Beautiful Broken Rules (Broken, Series #1)(108)

“Are you okay?” he asked, too much concern in his eyes.

I took the cloth from his hand and hopped off the counter, holding it against my lip. “I’m fine, Jaxon. Next time, try not to eavesdrop and maybe I won’t fall over you.” I know my tone was filled with ice, but I hated how he was trying to be friendly now all of a sudden.

I reached for the doorknob and he slammed his palm against the wooden door to keep it shut. I didn’t even bother trying to pull it open since he was a thousand times stronger than me. I just stared at the door, waiting for him to relent.

He came up close behind me without touching, but I could feel the heat of his body. “What are you doing to me? You’re ruining me. This isn’t me. I don’t drool after women, but I can’t seem to get you out of my f*cking head! Worst of all, we aren’t even friends anymore. You were my best friend, Emerson. Now you’ve got me jumping down my own brother’s throat because you’re in his bedroom. You’ve got me taking you out of some other guy’s bed just so I can see you in mine… just one more time.”

“Jaxon, you ended us,” I whispered.

“Why can’t we at least be friends? Every time I attempt to talk to you it turns into a yelling match.”

“It’s impossible. I can’t be your friend. It hurts too much. If I’m ruining you, then you’ve destroyed me. I finally trusted someone enough to love and you proved that all along it wasn’t worth it.” Tears were running down my face again. One day I hoped that these tear ducts would just dry up.

“Please, Beautiful, just come to my room and talk to me.” I winced at his term of endearment for me. His arm came down from the door and I jumped at the opportunity by swinging it open.

“Just stop, Jaxon. Stop playing my CD at night, stop hanging up pictures of me in your room, stop taking me out of Cole’s bed, and stop making sure I get my favorite food. You don’t want me anymore; all of this stuff just confuses me!” I continued down the hallway to leave.

“Emerson, that’s not--“

“Leave her alone, Jax.” I heard Cole’s harsh voice interrupt from the end of the hall. I walked out of their place and headed straight for my car to get to school.

*.*.*.*.*

Everything was almost ready for the auction tomorrow night. Micah had actually been a huge help to me. I was surprised when he signed on for the internship at the beginning of the semester. I had no idea he was interested in this area of Journalism. At least I’ll have a close friend in Africa with me. I was still getting to know the others in the group.

When he saw my lip, he freaked out because it definitely looked like I had been punched. It took a while to explain that I had actually managed to punch myself. After my ridiculous story, he laughed and told me that only I could accomplish that. Surprisingly, he hadn’t hit on me once since Jaxon and I had broken up. Earlier, I had needed to call all of the girls that were going to be auctioned off to make sure they would all be here on time, and Micah volunteered to call all twenty of them. I don’t care if he just wanted twenty hot girls’ numbers; that was a lot of time that he saved me.

While we were finishing up the ballroom, I turned toward him from across a table, “Thanks again, Micah. You’ve helped me out a lot. If it weren’t for you, I’d have had to come up here at three in the morning after I got off work just to have this place done in time.”

“Not a problem, Ems. I know I gave you a hard time last semester about the whole dating thing, but I think of you as a good friend. I realize you would rather have Jax here to help, but I’m glad I could.”