Until You (Fall Away Series)(22)

I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me.

And I’d almost thrown my future away in my need for her?

I’m done giving them my attention.

She hated me. She’d hate me forever, and I was a stupid f*cking prick for wanting her when we were fourteen.

No one wants us. I knew I didn’t want you. My father’s voice crept into my head.

I climbed back over to my window and crawled through, not caring if they saw me. Tossing the ax onto the floor, I walked over and switched on my iPod dock to Five Finger Death Punch’s Coming Down and grabbed my phone to text Madoc.

Party tonight? Mom’s leaving around 4. My mother escaped every Friday night to her boyfriend’s in Chicago. I still hadn’t met the guy, but she almost always stayed the entire weekend.

Hell, yeah, he texted not a minute later.

Drinks? I asked. Madoc’s dad had a liquor store—or close to—in his basement along with a wine cellar. The guy was hardly ever home, so we took what we wanted, and I supplied the food.

Got it. See you at 7.

I threw my phone on the bed, but it buzzed again.

Grabbing it again, I opened up a text from Jax.

Dad called again.

Son of a bitch.

My father was finding ways to get Jax’s number, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to be calling him. Abusing him was one of the reasons my father was in jail, after all.

I’ll handle it, I texted.

Looking at the clock, I saw it was only ten in the morning.

Just go today, I told myself. Get it over with for the week, and you won’t have to go tomorrow.

These trips to my father’s ate at my insides, and I dreaded them. There was no telling what he’d say to me from one week to the next. Last time, he’d told me, in graphic detail, about how he’d dropped my mother off at the abortion clinic one day to get rid of me. And then, how he’d let loose on her when she hadn’t gone through with it. I didn’t know if the story was true, but I tried to just let the insults, stories, and taunts fly past me. Most of the time they did. Sometimes they didn’t.

Screw it.

Throwing off a sweaty, black T-shirt in exchange for a clean, black v-neck, I snatched my keys off the bedside table and bounded down the stairs.

“I’m heading out for a while,” I said as I passed my mother in the kitchen. “See you Monday.”





My hands shook, even though I’d been coming here nearly a year already. I hated looking the f*cker in the face, especially when he made these visits as awful as possible. I knew he got special privileges for cooperating, but I had no doubt that he enjoyed every sick word that came out of his mouth, too.

“It’s Friday. I’m not supposed to have to see you until tomorrow,” he grumbled, sitting down at the table in the visiting room.

I forced myself to look him in the eye and even out my tone. “You’re calling Jax again. It stops now.”

He laughed me off. “That’s what you said last time, but you’re not in control, Jared.”

Yes. I. Am.

“You’re not even allowed to make calls.” After I reported it to the warden last time, he’d lost the privilege of making unsupervised trips to the phone.

Shrugging his shoulders with palms up, he answered, “And yet, I find a way.”

It was only a moment. But in the time it took for my chest to sink and for me to break eye contact, he knew. He knew he was right, and that I was powerless. Maybe it was the guards letting him make calls for favors, or maybe he had a fellow prisoner helping him out, but we both knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop him.

I could never stop him.

“Leave him alone.” My lips moved, but I barely heard my own voice.

“What bugs you more?” He leaned in and narrowed his blue eyes. “That I call him and not you, or that you can’t stop me? I keep telling you, Jared, you have no power. Not really. It may seem like you’re the one in control, because you’re out there and I’m in here, but I’m the one that haunts you. Not the other way around.”

I stood up and stuck my hand in my pocket, gripping the fossil necklace so hard that I thought it would break.

“Fuck you,” I growled and walked out.





“Oh, Jared,” Piper gasped my name as I devoured her neck. Gripping her hair and pulling her head back, I tried to get lost in her perfume and her body.