BEAUTIFUL BROKEN MESS (Broken, Series #2)(57)

“Em, I’ll see you later okay?” she says.

“You’re not leaving, right? I mean, remember what we talked about?” she asks cryptically.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll stay for a little while.”

“Okay, well I had fun today. Thanks for coming with us!” Em says with a smile. Jax sits down next to Em, facing the water, and she quickly gets up to sit in his lap, facing him. Audrey spins around to head back toward the party and accidently runs right into my arms. Or maybe I had planned it that way.

“Whoa, you’re not gonna leave are you?”

“Yeah, I’m hoping I can,” she replies. Without letting her step out of my grasp, I reach out and tuck a wandering strand of hair behind her ear. In the dark, her eyes look as black as midnight when she gazes up at me. Slowly, I lean down so my mouth is level with her ear.

“We’re still on for tomorrow, right?” I whisper. She nods her head up and down. With my face still close to hers, I run my lips lightly against her temple. From a few feet away, I catch Em watching us over Jax’s shoulder. When she sees me looking at her, she smiles and gives me the ‘thumbs up’ signal behind his back. I stare at her, confused. Why is she happy about Audrey being here?

I lean away from Audrey and stand up straight before Jaxon catches on. I lead her back up the hill so we can rejoin the partygoers.

“Why doesn’t Em want you to leave?” I ask.

“So I can talk to Jaxon,” she says simply.

“What? You’re going to tell him before me?”

“I don’t really want to tell either of you anything anymore,” she states in a hard tone. I grab her arms and stop her before we reach the crowd, then sit down in the sand, gesturing for her to join me. After a heavy sigh, she relents, but sits a good foot away from me. I don’t understand why she’s being cold all of a sudden. I take hold of her legs and pull her closer to me, her body leaving a trail in the sand as she reaches my side.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Jace… let’s not do this here.”

“Where? Here, where no one can hear a word we say? Or did you actually mean, let’s not do this ever? I think here is pretty damn perfect.”

A fire ignites behind her eyes as she glares at me. “Yes, I actually meant let’s not do this ever. You want to know why? Because none of y’all cared when it actually mattered. You heard a rumor and you believed it. You assumed and you ran with it. At what point did you come to me and ask if any of it was true? When, Jace?”

My mouth opens and shuts because I’ve got nothing to say to that. “Exactly,” she huffs out in frustration and stands. “You don’t deserve to know what happened in MY life, because you never bothered before. Why are you HERE now? Why do you care NOW?” she yells.

As if he has an internal alarm for an upset Audrey or just super-sonic hearing when she’s distressed, Lane emerges from the crowd with a determined look on his face. When he spots her, he stalks forward.

“What’s going on over here?” A voice I wasn’t expecting makes my head pivot backward. Jax is standing behind me, taking in the scene. “Jace?” he asks.

Everyone is just staring at one another, and before I can even begin to formulate a response, Audrey says, “Jaxon, can I talk to you?”



  - Nine -



AUDREY -

Jace has that deer-in-the-headlights look. I didn’t mean to rip into him like that, but I am feeling extremely overwhelmed by the situation. Em has just spent the better part of thirty minutes trying to convince me to talk to Jaxon. Then Jace comes along, acting like he’s entitled to know anything and everything about me.