Free RECKLESS - Part 4 (The RECKLESS Series) by Alice Ward Page B

still not breathing, I silenced the ringing and then shut my phone off and crawled back into bed. As the depression, exhaustion, and tears pulled me under, back into a fitful bit of sleep, I told myself that it must have been a mistake, that there had to be some sort of an explanation for it all, that I’d see him in the morning and we’d sort it all out.
    This couldn’t be it.
    This couldn’t be the end.

***
    By the time I woke up around noon, I’d found my pissed off. Screw wallowing around like some pansy chick that needed a man to feel like she meant something in this world. I might have thought I loved Jace, but, in all reality, we hadn’t had more than a couple of weeks together. I wasn’t about to let my life fall apart over him. Sean might have had some sort of rights to screwing up my life. Jace? He hadn’t earned that right.
    I was going to get up, shower, make myself look hot, head over to his place, and remind him of what he’d given up, or maybe was about to. If it turned out that it had all been a misunderstanding, if it turned out that his phone had been stolen, or that he’d left at someone else’s house, or some other crazy mishap... there was still the matter of why he hadn’t shown up for my homecoming.
    In other words, I needed answers and I was going to look hot getting them, if for no other reason than to make him squirm. I was a firecracker, not this pansy-ass lovesick puppy I’d been acting like since I’d started seeing him.
    It was damn time I started acting like it.
    I went for the outfit he’d given me, the high-low dress without the leather jacket. I styled my hair into loose waves, put on my knee-high boots, applied just enough make-up to look like I actually gave a shit about myself and then plowed my way out the door.
    Only, as I climbed into the back of the cab, as we drove down his street, I started to second guess myself. Maybe this wasn’t the way to go about things. I had classes in an hour. I had a life to get back to. What was I going to do if it turned out that he really had moved on? I didn’t have time to be a wreck, not after falling apart after Sean, not after spending more than a week back home dealing with all the family stuff. I needed to focus on the last two months of college before I ended up having to repeat an entire semester.
    If Jace had moved on, if he’d made me the other woman, I couldn’t deal with that. I figured it was better just not knowing, avoiding the problem. Whatever his excuses, whatever his reasons, the truth was staring at me in the face; it was over. So, just before the cabbie stopped at his house, I had him turn around, had him drive me back to campus.
    “Change your mind, missy?” the man asked, flipping a U-turn at the end of the street.
    It didn’t sound like there was any judgment in his voice, but I still couldn’t help the guilt flooding through me. Apparently, I was even more of a lovesick puppy than I’d thought because I just wasn’t brave enough to try and face the truth.
    That would be the theme of the day.
    I avoided the coffee shop. Turned off my cell phone. When someone started knocking at my door—probably him--I ignored it completely and pretended like I wasn’t home. And when Becca finally showed up, I declined her offer of heading out to see the band. Jace hadn’t shown up to see me. What made him think I was going to show up to see him?
    “Okay, Andy. Last chance,” Becca said, standing in the doorway, ready to leave. “You know that man is going to show up here and drag you out of that bed.”
    “No, Becca, he’s not,” I said, turning away from my studies to glare at her. “And I don’t want him knowing I’m here.”
    Her brows creased in concern and confusion. “I don’t understand.”
    “A woman answered his phone last night, Becca. A woman.”
    Her head shot back in shock and disbelief. “Are you sure?”
    “Am I sure it was a woman? Of course I’m fucking sure! I’m not an idiot, Becca.