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I CAUGHT SIGHT of his eccentric hairdo, coiffed to perfection, bee-boppin’ down the pavement. Without thinking, I barreled toward him. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
Jace turned with a start, his hand flying to his chest before taking inventory of his attacker. “Calm down there, tough stuff. Tell you about who?” he clucked.
I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t play the innocent card with me. We both know you’re anything but.”
Collecting himself, Jace crossed his arms and straightened his spine. “Talk or I’m walking. I have an eyebrow appointment, and Ankie waits for no one.”
I was losing my patience with this whole situation. “Jace, for once be serious,” I huffed.
He looked down at his watch, tapping his foot.
“You know what, man?” I raised both palms. “I thought we were in this together. Maybe I was as wrong about you as I was about her.” Jace and I had formed a powerful alliance after Eva’s visit to the hospital, and I didn’t think he would keep something as big as a new guy in her life from me. We had been conspiring, and he had kept me informed of each step of her recovery ever since I found her a doctor.
I turned to walk away, but Jace’s don’t-go-there-honey tone called back to me. “Never doubt me, sugar.”
My morbid curiosity stopped me. I turned to face him. “I’m listening.”
He sauntered toward me. “You’re speaking of Drew, I assume? The insanely good-looking boy who has his hands all over her sweaty body every day?” He raised a brow.
“Watch it, Jace,” I warned. “We’ve already been down this road once, and I promised you I’d never lay a finger on you again, but I don’t like the path you’re taking through Jaceland. Just spit it out already. Don’t toy with me, dude.”
“Fair enough. Just use that beautiful little head of yours to think for a minute.” He hesitated, before pointing upward. “I feel I should clarify. I meant that head, honey. Even though I’m sure the other is just as beautiful.” He licked his lips.
I felt my cheeks get hot. Did I just blush? “Get to it,” I demanded.
Jace’s lip curled in disgust as though he had tasted something bad. “Ugh, I can’t stand you these days. You’re no fun at all.” He waved a dismissing hand. “Besides you—and me, of course, Drew is the best thing that’s ever happened to Eva.”
That comment made my skin crawl.
“If you love her as much as you say you do, you’ll let it be and support it. I didn’t tell you because . . .” He zigzagged a well-manicured finger in the vicinity of my body. “All this jazz.” He rolled his eyes. “I knew you would try and stop it and she needed it—needs it,” he corrected. “As much as I adore you, sugar, she’s my number one concern. Always will be.”
Though I appreciated how faithful a friend he was to her, the stab he delivered almost reached my marrow. I narrowed my eyes. “How could you ever think I don't have her best interests at heart?”
“Because yours is broken.” Jace raised a brow while that festered. “Look, it’s not that I doubt your love for her, but, again.” He zigzagged his finger in the same pattern.
I raked an unsteady hand through my hair. “I’m trying to figure out when I became the bad guy in all this.”
Jace sighed and looped his arm through mine. “You aren’t the bad guy, honey. You’re the knight in shining armor. But you’re too hurt to see past the armor, and she’s still locked in her tower. Wait till she’s ready to throw down her hair. She’ll come to you.”
I wasn’t sure why it didn’t feel odd to be walking arm-in-arm with Jace. “You just don’t get it.” I shook my head with a sarcastic chuckle, pulling us to a stop. “I’ve done everything I can, yet there she is with some other guy—telling him everything.” I swung out a frustrated hand. “And I’m supposed to just wait until she comes to me?” My fingers banged off my chest with a knock.
Jace nodded, a curt little bip as if it was as simple as that, but it wasn’t. None of this was simple, and it was time that I stopped pretending. “I know you want me to understand, and maybe I’m an asshole for not, but I think . . .” I sighed, dropping my head with the exhaustion that I felt. “I think I might be done, Jace.”
Jace’s tone sharpened with his shoulders. “Nonsense. Don’t sling crap at me. You’ll never be done with her.” He tried to pull me forward once again, but my feet were unforgiving as realization set in, my stomach sinking with the letdown of my heart.
“I’m serious.” My eyebrows pinched in, the truth of all this bringing the larger picture into focus. Even though I told her at Bertha that I would do anything, give her the time she still needed, I didn’t think I could handle any more. “This kills too damn bad. The phrase ‘love hurts’ never met Angel. She runs through me, and it feels like acid these days. It’s debilitating.”
Jace smoothed a hand over my bicep, his voice pleading for the girl that he loved. “Don’t give up on her. She’ll come around. I know she will.”
“Come around?” My voice raised, incredulously. “Is that what I’m waiting for?”
“It’s not like that,” Jace huffed, and I could tell he was struggling to find the words to make this right. But he couldn’t. Not anymore.
“Save it, Jace. For once.” Fatigue laid heavy in my words, them giving up with me as I stuffed my hand into my jeans pocket, and drifted to walk away.
“She needs him.” Authority rang in his tone, his perfunctory statement protective of his friend.
My eyes cut to his, my own defenses kicking in. “And I needed her,” I spat, truth swollen in those words. My mouth closed around them quickly, ashamed at the admission, but it was confessed just the same.
I clasped my hands behind my head and pushed out a breath. Love should be more than coming around. It should be something that your soul can’t live without, depriving yourself of it unquestionable. “Honestly, I’m frustrated as hell, and I might just be ready to finally jump off her hot-and-cold merry-go-round. I tried, I really did, but I can’t keep track of it anymore. She wants me one minute and then pushes me away the next, and yet she confides in another man? It’s a slap in the face, and you fucking know it.”
Jace’s curt expression didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t refute.
“This isn’t just about him. It’s about us. What’s it say if she can go to some stranger before me? Not much.”
“Pull your shit together. Drew is helping her, that’s all, and that’s why she had to tell him. She loves you, you know that. She just has to figure out that she loves her, too.”
I considered his words. I knew she had a lot of self-loathing to work through, but I also knew that if she loved me even an ounce as much as I loved her, she would never be able to put me through the wringer like this. “This isn’t love, man. She’s destroying me.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked away, not sure of anything anymore.