Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
His hand rested on his steering wheel instead of reaching for his burger. I was two-point-five seconds away from dumping it in his lap.
“Are you with Brookes now?” A line sunk between his brows. “You know he did this to me.” He leaned forward, into the red glow of the Roller Burger sign, and pointed at his eye, not that I needed the light to see that shiner. “He’s an asshole.”
I wasn’t sure why it pissed me off so much. “If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe you deserved that punch, Brent.” Because if he was the one who had blocked Wolf’s number…
“How did I deserve—”
“Did you change his number in my phone?”
I caught his face blanch before he half managed to control his expression. “What?”
“That summer after I broke up with Wolf and you offered for me to spend the summer in South Carolina with you… Someone changed Wolf’s number in my phone. Was it you?”
Cassie wouldn’t lie. Monroe never wanted us to break up in the first place, so that only left Brent.
“I…” His mouth closed. A frown crumpled his features before he opened it again.
My heart thrummed out an erratic pulse as I waited for his answer. If he would even tell the truth.
“I was helping you! Wolf was bad for you, Jade.”
It felt like the world came crashing down around me. Everything was a lie. Brent, Wolf…everything I thought I knew and felt about them both had been a twisted image created by Brent. Anger bubbled through me, blending with a crippling sense of betrayal and sadness. I hadn’t wanted to believe Wolf’s suspicions, and now I realized why. Because it hurt. The self-inflicted purgatory I’d spent the past eighteen months living in was, in fact, caused by a man who had claimed to love me. A man I had tried to love back, just so I could escape the pain of losing Wolf. And all along, Brent was the reason I had lost him. I couldn’t even speak.
“You had to know Wolf was fucking around on you,” Brent said, like I was stupid. “He’s Wolf Brookes. All those parties you never wanted to go to, all those games you couldn’t make because you were working so much… You really think he was loyal to you? That he loved you? He’ll never love anybody more than he loves himself.”
“You don’t know the first thing about him,” I snapped, pissed off that he was using my own insecurities against me. Things I had cried on his shoulder about when I thought he was a friend.
“I love you, Jade. More than he ever will.”
Whatever Brent felt for me, it wasn’t love. It was selfish. He’d gone to extreme lengths to get me, and I’d made it so easy. I’d enabled his manipulation when all I had to do was ask Wolf.
“I know I hurt you—”
“Stay the fuck away from me, Brent.” The fact that he still thought I’d ever go near him again… He disgusted me. “And I suggest you stay away from Wolf. Because when I tell him what you did…”
The color drained from his face.
I rolled forward and grabbed the edge of the tray. “Now take your food.”
He didn’t move. “No—”
“Fine.” I unclipped it, then upended the whole thing—drink included—onto his lap.
“Fuck!”
I didn’t hang around to see his reaction beyond that. I spun on my skates and glided across the lot.
“He’s just using you, Jade!” he shouted after me. “You were always just a placeholder. Someone he could easily cheat on.” Even the anger couldn’t override old wounds. Those words picked, picked, picked away at that old, festering scab of self-doubt.
The words “charity case” and “gross” rang through my mind like one of my affirmations. Words that had come from Wolf’s own lips.
Eighteen
Wolf
Crickets chirped in the bushes beside the porch, silencing when I dropped the shoebox of penguins to the step. I lit a joint, took a seat, and stared out over the dark yard.
It had been a good five hours and fifteen minutes since I’d learned about PussyHunter69, and while I’d tried like hell to push it out of my mind, I couldn’t. I’d gone home, played God only knew how many hours of Assassin’s Creed, and I still couldn’t get the thought of Jade possibly sending nudes to some random guy out of my head. Fucking Lonely Fans… I took a drag, letting the pungent taste of weed coat my throat. Jade was the kind of girl who wore baggy clothes to hide her figure—unless she was working at Roller Burger or pick-pocketing fuckfaces. And if she was willing to use her body to get money in that situation… I knew how desperate things could get when shit was tight but selling herself? The thought had a sick knot settling deep in my gut.