Saints: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Pawns of Patience Book 2) Read online

  “I used to go to parties sometimes with Sadie. Before her… problem got to be so unmanageable.” That’s weird. No one’s ever mentioned that before. “I took her home one night because we stayed later than Smith did.” I have to turn away, a sick feeling overwhelming me. If he tells me he did the same thing to Sadie that he did to me… He must realize that’s the direction my mind takes. He looks pained as he tells me emphatically, “I didn’t do anything to her. I only took her home.”

  “Lucky her,” I murmur, quietly enough that I’m pretty sure he doesn’t hear me.

  “We’d stayed out so late.” He gets this faraway look in his eyes as continues driving, as if he’s remembering it vividly. “My father gets up at the crack of dawn. I wasn’t going to make it home on time, so I crashed in one of the guest rooms. When Celia came in, I wasn’t thinking straight. I was tipsy and half-asleep, and honestly, I was just barely old enough to drive. I thought it was cool an older woman was coming onto me.”

  We both cringe simultaneously. What he’s describing is horrifying in the worst kind of way. He didn’t just sleep with Celia Harrington; Celia took advantage of him.

  “I didn’t know Woods had gone back to the house with Smith and was staying in the next room. Then, the next day he tells me he heard everything. And I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to you, of all people, but it’s like he enjoyed taunting me. I really thought he would just keep doing that forever.” He shakes his head, and I can almost picture how he must have felt.

  “But he stopped?” That seems to be the insinuation.

  We’ve reached the one half-decent ice cream place in town, but neither of us moves to get out of the car. I’m watching Ace while he seems to agonize over our conversation. He won’t look at me anymore.

  “Woods saw me helping you leave. He called me in the car after you’d fallen asleep. I swear I didn’t want to do it. I tried to convince him to just let it go, but he was furious that you’d embarrassed him at Brent’s party.” Ace drops his head to the steering wheel, making me jump against my seatbelt when it sets the car horn off. The couple walking past us shoots us dirty looks. “He swore if I did that one thing he’d never bring up what happened ever again.”

  My heart drops like a lead weight. “Dammit,” I whisper. It’s exactly what I tried to tell Smith I suspected. Jax was involved the whole damn time. Here I’ve been simmering with anger towards Ace for months, when all he was doing was trying to protect himself and people he’d grown up with and cared about. The decision he made wasn’t fair to me, but given the choice, I might have made the same decision in that moment.

  “I should have just let him tell everyone. It’s not like I can stomach hanging out with the Harringtons after what happened anyway, and it’s no secret anymore what a shitshow Celia is, either. Now if people find out, hell, they’ll probably just feel bad for me.” He’s not wrong about that. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, or even to understand why I did it. But you deserve to know. I feel like a piece of shit for doing that to you, especially because I knew how much shit other people were already giving you.”

  “No,” I reach out and put my hand on his arm, stopping him before he can spiral any further into this hole of self-deprecation. “I do understand why you did it. It was still wrong, but I have to admit I feel a little better knowing you weren’t just being nice in the beginning so you could take advantage of me later.”

  “God, no. I never wanted that. We were friends.” He reaches his arm over his chest so he can pat my hand where it’s still resting on his bicep. He must forget about his injury, because he winces when he stretches that arm too far.

  “Yeah, we were.” I eye his open wound again, still not so sure he should be walking around like nothing happened when something so clearly did. “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to get that checked out?”

  He shakes his head. “And try to explain that a grown woman stabbed me with a letter opener? I’m sure that will go over particularly well when they find out the woman is Celia Harrington. The woman whose husband has successfully settled malpractice suits on behalf of every doctor in a thirty-mile radius:? I’m sure that would make me a hit in the emergency room.”

  Obviously I suspected Celia was the one that did it to him, but it’s still startling to hear him confirm it. It’s even more startling to hear that she used a letter opener to stab him with. It makes me shudder just to imagine it.

  Ace finally opens his car door, so I get out, too. My stomach is feeling unsettled enough that I could probably skip the ice cream, but now that we’re here it seems like it’d be rude to say that. Plus, I think both of us could probably use a few minutes outside of the confines of the car. That was some weighty stuff we just talked about. It feels good to take a deep breath of fresh air as I look at the shops around us so Ace can have a second to himself.

  “Juliet?” When I turn, Ace is several feet closer to me than I expected. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and he looks so miserable it makes my heart break. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “I know.” I really believe that he is. And hell, I forgave Smith for manhandling me when we first met. I forgave Patrick for spending months insinuating I was stupid. I forgave Sadie for pulling a disappearing act on our friendship for months. I guess I can try to find a way to forgive this, too. I’ve been on the receiving end of Jax’s bullshit, and I know all too well how easy it is to get caught up in it.

  We stand there, awkwardly facing each other. I don’t think either of us knows quite where to go from here. It feels like we’re a million miles away from the days we spent eating lunch together. But I can feel myself letting go of a lot of the resentment I’ve been carrying, so it doesn’t feel right to just part ways again, either.

  “Ice cream?” I suggest. We’re already here now.

  Relief floods Ace’s face. I guess he’s glad that I’m not gonna make him talk this to death. He crosses the few steps it takes to reach the door to the ice cream shop and pulls it open. “After you.” He gestures for me to go ahead.

  I’ve been here a few times before. I really like making Salma bring me here so I can watch her panic when she sees me load my ice cream up with toppings she swears shouldn’t be mixed. The girl working behind the counter gets a big smile when she sees me.

  “Juliet! Good to see you girl, you want the usual?” she asks.

  I smile back at her and nod, hoping like hell that maybe Ace is too distracted to hear what she said. “You know each other?” Yeah, no such luck. I look next to me to see Ace looking down at me with curious eyes.

  “Oh, yeah, Juliet comes in all the time,” the girl cheerfully answers for me. My face instantly goes red, I can feel the heat radiating off my cheeks. Ace tries to fight back a grin, but his lips curl up until he can’t hold it in.

  He nods thoughtfully. “So, you’re a big fan of ice cream, then. Noted.” There’s something about the way he says it that makes me think it’s not the first thing about me he’s noted. I get a little flutter of butterflies in my belly. To the girl working, he says, “I’ll have whatever she’s having.”

  “Oh, no.” I shake my head profusely. “You definitely don’t want to do that.”

  “Why not?” He leans forward to watch as the girl starts putting my order together. It takes him only a few seconds to see why not. He makes a face as she piles gummy worms next to chocolate chips. “Oh. Is this… like some kind of cultural thing?”

  I frown at him before I giggle. “You mean do other people that grew up poor eat their ice cream with enough candy to put them in a diabetic coma? No, not really. I have a little bit of a sweet tooth, that’s all.”

  “I’ve seen five-year-olds at Halloween eat less candy than that.” I stick my tongue out at him. I can’t help myself. Ice cream loaded with candy is a major guilty pleasure for me. This is the first time anyone here besides Salma has gotten ice cream with me.

  Jake used to give me a hard time, too. Not that I want to be thinking about him
right now. It’s been almost four months that we’ve gone without talking. Actually, Ace kind of reminds me of Jake a little. Which, if I’m being honest with myself, is probably part of the reason it feels so surprisingly easy for me to forgive what he did last semester.

  I don’t want to dwell on that. Once we get our ice cream—Ace ends up not getting the same thing as me after all—and we sit down at a little table out front, everything feels lighter. I don’t want to think about the fact that he slept with Celia, who may or may not have murdered Kathryn Lassiter. And I stop letting myself compare him to Jake. Once I mentally get past those things for the moment, I find myself enjoying his company exactly the way I remembered it being before. Maybe things are finally looking up for me here.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Pearl watches with trepidation as I drop my bag by the door. “I don’t like this,” she says, but she’s only repeating herself yet again. It’s the same thing she’s been saying for the past couple days, ever since I decided to do this.

  Lynne Brown, the woman that spent more than a decade pretending to be my mother, won’t stop harassing me. It started with the phone calls. Every time I blocked one number, she just called me from a different one.

  Now she’s escalated to long-winded and barely coherent text messages about how much she misses me. She also has become awfully damn fond of telling me, “You’ll understand someday when you’re a mother.” And even though I want so badly to respond and remind her that she’s not actually a mother herself, I’ve managed to refrain from engaging altogether.

  Something has to give, though. She seems desperate to talk to me, and until I hear her out, I know she won’t stop trying to reach out. It’s the addict in her. She never knows when to just fucking stop.

  As for Pearl, I tell her the same thing I told her the first time she raised her concerns. “If I don’t do this now, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder for her trying to track me down. I’d rather get this over with than spend any more time dreading the day when she inevitably shows up here.” I shudder just imagining it. She’d no doubt get dollar signs in her eyes if she ever stepped foot across the Patience city line.

  “We could ask Grant Harrington to file for a restraining order.” She says it more to herself than me. I stop, turning to face her so that she knows I’m serious when I shake my head no. He needs to be focused on Friday. If Pearl’s really going to make me go through with getting emancipated, then I need him to make sure it’s all done right. Because if it isn’t, I won’t have any idea how to fix it when Pearl is… gone.

  I can’t say that though. Instead, I tell her, “I don’t think a restraining order would do anything. I’m not even sure she’d be sober enough to remember to follow it if we did get one. This is the easiest way. I promise you, I wouldn’t be going otherwise.” Her mouth sits in a flat line, but she does give a small nod. She knows I’m right, even if she doesn’t like it.

  There’s a light knock on the front door, surprising us both. I step aside so Pearl can answer, but she barely get the doors halfway open before she pushes it closed again so hard the paintings on the nearby walls rattle. I gape at her. She’s the queen of being polite, even when it’s someone she doesn’t like.

  “I panicked,” she says out loud, sounding as surprised by it as I am. She looks over at me, “It’s Asher Van Doren.” Ah, now the door slam makes slightly more sense. The last time we talked about him, I was sobbing about the pictures he’d taken of me. At the time I thought he was responsible for posting them, too, but now I know that’s not the case and there’s a hell of a lot more to the story. I didn’t think to share any of that with Pearl, especially since that whole story involves Cece, who Pearl’s already not fond of.

  I don’t have time to brief her on all of that now. “It’s okay. It’s a long story, but we talked things out.” She purses her lips but gives one tight nod. It’s probably the closest thing to approval that Pearl’s going to give right now.

  Pearl steps out of the way so I can open the door. Ace is halfway back to his car. “Hey!” I yell out to him. When he turns, I can see the relief on his face from here. He backtracks to me. “Sorry, that was just a misunderstanding,” I tell him when he gets close. I don’t want him to think I wanted Pearl to slam the door in his face. We left things pretty okay between us the other day. Not fixed completely, I don’t know if that’ll ever be possible, but good enough that I don’t want any doors slammed in his face.

  “It’s okay. I was just coming to see if you were busy.” Uh, he could have texted. “You know, since we’re both here while pretty much everyone else is away.” That’s fair. It has been a little boring not having anyone else around.

  “Now’s not really good for me, actually.” I glance in the direction of my duffle bag, which makes him look that direction, too. He has to lean forward a little before he sees what I’m looking at.

  He stares down at my packed bag for a long moment, then up at me again. “Are you going somewhere?” There’s a slightly panicked quality to his tone.

  “I’m driving to Nikon Park for the day. I’m only taking a bag in case it gets late and I need to stay the night somewhere,” I reassure him. I’m not actually sure where I’ll stay if I do end up needing to stay. I convinced Pearl that I’d be able to stay with Jake if needed, but I have no idea if that’s actually true. I’d like to think he wouldn’t turn me away if I was desperate, no matter how mad he might still be with me.

  I can tell he’s trying to be nice, but I see the judgment behind his eyes. He’s probably worried just like Pearl is. They don’t think it’s safe for me to go back there. I mean, they’re both probably right. Nikon Park isn’t the safest place around, no one would argue that. But it is a place I spent most of my life, so I like to think I have a pretty good handle on what it takes to survive one day and maybe one night there.

  Ace straightens to his full height, which makes him look seriously imposing. “Do you want company?” he blurts out. “I could go with you. Just for, you know, company.” He shuffles his feet as his eyes drop to the ground.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I start, but Pearl steps forward to interrupt me.

  “Yes. That’s an excellent idea. What a nice offer that is, right Juliet?” She sure did a quick one-eighty. Though, at this point, she’d probably send me off with Freddy Krueger if it meant I wasn’t traveling to Nikon Park alone.

  I prepare to tell him no, that it’s really not necessary. There’s no reason for me to drag someone else into my hometown mess, but then I think about how Ace does kind of owe me. And it would be nice not to spend three hours round trip in the car by myself. I hear myself saying, “Okay,” before I’m even really decided. What’s the worst that can happen, really? My junkie not-mom embarrasses me in front of him?

  Pearl seems to sag with relief. “Wonderful.” She narrows her eyes at Ace, a warning flashing in them. “Mr. Van Doren, I expect you’ll keep your hands off my niece’s clothes on this trip.” Ace’s face goes red as he nods emphatically.

  “Uh, yes ma’am,” he manages to get out in response. I can tell he didn’t expect Auntie Pearl to get straight to the point like that. I’m personally not surprised. This is the same woman I once described as being what would happen if a sweet grandma had a baby with a Russian dictator. Ace glances over at me for help, but I’m gonna let him squirm a little on this one.

  Pearl continues to eye him warily as I get my car keys. “Are you ready now?” I don’t need to take anything with me if he’s going to ride, too. The best part about taking Ace with me is that I’ll feel safe leaving whenever I want, even if it’s late. No one’s gonna bother me with Ace around. He’s basically the Hulk’s bastard son—but nicer.

  “Yeah, I’m good to go.” He nods at first, but then hesitates. “Uh, could I drive though?” I make a face at him. I’m a perfectly fine driver, so there’s no reason he should need to drive. His eyes widen, I guess as he realizes how his words sounded. “I’m sure you’re a gr
eat driver, I just think I’ll fit better in my car. In fact, you can still drive if you want.” He tries to hold his keys out to me but I shake my head. I barely feel comfortable driving the car Pearl bought me. No way am I driving someone else’s overpriced car.

  “It’s cool if you drive.” I turn my attention to Pearl. Part of me wants to hug her, but I know she’s not the kind of woman to be reassured by physical contact. “I’ll see you when I get home,” I tell her, watching her face soften as she nods.

  “You be careful.” She looks from me to Ace. “And don’t you leave her alone with any of those people.” I glance away so I can roll my eyes without her seeing. Those people are all people I grew up with. Most of them aren’t that scary despite what she seems to think. I’m glad Ace nods his agreement though, because I’m sure that offers her some comfort.

  We end up walking to the car in silence, but the silence doesn’t last long as Ace pulls out of the driveway and points his car towards the city line. “I forgot how scary Miss Pearl can be. Did you know we used to call her the Lexington Estate Witch when we were kids? We were always so afraid of her.”

  “Yeah, Smith told me about that, actually.” I bristle a little remembering how he wasn’t being very nice when he told me about it. That day was the first time we kissed, before we were actually on good terms. The kiss that Jax posted up at school. Romeo & Juliet die at the end of the story. After what happened to Kathryn, and Smith’s warnings about my own safety, that statement suddenly seems even more ominous than before.

  “Right. You and Harrington.” I can see him look at me from the corner of his eye, and I imagine he’s trying to decide if she should say anything else about it. Or maybe he’s working up the nerve to ask me if it’s true that I’m sort of seeing Patrick, too. “It’s really hard to see you two together.” Well, that sure as hell wasn’t what I was expecting him to say.