I shake my head. “Jamie, this isn’t—”
“I’m the one you warned him against, right?” She smiles, sloppy, and I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming. “What were his exact words, Colton?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, that’s right…” She sways on her feet as she moves toward me, stabbing her finger into my chest. “Who the fuck knows what, or who, she’s been doing the past five years!” Jamie laughs once. “You’re just like her.”
“Like who?” I ask while Jamie stumbles toward the open door.
Brianna stops her. “Just wait,” she says, adjusting the straps of Jamie’s dress. “You’re just… a little exposed, is all. Come on.” She takes Jamie’s hand and leads her to the bathroom.
I stand in the middle of the room, taking stock of everything that’s happened. It feels like hours since I kicked open the door. It’s only been minutes. Maybe even seconds. “You owe me,” Colton says, and he can fuck right off.
“Fuck off,” I murmur, checking out the broken shelf. He walks away without another word, and I sit on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands.
“Why did you lie to me?” Brianna says, and I don’t know if she’s talking to Jamie or me.
I lift my head, my position giving me a direct view into the bathroom where Jamie and Brianna stand opposite each other. Bri runs a cloth under the tap, then reaches up to wipe the smeared makeup from under Jamie’s eyes.
“I’ve barely said two words to you,” Jamie answers, her tone flat.
“I asked if you drew, and you said no.” When the fuck did that happen?
Jamie’s blinks are as slow as her words. “I don’t draw.”
“Did you ever?” Bri asks.
I stand quickly, wait for the two girls in my life to face me head-on. “Let’s go.”
23
Jamie
If I ever want to know what it feels like to disappoint both parents, not just one, I’ll remember this very moment—sitting in the back seat of Brianna’s car while Holden drives and she sits shotgun, and they keep looking at each other while silently judging the girl they feel responsible for.
Even though Brianna’s car is an open-top Jeep, I feel like I’m suffocating on the thickness of the air filling my lungs. It’s as though the world is folding in on me, the weight of our deception squeezing at my throat, making it almost impossible to see, to breathe. Because it’s only now I’m forced to realize that everything I thought I knew was a lie. And the person I believed Holden to be is the biggest lie of them all.
He pulls over at the front of a small cottage-style home, and Brianna turns to me. “It’s my grandparents’ house,” she says, smiling that sweet, innocent smile of hers. “My grandma’s a light sleeper, so the headlights would wake her.” I don’t know why she feels the need to tell me this, and I really wish I didn’t care about her or that I didn’t like her. It would make things so much easier.
I look at the house, at the pale-yellow siding and the hydrangeas lining the front yard, and offer a smile of my own. “It’s a lovely home.”
Without another word, Holden gets out to walk her to the door, and I close my eyes, wait for his return. As soon as he’s behind the wheel again, he says, “You can move to the front now.”
I’d rather not. “I’m good.”
He taps his forehead on the steering wheel twice, as if frustrated he has to deal with my petulant ass, and then turns the car around. Once we’re on the main road again, I ask, “Can you take me back to the party?”
I catch his eyes through the rearview mirror, watch them widen slightly. Jaw set, he snaps, “What the fuck for?”
Heart in my throat, my voice barely audible, I murmur, “I left my pendant there.”
“What?” He’s so snide, and he has no right to be. I didn’t ask him to fucking break down doors or go punching people like a jacked-up Hulk on steroids. I’ve already dealt with one of those in my life. I don’t need another.
“My pendant,” I say, louder, clearer. I sit taller. “I left my pendant in the bedroom, and I need to go back and get it because I can’t…” I can’t exist without it, and now I have to learn to exist with him. “I just need it. Please, Holden. I’ll never ask anything of you ever again.”
He doesn’t speak, but he nods, and ten minutes later, we’re driving past the old paper mill. He parks at the same spot we left and says, “Wait here.”
It feels like an eternity before he returns, handing me my phone first. I didn’t even know I was missing it. “Maggie’s called a few times,” he tells me, getting behind the wheel again. “I already let her know you were safe.”
I was never not safe…
My pulse jumps out of my chest when he hands me the pendant, and I hold it tight in my grasp, bring it to my heart, let it bring life back into my soul. My eyes drift shut while tears coat my lashes, and believe me, I realize how pathetic it is to feel so much about a physical object or rely so heavily on it to keep me somewhat sane. “Thank you.” I choke on the words, and I don’t open my eyes or loosen my grip on the metal as we move again. Only moments later, my shoulder hits the door, and my eyes snap open when Holden makes a sharp turn. But he’s not turning onto the road; he’s speeding behind the paper mill. My neck twists as I look around us, and I lurch forward when the car comes to an abrupt stop, almost hitting my head on the back of the front seat. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
He gets out of the car, slamming doors and kicking rocks. Then tires. And when he joins me in the back seat, his eyes lit with rage, I push my back into the interior, trying to stay as far away from him as possible.
“How drunk are you?” he accuses, his words echoing through the stillness around us. He’s parked in the perfect spot—still hidden from the main road and far enough from the houses that no one would see us unless they drove by slowly.
“I’m not drunk,” I reply. I’m just… self-destructive.
“Did he take advantage of you?”
“No!”
Holden’s too big for such little spaces, and his legs are bent in awkward angles, his chest alone taking up half the width of the back seat, but when his head falls into his hands, the heels of his palms rubbing at his eyes, he looks so, so small. “I need to know what happened in there,” he says, tone flat, not looking at me.
Clearing my throat, I ask, “Do you want me to tell you that we fucked?”
“No,” he’s quick to answer, eyes on mine now. “I want you to tell me the fucking truth, Jamie!”
His eyes drop to my hand when I grip the pendant tighter. Pulse racing, I give him what he wants. “He was going to take me home, but he said he needed something from the bedroom, and so I followed him in there…”
He drops his head in his hands again, his fingers curling, gripping at his hair. “And then what?”
“He told me I wasn’t what he expected. That he found it odd that I wouldn’t even let him kiss me, especially after what you told him… that you warned him—”