Page 23 of The Comeback Road
The world seemed dark, unforgiving, unfeeling, and sodesolate.
That feeling was foreign, like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was suffocating, unrelenting.
I barely registered that I had made the drive home and into my front door. An emotion I’d never felt before was starting at the base of my heels and traveling throughout my body, touchingeverything like an electric current. I felt itchy, my skin was like a foreign material, and I stillcouldn’t breathe.
Why can’t I breathe?
I grabbed at my shirt to pull it off in case it was somehow restricting my air flow, but that wasn’t it.
I felt wrong. Everything feltwrong.
I was hot and itchy, and I still couldn’t understand why I couldn’t breathe.
In, out.
In, out.
I stumbled into the bathroom to splash water on my face. The reflection staring back at me stopped me in my tracks, and I was no longer concerned about breathing. I appeared to be a vastly different version of myself, different from the man I had been that afternoon. I looked gaunt andhaunted. Like my body was rejecting my choices before my brain had a chance to catch up. One thing kept playing on repeat, over and over.
“We aren’t friends, Jace. We never were.”
“We aren’t friends, Jace. We never were.”
“We aren’t friends, Jace. We never were.”
“Friends? We were never friends.”
“Friends? We were never friends.”
“Friends? We were never friends.”
How had I missed it? Missed everything that was right in front of me?
“Go home to your wife.”
The thought of Jess touching me sent a wave of nausea rolling through me. It had me grasping at the bathroom sink. The cold marble underneath my fingers only further added to the rolling in my stomach, and the only thing I could think about was Lexie’s face after she told me it wasn’t enough. It was playing on repeat; the last look she gave me haunted me, keeping me awake and on a loop in the shadows of my subconscious. The wordsshe had slung branded themselves like a tattoo, searing into my being. She had branded me before I even realized it, and now it was too late.
I felt myself sinking to the floor.
What have I done?
The bile continued to rise in my throat, and before I could stop it, I emptied the meager contents of my stomach, retching uncontrollably.
Before I could pick myself up off the floor, I heard a knock at my door. My heart soared, praying it was Lexie. I prayed that she would understand my confusion because that’s what it was—confusionat seeing Jess again.
And I was not fine, not anymore, not by a long shot.
Not bothering to throw a shirt on or use mouthwash, my only destination was my front door, where I prayed she would be. Throwing it open in my haste, I shuddered to a stop.
It wasn’t Lexie. It wasn’t my starlight.
It was Jess.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jace
“What are you doing here?” I looked at Jess, standing in front of me, and I didn’t feel it. The flicker I had thought I felt before was nothing—nothingcompared to how I felt just being in Lexie’s presence.Nothing.
