Scooping her up, I carried her into the bedroom and placed her in the center of the bed. “Are you hungry?” I asked while she snuggled into the pillows, her lashes already lowering as she fought sleep.
“I’m too sleepy to eat,” she said around a yawn.
“Give me five minutes. I didn’t eat all day, and now I’m starving.” I kissed her before standing.
In the kitchen, I wolfed down a sandwich and a huge slice of the cake Doe must have brought with her. When I climbed into bed beside her, she was already out cold. The stress of the day mixed with the best shower I’d ever had and Doe asleep against me was a powerful combination.
The moment my head hit the pillow, with the scent of her sweet-smelling, damp hair under my nose and her curves pressed into me, I passed out.
16
Doe
A ringing phone pulled me out of a deep, bliss-filled sleep. Peeking an eye open, I glanced at the nightstand beside me where both Jenner’s and my own phone were sitting. We had the same phones, right down to the same color, and neither of us had a case on it.
That was probably why I’d broken mine so many times, but I just couldn’t stand a case.
We also had the same ringtone programmed, something I’d been meaning to fix so that I would at least know when it was my phone ringing or if it was his. But I’d repeatedly forgotten, and now I had no clue which phone was making that annoying noise.
Groaning, I reached out for it, wanting nothing more than to make it stop so I could pass out again. Rolling onto my back, I blindly swiped my thumb over the screen until the ringing stopped, and I lifted it to my ear, answering it in a sleep-groggy voice, “Hello?”
The silence on the other end was surprisingly loud, which fully woke me up. Sitting up, I pushed my tangled hair out of my face, letting the sheet fall to my waist without caring that I was completely naked. “Hello?” I asked again, only to be greeted with more silence.
Frowning, I looked down at the screen, expecting to find “Spam Risk” on the caller ID. Instead, there was a name I didn’t recognize.
Pixie.
There were even double hearts and butterfly emojis around the name.
Who the fuck was Pixie?
My gaze snapped over to Jenner. He was lying on his stomach, one arm still draped across my lap now that I was upright, snoring so loud he sounded like a hibernating bear in the dead of winter. A smile started to lift my lips.
And then I heard a voice coming from the phone.
“Hello?” the soft, feminine voice called, and I quickly lifted it back up to my ear. “Who is this?”
“Who is this?” I demanded instead of answering.
“This is Pixie. Who the hell are you, and why do you have Jenner’s phone?”
Jealousy made my voice hard. I had no clue who this woman was, but I didn’t like that she was calling my boyfriend. “Excuse you? I’m Jenner’s girlfriend. Who the hell are you to—”
The woman’s humorless laughter cut me off. “Good one, bitch. But Jenner doesn’t do girlfriends. I’m the only woman in his life. I’m his—”
I ended the call before she could finish, not wanting to know how she knew anything. Throwing back the covers, I didn’t even care that I was naked as I jumped out of bed. Throwing the phone—obviously Jenner’s—on the bed, I grabbed my own before stomping over to the closet.
Earlier in the week, I’d brought over a few clothes to hang in the closet, and the night before, I’d brought even more. Grabbing the first thing of mine that I touched, I pulled it on and then started taking the rest of my clothes off the hangers. I didn’t waste time folding them as I stuffed them into my gym bag lying on the closet floor.
The whole time, I didn’t even try to be quiet, wanting Jenner to wake up and stop me. I wanted a confrontation, to scream and rage at him and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing. Had he been laughing at me this whole time?
I’d been the first to say “I love you.” And then I’d eaten it up when he’d said it back. I should have known better. Life was not that easy. The things I wanted didn’t just fall into my lap. My mind replayed the moment things had changed. At the grocery store. With Courtney. Fuck, he must have seen how desperately I’d wanted out of that situation, and he’d used it to his advantage. Making himself the hero just so I would drop my guard and let him in without question.
The night he’d had dinner with my parents, he’d been off. We were supposed to talk last night about whatever had been bothering him. And I had planned on telling him about the bone marrow procedure. But we had gotten…distracted.
Was Pixie what he’d wanted to tell me about? Had he been planning on telling me that this thing between us wasn’t exclusive?
I’d gotten a bad feeling when he’d said we needed to talk, but he’d said there was nothing to worry about.
Jenner only slept, and I angrily zipped the bag, tossing it over my shoulder as I shot the naked man a glare.
He was just like every other asshole in West Bridge.
No, he was worse.
He’d given me a taste of happiness before ripping it all away.
The longer I stood there looking at him, the more my anger turned to hurt. I should have known that what we had was too good to be true. Whoever Pixie was to Jenner, the way her name was in his phone was enough to tell me that she was important. She’d sounded so confident that she was the only woman in his life, it had broken something in me.
Even though I’d gotten to know Jenner a lot over the past week, I was aware there was a lot about him that I didn’t know. But if Pixie was so special to him, he would have at least mentioned her at some point…
Unless she was his fuck buddy or whatever the two of them labeled their relationship.
That was the only reason I could logically come up with for her to sound so sure that she was the only woman in Jenner’s life and for him not to have mentioned a single word about her.
With my heart breaking more and more the longer I stood there, I felt something roll down my cheek, and I realized I was crying. I had a choice. Confront him, show him just how hurt I was, and maybe even break some of his shit. Or walk away. Pretend that my heart hadn’t been crushed into dust.
Ghost him.
Move on.
Put the son of a bitch out of my mind, pick myself up, and go on with my life.
Somehow.
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I tried to lock down the parts of myself that were hurting. It was what had helped me through all the years of being bullied in school so that I didn’t spend every minute of the day crying. It had been more a defense mechanism to protect my brothers, to keep them out of trouble for punishing anyone who had hurt me.
But as I tried to lock down the emotional pain, I found I couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t stop. The agony of realizing I wasn’t someone special to Jenner was too much to store away in one of my many secret compartments.
Biting back a sob, I sprinted from the bedroom and out the front door. I’d asked Violet if I could park my truck in the garage so I could surprise Jenner the night before, and I quickly used the code to open the garage door. Minutes later, I was on the road, but the thought of going home with tears still flooding down my face wasn’t appealing. Mom would want to baby me, and Dad would go all rage monster. I couldn’t deal with either of them and their forms of coddling.