BROKEN AND SCREWED(Broken_Part One)(10)

I looked down. I’d forgotten that fact.
He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m going to Grant West, you know.”
“I know.”
“I won’t be here anymore.”
Tears filled my eyes.  He hadn’t been here for a long time, but I bit my tongue.
He sounded apologetic. “I don’t want to talk about you and me, about—whatever. It’s done. It’s fine. We’ll deal with it, but you’ve got some good friends. Angie’s a good friend to you, so is Marissa. They both care about you, in their ways. So you should be okay, right?”
“Uh, what?”
He looked at me this time, but he never took the sunglasses off. The wall was so pretty and perfect. “You have friends that’ll look out for you next year. I won’t be here and your folks…they’re good parents. Hell, they raised me most the time.”
But that was when he had lost his mother and when his father became an absent one. And that was when Ethan was alive, when my parents could function as normal parents and when they still cared about the little things in life like their other child. That wasn’t now and that hadn’t been for a long time.
I said none of that. Instead, I gave him a small smile. “You’re right. I’ll be just fine.”
“Your brother would want that.”
Ethan would want a lot more, but I didn’t say that either. I sighed. “What are you doing, Jesse?”
The wind shifted and he went with it. The cold Jesse was back in place. I was startled to realize that he had opened to me, just a bit, but it was gone. I couldn’t see through his sunglasses, but I knew his eyes were dead again. “We should go back.”
And just like that, the rare moment was gone. It had slipped through my fingers and I hadn’t even realized I had the chance to grasp something. When he dropped me off at home, I hesitated to ask if he still wanted me to come over that night. I didn’t think I could take more of his rejection, so I waited the rest of the day at home, ignored Angie and Marissa’s text messages, and dressed in something sexy.
I shouldn’t have. I knew that, but as my heart pounded, I knew I couldn’t stay away. He had asked. It was enough for me, so I wore a slinky black dress. It was simple, something that I could’ve worn to a party or to a girl’s night out. I drove to his house.
My heart wouldn’t stop pounding. That was my normal heart rate now. My palms were sweaty and as I knocked on his door, I didn’t know what I was going to face.
When it opened, I held my breath. His housekeeper answered. Before I could open my mouth, she held an arm out and pointed inside. When she turned and waddled away, I heard her mumble under her breath, “Always Alex, he says. Always Alex, he says.”
As I walked through the mansion, the same cold feeling came to me. Goosebumps ran up and down my arms as I turned down the last hallway. His room was the last door, but when I opened it, I knew he wasn’t there.
I took a shuddering breath. It rattled in my lungs and I didn’t know what else to do.
Leave?
But then I couldn’t look away from his bed. It was a king size. The sheets were rumpled from when he had gotten up that morning. I knew how they felt. I shivered from the need I had to curl up among them. The nights I had spent in there had been the best sleep I’d gotten. Before I had fully made my decision, I slipped off my sandals and crawled underneath his sheets. They were so soft to the touch. I nestled under them.
My body started to relax and the fatigue started to slip in. My eyelids grew heavy, but before I drifted off to sleep, I thought I saw a black shape in the doorway. But then it didn’t matter and I was asleep.
“What? What is she doing here?!”