The two girls get out the door first, and while they check him out obnoxiously, they walk right past him. As soon as I step out, he clicks his phone off and puts it in his pocket.
"Told you so," Charlotte sings. "See you later!"
I roll my eyes. "Bye."
Jace stands up straight as I approach him. He still doesn't have that warm and welcoming smile I remember, but he's not glaring at me so there's that. I run my fingers through my hair and wait for him to say something. When he doesn't, I realize I have no choice but to talk first.
"Do you need something?" Okay, maybe I could have been a little nicer.
He snorts. "Oh, so you can come see me whenever you damn well please, but I can't? Good to know."
As he goes to walk away, I grab his wrist. "No, stop." He looks down at where my skin is touching his, and I let go. "I didn't mean to sound rude. Honest. I just don't know what you're looking for."
"I don't either. But I figured this was an okay place to start."
"Okay."
The two of us walk next to each other in total silence as we make our way across campus. It's strange, but not completely awkward. And besides, after I've spent the last couple weeks trying to get him to talk to me, why would I turn him away.
One thing I did expect however, was this to be just like high school. As we walk past a group of girls, they all gape at him and shoot me dirty looks. For a second, I wonder if he even realized they were there, but when he chuckles quietly, I know he did.
"You always hated that."
I tuck my hands inside my sweatshirt to keep warm. "And you always ate it up."
"I'm a guy," he reasons. "Can you really blame me?"
"A little. Yeah."
It's not anywhere close to how we used to be together, but it's definitely better than we have been. And when we reach my car, I don't even need to point it out. He stops and looks like he wants to say something, but ultimately just nods at me and steps away. That's it.
I mean, I didn't think he'd hug me or anything, but I can't help thinking he's going cold again.
"Bye, Jace," I say as I turn toward my car.
He huffs. "Oh, so this time I get a goodbye."
And there it is.
I don't justify him with an answer. Mainly because he's right to be mad about it, but also because he's just looking to start a fight, and I'm not going to play into his hand. If he wants to be angry with me, that's his prerogative.
WEIRD THINGS HAPPEN WITH Jace all week long. There are at least two days where I come home to Jace sitting with my dad. Another day, I run into him on campus—and I mean literally run into him—and he asks me to grab lunch with him. It wasn't exactly the warmest of lunches, and certainly not a date, but every day feels like he's warming up to me a little bit more.
Until he isn't.
I'm talking to Carter, trying to fill him in on everything with Jace and maybe get a little clarity, when the devil himself comes over right in the middle of our conversation. He looks between the two of us with suspicion etched across his face. Carter plays it off much better than I can, though.
"Hey man," he greets him. "What's up?"
"Nothing." It's a short answer, and his tone provides no opening to take the conversation any further.
Carter, being able to read his best friend well, gets the hint. "Okay, well, I'll leave you two to talk."
My eyes widen as I look at him pleadingly. I don't want to be alone with him—at least not when he's like this. When Jace likes you, he can be one of the sweetest people I've ever known. But when he doesn't, it's hell. Still, Carter winks at me, and with a pat on Jace's shoulder, he leaves us together.
I try to calm my breathing as I mentally tell myself there is nothing to be afraid of. It's just Jace. Just the guy I've known since I was twelve. Why am I so intimidated by him lately?
"Is everything okay?"
He looks back at Carter and then at me. "Are you fucking him?"
The question alone makes me choke on air. "Am I what?"
"Are. You. Fucking. Him."
"I heard you the first time; I just don't understand why you even feel the need to ask that question."
He shrugs. "Well, I don't know. You disappeared for over a year, only to come back and now you and Carter are all buddy-buddy."
Okay, no. This isn't happening. "Are you fucking kidding me? You, more than anyone, know exactly why I'm back here, and Carter has nothing to fucking do with it."
His mouth opens to say something but I cut him off.
"No. You don't get to say anything to me. Not after that." I cross my arms over my chest and shake my head. "How dare you? I don't know what your deal is lately, but this constant game of he-hates-me, he-hates-me-not is exhausting, and I'm not doing it anymore."
Before he has a chance to respond, I turn around and walk away.
Fuck him and everything he stands for.
THREE DAYS GO BY and I don't hear from Jace at all. It's a bit of a change, being as we spent every day associating in some way for over a week, but it's nothing I can't handle. Carter has tried calling me at least eight times, but I don't plan on answering it. If there's anyone who can help whatever is going on in Jace's head, it sure as hell isn't me.
I'm back in English, writing down the assignment and all its details, when Charlotte taps me on the arm. My brows furrow as I turn to face her, and she smiles.
"Your boyfriend is outside."
Glancing out the door, I see Jace waiting for me once again, but this time I don't care. "He's not my boyfriend."
"Ooh," she coos. "Ice queen looks good on you."
Now that manages to make me laugh, but still. I can't stay cooped up in here all day, and there are no other doors. My only option is to walk past Jace. So, as I leave the room, I lace my arm with Charlotte's and make every effort not to even look at him.
"Paige, wait," he calls but I keep walking. "Please?"
I sigh heavily and slow down, feeling the pleading tone in his voice hitting a soft spot. After I give Charlotte a look that tells her it's okay to walk away, I turn around to Jace.
"Look at that. He does have manners."
He smiles in a way that always used to turn me to mush and nods. "I deserved that."
"I know." I zip up my jacket and look around. "So, what is it today, Jace? Walk in silence to my car? Go find Carter so you can insinuate that I'm a whore? What is it?"
It looks like he's trying to keep himself calm as he rolls a rock under his shoe. "I want to take you somewhere."
"Somewhere?"
His gaze finds mine and there's something in it I can't put my finger on. "Just...please."
There's that damn word again. To be honest, I like it better when he's an asshole. At least then I have a better chance of not giving a shit if I tell him no or offend him. But this…ugh. This makes it so I don't have much of a choice.
"I'll follow you."
Without another word, we head over to our cars—where he just so happened to park behind me and block me in. I give him a look, and he shrugs unapologetically.
Whatever.
WE PULL INTO A parking lot that may as well be in the middle of nowhere. I'm pretty sure we drove through at least a mile of forest before getting here. I get out of my car the same time Jace gets out of his, and he nods for me to come with him along a trail that looks like it hasn't been touched in months.
"Just so you know, I sent Becca my location and told her I'm with you," I announce. "If you're taking me out here to kill me, you won't get away with it."
He snorts and looks back at me with a cocky grin on his face. "Good to know."
We walk for at least ten minutes until we come to a cliff. It looks over the rest of the forest, all the way until it reaches the ocean. The sight is one you would expect to see in a magazine or travel brochure.
"Wow," I breathe.
He sits down on an outcropping of rock. "I know."
The two of us just stare out at the space, and I re
alize how much the big open space makes me feel small. In a way, it's intimidating, thinking of how big the world actually is, but in another way, it's comforting. I take a seat next to Jace and just stare out at the sunset.
It takes a minute before he says anything at all, but when he does, it's not at all what I thought it would be.
"Why did you do it?"
I look over at him, but he won't return my gaze. He keeps his eyes on the view.
"Do what?"
"Disappear without so much as a goodbye."
Jace is the king of not confronting his problems. I mean, he literally ran away from home once and spent two weeks in a hotel because he got into an argument with his brother and didn't want to be around him. So, hearing him ask me about it so directly is a bit of a shock.
"I can't explain it." My tone is as quiet as a whisper, but he hears it as if I screamed it into the empty space.
"That's bullshit," he growls. "You had to have a reason, Paige. What was it?"
I look down at the ground and shake my head. "It doesn't matter."
"It fucking matters to me! You just left. You kissed me goodbye, and promised that we would be all right, and then disappeared. You disappeared from my life like it was the easiest thing in the world to do!"
"You think that was easy? " I balk. "You think I didn’t spend every goddamn second for months wishing I could just talk to you?" Standing up, I step away from him to gain some distance. "It wasn’t easy for me, Jace. No part of anything was easy for me. "
"Then why’d you do it? Why’d you throw us away and give me no reason whatsoever?"
"Because I loved you!" The confession rolls off my tongue before I can even try to stop it. "Because I was so hopelessly in love with you that I was losing myself, and I thought it was better to let you go than to allow myself to believe that one day we would be something we weren’t."
He has no answer to that, and I didn't expect him to, so I start walking away to go back to my car. But as I get a few steps away, I stop.
"I didn't leave you, Jace. I set you free."
He murmurs something that sounds like I wish you hadn't, but it clearly wasn't meant for me to actually hear. His head stays down, with his eyes focused on the ground, so I leave him sitting there alone—which seems to be exactly how he wants it.
Sitting in this therapist's office is nothing new to me, but the feelings coursing through my body are ones I haven't felt in a while. Paige told me she was in love with me last night, and while there are a million other ways I would have rather heard those words softly spoken instead of being screamed like she genuinely wanted to punch me in the face, I heard them. And fuck did I feel them. It's the first thing I've felt in a year that wasn't pure agony.
Dr. Clitman keeps asking me questions and waits a few minutes for my answer, but she doesn't get any. This is how these appointments always go. She talks, and I pretend I'm not listening. But I am. A part of me always is.
"Anything new happen since our last session?"
I don't mean to have any kind of response. Hell, I'm not even looking at her, but she sits up in her chair and writes something down before putting the notebook on the table.
"Well, whatever or whoever it is, I hope you stick with it."
My head jolts up. "I didn't even say anything."
She smiles at me in a way she shouldn't, given that I've done nothing but waste her time the last few weeks. "You didn't have to. Your body speaks volumes even when you don't."
"Oh yeah?" I sit back and stroke my chin. "And what exactly did my body tell you?"
"When I asked you if there was anything new happening since our last session, the corner of your mouth twitched," she explains. "You did something else, too, but we're not going to get into that just yet."
I almost laugh at how ridiculous she sounds, but I manage to hold my composure. "And because my mouth twitched, that means what?"
"It makes you happy, or at least brings you a little joy." She has so much confidence in what she's saying. "It's the first time I've seen that on your face since we started."
Thinking back at the conversation with Paige last night, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little relieved. After all, I spent this whole time thinking she ghosted me because I meant so little to her or because she met someone else at school. I mean, I'm a little ticked off that it could have been avoided if I was just honest with her when Carter told me to be, but I'm not about to admit to anyone that he was right. Not now. Not ever.
"Your next appointment is Friday at two," she tells me as she opens the door. "I'll see you then."
It's not optional. We both know that. And while it drives me up a wall, I'm not about to ditch her. She would tell my dad, and my trust fund would vanish in a puff of smoke—along with my ability to support my bad habit.
Being around Paige makes it easier. I can't explain it, exactly, but it's like she eases the pain a little. Between having her near me, and the pills I've been taking, I'm finally starting to feel like I can breathe again. Now I just have to make her want to be near me, too.
THE WRAP-AROUND DRIVEWAY is filled with cars, one of which being the exact one I'm looking for. I make sure the package I just grabbed from Rinaldo is safely tucked away and out of sight, and then I jump out of my car and run up to the door.
Hearing the fancy doorbell ringing through the house always manages to make me laugh. It's something Paige has hated as long as I’ve known her. She says it makes her house sound like it's meant to be filled with things you can't touch and snooty rich people, and that it's not cozy. Leave it to her to complain about a doorbell.
The door opens, and Mrs. McAllister greets me with a smile. "Hi, Jace."
"Hi, Mrs. A."
She opens the door further to let me in and away from the rain. "Peyton is with doctors for the next couple hours or so, but you're welcome to stay and wait if you'd like."
"Oh." I rub the back of my neck to ease the discomfort. "I'm actually here for Paige."
As if I thought her into existence, her voice fills the room. "I've got it, Mom."
I look up to find her at the top of the stairs. Her hair is tied back, and she's wearing a pair of sweatpants with a shirt knotted into a crop-top. As she makes her way down, I'm so sucked into her that I don't even realize her mom left until Paige is standing in front of me.
"Hey."
She says it like it's easy. Like last night and the past few weeks didn't even happen. Like she couldn't hate me if she tried.
"Hey," I reply. "You busy?"
Nodding her head, she gives me an apologetic face. "My boyfriend is upstairs, and we've been having this sex marathon. It's really time consuming. Carter is really needy."
The disappointment leaves the second I realize she's kidding, and I couldn't stop the laughter from bubbling out of me if I tried.
"You're a menace, you know that?"
She grins. "I'm an angel. Just ask my dad."
Peyton's coughing fit starts, and it must be a bad one, because it echoes through the whole house. If that isn't hard enough to hear, he screams at someone to get away from him before coughing more. Paige flinches at the noise, and the playful mood she was in before is gone.
"Is everything okay?" I ask her carefully.
Her fingers mess with the string on her sweatpants as she stares at her feet. "He's uh...he's getting worse. The doctors are trying to help, but he's hard to help when he's like this. I can't really blame him."
Well, I was going to try to take her out. Maybe to dinner or just back to my place to hang out and make up for being a dick the last few weeks, but something better comes to mind. I take off my jacket and wrap it around her before opening the door.
"Let's go."
She looks up at me like I've lost my mind. "Where are we going?"
I lead her out the door. "You'll see."
THE TWO OF US are completely drenched by the time we get inside my parents' house, but I knew no one would be home. Paige hasn't stopped asking
me what we're doing since we left her place, but I'm yet to tell her anything. She'll figure it out soon.
"If you think I'm going to sleep with you, I've got news for you."
Looking back at her as I walk toward the dining room, I stick my bottom lip out. "You mean we didn't come here for one of those sex marathons you were talking about before?"
"Ha, ha," she says sarcastically. "Seriously, what are we doing here?"
The minute I get into the room, I start clearing things off the table, and I can see on her face the minute that it clicks.
When we were younger, if things got hard or there was just something we needed to get away from, we would wait until it rained and then we would lay down on my dining room table and stare out the oversized sunroof my dad had installed. For some reason, watching the rain hit the glass always made it feel like it was washing away all our problems.
"Oh my God. We haven't done this in years!" she says as I finish clearing everything off and motion for her to climb up.
The two of us lie beside each other on the hard wood, neither one of us saying a word. It's everything I needed and didn't realize until now. I don't think it can wash away all my problems, but if it washes away hers even for a minute, that's okay with me.
"Thank you," she tells me after at least a half-hour.
I look over, only to find her already looking back at me. "I'm really sorry. About your dad, and for how I was acting."
Shaking her head, she turns away and back to the sunroof. "I deserved it."
"You didn't."
A part of me considers setting the record straight—telling her she wasn't alone in what she was feeling. That we were more than just two friends who fucked around from time to time. But I can't. I'm the furthest thing from what she needs right now, and if I fuck this up and make her leave again, I'll go back to how I was. I can't handle that.
Instead, I'll keep my mouth shut.
ONE THING I DIDN'T realize I missed was playing video games with Carter. I guess over time, I just started pushing him away. Granted, he really needs to stop trying to control my life, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the time we spend together where he's not a total douchebag.
Change My Game: An Emotional Second Chance Romance (North Haven University Book 2) Page 7