She pressed her lips into a straight line. She looked like my mom when I was eight years old and dropped the word shit during a dinner with relatives. “Why would he need to win you back?” she asked evenly, as if it were a review question for a quiz. I studied her pretty face, wondering if she even believed a word I was saying.
“Because he cheated on me with Gabrielle,” I murmured just as Emily sprung up from the ground.
“Found it! I get to keep it!” she yelped.
Sloane’s head tilted just an inch at me. Her eyes started to drift from me, as if she were starting to think hard or remember something. I was just about to tell her about the bloody T-shirt and voicemail when a low voice silenced us all like little girls up too late at a sleepover.
“Now, why is this happening?” Jake’s sexy grin melted Emily straight into her Pradas. She bit her lip as he plucked my ring from her fingers. “Fairly certain this doesn’t belong to you.”
“Oh, Jake, get on one knee and pretend to propose to me,” Emily moaned. We were all hammered.
Except for Sloane. Sloane had sobered up very quickly. Out of nowhere, she grabbed my hand with urgency. I knew what it meant. She had to speak to me in private. But Jake was looking at me now.
“Lara, what do you say we get you and your ring back to your fiancé?” he asked, smiling casually at me, the way he never smiled at me. My eyes flitted all about his face. Was I angry at him? I couldn’t remember. I was something at him. But he was so handsome with his slicked hair and so sexy in all black that I completely forgot.
“No thanks, I’d rather have you,” I announced. The girls howled and I felt an odd satisfaction as Jake’s green eyes lit on fire. He glared at me, so pissed off I could feel his heat in my veins.
“I’d rather have you too!” Emily raised her hand.
“Fuck off!” Piper yelled.
Sloane kept tugging at me. But she stopped – we all did – when Jake gripped the edge of the table with one hand and easily yanked it out, moving it aside so he could step in to come get me. I pressed my back against my seat as I stared up at him, his broad frame looming over me for all of a second before I found myself six feet above ground, thrown over his shoulder like a doll.
“Jake!” I pounded on his back as the girls all
squealed and cheered. “Jake, let me down!” He was walking me through the lounge, through a sea of pulsing lights and beautiful people dancing with their eyes closed. I could probably crowd surf if I wanted to. But I didn’t. Maybe it was my fear of heights but I found myself sobering quickly the way Sloane had. “Jake, please!”
He finally put me down behind some curtain, backing me up against the wall. “What the hell are you doing, Lara?” he demanded furiously. “What were you doing over there? Huh? Look at me. Now is not the time to be even a little bit careless and just now, you were about twenty levels about that. I don’t even know what you told the girls but judging from how the blood fucking drained from Sloane’s face – ”
“Jake, I told you I loved you tonight and you said nothing.” My chest heaved as I stared at him, the a million angry words threatening to spill out of me without control. “Jake, these past few months, my life’s been turned upside down. Completely. Nothing I’ve known has been real. Everything has been a lie, I am engaged to a man who is a true fucking psychopath and you know what I realized today? You are literally my only hope. You are the only reason I haven’t forgotten relief, or excitement, or happiness. You’re the only reason I don’t feel like it’s completely over. I can’t even feel that way with Sloane and I’ve known her since I was ten, ‘cause telling her about Jackson is as good as forcing her to choose between me or him and Caleb and you know what, I have a bad feeling… I have real bad feeling she’s going to choose them. So you look at me.” I held my hands out and laughed. Like a lunatic. “I got nothing. Nothing but you and hey, maybe I’m really fucking drunk right now, but the fact that you still haven’t said anything yet, the fact that you just kind of looked at me like I was crazy when I told you I loved you… it makes me think I really am alone. And maybe I should be that way because why should you have to suffer through this if you don’t love me? Why would this possibly be worth it?”
Oh God, I’d lost it. I could feel the hot tears running down my cheeks. If it wasn’t over then it was over now. Every last emotion in my body had poured from my lips to become Jake’s burden. As the bass blared in my eardrums, he looked down at me, his eyes boring so hot into mine that I felt my knees getting weak. It was pathetic but even then, I prayed to God that he’d just say it. I do love you.
But he didn’t. Still. And suddenly, my phone was ringing. I picked it up without looking at it.
“Did you mean Audra?” It took me a second for me to process the voice on the other end. It was Sloane.
“I – what?”
“You said Jackson cheated on you with Gabrielle but I know you meant Audra,” Sloane said, her voice shaking. “Because I just went outside to look for you and I saw them in your car, I saw him… and she was laying on top of him and… ”
I don’t know if she trailed off or if I hung up because I was a madwoman, pushing my way outside, a sick part of me alive and thrilled to finally catch Jackson in a lie.
Chapter Fifteen
Lara
My hangover was no joke the next morning. I couldn’t even move away from Jackson as he tried to take care of me.
“Drink it, baby. I swear it works,” he said, handing me a glass of club soda mixed with limejuice and salt. I stared at it. “Hey, your boy Sawyer was the one who taught me,” Jackson cracked, getting me to at least look up at him. When I didn’t smile, he sighed. “I know you didn’t sleep with him. It was a joke.”
God, it was a bizarre morning. But why wouldn’t it be? It had been a bizarre night. I’d gone outside and looked into Jackson’s car window to find him passed out as he always was after sex – with Audra lying on top of him. She’d jolted up when she saw me, waking Jackson and prompting me to turn around and hail a cab. Jackson had rushed in after me but I had, for most of the ride, just laughed. I couldn’t even listen to a word he had to say. All I could do was laugh. I’d felt truly deranged. But it was all so hilarious to me. Literally everything Jackson ever said was a lie. Every aspect of my life was a mess. Anything that could go wrong did and the fact that I hadn’t lost my mind earlier was nothing short of a miracle.
Jake had been my glue the whole time.
But now I had no idea what we were. Perhaps my drunken rant last night was his green light to finally book it from New York, free of guilt. Why waste time saving a head case? My phone was still dead and uncharged but he probably hadn’t texted. He’d probably flown off already, to Tulum or Machu Picchu. Turquoise water and ancient structures – that was how Jacob Kinsley wiped his slate clean.
I wished I could be the same.