BEAUTIFUL BROKEN MESS (Broken, Series #2)(19)

This is icy territory that I’m still not sure how to approach. I could just blurt out the truth to Jaxon. I want to, God, do I want to. I want to tell him everything. I want to tell him how I’ve only wanted Jace since the moment I met him. In a way, I know Jaxon won’t care that I had only been with him to waste time. He already knew that.

The morning he brought me back home for breakfast after Cole’s party, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Right away, I refused. But then he explained that he thought I was a cool chick and we could have some fun together. He also wanted to get his mom and brother off his back, since apparently he’d been acting wild lately. He claimed that if he had a steady girlfriend, maybe they would lay off him and not worry so much. Stupidly, I actually considered his crazy idea.

When I later realized that Jace was a lost cause, I explained to Jax that I cared about someone I couldn’t have, and that the only way I would “date” him was if he knew that it wouldn’t be going anywhere. I also wanted to get away from my house more often. He completely agreed, saying he really only needed a buffer to keep his mom at bay. I didn’t have normal parents, so I had no idea what he was talking about.

We crafted this strange sort of relationship and friendship between us. I won’t lie, we had a good time together. But there was always something missing for both of us. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have agreed to it, but I was young and stupid and just trying to find an escape from my home life.

For the next three years, I compared every guy I came across to Jace, and they always came up short. That’s when Lane decided I needed to try and do something about it. I hadn’t seen Jaxon in years and I hoped the fact that we had never been in love would help to sway Jace’s opinion on the matter. Maybe Jace just needed to see that I never really meant anything to his brother and that it had always been him for me.

Nevertheless, when Jaxon pulled me away from Jace and back into his room, I realized it wasn’t my story to tell. This is his twin brother we’re talking about here. If Jace didn’t want him to know, I couldn’t hurt him even more by telling Jaxon. I spent the entire week trying to get Jace alone, but he slipped in and out of the apartment like a ghost and I couldn’t get him to listen for even a second. Halfway through the week, he stopped coming back to the apartment altogether.

When I finally met Emerson, I instantly despised her. Not because she was beautiful, and not because I sat around all week listening to Cole and Jax talk about her like she walked on water. None of that bothered me. What made me seethe was that the first time I met her, Jace had his arm around her shoulders. Who the hell was this girl, and how did she have all of these guys wrapped around her little finger?

Cole’s new girlfriend lived next door, and from what I was able to gather, she was Em’s best friend. I figured out that Jace had been hiding out over there, so every day I tried to stay close to the door in hopes that I could catch him. One day I heard him outside the apartment calling out to Quinn and I jumped up to open the door. He was already running down the hallway and heading out toward the parking lot. I was still in my pajamas and my hair was in a messy bun on the top of my head, but I didn’t care. My time was running out. Lane had called that morning to ask about my progress, and when I told him I was still at square one, he told me that I needed to kick it into high gear. I had classes to get back to.

Jace came back down the hallway with one arm wrapped around a beautiful, blonde-haired girl who could only be the infamous Emerson. His opposite hand was holding a large duffel bag. I winced, knowing that I was going to have to do this in front of her. But before I could even get introductions in, I had already pissed off Jace.