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“How are you getting home?” Jesse questions as we walk out of Lauren’s home together, narrowly escaping being caught by anyone. Though I’m not going to lie, I feel sorry for the girl, her home is a mess.
I shrug my shoulder as I look up at the bright blue sky. “Walking,” I tell him. “I don’t have a car and my phone went dead last night so I can’t call an Uber.”
“Come on,” he says, nodding his head toward the front gate. “My place is a ten-minute walk from here. I’ll drop you home.”
“Thanks, but no,” I scoff. “You and I have already spent way too much time together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, babe,” he tells me. “You said your mom would be worrying. So you can either walk the hour and a half back to Haven Falls, or you can walk ten minutes back to my place with me and then I can drop you home.”
I let out a groan. I’d be an idiot if I choose to walk when I have a perfectly sexy Ryder brother offering me a lift home, and it’s not like he’s doing it in hopes of getting something in return. After all, he’s already had me…twice. “Fine,” I tell him with a defeated sigh.
Jesse grins proudly as though he’s just won something and I realize that it’s going to take something huge to wipe the grin off his face. Jesse starts walking and I follow his lead, unable to remember how to get to his place.
Sure enough, we reach the famous Ryder household ten minutes later and true to his word, he rushes inside, though his bedroom window after explaining something about burning a mattress. The second he disappears through his window; his head comes shooting back out. “Hey, you hungry?” he calls below.
I raise my brow in interest. “I mean, I’m not going to say no to a bagel.” Jesse winks before disappearing once again when horror strikes me. “WAIT!” I yell, hoping he hasn’t gotten too far. His head comes back and I beam up at him. “A coffee would be great too.”
Jesse rolls his eyes. “Anything else, your majesty?”
I grin back at him. Two can play this game. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind some good sex. I haven’t had any of that in a while, only duds.”
Jesse narrows his eyes at me but the amusement is as clear as day on his face. “Trust me, babe, you don’t want to start a war with me. I always win.”
I cringe at the name ‘babe’ on his lips. While it sounds alright coming from his mouth, I’ve never been much of a ‘babe.’ Now, ‘Tiger,’ while it sounds super cheesy, I couldn’t help how it gave me tingles every time I heard it. In fact, I think I like it way more than I should.
“I think you’ve finally met your match,” I tell him with confidence. “Now, where’s my coffee, wench?”
His shoulders sag and he glares before finally ducking away from the window. I stand tall, never so damn proud of myself. I guess all the years of getting under Jackson’s skin has finally paid off.
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting in Jesse’s Range Rover, happily sipping on my coffee. The ride is quiet as Jesse seems to be stuck inside his head. I don’t really mind though as after putting anything sexual aside, I really don’t know what to talk to him about.
Why do I feel so giddy and nervous?
He pulls onto my street and I’m not surprised to find that he knows exactly where I live. “Wait,” I call in a panic. “You have to stop a few houses down.”
His brow furrow as he glances across at me. “Why?”
“Because Jackson will be staring out the front window waiting to see who I spent the night with and if he sees you dropping me off, there’s going to be a brawl on my front lawn.” Jesse grins and I see the idea forming behind his eyes. “Don’t even think about it,” I warn.
He pulls over on the side of the road, just as I had requested. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I roll my eyes as I unbuckle my seat belt and start getting out. “You’re such a liar,” I tell him before turning around and looking at him with an awkward cringe, unsure of what to say. “So…ummm.”
“Don’t,” he cuts me off. “I don’t want some awkward as fuck goodbye. Just go and I’ll see you around.”
“Sounds good to me.”
I step back from his Range Rover and wait patiently for his car to turn around and leave. After all, I wouldn’t want to turn my back just to see him shoot forward and boast about his night in front of my house just to piss off Jackson.
With Jesse out of the way, I can finally breathe. What the hell was that? I was planning on going out for a good night, though I had my doubts about it being good. All I really cared about was getting away from my brother. He’s such an ass at the moment. Well, actually I guess that’s not fair. He hasn’t been an ass, I just like calling him that.
He slept with my best friend and destroyed everything. The one restriction I’ve ever put on my brother was to stay away from Henley. She was all I had in the world. I didn’t care if he slept his way through all the girls at school, but Henley was off-limits. I should have known better than to turn my back because the second I did, the two of them were getting naked and betraying my trust.
I lost my brother and my best friend in one go and the very next day, mom tells me I’ve lost my school as well.
Having to live under the same roof as Jackson lately has been hard and any chance to get under his skin is a chance that I’ll take, hence why I snuck out and went to some ridiculous party in Broken Hill. Not knowing where I was or who I was with would have driven him insane, the fact that I never came home would have definitely killed him, and he deserved all of it.
I walk down to my home and sure enough, Jackson is staring out the front window when I step onto my front lawn, in a show of not giving a shit, he shuffles away as fast as humanly possible and by the time I push through the front door, he’s on the couch watching TV as though he’s been there the whole time. “Where the hell have you been?” he demands, narrowing his eyes at me as though the answers are written across my face in sharpie.
“What’s it to you?” I grunt, striding past him. “Who knows? Maybe I was out screwing your best friend.” I grin to myself. If only he knew who I was really screwing. Though I’m sure the rumor mill will do its thing and in time he’ll know exactly what I was up to.
“Kaylah,” he sighs, pushing up from the couch but not stepping towards me. “How long are you going to hold that against me?”
“Until you can go back in time and change what you did.”
“Come on, you know I can’t do that.”
I stop in the hallway in front of my bedroom door before looking back at him still by the couch. “Then I guess I’ll never get over it.”
Jackson’s expression breaks but I don’t hang around to hear his excuses. I push through my bedroom door and let it fall closed behind me, collapsing down into the bed and wishing today was already over.
Chapter 4
Jesse
I think I’m in love.
I sit back on the couch in the den, watching the T.V. but not actually hearing it. I haven’t been able to get Kaylah Millington out of my head all day. She blew my fucking mind. Hell, I even refused to let her sneak out of that room and made her stay and chill out, but something tells me that she wasn’t exactly put off by the idea.
I don’t know what’s up with me. I’ve never spent time with a girl after a random screw like that before. What’s more, I sure as hell haven’t fallen asleep spooning one, let alone, waking up craving her the next morning.
The fact that she’s Jackson’s baby sister…well, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s really a bit of both. It’s a way to stick it to Jackson that I stuck it to his sister, but at the same time, she’s his little sister and there’s no way in hell she’ll let me get that close again.
I’ve sat here all afternoon. I got home from dropping her off and haven’t moved a fucking muscle since. My phone has chimed over and over again with the boys looking for me. Nate has walked in a handful of times, wondering what the hell is wrong with
me and as I stared off into space, unable to give him a straight answer. He wandered off utterly clueless.
Thoughts of her body swirl through my head and I’m struggling, I’m really fucking struggling. It’s messing with my head. I don’t understand what the fuck this is. This shit has never happened to me. I’m not the guy who catches feelings for some chick, especially some chick who happens to be Jackson Millington’s little sister.
Fuck, I’m screwed.
Why can’t I stop thinking about her?
I have to do something, but I’m so out of my depth here. What am I supposed to do? How do I make it stop?
I get up and make my way into the kitchen and start opening up drawers, the fridge, the fucking pantry, basically anything that will open and close while I search for something, but I don’t fucking know what. Maybe I’m hungry, but I’m too confused and out of it to think straight. Why am I so fucked up?
“What on earth are you doing?”
I spin around to find mom staring at me from the dining table and I check myself. When the fuck did she get there? I swear I didn’t walk past her just now. “I, um…I’m hungry.”
Mom narrows her eyes at me before pushing up from the table. She walks over to me slowly. “Are you alright? You’ve been acting strange all day.”
“Yeah,” I say, shrugging off her concern. “I’m fine, just tired, I guess. I think I’ll go and lie down for a while.”
“Alright,” she says with deep suspicion. “Don’t make a mess. I’ve spent the day cleaning.”
I smile. There’s nothing quite like having to tip-toe around the house after mom has spent the day cleaning it. I get up to my room and lie down on my bed for all of three seconds before flying back up and grabbing my keys. This is driving me insane. I need to talk it through. I need to understand what this feeling is and there’s only one person whom I can possibly talk to.
I pull up outside Tora’s place ten minutes later and make my way through her door, not bothering with knocking or ringing the doorbell. I walk through, knowing she’s either up in her room with her eyes glued to her Kindle or she’s down in the den binge-watching something on Netflix.
I start with the den and I’m not disappointed. “What are you doing here?” Tora groans as I walk past her and knock her feet off the coffee table.
I drop down on the couch beside her with a heavy sigh and lean forward, propping my elbows on my knees. I look to Tora, not sure of any other words to describe it. “I’m in trouble.”
She watches me for a moment, probably wondering if I’ve gone and robbed a bank or got my name on Broken Hill’s most wanted list, but she’d never figure out that it’s worse than that, so much worse. “What’d you do?”
I crash down onto the couch and prop my feet up at the end as Tora takes a sip of her drink. I let her have it. “I’m in love.”
Soda comes spurting out of her nose and mouth and she gapes at me in horror. “What?” she shrieks, trying to mop up the soda. “You’re lying right now. Tell me you’re lying.”
“Believe me,” I say, feeling my world crumble. “I wish I was.”
Tora sighs. “Shit, that poor, poor girl. Who is it?”
I watch her as I scrunch up my face. I’m really not sure if I should be telling her this, but it’s not like she’s about to go and tell the world, I trust her with my life. “You have to promise not to say anything.”
“Are you twelve?” she scoffs. “Would you like me to make a pinky promise?”
I narrow my eyes at her. Would a ‘sure, Jess, no problem’ have hurt? I go to get up, knowing exactly how she’ll react. “Fine, I’ll go and find someone else to talk to about this shit.”
“No, no, no,” Tora rushes out before drawing a cross over her heart. “I’ll behave.”
I consider her a moment before getting comfortable again. “Good,” I tell her, holding out my little finger. “And for the record, I do want you to make a pinky promise.”
Tora laughs but nonetheless, loops her pinky around mine. I smirk back at her. “If you even think about breaking the sanctity of this promise…”
“I know, I know,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “You’ll tell everyone that I was crushing on Mr. Thompson when I was ten and how I was plotting to get rid of his wife so I could marry him.”
I laugh, recalling my fond memories of my childhood. “You know that guy was gross, right? I’ve never seen so much hair on a man in my life.”
“Shut up. I thought he looked manly.”
I hold back vomit. “More like an ape.”
Tora fixes me with a hard stare. “Can we stop discussing Mr. Thompson and start explaining why you think you’re in love with some girl you probably only just met?”
How does she know that I only just met her? I let out a breath, still unsure what to even say. “Fine,” I groan. “But we’re coming back to the Thompson thing.”
“Jesse.”
“Alright,” I cringe. “It’s…” Fuck. “Kaylah Millington.”
Tora flies to her feet, knocking over a bowl of popcorn as she stares at me wide-eyed. “WHAT? Have you lost your mind? Nate is going to kill you. Not to mention, Jackson will too when he finds out you screwed his little sister.”
“How’d you know I screwed her?”
“You’re Jesse. You screw everybody.”
I laugh to myself. She has a point, but we’re not here to discuss my downfalls and bad habits right now. “Can we focus on the issue at hand, please?”
Tora raises a brow. “And what’s that? That you screwed the one girl that’s going to make Nate think you’ve betrayed him and gone to the dark side.”
“No,” I say, sitting back up. “How do I stop having…feelings? I don’t like it.”
Tora gives me a soft smile as she drops back down to the couch. “It doesn’t just go away. Trust me, if they did, I’d make it stop for me, but I can’t.” She lets out a heavy sigh, and I realize that she’s still hurting really bad about her situation with Nate. “When did you start getting these so-called ‘feelings’?”
I laugh. Now, is that really a question she wants me to answer? I think it over for a second and in order for her to completely understand my situation, then it’s a must. “Well, I was eating her out-”
“Woah,” Tora cuts me off, blanching at my opening comments. “I don’t want to hear this shit.”
“You have to,” I insist. “This is the whole reason I like her.”
“Jess,” she groans. “I don’t want to hear how the girl has a golden pussy or how her flaps practically called to you.”
She’s not fucking wrong. Her pussy was more than just golden, it was fucking perfection. “No, it’s much better than that.”
Tora’s face scrunches up as regret flashes on her face. “Let’s hear it.”
Hell, yeah. I dive straight in before she has a chance to change her mind. “So, I was going down on her, right, and man, she gets into it, like really into it. Her whole body was shaking. Her hands were in my hair and-”
“Jess, remember I’m not one of the boys.”
I scoff. What an absurd comment. “Yes, you are. So, shut up and listen,” I demand before picking up where I left off. “Her whole body was like…I don’t know how to explain it, she couldn’t stay still. It was like she was having the fucking ride of her life. I don’t know if I was doing the work or she was.”
“Jess,” Tora warns.
I grin wide. “Fine, anyway, she was going nuts. Absolutely loved it to the point she fell off the fucking bed.”
Tora’s brows furrow in confusion. “What? You’re lying.”
“I kid you not,” I tell her excitedly. “But that’s not the best part. You won’t believe what she said.” I try to give a dramatic pause but I don’t have the patience and spit it out. “She called the ‘three-second rule’ climbed back up on the bed, and let me get back to business.”
“What?” she laughs. “You don’t mean that thing you say when you drop food on the f
loor as an excuse to keep eating it?”
“Exactly that,” I boom, recalling the adorable look on her face when she said it. “It was so fucking funny. I could hardly finish her off, I was laughing so hard.”
“Alright,” she smiles. “Can we move on to the whole ‘how you were infected with feelings’ thing?”
“That was it,” I tell her. “She said ‘three-second rule’ and I fell in love.”
“Shit,” Tora sighs, finally seeing my issue. “You really are in trouble.”
“I know,” I groan. “Now, you have to tell me what to do.”
Tora looks at me as though I just asked her to lick my feet. “I can’t do that for you,” she says. “You have to come to that decision on your own.”
“What?” I scoff. “That’s bullshit. Tell me what to do.”
“I’m not going to do that, but tell me this. Are you ready to be a committed man, dedicated to only one girl for the rest of your life?”
Horror tears through me. Commitment? Hell no. I can’t do that. “No way.”
“Then it’s settled. You leave her alone and she can go use the three-second rule on some other poor loser.”
Jealousy courses through me at the thought of Kaylah letting some other douchebags go down on her and I instantly want to hate this imaginary guy and knock his teeth out. “What? No, she can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
I shake my head. How is she not getting this? “She can’t sleep with other guys.”
Tora raises her chin. “She can do whatever and whoever the hell she wants,” she tells me. “You’re not her boyfriend and you just told me you never want to be in a committed relationship. That means you pass on her being yours. You don’t get to tell her that she can’t be with anyone else unless you date her exclusively.”
“But…”
“But nothing, Jess. You can’t do that to the girl. She’ll hate you for even suggesting it. Why don’t you ask her on a date? No strings attached and take it slowly. If you like it, then go on another, if not, tell her you're sorry and move on. There’s no need to put her through all your caveman bullshit. She’s human too.”
Jesse: Broken Hill Boys (Novella 5) Page 3