“Jackson Pierce! I had no idea you’d still be slumming after all these years.”
“Shut up, Spencer.” He threw an arm around me. “I do not have time to kick your ass today.”
I tugged him toward the door.
“I guess Heaven’s like a case of herpes. Impossible to get rid of.”
And that was the final straw. Not just for Jackson, but for me. I pushed Jackson’s arm off my shoulder and rushed toward the counter, flinging myself over it in a quick move.
“Heaven!” Jackson called, scrambling after me. But it was too late. Spencer backed away, shocked at my resolve, and I hauled out and punched him in the face. He stumbled backwards, dark evil glinting in his eye.
“Fuck you, Spencer. Don’t you dare blame me for your shitty, fucked-up life. For the fact you work in this dead-end job and live a miserable life. You’re the one with hate in your heart. Not me. I’m not that girl I used to be. I own my mistakes, my regrets, and my choices. You’re just pathetic.”
“If I’m that pathetic, then you’ll know I’ve got no qualms about hitting a girl. Especially one as trashy as you.”
He lunged at me and I held my ground, fists balled and ready, but Spencer never made it to me. Jackson lunged between us, crashing into him with a two-hundred-pound weight made of muscle and rage.
He grappled with his arms for a minute before using his considerable size and strength to flip him on his stomach, pinning his body and face against the dirty floor. I rushed over and stood behind him, smirking at Spencer’s position.
“What do you want me to do with him?” Jackson asked, jamming a knee in his back.
“Nothing,” I said, meaning it. “He’s not worth it.”
Jackson nodded but leaned down and said, “You’re lucky she’s here or I would tear you apart. Got it?”
“Fuck you.”
I shook my head. Spencer would never learn, but that was why his life sucked so much.
“Come on,” I said, tugging on Jax’s shoulder. He was breathing heavy, furious and boiling with rage. We weren’t kids anymore. If Jackson really hurt him, then there could be trouble. Real trouble none of us needed.
He stood and brushed off his hands before taking mine in his. At the counter, he opened the door to the side and grabbed my dress. I tossed the money on the counter. I stopped before I walked out the door, watching Spencer slowly get off the ground. There was a bruise forming on his cheek.
“Maybe it’s time for you to figure out what’s wrong with you, Spencer,” I said. “Why you’re so angry all the time and why you’re obsessed with the things you can’t have.”
I didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t deserve my attention—not anymore.
Jackson sat in the driver’s seat, hands squeezing the wheel.
He peeled out of the parking lot the second I shut the door and drove silently before pulling over into a gas station parking lot. He got out of the car and went inside, coming back a few minutes later with a plastic bag full of ice.
Back in the car he took my hand, the swollen one, and inspected my fingers before pressing the ice against it.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said in a shaky voice. The adrenaline evaporated somewhere in the last five miles. “I don’t know why he rattles me so much. It’s like he knows the truth about me instinctively. He always has. It’s like he knows I’m a fraud—weak. That beneath the surface I’m still that girl from back then.”
Jackson touched my chin. “You’re not a fraud and you’re certainly not weak. Not physically or emotionally. You’ve earned your success and if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that you’re not the same girl as back then. You’re a woman now; smart, strong, and breathtakingly beautiful.”
I looked away from his eyes, they were too intense, too meaningful, and I knew the answer to my question I’d asked before I got out of the car. What did Jackson want?
Me.
I knew that and after that scene in the cleaners’ and the words he just spoke, that if it were just about me and him--just the two of us--I would be hard-pressed to answer any differently.
27
Heaven