Beautiful Broken Rules (Broken, Series #1)(107)

Interrupting my inspection of his room, Jace asked, “You haven’t been in many bedrooms though lately, have you?”

I stared at him, wondering if I should answer that question, while he came and sat next to me on the bed. I decided not to. He would just relay that back to his brother and I would feel even more pathetic than I already did.

Instead, I pulled out my English text and began going over each subject area we needed to know. I quickly realized that Jace didn’t need to study this at all. He knew everything by heart already; he was only doing this to help me out. I caught myself zoning out while he read from his book to me. I watched his facial expressions and his mouth move as the words he spoke flowed from his lips, lips that were the same size and plumpness as Jaxon’s. I spied that damn slightly turned in front tooth that I had once told Jaxon was my favorite part of his face. My heart began to hurt from the sight of him. He looked too much like his brother and it was painful.

Before I could catch myself, I began leaning in toward his lips. In my mind, this had become Jaxon sitting on his bed reading to me, not Jace.

He immediately leapt backward away from me, before I made contact. “What the hell, Em?” He looked at me with a stunned expression on his face.

I finally came back to earth and realized what I’d almost done, when it wasn’t Jaxon’s deep melodic voice I was hearing, but Jace’s. My hand shot up to cover my lips.

“Oh my God, Jace! I’m so sorry!” I yelled. All of a sudden, tears were streaming down my face. What the hell was going on with me? I stopped crying weeks ago and now this week, I couldn’t stop.

“You really are trying to get my ass kicked,” he said, trying to lighten the mood and I loved him for it.

“No, no, no, God, that wasn’t supposed to happen. I zoned out. You were…” I couldn’t say it. I was humiliated enough. How could I tell him that I thought he was his brother and that was why I had almost kissed him?

“It’s okay, I understand.” He gave me a sad, pitying look and I couldn’t be in this room with him another second.

I quickly reached down and put all of my papers and books back into my bag and leapt for the door.

“Em, wait! It’s okay!” he shouted.

When I ran out the door, I stumbled over Jaxon’s body that was sitting on the ground and leaning up against the wall. Simultaneously, my hands flew out to catch myself but my face followed and my mouth hit my knuckle. I brought my legs in toward my body and crouched on the ground in that position for a second. If I ever hoped to get my dignity back in front of him, it apparently wasn’t happening anytime soon.

“Babe, are you okay?” Jaxon asked, hovering over me nervously.

“What the hell did you do man?” I heard Jace’s voice from further back.

“No, *, what the f*ck did YOU do?” he barked at his brother. “I heard her shouting in there. Why would she be shouting when you said you two were just going to be studying?”

I couldn’t let Jace take the fall for my embarrassing mistake. I stood up and faced them. “Stop yelling at him Jaxon, he didn’t do anything wrong,” I scolded.

They both stared at me with wide eyes. Then Jaxon reached down, scooped me up, and started walking toward the bathroom before I had a chance to protest.

“Jaxon, you can’t just pick me up whenever you want anymore, put me down,” I said angrily.

He ignored me and continued into the bathroom. He sat me down onto the counter and turned toward the linen cabinet. I watched as he grabbed a clean washcloth and brought it to the sink to run water over it. When he seemed pleased with the temperature of the water, he twisted the cloth to ring out the excess. I just sat there watching him, having no idea what he was doing. He finally looked up into my eyes and my stomach dropped; I missed those eyes. He brought the washcloth up to my lip and gently pressed down. I winced at the pain. He lifted it up and with another corner, he wiped my chin. I looked down at the cloth in his hand and noticed it was covered in blood. My blood. I had no idea I was even bleeding.