Page 67 of Defiant
I knew why she was telling me this and not my dad. He hardly paid Mom a second look anymore…not like he ever did before she got sick, either. If something was going to happen with Mom, I had to be the adult and see to it, not him.
It was fine. I was used to it.
Some people might think growing up with money was the shit, but it honestly sucked more often than it didn’t. I’d give anything to be from a normal family, to have normal problems—not the constant shit storm I had to deal with on a daily basis.
I told the nurse goodnight, watching her leave down the hall before bringing my stare back to my mom’s door. Sometimes, even with all the money in the world, there still wasn’t a cure for everything.
It wasn’t fair, of course. She was a good person, a great mother. She didn’t deserve to get sick like this. Doctors weren’t even sure what was wrong with her, only that her brain was not processing things as it should. No cancer, no tumors, but obviously there was something they weren’t seeing. That, or the human body still had some mysteries left.
To her shut door, I whispered, “Goodnight, Mom. I love you.” It wasn’t dark enough outside to sleep, but that sedative should put her out for quite a while.
I tiptoed back to my room, closing my door and breathing out a sigh as I relaxed once I was alone. Life really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sometimes I hated it with a burning passion.
Unfortunately, this was the hand I was dealt, and I had to learn to live with it.
Chapter Eighteen – Jacob
The truth shouldn’t get me so riled up, but it did. How could I sit there and pretend as if nothing was wrong? It felt like fucking everything was wrong, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. What happened with Jaz and her fellow students was in the forefront of my mind.
I was not exaggerating when I said I wanted to kill those kids.
That alone should’ve been a warning sign enough, but of course, because of the cosmic joke that was my life, it wasn’t enough. I had to deal with an oblivious Jaz, too, not to mention the anonymous client who still wanted me to basically spy on her and report to him everything I learned.
I couldn’t tell Mr. Anonymous about what happened to Jaz earlier this week. I couldn’t. There were some lines I didn’t want to cross, some things that anonymous client of mine didn’t need to know.
I thought about telling Jaz, of course, that someone had hired me to look into her—and that I’d been reporting shit on her from the first time we met—but I didn’t know how she’d take it. With everything that had happened to her here in Midpark, she was likely to take it as another betrayal, and I didn’t want her to think that I would ever hurt her or lie to her.
Fuck. See? Things were so fucking complicated, I honestly hated it. I hated it with every fiber of my being.
Sitting next to her on the couch, telling her the truth, it had been too hard to hold myself back from her. She didn’t need me getting all handsy, not now. Not after what happened. She came here for me to teach her how to defend herself; that’s all.
That’s what I had to remember.
However, as I stood there, in my bedroom, my hands gripping the sides of my dresser hard, my mind raced in every direction it shouldn’t. That girl out there wasn’t mine; I had to remember that, had to get it through my thick skull that, while I might’ve grown to care for her, things could never become anything more between us.
They couldn’t.
Could they? Fuck, telling myself she was legal sounded like a sleazy thing to say, something the perverts used as an excuse when they jacked off to freshly-minted eighteen-year-olds. I wasn’t like that. I’d never been like that.
So why the fuck did Jaz make me feel like this? I hated being so conflicted, hated how easily I got riled up when it came to her.
If the feelings came to me this effortlessly, how was I supposed to deny them? How could I stand there and ignore them as if they didn’t exist? Fuck it all to hell.
“Knock, knock,” Jaz spoke as she stepped inside my bedroom—someplace she definitely should not be. I barely glanced up at her, my fingers tightening on the sides of the dresser. Suddenly my clothes felt too restricting. “Is Mr. Grumps okay?” As she spoke, a smile spread on her lips, lips a few shades too red and too full to not garner my attention.
I managed to glare at her, not moving a single inch. “I told you to stop calling me that.” And, I had the feeling, I’d be telling her multiple more times before it landed. I wasn’t the only one here with a thick skull, apparently.
“And,” she said, inching closer to me, still smiling that enchanting, alluring smile, “I figured by now you’d realize I’m ignoring you every time you say it.” Her thin shoulders shrugged. “You will always be Mr. Grumps.”
Hearing her say that made something inside me tick. God, I wanted to…
Hell. I knew what I wanted, but it was the one thing I shouldn’t want. Not now, not ever. The one thing I knew from the very beginning I had to keep myself from, the one thing that made me weaker than anything ever had in my entire life.
Her. I wanted her. I wanted to feel that body pressed against mine again, wanted to feel those lips against mine and devour any sounds that escaped. I wanted everything from her, and I knew I shouldn’t.
I didn’t look up; I knew Jaz had moved behind me, standing about a foot away from my back. Without looking at her, I knew she stood between me and the bed, someplace she most definitely should not be. This…this would not end well. I should go. I should take her home. I should do literally anything else but remain in this room and allow this to continue.
But what did I do?
