Page 24 of No Saint
“If you didn’t want to deal with the petty bullshit, you should have been smarter and either not gotten involved or not gotten caught.”
Jade evidently didn’t appreciate that comment because her brow furrowed, and a heavy hand full of attitude landed on her hip. “Don’t patronize me! It’s pure luck that you aren’t in jail rightnow. Or maybe you never got caught because no one was willing to ratyouout.” Now both hands were on her fuckable hips. “And here, you always preached about honor among thieves. The hypocrisy.”
That word got under my skin like a damned splinter, working its way deeper. That woman had no right to call me a hypocrite.
“Like you’re not the definition of a hypocrite.” Me threatening to rat her out was simple business. The way she’d dropped me? Oh, that was personal, and it had fucking broken me. All her having to be a “live-in servant” for a few weeks would hurt was her ego.
Her nostrils flared. “Says the guy who hated silver-spooned assholes but now sells out the friends he grew up with for one.”
“Friends?” I laughed.
She’d avoided me, point-blank just admitted she didn’t want to be in my life, abandoned me when I’d needed her the most, and she thought we were friends? “Afriendwould definitely think it’s okay to skip out on theirfriend’sdad’s funeral. Some fucking friend you are.”
Her expression blanked before she redirected her attention to Dog. Her not showing up for Dad’s funeral had been a hollow-point bullet straight to my heart. Sure, she’d cut me out by the time Dad passed, but I had loved that girl more than anything else in the world. She’d been my best friend, my rock. The only damn person I’d needed then. I was so sure she’d show up that I’d looked for her. But she didn’t even have the decency to send me a message. I’d never felt so disposable in my life.
“You’re right. We aren’t friends.” She tore at her thumb, refusing to look at me. “And it wasn’t my place to go to the funeral.”
I felt betrayed all over again. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Her jaw tensed. When she looked at me, there was a trace of hurt in her eyes. “It means, you didn’t need me, Wolf. You had Nora.”
Before I could offer a rebuttal, she turned and walked back to the house.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled.
Jade had dropped me months before I’d started dating Nora—to get over her. To convince myself that I wasn’t as worthless as Jade had made me feel. I never would have thought that Jade gave a shit about who I dated after her, but that comment…
I glanced at Dog, belly up on the lawn chair, then looked at the back door. “Seriously, what the fuck?”
Shaking my head, I brought the joint to my lips and took a hefty puff.
“I don’t need this shit,” I said before dropping my head back against the nylon. I really didn’t.
Seven
Jade
“Stupid Gucci shit,” Cassie mumbled, tossing Rogue’s expensive white shirt into the washer along with all the others.
As well as trash, apparently, he’d been hoarding his laundry. The fact that Rogue trusted Cassie with his clothes blew my mind, for very good reason. She took a bright-red thong from a Wal-E-Mart bagfullof bright-red thongs and tossed it in the machine. The irony that she’d bought those with his money…
Her antics were at least distracting me from my earlier encounter with Wolf. I hadn’t expected anything from him except a cold shoulder. Certainly nothing that deep and definitely not that soon. The look on his face when he’d mentioned his dad’s funeral kept playing through my mind on repeat. It made no sense. I was the last person he should have wanted there, and the idea that he had, that maybe he’d needed me, cut deeper than I thought possible.
I had loved Wolf since the first morning I had woken in his bed, unable to remember anything of the night before, with him on the floor right beside me. I’d been drugged by a guy at a party, and, well, Wolf hadn’t quite managed to save me, but he’dtried. Wolf had been out of my circle until Monroe dated his best friend, not to mention out of my league.
The next few weeks were a dark place for me, and he was by my side the entire time, like a self-appointed guardian. He was a good friend until I asked him to have sex with me. Before the drugging, I’d been a virgin, and I wanted him to give me a first time I remembered. I wanted it with someone I trusted, someone I felt safe with. No one made me feel safer than Wolf. And for the next year of high school and my first year of college, no one had made me feel more loved. Then he’d given up a scholarship to his school of choice to come to State to be with me.
I thought we were the fairy tale, but I quickly learned there was no such thing. Life had a way of throwing curveballs that push people apart. And push it did, until everything became too much. The pressure, the attention, the distance that grew, even though we were living in the same town, on the same campus. So, I asked for a break. Just a break, not a break-up. He changed his number, and two months later, he started dating Nora Locke. Peppy. Skinny. A cheerleader. Someone who looked like she belonged with a guy like Wolf.
Not a charity case. That crippling lack of self-worth I’d been battling for as long as I could remember began to creep back in. If this was day one, the other twenty-nine were going to be a joy.
“Hey. You okay?” Cassie touched my shoulder.
“Yeah.” I lied. “Fine.”
Tossing another shirt into the washer, she flashed me a knowing look. “You can’t fool me. I’m the queen of guy problems.”
“I know.” Not these kinds of guy problems, though. Wolf was an old wound that had no business still hurting. I certainly didn’t need to pick at it.
