Page 91 of No Saint
And the only reason I’d ever confided in Brent was because I broke down in front of him one day. He had been a good friend to me back then, or so I’d thought.
Wolf snorted into the bottle before taking another swig. “How fucking considerate of you. Don’t tell me jack shit about your family. Don’t give me a reason for wanting a ‘break’ from me. You’re on a fucking roll.”
“I told you why?—”
“I don’t want any more bullshit.” His words were slightly slurred. “Why did you really break up with me, Jade?”
There it was. The question he’d never dared ask me. The one I’d managed to dodge by asking for a break. As in, to be discussed at a later date, which never came. I didn’t know how or where to begin. I’d told him I needed to focus on myself for a little while. It wasn’t a lie, what with my dad and helping my parents.
I wondered if Wolf was as scared of the answer to that question as I was of his reaction.
He took another swig of liquor. “Don’t fucking tell me, then. Not like it’s ruined my life or anything.”
That stung. He had no right to say that to me. He had moved on, regardless of Brent fucking with my phone. I guessed the reason I never questioned Wolf changing his number was because my being disposable had been easier to believe than his loving me. And he had proven me right when he jumped right into Nora’s bed only weeks later.
“Okay, I’ll tell you.”
I had spent the last few hours convincing myself that Wolf and I just needed to be friends. I wanted that. To keep him in my life. We would never move past this if I didn’t tell him the truth.
“Yes, my dad got sick, but that’s not why I wanted a break.” I shook my head, remembering all that naïve hope I’d had that Wolf would join me at college and we’d live happily ever after. How foolish I was. “You were State’s new star, and I barely saw you.”
When Dad lost his job, I’d started working extra shifts. Wolf had practice. We both had to study…
“I just wanted to go back to when it was you and me on the roof of your trailer. At The Lookout. But whenever I saw you—” I clenched my teeth. Whenever I did see him, there was always some party, and girls would be hanging around him like vultures over a dying animal. I could almost see them plotting how they were going to take him from me. And maybe I wouldn’t have cared if it weren’t for the simple fact that I just wasn’t around. “We just weren’t compatible anymore.” That was the easiest way to put it. An omission, but the truth.
“Bullshit. We’ll never not be compatible.”
Of course he had to say something like that. Something that made me remember why I loved him so much…because he never stopped having faith in us. I’d been the one to do that. He was right, though. No one got me like Wolf did, and I knew no one could compare. Not if I lived a hundred years.
“We aren’t because you need someone who can handle you being number thirteen. Who is confident enough not to feel shit every time a hot blonde tries to make you ‘forget about me.’” I regretted saying it the moment the words left my lips, but I’d literally had a girl say that to my face. I hated that I was putting all my gaping insecurities out there for him to see.
“That’s not incompatibility. That’s a lack of trust.” His dark brows furrowed, hurt blanketing his eyes. “How could you think anyone could make me forget about you?”
Easily. I wasn’t hot, or pretty, or special. I’d heard it my entire life in subtle, well-meaning digs.Lose a few pounds, Jade. Put on makeup, Jade. You’ll never keep a man like Wolf dressing like that.And it all became that much easier to believe when I had to work all the time and wasn’t around. Meanwhile, he was at parties, with pretty girls lining up for his attention. He’d smile and be nice and give them hope. When all I wantedwas for him to tell them to fuck off, to stop being the nice guy, just for a second. For me.
I’d felt like I was losing him. So, I had pulled away before I did.
“We just didn’t fit like we used to?—”
“Yeah?” He shoved off the couch, staggering toward me. “Tell me, then, Jade.” He was right in front of me, the heat of his body impossible to ignore as he glared down at me. “How did we not fit?” he said, his whiskey-tinged breath washing over my face. “Tell meallthefuckingwayswedidn’tfit.”
I thought of the inside jokes only we found funny. The collection of origami notes he’d given me to help me. How he’d always seemed to know what I was thinking or feeling. In all the ways that mattered, Wolf and I were like two broken pieces of a demolished star, stuck in each other’s orbit. No one else understood me like he did, made me feel as loved as he had—even if I’d doubted it sometimes. If dating Brent had shown me one thing, it was that I feared no one else ever would. And it terrified me. The idea of him, the dream of him, terrified me.
“I…” I couldn’t look him in the eye and lie.
“You can’t, can you?” He leaned closer to my face, his blue eyes searching for answers I didn’t have. For a cure to his pain, maybe?
“It wasn’t about you, Wolf,” I whispered.
“Well, it sure as hell felt like it was about me.”
That was the only time I could say he’d raised his voice at me, and while I wanted to shrink back, I saw the vulnerability beneath the lashing out. I saw the sense of inadequacy I was all too familiar with. And I hated that I’d ever made him, of all people, feel that way.
“If I could go back—” I bit the inside of my cheek. Telling him wouldn’t help anything. We couldn’t go back.
“Say it, Jade. Just fucking say it. If you could go back, you would have what? Never dated me?” He took a step back like I’d physically slapped him. “Fine. I get it.” It was so easy for him to believe the worst of me.
“No!” Why was this so hard? I drew in a deep breath and met his gaze. “I have spent the last year trying to convince myself that us breaking up was for the best.” God, could I have done without seeing the longing in his eyes. Because it mirrored my own. “That I was happy without you, and…” The rest of that sentence lodged in my throat like a ball of barbed wire. It was the most honest I’d been with anyone, including myself, in a long time. I’d needed to grow without him. To learn to, maybe not love, but at least like myself, but it had hurt. Every day without him felt like a self-inflicted punishment. I’d been clinging to a pole and taking the lashes for so long, I’d grown numb to it…until I’d had to move into his house, that was.
