Unbroken Rules (Rules 3)

“Will, hey.” I awkwardly fix my hair. “Did we wake you?”

“Let me see.” He brings a finger to his chin. “Did the sound of you groping each other like horny teenagers wake me up? Nah. All good.”

Haze and I exchange glances. I fail to repress a smile.

“For fuck’s sake, can’t you two just get back together already and put us all out of our misery?” Will teases and walks to the fridge to get milk.

How I wish it were that easy.

“Are you guys going to see Harry today?” Will asks, pouring himself a bowl of cereal.

“Yeah. They said we should be able to see him. Oh, and you’ll never believe the call I got this morning. My dad’s parents finally got a hold of Lauren.”

“They did?” Haze’s eyebrows jerk up.

I summarize the ridiculous conversation I had a few minutes after waking up. Claire, my dad’s mom, fed me some sob story about Lauren being so devastated over her husband’s accident that she couldn’t bring herself out of the house. Lauren told her she spent the evening trapped in crushing anxiety attacks and uncontrollable tears. She claimed her decision to stay away was for her kids’ sake. We all know that’s bullshit, but bullshit or not, she’s Maika and Jay’s legal guardian, and my hands are tied.

“Did you eat yet?” Haze asks me out of nowhere.

“Not yet. Why?”

“We’re going out for breakfast.”

“But… we have to go visit my dad.”

“It won’t take long. I promise. An hour tops. And visiting hours haven’t even started yet.”

I sway from side to side. “I don’t know. What about Jay?”

“I think he can manage an hour alone. Come on, it’s on me. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Canada, just go out with the poor guy and release us from the sexual tension,” Will whines.

“Fine,” I relent.

Haze rejoices, treading back to the bedroom to get his phone. I don’t know why my agreeing to go to breakfast seems so important to him. What does he want to tell me, and why does he need me out of the apartment to do so? Normally, I’d be worried, but I doubt anything he throws my way could faze me, even a little bit, at this point. Not after the past twenty-four hours. Anxious, Haze leads the way out of the apartment and into the elevator.

I always found irony in the word ex. So many terms flood my mind at the mere sound of it. Ex as in excruciating, exhausting, extremely annoying, exterminate the bastard. I never thought I’d refer to Haze as my ex. I still can’t get used to the idea, and deep down, I have a hunch the term isn’t meant to stick around our relationship.

The ride to the breakfast restaurant was silent. Haze looked tormented. What truly worried me was the fact that he didn’t talk about the rather hot make-out session we shared in the kitchen this morning. I would’ve anticipated his life mission to become teasing me back into his arms. That’s what I love about him. He always made me feel so alive, so free. The electricity between us could never find an equal.

We had breakfast as he wanted. When I asked why it was so important to him, he said that we needed to talk, so we did: we talked about the weather, how Waze is slowly learning to shake hands, anything and everything but what he wanted to talk to me about.

Question marks cross my gaze when Haze parks the car in our apartment spot but doesn’t move a muscle. He fiddles with his phone lying flat on his lap.

“Are you ready?” I let out.

“For what?”

“To spit out the thing that’s been eating at you all morning.”

He lowers his eyes to his hands and drops a sigh. “There’s something I didn’t tell you yesterday. It just seemed like too much at the time, but I know the worst thing I could ever do is keep the truth from you again.”

I appreciate his honesty. Yes, Haze made mistak

es—monumental, near impossible to forgive mistakes—but he sees the error of his ways.

“When you asked me to go to your house yesterday… Lauren was there.” He unlocks his phone with a swipe and pulls up his recordings. “She was wasted. She’d been drinking all night. That’s where she was, Winter. She wasn’t crying in bed. She was getting hammered.”