“Don’t you do this to me right now,” she ground out, her voice trembling, her eyes like dark ice. She backed away several steps. “Not you too. I can deal with this shit from anybody else, but not you.”
“I have a family—” he yelled at her, surging to his feet, but she cut him off.
“Oh, fucking good for you! I didn’t ask for you to take me in either, did I? You jumped up all knight-in-shining armor and did that on your own! You ran out in the middle of the night to find him yourself. What, do you think I do any of that shit he deals in?”
“Do you?”
“I can’t believe you would ask me that. I really can’t. Have I ever seemed high to you?”
“Not that I could see, but there must be some reason—”
“No, I don’t do drugs. I don’t even smoke weed. Brian wouldn’t have it.”
“Oh, Brian wouldn’t have it—”
“For fuck’s sake, he tried to murder Brian. I thought that established for you that he wasn’t a good guy. And now you’re freaked out?”
“It was plainly established for you that he wasn’t a good guy from the start. It’s one thing to get mixed up with someone who turns out to be scum, but to go into it knowing he’s that dangerous is insane.”
“Come on, say it. I was asking for it, right?”
“No, but why…just why? I don’t get it.”
She gave a defiant toss of her head. “Maybe he’s a great fuck. Get that?”
The words wouldn’t even compute right away; his brain wouldn’t accept them. He stormed blindly past her, almost reaching the bathroom door before he turned back. “Congratulations. I hope that fuck was worth it. I really do.”
She only blinked at him, looking small and lost. And he wished as he stripped off his jeans and stepped under the hot shower spray that the water would wash away some of this chaos in his mind. Standing with his hands braced against the wall, he let the stream hit the back of his neck and the tension between his shoulder blades. Nothing would melt the knot there, not for days.
Was that all she cared about? Living wild and free and doing whatever she wanted, damn the consequences? That was fine for her. But if that was the way it was, she need not try her luck here. He’d been through too much shit to waste his time on someone like that. What he could use was some time away—maybe Shelly would let him take the girls to his parents’ lake house for a few days. They could fish, hike the trails, take the boat out. The outdoors never failed to clear his head.
He’d believed in her. Stood up for her.
“Jared?”
Turning his head and peeking over his arm, he could see her vague outline standing on the other side of the fogged shower door. He didn’t answer her, instead grabbing his bottle of shampoo and squeezing out a dollop into his palm. If she wanted to talk, she could talk.
“I know, okay? I’ve heard it all from everyone. Brian and Ghost and Jan and…everyone. You know that. I didn’t listen, I like to think I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, but this time I got in over my head. What do you want me to say? I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again? I won’t do it again. But I won’t apologize to you, because I didn’t do anything to you. You got involved in this all on your own.”
“That explains why you came here when Brian got attacked.”
“I told you why I did that! I didn’t ask you if I could stay. You told me to stay.”
“You knew I would.”
She flung the shower door open, and suddenly he could see her clearly, her tear-streaked cheeks, her welling eyes. “Bullshit! You think I came here looking for…what, your charity? Your chivalry?” she scoffed. “Motherfucker, please.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” he grated, voice low and shaking, and her entire being seemed to pause. He didn’t lift a finger or take a step toward her, but she took two paces back from the look in his eyes, her own wide with surprise. “I’ve never called you names. I’ve never disrespected you like that, and I never would. I’m not one of your drug-addled fuckboys, Starla, and that won’t fly here.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” He turned back to his task, soaping his hair, trying to calm his raging pulse. When seconds ticked by and he refused to look at her, she made a strangled sound and slammed his shower door hard enough to rattle the glass. Then she was gone.
***
Where to go? Where the fuck should she go? There was always her parents’—nope. Or Julie’s… She barely thought of that place as home anymore, but she guessed it was. With Doug on the couch flinging insults at her and eating them out of house and home. Pathetic. She hadn’t even bothered to look for a new place, which had been on her list of things to do. She was as bad as everyone said, wasn’t she? Fucked-up all the way around, irresponsible, light years away from having her shit together.
She didn’t know what to do, and she couldn’t stop sobbing. She knew Jared could hear her. Embarrassment ate a hole through her stomach as she plowed through her pile of clothes still in the guest room, shoving them into her duffel bag. Some of her toiletries were still in his bathroom, but fuck it. She would buy new before she went back in there with him.
And even through it all, something in her pleaded for him to come in and make it okay, to be the forgiving sweetheart she knew he was, and that was maybe the most pathetic thing of all. They should be celebrating Max’s capture right now, but instead of fielding his perfectly reasonable questions in a calm manner, she’d opened her big fucking mouth. He’d just spent all night trying to save her. The very least he deserved from her were some answers.
But how could she give them when she didn’t even know them herself?
Maybe he would come if she only gave him a few minutes to cool off. Then she hated herself for even thinking that. She needed to get the fuck out of here, out of his life, out of his kids’ lives. He didn’t want someone like her hanging around his daughters—that was understandable, wasn’t it? All the nice things he’d ever said about her, all the times he’d made her think she was worthy, and he’d been wrong all along. He wasn’t willing to take a chance on her. Fair enough.
Once she had all her belongings in her bag, she fled up the hallway toward the living room, stopping to wipe her eyes and take one last look at the pictures hanging on the wall beside the door. Ashley and Mia, both with big grins, each holding a rod and reel at the end of which they proudly showed off their catches of the day. Jared knelt between them, his eyes electric blue, looking more gorgeous than any man had a right. Precious, all three of them. She hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time with the girls, but she would miss them. The pizza, the hair braids, the paints and softball games… She’d had a foolish fantasy that her future held more of those things.
What an idiot.
Starla glanced back over her shoulder at the entrance to the hallway. All was silent beyond it; she couldn’t hear the shower anymore. Please, Jared, stop me. I am sorry. I am so sorry…
Her bag dropped to the floor beside her, and she ran for his bedroom, heart in her throat. They could work through this. They could.
In his room, the curtains were pulled. Even in the spare light, she could see he was already in bed, the comforter pulled up to his tousled wet hair. If he was awake—and he had to be—he knew she stood there, he had to, yet he didn’t turn to look at her. What to say to the back of his head?
There was nothing to say. His silence said it all.
She fled the house before he could hear her sobs again.
In the end, she did go back to Julie’s. Obviously still sore from their argument the day Starla left, her roommate didn’t seem ecstatic to see her, but Starla couldn’t fault her for that. The feeling was mutual. She spent most of her time in her bedroom with her earbuds in, emerging from her cocoon of misery only to eat and work. Doug was in rare form, spending most of his days passed out drunk. At least that kept him quiet, except for his snoring.
She thought of Jared every moment, waking or sleeping. His eyes, his laugh, his smile. His voice, dark and sex roughened. The way he kissed her. Jesus. To think she’d been so worried about fucking up with him, and all along it had been something she’d already done and couldn’t change that would be their downfall. She couldn’t win, so why even play the game? This had been her shot, her one chance at greatness. And she’d blown it before she could even get started.
Work and drawing and her clients were her only consolation, but even that was torture because being at Dermamania reminded her of Brian. Still she worked herself almost to exhaustion, catching up on the clients she’d had to ditch on and tackling her waiting list. Brian… God, she’d been such a horrible friend. All this time worrying about herself—what the hell did she know about suffering? As soon as she was finished up at the shop the Wednesday after leaving Jared’s, she drove straight to the hospital.
Starla didn’t know what to expect when she gently tapped on Brian’s door, but it certainly wasn’t the sight that greeted her as Candace answered her knock, bright-eyed and smiling. As soon as she saw Starla standing there, she pitched herself into her arms, and Starla catching her was the only thing that kept the girl from tumbling out into the hallway.