"Go save the town, hero!" I yell to him when he's next to the door. His cheeks turn pink, but I notice a slight smile on his lips before he turns back.
ChapterTwenty-Two
JUSTIN
I have to go back and smash his face into pieces. Again.I think as I march toward the garage. They looked so fuckingcozytogether. So perfect. They don’t have this ugly history between them. No hurt or bullying. His family didn’t poke their noses in her life and didn’t try to make her miserable.
She never fuckin’ smiles like that with me. Never. So carefree and happy and genuine. And so adoringly. And she’s had a crush on me for ages, I know that. And yet, I’ve never seen her looking atmelike that. She’s always on guard around me, always alert and ready to pounce.
Do they have something going on between them? Does she want him more than me? She’s mine, not his.
So why are you leaving rather than going back to demand that she be yours?My brain helpfully suggests to that burning rage in my chest. Why? Because I can't announce to the whole world that I want her for myself. Because I can't want her. I can only have her for a night, in the shadows of darkness, where no one can see us. Where I can hide from the guilt, shame, and myself. Accepting my feelings means accepting reality. She was right, and I'm not ready for that. I don't know if I'll ever be ready.
The pile of people I've been hurting just keeps growing. If I add her in there, I'm afraid I won’t be able to handle it without stepping over the thin line I'm currently balancing on. I thought the only way to stay on this side of it was to fuck her and get her out of my system, but it turned out worse than I thought. Since I got a taste of her, she’s been plaguing my mind with her ever-growing presence, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. If I ever have her, I don’t think it will be enough for me, but I can’t offer her anything but a shameful night full of orgasms in the darkness. Maybe it’s time to try something else. Where I’m not a selfish bastard.
I can try to ignore her and pretend she never existed. That's the best-case scenario for both of us. I owe her that much.
And for the following two weeks, I do just that: I pretend she isn't walking on the other side of the road, wearing her flowy blue dress that accentuates her beautiful body. That she doesn't bend down to pat this ugly mutt the town doctor has, and that she's wearing shorts cut so low that I can see her firm ass. That she doesn't carry that heavy ass box from her car that she almost drops, and it's not me who caves in and goes to fetch it from her hands to roughly deliver it to the diner without saying a single word. And it's definitely not me who was walking down Main Street back and forth on the night she stayed late at the diner, painting something on the wall by the door.
Nope, it didn’t happen, and it was not me. I was very good at ignoring her for a whole three weeks, just as I planned.
Jake finally leaving for rehab after the shooting helped to take my mind off certain things. He became jittery and even more irritated, and our father said that he'd had enough and that it was time to fix the situation.
* * *
It’s been three weeks of successful ignoring, and I’m on the verge of biting someone’s head off. My guys at the shop stay away from me because of my temper. It’s like I switched places with Alex and need to be put on a leash. My family stays away from me because I'm in a constant foul mood, and I stay away from them for a different reason. How can I face Alicia and Jake now? How can I tell them the truth? Especially Jake. He's going to hate himself just like I do for torturing an innocent person. And hate me for everything else.
Today will be the first time I seeherup close. Freya’s having an official opening for her PTSD facility. They just renovated the place, and she already has a full staff. Alex mentioned that she wants to introduce them to locals since some of the staff are moving from other states and could use some mingling. When Freya started this PTSD facility thing, her plans were small, a few-people-at-once kind of place. But it's turning out to be a huge place, and not only by a Little Hope scale. It took longer than we all anticipated, but, in the end, I believe it will be worth it.
I take an extra-long shower and take a shamefully long time to pick a shirt to wear to a fucking barbeque. I'll smell like a fire by the end of the day regardless of what I wear.
My phone rings right before I’m about to leave my apartment. “Yep?”
“Jus, we need orange juice and champagne. Ladies demandmimosas." He says the word like it's a snake threatening to bite his ass.
“I’ll get it on the way.”
"Thanks, man. Hurry up, it's a peach party here, and we need eggplants." He sounds like he's suffering when he's surrounded by all that beauty.
I let out a loud laugh. “Who talks like that?”
“I don’t give a fuck. All the ladies came here earlier than theyneededto.” Yeah, Alex might have worked on his PTSD, but he’s still an asshole. Some things never change, and I'm grateful for that. This stability is precisely what I need after a few days of emotional turmoil.
And hormones. Fuck. I have more blisters on my hands from the past week than I’ve had for years working with mechanic tools. I either jack off or work at the shop, over-tightening all the damn screws. Every time I turned some nice visual porn on, I couldn't do it. Got half-mast at best. I kept thinking about inviting over one of my regular fuck-buddies, but every time I thought about somebody’s body under mine, it gave me shivers. Bad shivers.
Fuck, I can still taste her on my lips and smell her sweet musk. Well, that does the trick, and my dick roars to life. Just great. If I had known before that tasting her would make me even more hungry, I'd never have done it. Or I would do it, but I wouldn’t stop there. She was putty in my hands, and I fucking blew it by opening my big mouth. Couldn’t I have fucking waited to say that I hate her forafter? An idiot. She could be out of my mind by now if only I fucked her.
Now, more than ever, I know I have to have her. Ineedto have her. She’s the drug. The solution to my pathetic illness. One that just has a bunch of fucked-up side effects. Before, when I thought of her as guilty, I hated her with double the passion because I wanted her when I shouldn’t have, and it’s been going for so long that I forgot how to feel anything else toward her but hate.
Now though, I don’t even know why I hate her. But I do. I hate when she smiles at everyone else but me. I hate her badass outfits. I hate her wearing those sexy short skirts that she likes so much. I hate her beautiful tattoos. I wanted tattoos, but I saw her skin covered in them, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Just to separate myself from her as far as possible. I hated her cuddled up with that asshole Mark on the curb after the fire. Oh yeah, after the fire, I stayed and watched from afar; I hated that he could comfort her without hating himself for consoling the enemy.
My feelings toward her are apparent.
Today, I’ll see her up close, and nothing—I mean it, nothing—will stir.Do you hear me, asshole? Nothing!I glance at my lap, hoping he’ll understand the gravity of the situation.
I stop by the store and grab champagne and juice. By the time I arrive at the place, the parking lot is almost full. It’s an old mansion she renovated, and now she’s planning to expand, considering they’re already fully booked. The three-level building is about eight thousand square feet and was half destroyed by time and old owners. Now it looks unrecognizable. The first floor is fully dedicated to common areas, and I believe that’s where the gathering will happen. The house itself is about fifteen minutes away from Little Hope and is surrounded by the best Maine has to offer: gorgeous pine woods, sunlit mountains in the background, and blueberry bushes.
The weather is amazing. It’s warm but not suffocating because of the woods and their shadow. I’m jealous. My second-floor apartment above the garage heats up like a motherfucker. Snow is more stubborn here, though, so everything has its pros and cons.
