AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"No," Tess said.
"Yes," Ryan said.
For fuck's sake. I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn't accept my sister piling on at this point. Everyone in my life had assumed I was just a pretty face, just someone who could read some lines and scoop up some money. Then I was supposed to go home and be happy with my lot in life, be happy that people expected me to stick to a script, never have any genuine thoughts or emotions of my own. That allowed them to just move around me. "Seriously?" I asked her.
"Jules," Ryan said, his voice low, intimate. "I didn't plan it. It's just ... I think there's something here." He waved a hand toward my sister.
My mind rolled, anger and hurt mixing inside me. Jace, Zac, this ... I couldn't take it. "Yeah, something's here," I spit at Ryan. "My little sister's here. And she doesn't need you barreling into her life and screwing everything up, just to leave when your next movie role takes you to Timbuktu." I channeled the tiny bit of my anger that had erupted on Tess's behalf. She didn't know how Hollywood worked, she wasn't equipped to be involved with Ryan.
"What are the odds there'll be another movie in Timbuktu?" Ryan asked, grinning. "I think it was just that one—"
"No." I interrupted him, getting to my feet. I felt like I was going to explode, and seeing Jace hovering there, listening, only confused issues more. "You don't get to charm your way out of this one, you ... you ..." Words failed me as tears pricked the backs of my eyelids. I was angry at Jace. I was angry at Tess. I was angry at Chad with all his knowing looks and suggestive smiles, and I was angry at Ryan for taking advantage of my sister. "Man!" I finally found a word to hurl at someone and it wasn't even half of what I'd hoped.
Tess looked disappointed at the insult, and said, "Not much of a burn." Then she shook her head and went on. "Listen, guys. Let's just pretend none of this happened. If you're hooking up, that's perfect. That's what you want everyone to think anyway, right? And you'll be gone in a couple days, and Gran and I can go back to our regular lives. Whatever happened between me and Ryan, which was pretty much nothing, was just a lighthearted fling. It was nothing."
"Um," Ryan said, sounding hurt.
Jace's body had gone rigid in the doorway. Perfect. Now he thought maybe I was hooking up with Ryan. I stepped closer to Ryan, unable to get hold of the chaos inside my chest and head. "No. Look. You're here because I'm doing you a favor," I told him, pointing a finger at him. "I didn't bring you here to charm the pants off my naïve little sister and break her heart. That's not what this is about. This is about—"
"You." Tess said, spitting the word at me as she stood. "Everything is about you. It always has been. Right, Jules? And this, this weekend—which was supposed to be about Gran, by the way—has become a media circus so you can show the world that Juliet Manchester is just fine after her nasty divorce. And what makes a woman fine? Another man, of course! So you picked one off the man tree to help you out, and we all have to play along, right?"
Shock ran through me. What? On top of everything else, Tess was calling me selfish? Hadn’t I called myself the very same thing earlier? Maybe that’s all I really was. A selfish empty-headed starlet who ran around hurting other people and not even realizing it.
"It's so hard for you to imagine that maybe someone might actually be interested in me, isn't it? It's just completely outside your realm of experience. After all, what do I have to offer? I'm the short one, the fat one, the unpopular one ... I'm Juliet Manchester's little sister, right? That's all I've ever been, and with you around, it's all I'll ever be."
Confusion washed through me, gushing over whatever logic or sense I had. I shook my head, managing to clear it slightly. Whatever was coming out of Tess's mouth didn't feel like it was about this weekend. Or about Ryan. It felt much deeper and older than that. Tess thought I was selfish, self-centered. She thought having me around made her life harder, worse. She thought I wanted the spotlight all the time, that I needed it. How could I explain how wrong she was? "No, Tess ..."
"Let's just get through tomorrow night's charade and then you can all go back where you belong," she said, turning. "You can take your fame and your angst and your enormous security guards and just go home. Both of you." Tess turned and left the room, flying past Chessy, who squawked in a chicken version of a fist bump as I sank back down at the table.
Ryan stood still for a second, his hands spread on the white tablecloth as he leaned his weight on them. "Juliet. I'm sorry," he said quietly.
I didn't know what to think. I was upset, but as I pieced through the feelings zipping around inside me, I realized I wasn't angry at him, not if he really cared about Tess. "You just met her, Ryan."
"I know. It's insane. But Juliet," he stood up and looked at me, wearing the most open and honest expression I'd ever seen. "I think I'm in love with her. I've never felt this way."
I knew that feeling. I hoped maybe it would work out better for Ryan than it was working out for me. I sighed. "Go get her, Ryan. But if you hurt her ..." I barely had the strength to make the threat.
"You and Gran will team up to remove my balls," he suggested.
"Something like that." I had no doubt Gran knew more about what was going on than I did. I'd been so wrapped up in my own world. In Jace.
Ryan left the room and I sat at the table for a while, comforted in a strange way by Jace's silent presence in the doorway. I looked over at him, but if he had thoughts about everything that had just happened, he wasn't sharing them now. He stood silent, his back to me, both of us sharing the pain and hurt that might as well have been a canyon between us.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jace
Ilistened as Tess and Ryan revealed their relationship, and tried to understand whether Juliet was angry, or jealous, or ... what. At first, it seemed like she was angry. She wasn't with McDonnell, but she didn't want anyone else to be either? But then, as her sister rambled, furious, I realized it wasn't about McDonnell. It was something else, something older, that lay between Juliet and Tess. My heart ached, listening to Juliet’s pain, and I wanted to step into the room and tell Tess she was wrong about her sister, that Juliet was caring, giving, that she cared too much about other people, even.
Of course Chad had no such thoughts, apparently—he felt sympathy for no one. He stood in the hallway, having been summoned from his post by the front door when the voices escalated around the dinner table. He leaned casually against the wall, just out of view, and chuckled at the misery of those in the dining room, raising his brows at me as if to say, "rich folks have issues too."
When things had settled down, he returned to his post, brushing a bit too close to me and bumping my shoulder on his way by.
"Watch it," I growled.
"We all should," he returned. Was that a threat?
Gran had escaped back into her gaming lair, and Tess headed upstairs as soon as the argument had ended, followed soon after by Ryan.
