just didn’t want to admit the reasons. Over time, as we grew out of our honeymoon stage, I started really getting to know who Jett was. We had our first fight and made up quickly afterward, but the more arguments we had, the harder they were to recover from. It was like the more comfortable we became, the less of a filter we had around each other.
It wasn’t always bad, though. Our good days outweighed the bad, which made us forget all the shitty things we said during our fights. I’d remind myself that couples don’t always get along and that some conflict was normal, and that was enough to excuse it all.
I started cleaning in the kitchen, collecting the empty beer cans into a garbage bag and placing dirty dishes in the sink to be cleaned after. This was one of the things I hated about big get-togethers. The aftermath. You open your home to people, and this is what you get in return: a mess.
I needed to get out of my head, so I pulled up my playlist on my phone, hitting shuffle. “The Story Of Us” by Taylor Swift came on as I got to working on the dishes.
It didn’t dawn on me that the feud between Elijah and Jett might be because of the shit Jett was dealing until Wesley asked me what it was about. I didn’t want to think about any of it. The stress of it all was hurting my head.
I scrubbed to the beat of the music, singing softly. A door closed in the hallway and I looked up to find Jett coming down the hall.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge, and tapped the screen on my phone to turn the music off, facing me with an elbow propped on the counter. He was trying to act calm, but I could see him fuming inside. His knuckles were white with how tight he was gripping his beer.
