Page 15 of Fast Break
“Are you not with Jace?”
My lips curve up in a smile. What does he know about Jace? “No, Jace is not my boyfriend.”
“Really? It kind of seems that way.”
I pin my lips together, interest piqued that he has noticed. “I’m not with Jace,” I clarify anyway.
“What about before? You said no one right now,” he presses. I know I should shut this conversation down, but I don’t want to for some reason, maybe out of some kind of relief about the false rumours about him and Chanel.
So I tell him about Devon, about how we got together last year when he was in year twelve and I was in year eleven. He’s at university now and it’s been four months since I last saw him.
“Why did you break up?” he asks, one distracting hand tracing patterns on my quilt cover. He is perched up on his elbow now too, facing me like I am facing him.
“I guess in the end I realised he wasn’t actually all that nice.”
“Really? Why did you stay with him so long then?”
I raise an eyebrow at him, but he doesn’t seem to be following. Maybe he really is as innocent as he looks.
“I suppose it just started to feel like a series of hookups rather than a relationship and part of me was okay with that. The other part wasn’t so I ended things.”
“And when you say hookups you mean …”
“Yes, sex, JT,” I snort out a laugh.
“But why would you sleep with him if he’s not nice to you?”
I let out a groan as I flop onto my back. This guy. Seriously. “Do you really want me to spell it out for you, JT?”
“Oh,” he says, finally catching on. “You mean you just stayed with him for sex.”
I just shrug, not really wanting to get into those details with JT. I’ve had a few random hookups since I broke up with Devon too but there’s no way I’m telling this to JT. I kind of love how innocent he is because he doesn’t really come across that way, especially given the crowd he hangs out with. Not to mention that cousin of his who has a famously high body count amongst the female population of Evergreen.
“I’m not judging you. It’s just … I’ve lived a very sheltered life,” JT admits cautiously.
“Yeah?”
He pauses, fingers still painting patterns on my quilt. “My family is very religious.”
“Ah,” I say, not totally surprised by that revelation. “What about you?”
JT sighs again. “I am … actually I don’t know what I am. I have some belief—and Iwantto have belief—just not in the church my parents go to.”
“You don’t go with them?”
“No. I finally put my foot down about a year ago and refused to go anymore. It’s caused a lot of issues in my house,” he says. “But it turns out there’s not actually all that many ways to force a sixteen-year-old into the car each Sunday morning short of physical violence.”
“Did they ever resort to physical violence?”
“No, it never got that bad. But I had to live with months of lectures and psychological warfare. I was so relieved when we moved back here. My uncle and cousins and grandparents live here, and they have always stood up for me.”
“Why did you move back?”
“Ah. Well, um, my dad is actually a pastor in the church. He was asked to go help set up a new outpost in Morlee when I was eight years old, but a senior position became available back here which is why we came home. Everything my family does is about that church.”
“Your dad’s a pastor?”
“Yep.”
