“Jade?”
Reid was standing on the other side of the open doors, his face marred with a glower.
“Reid.”
“You want to explain why you hit my girlfriend?”
A sick laugh escaped my mouth, the sound ripping through me like a blade. Sure enough, Stella had presumably told him what had happened, only in her version she was the victim.
“Is that what she said?”
“No, I saw her face.”
It was my turn to glower - only it wasn’t so much in anger as it was confusion.
“Her face?”
Reid threw his hands up in the air. “Yeah, her busted lip and swollen cheek. Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t,” I replied, leaning against the elevator wall.
“Oh, so ran into the fuckin’ wall and did it to herself?”
Probably, I thought.
She’d proven there were no limits to her crazy.
“I can’t believe you,” he said when I didn’t respond. “Why, Jade?”
I stared at him, and wondered when we had fallen so far from where we’d been. I was looking at a complete stranger, and yet everything about him was still so familiar. He was all I knew for so long, and now he looked…disappointed. In me.
Oh, the irony.
I was disappointed in myself too.
For allowing myself to become so disconnected from who I was and for allowing his psycho Hobbit girlfriend to goad me. I wasn’t this girl.
I straightened from my position against the wall, and stuck my chin out.
“You need to ask Dane and Kennedy what they saw, because you won’t believe anything I have to say. Stella attacked me, Reid, and she made it pretty damn obvious you want nothing to do with me anymore.”
I wanted to tell him the rest, how she said I was nothing more than a fuck to him, but saying it out loud would only drive the knife in deeper, and I wasn’t sure I was willing to bleed any more than I already had.
Not for Reid, and not for the remnants of our friendship.
I was done.
“Jade - ”
“No,” I intercepted. “The fact that you believed her, after knowing me all my life, says it all. We’re done here, Reid.”
“No, we’re not,” he snapped. “Tell me what happened!”
“She already told you. What’s the point of repeating it if you won’t believe me?”
He roughly pulled his fingers through his hair, and expelled an exasperated breath. “She said - ”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re done Reid, for good. I’m done. Now let me go.”
He looked at me one last time, his eyes filled with everything he wanted to say but couldn’t. My lip trembled, and the tears fell as I looked away. I felt him move away from me, and when the doors shut, with him on the outside, I felt the tear, the loss, the end.
GRADY HELD MY HAIR back as I spewed the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl. My body heaved, and my muscles cramped with the exertion. There was nothing left, but my body kept heaving. It was physically painful, and I had tears running down my cheeks as a result. After the showdown with Stella, and the conversation with Reid that had followed, I’d come back to our room, and taken a hot shower before climbing into bed. Two hours later, I was running for the bathroom, ready to hurl my insides out.
And I sure as hell did.
“I think we need to get a doctor up here,” said Grady. He was rubbing my back while I shook, and continued to be sick, despite having nothing left to bring up.
I wiped my mouth, and gladly took the wet washcloth he handed me. “No, but I think I need to leave.”
I didn’t want to be there any longer, and it had nothing to do with spending the last hour praying to the porcelain Gods.
“You sure?” He asked, crouching down in front of me. “We can always wait it out, and see how you feel tomorrow morning. It might just be something you ate.”
I leaned my head against the cold tiled wall behind me. “Get me my phone please?”
He left, and returned minutes later, handing me my phone. There was only one person I knew to call at times like this. One person who would always come to my rescue.
I pressed my phone to my ear, and waited while it rang.
“Hi, darling.” My mother’s thick Spanish accent greeted my ears, and I’d never been so happy to hear her voice.
“Mama,” I greeted, my throat scratchy, and my voice hoarse.
“Jade, what’s wrong?” She asked, sounding alarmed.
“I need to come home,” I said, my voice thickening with emotion.
“Is everything okay?”
I shook my head, and then remembered she couldn’t see me.
“No,” I replied, “Do you think Papa can send the jet? I need to come home, please.”