Jay Crownover - Rule

“I’ll make it. It’s not that far.” I scrambled out of the back and had to lean on the door frame while he got out of the driver’s seat. We were standing so close I could see the pulse in his throat thumping under the hummingbird tattoo he had there. “Thanks, though.”

He exhaled and rubbed his hands roughly over his face. He took a step back and made sure I was looking him dead in the eye when he told me, “I’m serious about Sunday. Don’t show up here next week expecting me to play nice. I’m over it.”

I snapped a salute with two fingers to my brow and let my body collapse in the seat he had just vacated. “Message received. My services as chauffeur slash buffer are no longer needed, which means I probably won’t be seeing you around. Try to take care of yourself, Rule, seriously; somebody has to.”

I shut the door before he could say anything else and didn’t even wait until he moved away from the car to put it in reverse and pull away from the apartment complex. It was a short drive to my own apartment that I shared with my best friend, Ayden.

I had met Ayden freshman year when we shared a dorm room together. She was a chem major, worked at the same sports bar I did, and totally had the patience to deal with all my endless neurotic crap. Her family background was no picnic, either, so I loved that I could always rely on her to be there for me. She was also smart as hell and it had taken her exactly zero seconds to figure the reason my social life was boring and that I could never commit to any of the guys I dated was because I was hung up on Rule Archer. So when I came stumbling in hurting, with tears in my eyes, she put me to bed without questions and closed the blinds in my room while she fetched me some painkillers and a giant glass of water.

The bed depressed when she climbed up next to me as I kicked my peep-toe heels off and tugged my belt through the loops on my slacks.

“It was bad today?” Ayden was from Kentucky and her Southern drawl rolled over me like a soothing balm.

“He was with some skank again, he had a hickey the size of Alaska on his neck, my mortal enemy from high school hit on him at Starbucks, and it took Margot and Dale less than a minute to insult his clothes and hair and remind him he is not now nor will he ever be his dead twin brother. Luckily, this time they left out his job and disregard for manners, but he blew his top and stormed out. They’ve all decided it’s best we no longer come up on Sundays, making this the second family I’ve been a part of that can’t figure it out and just love and appreciate one another. To top it all off, Gabe has been blowing up my phone all day and I can’t think of anyone I want to talk to less. So yeah, it was really fucking bad today.”

She brushed a hand over my hair and laughed softly. “Girl, the situations you find yourself in.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Did you give him the key to his place back?”

I moaned a little and buried my head in the pillow. “No. I totally spaced out, but it’s not like I’m in any hurry to walk in on him and two girls at once again. Honestly I’ll be super glad to never have to see Rule’s pierced junk again.”

She snickered a laugh at me and rolled over onto her back so that she was staring at the ceiling. Ayden’s hair was as black as mine was blond and cut in a funky short pixie style. She had big whiskey-colored eyes and a heart that was pure gold. Besides Remy, she was the best friend I’d ever had. I loved her for not making me have to lay it all out for her to sift through—she just got it. While she might not understand how I spent my time equally loathing and loving a person who viewed me as nothing more than a nuisance, she never condemned or criticized me for it.

“That boy, he is a handful.”

“I don’t know, maybe the space will be good for me. Maybe time away from the whole family will finally give me the breathing room to kill the way I’ve always felt about him. I can’t spend the rest of my life walking away from other people just because they aren’t Rule.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry to see Gabe go, but you do deserve someone who treats you amazing and loves you in all the right ways. You’ve earned it, because no one I’ve ever met in my whole life loves as freely and gives as much as you do. Seeing as those parents of yours might as well be carved out of ice, that’s just a damn miracle. You’re a good girl, Shaw, and at the very least you deserve a good guy.”

I folded my hands together on the bed and laid my cheek down on them. My head was slowly starting to stop throbbing and all I wanted to do was take a nap and maybe work on processing everything that had happened today.

Ayden was right; I did deserve a good guy. I knew what one looked like, knew what one acted like, in fact I had been best friends with the ultimate good guy. Remy embodied everything any sane girl would want in a boyfriend and yet I had never had those feelings for him, not once. I remembered clearly the first time he had taken me home with him. I was fourteen and having a really hard time fitting in with all the preppy, rich kids my first year of high school. I know now that image and brands mattered, but back then I just wanted to wear jeans and my hair in a ponytail. Remy had been sixteen and captain of the football team. He found me crying outside the girls’ locker room one day after a particularly nasty verbal beat-down from Amy and her crew. He didn’t make fun of me, didn’t ask questions or get all weird because I was a freshman and he was a junior. He just bundled me up and carted me home with him because I was sad and alone and he didn’t want me to be either of those things ever again. He told me he could tell by my eyes that I was a kind person, that I needed someone to look out for me, and from that minute on he decided he would be the person to do it. I remembered all the warm and fuzzy feelings that came with that moment, remembered the gratitude and overwhelming joy I felt at finally having someone see how worthy and deserving of unconditional love I was, but what I remembered most was everything inside me going upside down when Rule walked into the kitchen and tilted his chin at me and asked, “Who’s the chick?”

My heart stopped beating, my lungs felt like they were going to collapse, my skin was suddenly too tight all over my body, and I couldn’t form a rational thought or a coherent sentence. Back then I chalked it up to a silly teenage crush; all the Archer boys were good-looking and had qualities that made them larger than life. Every girl I knew had had the prerequisite infatuation with a bad boy at one time or another. Of course, they normally grew out of it when they realized the bad boy was just an ass and they deserved to be treated better. But as time went on and things changed, my feelings never did even though it was clear they were never going to be returned. Rule only saw me as Remy’s little tagalong; a spoiled little rich girl, and then as we got older, as Remy’s girlfriend. That sucked because I had never been any of those things and as a result I sabotaged relationships, turned down guy after guy simply because I didn’t want a good guy—I wanted the one who was damaged and blind to the way I felt.

I was a good girl. I was loyal and honest and I worked hard and invested a lot of time and energy in building a secure future for myself. I stayed out of trouble and went out of my way to try to be the polished and perfect daughter my parents wanted me to be, and the successful, driven woman the Archers had given me the confidence to be. What I never spent any time being was the person that I actually felt like I was. She was locked somewhere deep inside me, suffocating and still holding on to the hope that Rule would notice she was alive. It was exhausting, and in the vulnerable moments when I was brutally honest with myself, I had to admit I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up.