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  Kennedy sighed, and rested her chin on her palm as she looked at me. “I understand why you pushed him away, but what I don’t get is why you allow that bitch to get to you, or why Reid allows her to dictate whether or not the two of you can be friends. I thought he was better than that.”

  “She’s threatened by me,” I said quietly. “I don’t blame her. Wouldn’t you be threatened by someone who was in love with Dane?”

  “That’s different,” she argued. “Stella is threatened by you because you mean a lot to Reid, and she knows that.”

  “Even so,” I sighed. “I fucked up any chance I had with Reid, and now he’s moved on.”

  Kennedy huffed. “Moved on my ass. He’s trying to cover up what he feels about you by wasting his time with that...thing. He’ll wake up eventually, but until then you shouldn’t allow Stella’s petty attempts to rile you up, get to you. Beat her at her own game by not playing.”

  I was about to respond when Kennedy was pulled underwater. She sputtered, and spun around to slap Dane, but he dodged her hand, and pulled her against him.

  “Hey Kitten,” he laughed.

  “Dane, you ass, I was talking to Jade!” She tried to sound annoyed, but one smile from him and she turned to putty in his hands.

  “Mind if I steal my girl for a while?” He asked, looking down at me. Dane Winters was tall, and had a body many girls had fawned over, but he was very much enamored with my best friend, which made him tolerable. Sometimes. When he wasn’t being a dick.

  “Sure,” I said. “I was about to head up anyway. I’m beat.”

  Kennedy pouted. “Ah really? You can hang out with us if you want? I swear Dane will behave.”

  Dane chuckled, and nipped at Kennedy’s throat. “I can’t promise that, sweetheart.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at them. They’d had so much to get through, and I knew they loved each other.

  “It’s fine, I’ll just go up, take a shower and climb into bed.”

  “See you in the morning?” Asked Kennedy. She squeezed my hand below the water, telling me she was here if I needed her.

  “Of course.”

  I moved back towards the pool steps, and let out a breath when I saw Reid and Stella had disappeared.

  Thank God.

  At least I could leave without having to see them groping each other.

  I stepped into my sandals, and wrapped my towel around my body. I rounded the corner, and should have been paying better attention because my foot caught on something, and I fell onto the hard marble floor. My hands stung from the impact, and I swallowed the need to cry out by biting my lip.

  “Ouch,” I muttered. I turned my head, and saw Stella glaring down at me.

  “You’d better watch your step, Jade. You could get yourself seriously hurt.”

  I frowned. The Hobbit had fucking tripped me.

  “What is your problem?” I asked, standing up and dusting my hands off on my towel. I was quite a bit taller than Stella, so I ended up looking down at her.

  “You’re my problem,” she snapped, completely undeterred by our height difference. “You keep staring at Reid, and it’s time you stopped. He doesn’t want you Jade, and you need to get over it. I saw you, at dinner, while we were in the pool. It’s pathetic.”

  It was pathetic, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

  “He’s my friend,” I replied lamely.

  Where the fuck was feisty Jade when I needed her?

  “I made it clear that it was either you or me, and he chose me, so just do us all a favor and stay the fuck away from him. He made it obvious he doesn’t want anything to do with you, so why haven’t you caught the hint yet?”

  Her words hit their mark, but they also stirred something else inside me.

  Anger.

  My need to protect myself.

  The old Jade.

  I stepped closer to Stella, sure to encroach on her personal space. “You don’t know a thing about my friendship with Reid. If he wanted me out of his life for good he would have told me himself.”

  Stella’s mouth twisted and her smile turned sinister. “You poor, stupid girl. Reid feels too sorry for you to say anything, but I don’t. So here’s the deal, stay away from him, and we won’t have any problems, got it?”

  I shook my head, and started to turn. “No, we don’t ‘got it’. I don’t take orders, least of all from Reid’s latest bed fly. So if I were you, I’d turn the fuck around and pretend this conversation never happened.”

  I started walking away, but a sharp tug of my hair had me stumbling backwards.

  “You bitch!” Shrieked Stella. I fell to the ground, hitting my elbow on the floor, and lifted my arm just in time to deflect Stella’s fist. My head hit the floor so hard my vision blurred but at least there was no way Psycho Hobbit was going to bruise my face.

  “Get off me!” I yelled, deflecting another punch.

  “He’s mine!” Stella’s shrill voice echoed around us. “He doesn’t want you!” She spat. She’d somehow managed to straddle me, and I struggled to keep her from clawing at my face. “He said all you were was a fuck, and that it meant nothing to him. Get it yet? He doesn’t fucking want you!”

  She was lying. She had to have been. Reid would have never said anything of the kind.

  Before I could tell her as much, she was lifted off my body, and Kennedy was at my side. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

  “Let go of me!” Stella fought Dane’s grasp. She elbowed him in the face, but he didn’t let go of her.

  “I don’t think so,” he grunted.

  Kennedy helped me up, and I rubbed the back of my head.

  “What did she do to you?” Asked Kennedy, her eyes looking me over. “Did she hurt you?”

  “She deserved it!” Snapped Stella. “Let go of me, or I’ll scream!”

  “I’m going to get Reid,” said Kennedy.

  “Do you think he’ll believe any of you over me?” Stella laughed, sounding like a maniac. “She attacked me, I was just defending myself. I came around the corner, and - ”

  “And what?” Kennedy asked angrily. “We found you on top of her, swinging like the crazy bitch that you are!”

  Dane dropped Stella onto her feet, and stepped away from her. “Reid is going to hear about this,” she said, walking away briskly. She disappeared around the corner, and all I could do was stare after her.

  What.

  The.

  Fuck.

  “You okay?” Asked Dane, his brows furrowed.

  “Fine,” I replied. “She just...”

  I shook my head, and winced when a slow, steady throb reverberated through my skull.

  “You need to find Reid,” Kennedy told Dane. “I’ll take Jade upstairs, and make sure she’s okay.”

  I grabbed onto Dane’s arm, and stopped him. “No, don’t. Just drop it. I’m fine.”

  “She was hitting you,” cried Kennedy. “We have to tell Reid!”

  “You’re probably too late,” I replied. “She’s probably already spinning him some fucked up version of what happened. I just want to go to bed.”

  Dane and Kennedy both looked at me with concern, and as much as I appreciated it, I couldn’t stand their pity. I wanted to be left alone.

  “I’m okay, really. I’ll just see you guys in the morning.”

  Kennedy pursed her lips, ready to argue, but Dane spoke up. “If you’re sure...”

  I nodded, and started walking towards the elevator. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  They let me go, and as soon as I was in the safety of the elevator I let the tears fall. What the hell had just happened? Stella’s cruel words bounced around in my head, stuck on repeat.

  He doesn’t want you.

  All you were was a fuck.

  The doors were about to close, but they opened up again, and my head lifted.

  “Jade?”

  Reid was standing on the other side of the open doors, his face marred with a glower.

&n
bsp; “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 she 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 didn’t just lie down, and tolerate people walking all over me.

  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 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 believe 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 mothers’ 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 daddy can send the jet? I need to come home, please.”

  “Of course. I’ll call him right now. Will you be okay to get to the airport?”

  “I’ll catch a cab.” I groaned when my stomach cramped, and tried to breathe through the pain.

  “Okay darling, you be careful, and we will see you soon.”

  “Thanks mama.”

  I pulled the phone away and clicked end.

  “There’s no fucking way you’re going to the airport alone,” said Grady. “Get your stuff packed while I call a cab.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “I love you, you know that right?”

  He patted my knee, returning my smile with a gentle one of his own.

  “Of course, my tootsie roll.”

  I hadn’t told him what had happened with Stella, but he was too astute not to know that I’d been feeling unlike myself because of Reid. He was just kind enough not to bring it up right then.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he said softly, helping me from the floor. “You’ll see.”

  For once I actually agreed with him. I was going to be fine. I just needed some time to get there.

  Chapter 4

  Reid

  The Hotel Room, Cabo

  Kennedy scowled at me from the living room when I walked into the hotel room we were sharing. Dane was whispering something to her, but looked at me as soon as he heard the door shut.

  “Well?” Asked Kennedy, folding her arms across her chest. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, resting my hands on my hips. “She didn’t deny hitting Stella.”

  “Seriously, Reid? Is all that sex with Stella fucking with your head?” Kennedy flung her arm out and pointed in the direction of the bedroom where I was staying with my girlfriend, Stella. “You know Jade better than her fucking parents do, and you honestly believe she’d lift her hands to someone?”

  “Kitten, calm down,” said Dane, rubbing Kennedy’s back.

  “NO!” She cried, snapping her head towards him. “Stella lied, and Reid refuses to see it! We saw her straddling Jade, trying to hit her!”

  “I know, baby,” he kisses her forehead. “Just calm down, okay?”

  He looked at her adoringly, and I felt a pang in my chest. That was how a man was supposed to look at the woman he loved, like he’d move mountains for her, die saving her. It’s how I looked at Jade when she wasn’t looking.

  I’d never looked at Stella that way, not once, and despite what Kennedy and Dane believed, I had yet to have sex with her. Every time I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I always made up some excuse instead. Lately though, Stella had been acting a little crazier, more possessive. It made no sense. I’d agreed to stay away from Jade, just like she’d asked me to, fucking begged me to, but it wasn’t helping. Fuck knows why I listened because I was fucking miserable without Jade in my life.

  Then why was I still with Stella?

  Simple.

  When I was with her, I wasn’t so obsessed with Jade, and I found some semblance of reprieve from the constant throb in my chest.

  “Go take a shower and climb into bed,” Dane told Kennedy. “I’ll be there soon.”

  Kennedy turned her angry, watery glare in my direction one last time, and then skulked off to their bedroom.

  When Dane finally
looked at me, I saw so much fury, and disappointment in his eyes that it winded me. He’d never looked at me that way before, and I had no fucking clue what to make of it. It was like he didn’t know me at all.

  Had I really changed that much?

  Probably.

  But no one had the right to judge me. They knew nothing about what had happened with me and Jade, and everything they thought they knew was total bullshit.

  Jade had been my best friend for years, and I’d always loved her, but when she rejected me she completely fucking annihilated me. Left me a broken man. So I did my best to move on.

  “I’m dying to know what makes you think Jade had any reason to lie to you,” said Dane. “Because I saw what Stella did to her Reid, and whatever Stella said to you, is fucking trash.”

  “Yeah? Then tell me why she has a bruised cheek, and a busted lip.”

  He frowned, looking truly perplexed. “She was fine when she walked away from us. She didn’t have a single mark on her face, or anywhere else.”

  “That’s not how it looked,” I barked, irritated. “I saw her face when she found me, and it definitely looked like she’d been hit.”

  Dane rubbed his hands down his face, and let out a breathless chuckle. “Unbelievable.” He shook his head, and looked down, a snarky smile pulling at his lips. “Ah that’s perfect, just fucking perfect.”

  “What the fuck are you carrying on about, man? Stella is in the next room, icing her damn face.”

  With a shake of his head, Dane looked up and replied, “The fact that you think Jade would do anything to Stella proves how stupid you are. You’ve stayed away from Jade because Stella told you to, and now you believe that Jade hit her. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?”

  “What do you expect me to do?” I bellowed, not worrying about who heard me. “Jade didn’t deny it!”

  “Why would she, when she knows you’d take Stella’s side over hers?”

  “I wouldn’t if she had just told me the damn truth!”

  Dane sighed, both in exasperation and frustration. I knew how he felt. “You don’t get it,” he said quietly. “And that’s a damn shame, Reid.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “You’ve already chosen Stella over Jade, and that’s why Jade won’t fight you where Stella is concerned. She fucking gave up. How can you not see that yet? She gave you up!”