A warm arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me into a comforting embrace. I gave in to his gesture for a second before I pulled away and scooted closer to my parents’ gravestone.
“Don’t,” I commanded as I held up my hand. “Don’t act like you care when I know you don’t.”
“That’s not true…”
“Isn’t it? When was the last time you even thought about talking to me? You got what you wanted, you fucked me, worked my pussy like your own damn toy and then you pushed me aside. So don’t come over here and pity me; I don’t need your fucking pity.”
“I never promised you anything, Goldie.”
“I know,” I practically shouted, “I know you didn’t, but damn it Jett, you sure didn’t make it easy on a girl when you were sending me flowers, notes, and acting as if I was God’s gift to earth.”
Jett sat there speechless next to me as his pupils moved back and forth, observing mine, looking for answers. How could a man so smart, so powerful and so commanding be so incredibly dumb?
“Let me ask you this one thing.” Jett nodded, so I continued, “Why me, Jett? Why did you pick me?”
Running a hand through his hair, Jett exhaled loudly as he leaned against a wrought iron fence that encased a giant mausoleum. As he sat next to me, I couldn’t help but soak in every last inch of him, from his pressed jeans to his simple black shirt to his perfectly styled hair. His jaw ticked as he thought about his answer and the image of my tongue running across his jaw ran through my head. I was hopeless.
“The first time I ever saw you, I was visiting my mom, just like you’re visiting your parents today.” Jett cleared his throat and said, “My mom’s family is on the east side of the cemetery. I like to come visit her often, just like you visit your parents. One day, I was coming to visit my mom after a rough day and you were sitting in front of her stone, drawing it.”
A gasp escaped my mouth as I knew exactly what stone he was talking about; it was my favorite. The one I had more drawings of than any other sketch in my collection.
“I was going to ask you what the hell you were doing, but when I saw you were wearing ear buds and completely lost in your drawing, I decided to observe you instead. I couldn’t get over the fact that your hair looked soft as silk or the way you tilted your head slightly to the side and bit your bottom lip as you tried to caress your paper with just the right shadowing. When you got up, I followed you to your next stop, and that’s when you stopped here and started talking to your parents about your life and the trouble you were going through. At that moment, I knew my mom brought you to me to help, to save.”
My heart was pounding rapidly as I tried to take in everything that Jett was saying to me, but it was all too much to think about. He believed his mom brought us together? His mom’s grave was my favorite in the cemetery? To say I was creeped the fuck out was an understatement.
I didn’t get him. At this moment, his eyes spoke to me and cared for me, but what about the last couple of days? I was used to Kace being hot and cold with me, but when it came to Jett, I couldn’t handle his emotional mood swings because I cared too damn much when he looked at me with those soulful eyes…those eyes that made me promises the owner couldn’t keep.
Shaking my head and getting up off the ground, I started to walk backwards to put distance between me and him. Coincidences I believed in, but outright fate? I had a harder time with that.
“Where are you going?” Jett asked, as he walked toward me.
“Don’t touch me,” I flailed my arms, trying to block off any form of him holding onto me like a lunatic. “I can’t be here right now. I can’t listen to you talk to me as if the last couple of days haven’t been torture, as if you actually care about me.”
“I do care about you…”
My head snapped up to look at him. “No, you don’t. If you cared about me, you never would have dropped me like you did. You never would have made me feel like a cheap whore that you were tired of. I have been paid for sex many times, but never once did I ever feel cheap and used. But, after you refused to even be near me the past couple of days, you made me feel like a used slut that you were too good to be with.”
“That was not my intention.”
“Then what was?” I asked, as my chest heaved from being too worked up.
Jett opened his mouth to answer, but then shut it as he was racking his brain to figure out what to say. Too little too late, I thought, as I huffed and stormed off. In the far distance, I could hear him call my name, but I didn’t listen. I just continued forward; I had a date to make.
Chapter Thirty Nine
“Thinking About You”
Jett
Fuck me.
What possessed me to tell Goldie why I picked her? I never told anyone about my mom, besides Kace, but that fucker could care less, so why did I tell Goldie? Why did I even follow her to the cemetery in the first place? I’ve been doing a good job of keeping my distance, staying away from her maneating ways, but for the life of me, when I observed her from my third floor window walking in the direction of the cemetery, I had to follow her; I had to see her.
I remembered the day I saw Goldie specifically. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts, an oversized T-shirt with a boy band on the front and a sad looking pair of Converse. She was tapping her foot to music I couldn’t hear, but could tell made her happy because the smile on her face as she drew the intricate curves of my mom’s grave fascinated me. The way her fingers stroked against her thick drawing paper urged me to get to know her, to have her fingers make the same strokes on my body. Little did I know, once I followed her, that she was going to need me more than I was going to need her, but at the moment, I wondered if it was the other way around. I refused to acknowledge that thought and continued to convince myself that the infatuation I had with the smart-mouthed girl was because she was new and she was different; that was it.
I walked back to the Lafayette Club, replaying the conversation I had with Goldie just moments ago, as I chastised myself for confessing to her about how I thought we were brought together by my fucking dead mom’s spirit.
What. The. Hell.
It was a little intense. I didn’t quite expect her to run away from me, but I didn’t expect for her to fly into my fucking arms either, not like I wanted her to or anything.
Shit.
What the fuck was I thinking? I actually wasn’t thinking. I hadn’t been thinking since the moment I buried my fingers into that sweet pussy of hers. She bewitched me that night with the way she responded to my touch, the innocent looks she gave me, and the way she thanked me for saving her. That night, she drove a wedge into me and staked her claim.
Now I was in a hell of a spot as I fought for my own sanity and losing Goldie. I knew the distance I put between us was hurting her, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her up. Instead, I called up Babs and Pepper and talked to them…fucking talked to them!
When the hell did I ever talk? We didn’t talk about me, we just talked about their future and what they planned on accomplishing after they left the Lafayette Club. Babs wanted to design her own makeup line named after her Jett Girl name. She had mock ups of all her designs for packaging and started mixing her own colors for eye shadow. I didn’t know much about the makeup side of things, but I sure as hell knew how to help her market herself and that’s what we’ve been working on the past couple of nights.
Babs was on her way out and I couldn’t be happier with the way she’d turned her life around. She was my first-ever recruit and I was sad to see her go, but proud she was able to accomplish something while she was here. It meant what I was doing for these girls was actually something good.
I started walking up the stairs to the third floor when I stopped at the second floor landing where Kace was sitting, staring straight ahead at me. He stood up, grabbed my arms and ushered me up the rest of the steps. By the time I reached the top, I shook off his hands and pushed him to the side. The man had the ability to kill with one punch, but he didn’t bother me. I knew I could stand my ground with him.