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JACE
“You’re just going to leave?” Allie asked from her bed, still naked, except for a blanket and her skirt covering everything but those thick thighs of hers that I wanted to tease until she was squirming in my arms again. I had touched her thighs, grabbed them, groped them so many fucking times before; all I wanted was to do it again.
I opened her bedroom door and glanced back at her. “Do you want me to stay?”
A hundred emotions crossed over her face, but after a few moments, she settled on fury. “No,” she spat at me, covering her thighs and pushing her glasses up her nose. “I didn’t expect you to anyway. Don’t you have a football game or something? It’s Friday night.”
My gaze traveled over her, and I clenched my jaw to hold myself back. I didn’t have anywhere to be tonight. I could stay here with her, touch her again, kiss her neck, feel her legs squirm around me … but nothing good would come from staying in here with her.
Things would get sticky between us. Hell, they already were. And I needed them to be fucking clear as day. I didn’t care about Allie, not one fucking bit. All I cared about was getting her and her mother out of this damn house and going off to play football in college.
“It got canceled,” I said.
And with that, I walked out of the room and shut the door behind me, resting my head back against the doorframe and blowing out a long breath. Something deep down inside of me didn’t feel right.
We shouldn’t have had sex. We shouldn’t have kissed. We shouldn’t have even touched each other. She was my stepsister, a girl I’d once wanted to spend my entire life with, a girl I used to sit with on the rocks at the Overlook, watching the snow drift down from the dark gray sky and melt as soon as it touched the ocean waves.
My hands balled into fists, and I shook my head.
This was never how Allie and I were supposed to turn out.
She shuffled around inside her room, and I walked back to mine, slammed the door shut, and threw a fist into the wall, easily breaking through the drywall yet again. This spot had become my own personal punching bag since Mom had died.
Fuck, why the hell was I getting fucking upset? I didn’t give a fuck about Allie. I can’t.
She and her mother had needed to get out of our lives months ago. She didn’t belong in this house, under the same roof as me, sealed with the same fate as me. She fucking didn’t.
I’d tried to get rid of them as soon as I found out about Dad and her mom dating. But neither of them would budge, no matter how much hell I raised. I had just been sent to juvie and a boarding school in the summer to straighten myself out, as if that was going to make me change.
I hopped onto the bed, grabbed the football from the side table, and threw it into the air. I would do it again and again and again if that meant Allie didn’t live here with me. I wanted her out. I had tried to make her life a living hell despite everything inside of me telling me that it was wrong, that I shouldn’t hurt her.
My phone buzzed from the side table.
Dad: Behave this week. I don’t want to hear that you were terrorizing Allie again.
I stared down at the phone, picked it up, and clenched it in my fist until my knuckles turned white. I hated him. He should’ve never fucking married Allie’s mom. It was the worst fucking decision she could’ve made.
Dad: There will be harsher consequences next time.
Instead of responding to him—I’d be chewed out for that when he got home—I turned off my phone, changed into my gym clothes, and decided on a run for tonight. Since the game had been canceled, Coach would want us to be twice as ready for our game next Friday night. We were playing our rivals, the Leeside Phantoms. Between them and Carter, I still had a shitload of steam I needed to blow off.
Opening my bedside drawer, I snatched my Apple Watch from inside and snapped it around my wrist for training. Inside were the usual—condoms, lotion, pills I refused to take that Dad had made some therapist give me, weed from Poison, and a picture.
My eye caught on the photo that I had folded in fourths. I sat down on my bed, resting my forearms on my knees, and pulled out the picture. Gaze flickering to the door to make sure it was closed, I slowly unfolded it and let myself smile.
It was of Allie and me sophomore year after one of my football games—homecoming, to be exact. Snow fell around us, blowing her brown hair into her face, nearly hiding her grin. With her arms around my waist, she stared up at me through those thick glasses, and she was happy—so fucking happy.
I shook my head and stared down at it for a long time, until my watch buzzed.
Nicole: Can we talk?
Nicole: I’m sorry for what happened.
Nicole: Please, speak to me, Jace.
Nicole: Jace, baby …
Four messages, all within one fucking minute. I silenced my watch and glanced back down at the picture, noticing the Cartier diamondbracelet that I’d bought Allie but she hardly ever wore because she didn’t care about all the fancy stuff. Back then, she’d only wanted me.
She had worn the bracelet that night though because I had asked her to. I just didn’t think the next morning, she’d be throwing it at me with tears racing down her face as she sobbed and asked me why.
“Why, Jace? Why?”
That was the last night I had seen her that happy. And truth was, that was the last night I had been happy too.
