Page 37 of Jessie's Girl
“Considering I’m Rose’s vice principal, and if she wakes up and sees me here, it’ll be all over the school on Monday, I think it’s best I leave now,” I drawl, shrugging into my jacket.
“Yeah, she has no filter.” He huffs out a short chuckle. “She won’t do it on purpose, but she will spread our business faster than an STD in a frat house.”
I scrunch up my nose. “Nice.”
“India.” He shifts to my side, cups my face. “It doesn’t stop me from wanting it. Tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow, we need to talk. Really talk.”
“Tomorrow is today,” I whisper.
“Yes.” A smile ghosts across his lips. “Today then. We’ll talk today.”
I nod, though my pulse crashes in my veins, under my skin.
“Today.”
He pinches my chin, tilting my head back. When his mouth claims mine, I close my eyes, luxuriating in his taste, in the texture of his sensual, firm lips, in the erotic play of his tongue. It would be a very tragic thing if he ever suspected how much he owned me.
Releasing me, he reaches behind me, twisting the lock and grabbing the knob. A hard pebble of dread takes up residence between my ribs, and part of me almost turns around and marches back up those stairs to the sex-scented sanctuary of Asa’s bedroom. But I step back, and as he pulls the door open, I dismiss that kernel of unease. It’s ridiculous—
“Oh shit, you scared me.” Jessie laughed, a key dangling from his fingers. “I was coming by to crash on… your…”
Ice slithers through me, coating my veins, my organs, my very blood. And as Jessie’s stunned gaze collides with mine then jerks to Asa, I’m left frozen, unable to move, unable to escape this horrible scene that has been set on a collision course from the moment we kissed two years ago.
“What the fuck is this?” he demands, his voice growing louder with each word until he’s nearly shouting.
“Keep your voice down,” Asa growls, the gentle touch on the small of my back belying the fierce frown darkening his face. He ushers me out of the house, forcing Jessie back off the front stoop and down the stairs. Once we’re at the end of the walk, he stops. “I get we’re going to have this out, but my niece is in that house.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “So keep your damn voice down so you don’t upset her.”
Jessie glances at the house, and though the fury doesn’t abandon his expression, when he speaks, his tone is lower. The anger, though. The anger saturates every syllable.
“You’re so concerned about Rose, but unless I’m reading this shit wrong,” he rotates a finger back and forth between me and Asa, “you were in there fucking where she’s sleeping. So make that shit make sense.”
“Don’t do that, Jessie,” Asa says, and the quiet warning in those words, coupled with the stillness of his large frame, send a shiver coursing through me. “Don’t go so far you can’t walk it back. Now, if you want to address what’s in front of you, we can do that. But leave Rose out of it.”
Jessie’s lips flatten, and he glances away, a muscle jumping along his clenched jaw. After a moment, he turns back, and his gaze jumps from Asa to me, then returns to Asa.
“How long has this been going on? Or do I want to know?” he asks, the corner of his lip curling in a sneer. “Have I been apologizing for a mistake I made two years ago, when all along you two were fucking around behind my back?”
“No.” And standing so close to him, the slight flinch that jerks his body reverberates through me. “I would never betray you like that.”
“You’d never betray me?” Jessie’s sharp crack of laughter echoes in the early morning air. “What do you call this?” He waves a hand toward me.
“This?” I speak up for the first time since Asa opened his front door, a spark of anger melting the numbness that had encased me. “I’m not athisor asituation, Jessie. And whatever is between me and Asa doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“You don’t think so?” His sneer turned uglier. “I don’t know if this is some revenge fantasy of yours, India, but you’re not naïve and I’m not stupid. So please don’t pull that ‘believe me, not your lying eyes’ bullshit. Is this your way of getting back at me? Getting with my best friend? Trying to come between us? Well played, sweetheart.”
Thisasshole. Shock punches me in the chest, momentarily robbing me of breath and speech. Is that really what he thinks of me? Believes I’m capable of? Hurt swirls with fury, merging into a murky, whirling mass.
“You have your fucking nerve,” I whisper. “Youbroke us. You did that all on your own. I was a good partner, a faithful partner. So whoever I move on to or with is my choice and my business—and sorry to break this to you, Jessie, but you don’t have a say in it. More importantly, there isn’t a stamp anywhere on my body that says, ‘Property of Jessie Reynolds.’ You don’t have a claim or a right to me. Only I have that.” I drag in a shaky deep breath, and his lips part as if to reply, but I’m not finished. I slap up a hand, palm out. “Now, maybe it’s in your character to do something as underhanded, as spiteful to use another person in some petty plot that’s two years in the making, but let me disabuse you of that notion—that’s not me. Mainly because you ceased being that important to my life two years ago. You don’t add to it, you don’t take away from it.”
His eyes narrow even more, and his nostrils flare. With jerky movements, he turns his body away from me and faces Asa.
“You crossed a line—you know you did. It’s why you didn’t say anything to me before now. You have a choice to make. Her or me.” Jessie throws down the ultimatum, and under the hard, crystallized fury, I catch the confidence. As if he’s already certain of Asa’s decision.
And the kernel of dread that took root in my chest just before we left his house, sprouts roots, curling in and out of my rib cage.
Because I’m sure of his decision, too. I always have been. Shame on me for letting myself believe for a second that the outcome could be different.
Even before Asa looks at me, I brace myself for what’s coming. But I’m kidding myself. It would be like Noah’s neighbors preparing themselves for a flood. My world is about to be rocked, and all I can do is stand here, climb to higher ground, and try to survive as long as possible.
