AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"You know," Ryan said, his voice becoming fainter as they moved through the house. "There is the security team." I felt Jace stiffen.
Tess's voice was louder now, filled with mocking disbelief. "Juliet is not getting together with a bodyguard."
Jace's arms fell, leaving me cold as he stepped back. The look on his face told me that might have been the last straw, the tiny barb that made the wounds to his ego mortal, unrecoverable.
"Jace," I whispered, staring up into those pain-filled dark eyes, wishing they would dance and gleam as they had the first few nights we'd spent together in the safe bubble of my house. The tone in Tess's voice, the complete dismissal of the idea that I would get involved with someone like Jace, revealed both my sister's opinion of what was important to me in people and also the other part of what was bothering Jace—the belief that he wasn’t good enough.
"She's right." He frowned down at me. "This is ridiculous. You're fucking Juliet Manchester, and I'm ... I'm a broke former Marine who can't take care of his own family, let alone a woman like you."
I gaped, my body chilling as he put a hand on the doorknob. "It doesn't matter," I said. “I don’t care about any of that.”
"That's what people tell themselves sometimes," he said. "That's how they sell books and romantic movies." He shook his head, a mirthless smile pulling his face into a painful expression that broke my heart even more. "But we live in the real world. Where I'll never be able to pay you back for what you've done, and neither one of us will ever be able to forget it."
"Jace." I stepped toward him, and he actually put up a hand to keep me back, stopping me in my tracks.
"Go find a movie star to love, Juliet. Someone like you. And one day you'll look back and you can congratulate yourself on the way you took care of that charity case that one time. That poor helpless idiot, Jace."
"What?" I felt the blood drain from my face. "Is that what you think of me?" I hated him in that instant, as he stood there self-righteous and innocent, playing the victim. The reason I'd found my way to Jace, to his arms and his bed, was because he saw me—really saw me—in a way no one else had ever been able to. He had never cast me in the role of superficial starlet, had never made me feel two-dimensional and insignificant. He'd seen the woman behind the cardboard cutout.
But clearly, I'd been wrong. He saw me exactly as everyone else did. A shallow movie star. A name.
That's all I'd ever be, I realized, wishing I could undo everything and never move away from Southern Maryland. I hadn't been happy here, but at least I'd been a human being. I moved past Jace, stepping out the door as he pulled it open and forcing myself not to look at him.
Chad was emerging from the room next door at the same moment that I stepped out of Jace's room, and for a second, we both stopped.
"I had some business to discuss with Jace," I told him.
"Right," Chad said, nodding as his lips pulled into an ugly grin.
I went to my room and stayed there, fuming and crying, until Tess called up that it was time for dinner, and then I went downstairs, girding myself. I'd still need to play Ryan's girlfriend for Gran, a task made harder by the way my heart ached for Jace. I hoped he might be outside during the meal, somewhere I could forget about him for a while.
But he wasn't. As we sat around the dining room table, Gran smiling broadly at one end, Jace hovered in the doorway, his black-clad shoulder coming into sight now and then as he shifted his weight.
The meal was a painful blur of polite conversation, and when it was over, I was relieved. Ryan stood, reaching for my plate. "I'll get these," he said.
I forced a smile at him. "So polite."
As Ryan left the room, Tess burst out, "Gran, at the table?" I looked down the length of the dinner table to find Gran industriously rolling a joint on the cherrywood top.
Gran shrugged and gave Tess a wink. "Big raid in an hour."
"Get it out of your system tonight. Tomorrow you have to dress up and be the center of attention and act like a proper old lady."
Gran sighed. "I'd kind of hoped I'd keel over before then. I guess there's still tonight. Sometimes wishes come true." I thought about that. It didn't feel like it to me. Then Gran continued, "You got to kiss your Hollywood crush, after all."
I felt my brow wrinkle in confusion. What? I swung my gaze to Tess, who was staring at me, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. "Jules," she whispered.
Ryan had just come back into the room, and I looked between them, my mind working over what I'd just heard. Had Tess been getting together with Ryan? Even though she'd believed he and I were together? Would my own sister do that? "You kissed Ryan?" I said, before I could figure things out.
Gran leaned back in her chair, watching this exchange with something that looked like pleasure.
"What? No," Tess said, too quickly. "I mean ... no, he's your boyfriend, right?" That, I knew, was for Gran's benefit. We wouldn't even be able to touch the real issue with Gran here—the issue being the fact that Tess was just one more person who saw me as something less than an actual person, someone she could just step around if I was in her way. "I mean, he was in your room last night," she went on. "Moaning huskily, right Gran?"
What was she even talking about now? I glanced toward the doorway, long enough to see that Jace had moved closer and was watching all this. The mention of Ryan being in my room had turned his expression to stone.
Gran looked stricken. "I wasn't eavesdropping," she said, her voice shrill, telling me she had probably been standing in the hallway with a glass pressed to my door as Jace and I had sex. "I couldn't help it. You were so loud. I haven't heard those noises in this house since I quit watching Erika Lust films." She shot me a look that dared me to complain, and then stood abruptly. "I'm expected elsewhere." She walked out of the room, passing Jace on her way.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked Tess. Then I shot a glance at Ryan. "Are you two hooking up?"
