AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jade reaches for her again just as I notice how close they are to the edge. “Wait. You’re going to-” I yell as I race forward, Tate’s loud footsteps behind me. But they’re not listening. We’re too late.
I’m only a few steps away when Buttercup pushes Jade backward using all her strength, silencing my words as they both start to fall. “No!”
Chapter Seventeen
Jesse
Willowstaresthroughmeas some kind of war rages inside her. I can see all the emotions playing across her features, but when she finally focuses again, it’s all gone. As though she’s been stripped bare. Like her soul’s been sucked from her body and all that’s left behind is a shell of the girl I was finally getting to know. I’m not even sure she’s hearing me anymore.
“Willow, please, I just need to…” I trail off because what I really need, I have no right to ask for. I need to comfort her; I need to hold her in my arms until I know that she’s okay. That she’s going tobeokay.
She shakes her head but even that lacks energy. “I’ve survived this before. I can do it again,” she says in monotone, making my heart clench. “I don’t need this in my life. I don’t need you.”
Fuck. I want to tell her she’s wrong; she must be. I thought she felt the same way I did, and I need her likeoxygen.
“Willow, I—”
“I only came here to learn the truth,” she cuts in. “And now that I know, I can move on.”
The stilted way she speaks feels like a stab to the chest with every word, but I let her finish. She’s hurting. She’s not in her right mind. She just needs time.She just needs time.
After taking in a breath, she squares her shoulders and stands tall before sucking her lips into her mouth. Tears prick the back of her eyes, and for a split second, it looks like she’s coming back to me, but she blinks them away, and in an instant, she’s back to being broken.
“Goodbye, Jesse,” she says with a nod. “Thank you.”
She turns and walks away, moving toward the main road, knowing that since I pulled into a one-way street, I can’t follow her. Although, maybe she’s not even thinking about that.
Jumping from my truck, I prepare to chase her on foot as I call out her name. But she doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t even react when I call her Buttercup.“I don’t need this in my life. I don’t need you.”
“Fuck!” I cry out, eliciting some dirty looks from those passing by. But I don’t care. Nothing means anything right now except for Willow’s pain.I caused that.
Tate and I agreed to taketwothings to the grave, and that was one of them. If Willow never remembered, we vowednever to tell her. No one deserves that kind of anguish.
And I fucking told her.
I went against every instinct I had. Everything I’d been fighting for so long. Why the hell couldn’t I have stayed away? Or lied more convincingly? I can handle her hating me because she thinks I killed Jade. Ican’thandle her hating herself.
I continue to watch her until she reaches Pippa’s building, only a block and a half away. My stomach twists in knots and my heart beats so hard that it causes a dull ache in my chest.
Willow disappears out of sight, and a fresh wave of emotions hit as water fills my eyes.Tearsfill my eyes. And before long, an emptiness consumes me. She’s gone.
When my phone rings sometime later, I realize I’m back in my truck, with no recollection of how I got here. Pippa’s name lights up the screen, causing a mix of dread and relief to take over.
“Hello,” I rasp, my free hand clenched in a fist, waiting for her onslaught or whatever hurt she’s about to inflict.
“Hi,” she says softly before shocking me with her question. “Are you okay?”
“Is Willow?” I counter because my pain is very much deserved.
“What do you mean?” She pauses, her question making my heart race as her panic rises. “I’m still at work. Did something happen?”
Everything happened,but I’m not sure what Willow wants to tell her.
“We just had a chat and she needed to be alone. Why are you asking if I’m okay?” I question, dropping my head back to the headrest.
“I heard the rumors.”
“What rumors?” I sit up so quickly, I almost hit the roof.
