Page 22 of Reckless Rebel

She closes the gap between us and I see both the guys shift on their feet as she approaches me. “Jace Conrad has the biggest heart in someone I've ever met. He's smart, funny, kind, beautiful, and anyone who knows him is lucky that they get to stand in his light. If you can't see that then that's your problem, but don't you dare stand there and tell me he isn't worthy of being her big brother. Because I don't give a fuck what a piece of paper says, Riley, he is her family. Don’t become a problem, or you won’t like what happens.”

Elle says my name like she is marking it on an invisible list, and the look she gives me makes me feel as if she is circling my name on that list with a big red Sharpie. When I don’t say anything, she just shakes her head, spins on her heels, and climbs into the car, both the guys climbing in after her without a second look. It isn’t until after their car has driven out of sight that I realize, they’re the people my parents told me about.

They’re Jace's real family.

13

Jace

Pathetic. Whore. Addict.

Those words have been playing over and over again in my mind all night. I haven’t slept. I couldn’t. Between the three lines of Coke I snorted before my babysitters showed up, to the two Adderall I tossed back when I left the car and stormed to my room, I was too wired. Riley hasn’t left my mind, her glowing smiling, flushed cheeks, barbed tongue. All of them are taking over my brain.

I should have said something, but what could I say? She only spoke the truth. I am pathetic, I let a sick and twisted piece of shit not only kill my sister, but Taylor too. And then I stood by while he violated my best friend and almost forced her into marriage. What could be more pathetic than that?

I am a whore, Taylor’s body wasn’t even in the ground that long before I resumed my sex fueled weekends. I continuously have a different girl on her knees or her back multiple times a week. I don’t know anyone else who fucks as much as I do.

Addict. That one stung the most. My parents were addicts, but am I? Aren’t I just having fun like a regular teenager? Doesn’t everyone smoke a joint to feel that high of not caring? Doesn’t everyone snort a line to feel invincible? Doesn’t everyone refill their Oxy bottle and neck them back whenever they want to dull the pain? Ambien helps me sleep and the Adderall wakes me up. Isn’t that what everyone does?

I don't know why I even care, it's not like I even know her. I don't have to impress her or even get her to like me. Riley Decker is an insufferable thorn in my side that I need to learn to ignore. She isn't going anywhere and neither am I, whether she likes it or not. We share a sister and that's the only thing that matters.

Thinking of Sofia creates an ache in my chest. So young, so innocent, if only she knew the kind of debauchery her big brother got up-to, she wouldn't look up at me with such pride if she did. Maybe Riley's right, maybe I should just stay away from her? Gerry and Ava have already given her more in the last seven years than I could ever give her in a lifetime. The only thing I bring to peoples’ lives is misery and death.

I light the joint and inhale deeply as I blow smoke out the open window. I'm not sure what time it is, but Cassie is already swimming in the pool with Ash. Asher fucking Donovan. The guy who took a bullet for Elle, saved her when I couldn't, yet when I look at him I can't see a hero. All I can see is the brother of the man who murdered them. He knows it too, I see it everytime we lock eyes, the pain and regret he feels at the destruction his family brought. He's a good man, whether he agrees with that himself or not, but the very sight of him makes my skin burn. If I could never lay eyes on him again that would be perfect, that way I wouldn't have to see my fucking failings constantly hitting me in my face.

I stub the joint out, the high I'm craving, not coming like I thought it would. Like I need it to. I feel like the walls of my life are closing in on me and I can't do anything to stop it. I need to get out of here.

I shower and change, throwing on jeans and a rumpled t-shirt, before slicking my hair back into its usual bun and heading down to the garage. I bypass all areas of the house that I think I might come across someone, and make it to my car uninterrupted. It's not that I don't love my family, or want to see them, it's just that they are too perceptive, too caring. They've given me the world on a silver fucking platter. Anything I could ever want or need, yet the one thing I truly desire is gone forever, which makes me want to take that silver platter and destroy it. Break it, smash it, burn it, just fucking ruin it so it resembles my true self, and my family finally realize what a lost cause I really am.

I don't even register where I am driving to, until I pull up at the cemetery. I used to come here all the time, but it's been months since my last visit. The evidence of that is clear in the stray branches and weeds that are across her grave.

My hand dusts the top in the same ritual as always as I whisper, "Hey big sis."

I slump down until my back is against her stone, relishing in the cold bite of it cutting into my spine. The pain is always a welcome reminder that no matter how bad things get, she will have always had it worse.

I think about the broken ribs I sustained in the crash, the snapped wrist that now has a long scar from the surgery to fix it, and the spleen I no longer have, with another scar to go with it. How much it all should have hurt, but I felt nothing but the empty ache of loss. That’s the last thing I remember before I am being kicked out of a slumber I didn’t even realize I had fallen into.

“Get up!” Elle’s voice cuts through the air like a knife.

“Queenie?” I feel disoriented as my vision unblurs and I find her staring down at me. “What are you doing here?”

Her face is a picture of disappointment and rage. “What are you doing here, Jace?” She throws my own question right back at me, and the despair in her tone has my defenses going up. I don’t need this right now.

“Visiting my sister, obviously,” I reply bitterly, just so sick of everyone trying to help me. I don’t need it.

Her lips curl slightly as she shakes her head at me. “What and Rachel wants you stoned and passed out in the middle of the day does she?”

I snort, “Well given she is dead, Queenie, I’d say it doesn’t really matter what she wants, does it?”

Her face changes from anger to sadness as she bends down to bring us eye level to one another. “Don’t do this, Pretty Boy. You’re better than this.”

“If that were true, she’d still be alive, they both would,” I whisper my regrets into the world and watch as her eyes close as if in defeat.

Her hands reach out to clasp my face. “I know what it’s like to feel like your world is ending, Jace. I know, I lived it.” Her voice begins to crack and the pain in my chest doubles at the reminder of what she endured. “I also know what it’s like to have a little girl save your life. So I am begging you to stop, to wake up and fucking choose to fight, if not for me and your brothers, then for her.”

My throat clogs as all the emotions of pain, death, and regret fire up inside of me, “I don’t think I have any fight left in me, Elle.”

“Bullshit!” She yells, standing back to her full height looking down on me, the anger pouring out of her as she starts to pace the ground next to me. “Fucking bullshit! Yes, Taylor is dead, your sister is dead, but you’re alive, I’m alive, by some fucking miracle we are all alive after everything we went through.” She moves towards me again, lowering herself and gripping my arms in her hands, “And I know it hurts, Pretty Boy, I know so fucking deep how much it hurts. But if you give up then it was all for nothing.”

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