Wright with Benefits, page 20
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said, turning back around.
Sutton bit her lip as she glanced between us.
“Can I just apologize?” he asked.
“No, you cannot. You can go away.”
“Annie,” he breathed, moving between me and Sutton. “Come on. We’ve known each other our entire lives. You’re my best friend. I can’t lose you. Please just hear me out.”
Sutton frowned. “Chase, maybe now isn’t the time.”
“I’ve been messaging and calling all week,” he continued, ignoring her.
“Yeah, and you’d think that you’d get the hint that I wasn’t responding.”
Chase reached forward and turned me to face him. I broke out of his grip and tried to avoid the earnest gaze he was shooting my way, the one completely full of regret. He was hurting, and I hated when he was hurting. But he’d done this to himself.
“Annie, please…”
“I really…” I began, but then suddenly, Jordan appeared out of nowhere.
He pushed between us, shoving Chase backward.
“Jordan,” I cried.
They were practically nose to nose as they stared each other down.
32
Jordan
“Time for you to leave, Sinclair,” I spat.
Chase’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think it is.”
“Considering I own the place, I have every right to kick you out.”
He glared at me. “This is unbelievable.”
“Just stop it. Both of you,” Annie said. Her hand wrapped around my bicep and pulled me back. “Chase, you should just go.”
“Annie, come on!”
“No. You said what you came to say.”
“So, what we have means nothing to you?”
She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
“And what exactly is between you two?” I growled.
“Nothing!” Annie said.
Chase just raised his eyebrows. “It’s not nothing.”
“Fuck,” I growled as I stared between the two of them.
I’d spent the last week dealing with my mom’s cancer announcement. Between that, the soccer complex, and this friends-and-family event, I’d been swamped. No time for anything except work and how fucked up everything else was in my life. I’d been worried about Annie heading off to Seattle and what I’d do now that my mom was sick again. I’d rushed into the decision to move with her, and now consequences were coming up. But I hadn’t thought that Annie would find solace in someone else while I was figuring it all out.
Not until I’d seen Chase walk in that door and beeline straight for Annie. Not until Ashleigh had said that Chase had broken up with his girlfriend and he’d run right back to Annie. Then I hadn’t been able to see think about anything clearly. I needed to talk to Annie after all this was over, but I couldn’t stop myself from figuring out what the fuck had really happened. Ashleigh couldn’t be right, could she?
So, I asked the question I didn’t want the answer to, “Did you two hook up?”
Annie’s eyes rounded wider. “What?” she gasped. “No! Why would you even think that?”
“So, you didn’t go over to his house this week after he broke up with his girlfriend?”
She sputtered, “I did. But…”
“But what?” I snapped.
Chase chortled. “Oh, this is great.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled at the same time as Annie did.
“Nothing happened,” Annie told me. “I went over to have pizza with a friend. I didn’t even know that he’d broken up with his girlfriend, and when I found out, I told him to go fuck himself and left.”
“Which is why you never mentioned it.”
She jolted back at the words. “Pray tell, when would I have told you?” she asked, anger seeping into her own words. “We haven’t spoken in a week, Jordan. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been busy,” I reminded her. “Two businesses to run, remember? This has been hell week. And while I’ve been trying to deal with my own shit, you were going behind my back?”
“No! God, you are blowing this out of proportion. I didn’t tell you because I never saw you, and then I fucking handled it. So, I didn’t want to bother you with everything else going on and…your mom.”
“Do not bring her into this,” I said.
She held her hands up. Her eyes filling with her own brand of fury…laced in pain. “I’m not. I just…you’ve been acting all over the map since you found out.”
“Don’t,” I snarled.
Annie winced, taking a step back. “Fine. Either you believe me or you don’t. You haven’t been around. I was the one who tried to talk to you earlier and you all but ran away, Jordan. These are the facts: I told Chase to go fuck himself. I told him that I didn’t want what he was offering.”
“How exactly did you get into a position where he could offer?”
She straightened then, as if my words had hit home. “Don’t you dare try to victim-blame me. Chase is my best friend. I went to his house because he’s a friend. It is not my fault that he blindsided me with this shit. And you need to fucking stop and think about how your words are hurting people that you care about.”
“How do I know any of that is true?”
“Because you trust me!”
Chase chuckled behind us. “Jesus Christ, Annie, you’re really dating this guy? What a douche!”
I stood there, chest heaving, wanting nothing more than to take out my fury on him. The cool, calm that I’d cultivated for the last three years dissolved. I’d spent hours in the gym or running to try to keep that side of me down, down, down. Buried so deep that none of my new friends and family would ever have to meet him. I’d gotten a punching bag to release energy. I’d started weight lifting, so I was too tired to feel the fury. I’d run and run and run until the anger was silenced. It had always felt like a dragon curling around my center, and if I didn’t feed it, it would take over. My father was the same way. He’d taken it out on us. He’d taken it out on Mom. He’d taken it out on anyone unsuspecting of his writhing anger.
And I didn’t want to be my dad, but fuck…it was all a goddamn mess. I was a mess.
My mom. Work. The party. Annie. Chase.
It was too much. Too much at once. I couldn’t think around the atomic bomb settling in my chest. The feeling of watching from the inside as my life went up in a mushroom cloud of shit.
Then, it detonated.
My fist connected with Chase’s fist. Annie shouted when it happened and pushed her way between us.
“What did you do?” she yelled at me.
“What the fuck?” Chase gasped, clutching his nose. I’d probably broken it.
“Jordan!” Annie cried out.
I came back to myself then. The red film cleared from my eyes. The anger ebbing just marginally to make me realize what I’d actually done. Who I’d become: my father.
I took a step back.
I didn’t want to be anything like Owen Wright.
I leashed the dragon inside myself that wanted to shatter Chase Sinclair. But he wasn’t really the problem, was he? The problem was that my life was falling apart and there was no way to put it all back together. I was in free fall, completely out of control. And the decision I’d had to make out of that free fall was destroying me.
Julian and Hollin rushed to my side. Julian knowing me well enough to jerk me back from Chase and snap at me. “Calm the fuck down!”
But I was already past that. I wasn’t going to do worse. Chase had gotten what he’d deserved as far as I was concerned.
“I’m cool,” I said, brushing Julian off of me.
Annie had dug a tissue out of her purse and was applying pressure to the blood running out of Chase’s broken now. She looked back at me as if she’d never seen me before. It was a real look. She’d never seen this side of me. I’d hoped she never would.
“Fuck,” I spat. I took a step toward her as if I could fix this. Even though I knew that I was about to make it so much worse.
“Don’t,” she said.
The rest of her response was lost as blue and red flashing lights lit up the inside of the barn and the signature whoop, whoop sounded outside of the winery.
33
Annie
“What now?” I gasped.
Sutton shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Chase was going to be fine. This was the moment that I’d always wanted in my life. I was the doctor in the house to check on Chase. Of course, I’d never expected it to be because my boyfriend had just punched him. In fact, I hadn’t expected much of any of that to happen. Not a damn thing.
So much for waiting for him to come to me with his grief. Instead, it had exploded out of him.
This wasn’t Jordan. This wasn’t him at all. This was the pain and grief and everything else all bottled up into one perfectly, spectacularly terrible moment. It didn’t make it hurt any less.
I closed my eyes to shield my heart. To try to hold back all the pain threatening to tear me apart. Because I loved Jordan…and I been planning to tell him tonight after the party. To tell him about staying in Lubbock for him. But now…
Well, now, everything was fucked.
And the police were here.
“I’m going to go find out what’s going on,” I told Sutton.
Ashleigh had stumbled over. Her eyes red and tears running down her cheeks as she gasped out her brother’s name.
“Chase is fine,” I told her. “Just stay here with him. He has a broken nose and will probably have a wicked black eye.”
“We’re going to press charges against that animal!” she shrieked.
“Ashleigh, breathe. It was one punch, and Chase is fine,” I repeated. “No need to press charges.”
“After what he just did?”
Chase shushed his sister. “Shut up, Ash.”
And then he closed his eyes again and pressed his fingers to his broken nose. He winced. Yeah, that was going to hurt for a few days.
I left Chase with his sister and headed outside with Sutton. Campbell was still playing in the background as we stepped out into the cool night beyond and to the police officers standing around. Jordan, Julian, and Hollin were already dealing with them.
One of the officers spoke up as I approached. “You don’t have to go home,” he said with a thick country drawl. Then he tipped his head down and shot them a condescending look. “But you can’t stay here.”
“Sir,” Jordan said, his voice stretched thin, “we have a permit for the event tonight.”
“You’re overcapacity. I’m going to have to ask you to shut it all down,” the man said, sticking his thumbs into his belt.
“Sir,” Jordan tried again.
“Son, we can do this the easy way,” he said dramatically, “or we can do it the hard way. Your choice.”
Jordan clenched his jaw, and Julian stepped in. “We understand, sir. So sorry that you had to drive all the way out here for this. We’ll take care of it.”
“Good boy,” the cop said.
I thought Jordan might assault a police officer with how tightly he was hanging by a thread. He must have thought better of it because he took a step back. Let Julian, with all of his charm and charisma, handle the police.
Hollin grumbled under his breath and tromped back to the entrance, ostensibly to send everyone home. He caught Nora at the entrance, and her eyes went wide. I lost what she said as they both scrambled through the door. A few minutes later, Campbell ceased playing, and a chorus of boos came from the crowd. Then a flood of disgruntled concertgoers came through the open barn doors.
The cops stood sentinel as the crowd filed through the parking lot and began the slow process of clearing the place out.
Julian was still working his magic with Jensen and Morgan both coming over to help smooth things over. The cops seemed to straighten up at the sight of them. Nothing like the power of the Wrights in this town.
Jordan finally turned to find me still huddled with Sutton off to the side.
Sutton saw him walk toward me, squeezed my arm, and made herself scarce. “Find me when you’re done.”
I nodded at her and met Jordan head-on. “Hey.”
He ran a hand back through his hair. Only realizing afterward that his knuckles were broken and bloody. “You should go home.”
My heart constricted, and I forced myself not to cry again. “After all that…that’s all you’re going to say to me?” I shook my head. “God, Jordan, nothing happened with Chase.”
“I believe you.”
“Then what…?”
“Annie, just go home.”
“I don’t get you. You don’t talk to me for a week. You hole up and avoid me. Then when you claim we’re finally going to talk, you assault my friend, and tell me to go home without an explanation?” I demanded. “This isn’t you.”
“This is exactly who I am.”
“I know you, Jordan. Whether or not you want to believe it, I do. I know exactly who you are. And right now, you’re hurting and taking it out on everything and everyone around you.”
He gritted his teeth as if to keep himself from exploding all over again. “Go. Home.”
I sniffled and shook my head. “Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll go to keep you from saying anything else you’re going to regret.”
“You think I regret a damn thing that happened in there?” he demanded, pointing at the barn. “Chase had that coming to him.”
“And me?” I shouted back at him. “Did I have that coming, too?”
Jordan looked away from me. “You said from the beginning that we were temporary.”
I choked back a gasp. “And you don’t think that’s changed?” I asked, my voice strangled. “What about Seattle?”
“Seattle was a pipe dream!” he yelled.
I shrank back. “I thought it was real.”
“Fuck, Annie. Day one, you said you were leaving, and I wanted to keep you, so I said I’d go. What else could I say?”
“You could have talked to me!” I insisted.
“And said what?” He laughed derisively. “You wanted Seattle. I wanted you. And now my mom has cancer. I can’t leave Lubbock, Annie, and I can’t keep you from following your dream.”
“What if I just want you?”
Jordan shook his head. “No, that’s not what you want. You’d regret it, and I’d never let you do it. If you want to get out of here, you’ll go. We both knew from the start that you were leaving with or without me, and you still are.”
Silence stretched between us.
Well, there it was.
I’d started this. I’d made us friends with benefits and told him to expect nothing more. Should I be surprised that he didn’t see that I was in love with him? That I would have…had given up everything to stay here with him? This might have been grief talking, but it still hurt. It still hurt like he’d cut me open, looked at my insides, and somehow missed all the important parts.
“That’s what you think of me?” I asked hoarsely.
“It’s not what I think of you, Annie. It’s just how it is. You and I were fun while it lasted, but you were the one who drew the line in the sand. You were the one who put a time limit on our affections. I’m just the one walking away so that you can follow your dreams.”
I choked. He thought he was being selfless. He thought that by ghosting me and then breaking up with me, he was being kind. How dare he! How fucking dare he!
“You don’t get to make that choice for me,” I snarled as I wrestled the claddagh ring off of my finger. “You don’t get to be an ass and think that you’re doing the right thing in all of this. It isn’t fair. I’m a whole person who can think and breathe and make my own goddamn choices.”
I’d gotten attached to the ring, but I didn’t want his version of my ring.
I flung the ring at him. It thudded softly against his chest. He furrowed his brows as if he didn’t realize what I’d done, his hand landing on his chest where the ring had hit.
“And for your information, I already put in my rank choices for residency programs.” I glared at him, trying to keep the tears at bay long enough to escape him before he could see me breaking. “I knew the minute that we found out about your mother’s cancer diagnosis that you couldn’t leave her, and I would never ask you. So I chose to stay in Lubbock and changed my rank choice to Tech.”
Jordan’s eyes rounded and he opened his mouth, a small startled noise escaping him.
“You’d know that if you had talked to me at all in the last fucking week.”
“Annie…”
“Save it,” I snapped. “If this is what you think of me and…what you think of us…” I choked back on my tears and shook my head. I couldn’t finish. “Good-bye Jordan.”
Then, I turned on my heel and walked away.
Grief was an excuse for his behavior up to a point, but it wasn’t enough to make up for how much he was hurting me. He could have talked to me. We could have worked through it together. Instead, he’d assumed that I’d leave him rather than staying here.
Part of that was on me. I had drawn the line in the sand and put a time limit on our love. But I’d thought that things were different since Seattle. I thought he knew what he meant to me. We’d just been on a different chapters of the same book. I’d seen the happily ever after waiting at the end of the tunnel and he’d only seen the inevitable destruction. Then he’d gone and destroyed it all himself.
“Annie,” Sutton said, dashing to my side.
“How much did you hear?”
She bit her lip. “Everything.” She took my hand. “I didn’t think this would happen.”
“Me either,” I whispered.
“Annie…can you still change your rank?”
I shook my head furiously. There was no changing rank after the deadline. Everything was already set.
“I guess I’m stuck here…just like he said, with or without him.”
