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“Jacob,” I plead, because I really couldn’t continue down this road with him. He’d said less than one hundred words to me in three years and I feel like I’m regressing back to the day he left me.
“Whitney,” he responds, holding my gaze and as much as I want to, I can’t pull away. There’s heat in his eyes and I feel my knees weakening under his piercing blue orbs. I bite my bottom lip on instinct but I immediately release it when I hear the sharp intake of air and the exhale through his nose.
“I—” I start when the door opens behind me.Yes! Finally.I let out a breath, grateful for the intrusion though Jacob looks like he’s about to rip the head off of whoever has interrupted us.
“THERE HE IS!” The voice of my father booms throughout the entire neighborhood and then he whisks past me and pulls him into a hug. “I fucking missed you.” I hear him. My mom comes running out behind me and I chuckle at both of them passing me to hug Jacob like he’s the prodigal son returning.
“Oh my God, you can’t leave me alone with him for three years ever again,” my mom says as she hugs him and gives him a peck on his cheek. “Mexico was good to you. You must have been beating the women off with a stick down there.” Her gaze shifts and her eyes widen. “Whit! OH, my goodness, hi honey!” She pulls me into a hug and kisses my cheek.
“It’s okay Mom, you see me all the time and I know JP was your and Dad’s first child.” I roll my eyes before moving into the house, grateful to be able to escape the awkward tension mounting between me and Jacob. I immediately find Chloe talking to Mason in a corner and I approach them both with a glare. “Not curious as to where I’ve been?”
“I thought you were still talking to Parker?” Chloe says. “Why are you all hyper?” she asks as she brings her glass of sangria to her lips and takes a healthy sip.
“Because JP is here. He arrived while I was still on the phone with my fiancé.” I say through gritted teeth.
Chloe chokes on her drink and begins coughing. “You’re shittin’ me. The man always did know how to make an entrance.” She giggles and I shoot her a look. “Well how did it—holy fuuuuuck,” Chloe whispers under her breath. I turn around when I hear my father announcing who was back from Mexico and when I turn back to look at Chloe her eyes are wide. “He looks gooood.” She takes another sip and thankfully the room is full of people talking so I’m sure no one heard her. “Yeah, you’re fucked. He looks like a man that came here to play zero games.”
“You’re not helping, Chloe,” Mason says as he takes a sip of what I assume to be whiskey. “Maybe I should go have a little chat with him.”
“Mase…”
“No, he doesn’t get to come in and make you so uncomfortable in your own Goddamn house,” he snaps and I see the fury in his eyes already.
“Just leave it. He hasn’t done anything.” I plead.
“He’s here and it’s messing with your head and your heart and while Parker isn’t necessarilymyfavorite person, he’s one of yours and I respect him as the man that loves you.”
Chloe rolls her eyes. “Since when are you so holier than thou when you drink.”
“The guy broke her heart, Chlo.”
“And her showing up here, looking like this,” she says, waving her hand over me. “With a ring on her finger is thebestrevenge. Let him pine over her. She’s moved on.”
Mason looks at me and I give him a weak smile, wishing I had as much confidence as Chloe thinks I have. “Let’s just go out on the patio and decide where we’re going when we get out of here.”
My eyes scan the room just like they’ve done over a hundred times over the past hour. It’s how it always was, whenever we were in the room together in mixed company my eyes were always looking for her. My eyes would find her for no more than a second before moving on. It was just enough time to know exactly what she was thinking, what she needed or if she neededme.Over half of the time, her eyes would meet mine. Sometimes she’d smile, sometimes she’d wink if she knew it was safe and sometimes, she’d bite her lip which was code for:get me naked now.
I stare at her through the blinds, my hands flexing into fists with the need to touch her. Her hair is longer than the last time I saw her and visions of seeing it wrapped around my wrist as I pound into her from behind infiltrate my brain.
Her, Chloe, and Mason went to the patio as soon as I entered the house and have been out there since. One of them has been by her side all night leading me to believe that one or both of them know about what happened between us.
They’re protecting her from me.
I wince at the sting that causes. I hurt her so deeply that she can’t even be around without a layer of protection around her heart.Or she still has feelings for you and she doesn’t trust herself around you.
More than likely it was a combination of the two. Either way, Mason and Chloe weren’t going to be easy and they weren’t going to back down. I down the rest of my gin and tonic before deciding that I’d had enough. There were at least thirty people here and though I’m sure Kevin and Michelle wanted to spend the night talking to me, they were polite hosts and had left me to tend to some of their other guests leaving me free to try to get Whitney alone.
I get up from the chair where I’m seated and open the door to the patio and make my way outside. The backyard looks different than I remember it. The stones on the terrace were different and there was a fountain that flowed into the pool now. There was also a hot tub in the corner that I didn’t remember being there. Kevin and Michelle were always going somewhere during the summer, whether it be cruises or European vacations especially tacked onto Kevin’s trips for work. During the time Whitney and I were together, there were more than a few times I stayed with her while Kevin and Michelle were gone and we had fucked numerous times in this pool so I know if there had been a hot tub then we would have defiled that too.
I make my way over to them and I’m grateful there’s at least ten people out here so I don’t have to worry about Mason or Chloe getting loud if my suspicions are correct.
“Mason.” I nod at my oldest godchild as I approach the table where they’re all seated. There’s a fourth chair available but I don’t make an effort to sit.Yet.
I remember Mason’s birth like it was yesterday. Kevin was scared shitless and almost passed out but the second he was out of Michelle, he was in love. His firstborn. A son. I’m fairly certain the second he turned two, Michelle rarely even saw Mason. He was attached to Kevin and me and went wherever we went. We even had him on the golf course when he was just three years oldjust in case,we had another Tiger Woods on our handsminus the sex scandals of course.
“Uncle J.” He nods back and I know now that he knows about me and Whitney because he usually has the same reaction to seeing me as his father does. I do actually see the war in his eyes about wanting to hug me but also being angry at me and protecting his sister. “How was Mexico?”
“Hot.” I chuckle. “But it was good. I feel great about the work we did there. I missed home though.”
