Red Hot Reunion - Bella Andre Page 0,56

saying.

Jason took off, straight toward them. In the back of his mind he knew it might be a better idea to cool off, to wait until Emma was alone so that he could hear her side of the story. But Jason wasn’t interested in what was fair anymore. In doing the right thing. Fuck being the good guy. Blood drained out of his face, his whole body felt empty, devoid of his usual boundless energy.

“Emma,” he called out.

She spun around and he knew. Guilt was pressed into her face, written all over her body.

She was betraying him. Leaving him.

For someone who didn’t deserve her. And never would.

“Jason,” she gasped, trying to pull her hand from Steven’s grasp. But Steven held tightly to her and there she was, stuck between two men and her parents.

Jason would have felt sorry for her, except he couldn’t go there. Not when everything he’d believed in had been ripped away.

“Looks like you’re having a big happy family Easter, aren’t you?”

His words themselves were innocuous enough, but not his tone. They burned his tongue, his lips as they fell.

“Can we talk about this later?”

She was pleading and a kinder man would have let her go, would have said, “Fuck it, she’s made her choice.”

But he wasn’t interested in being kind. Or in making this easy for her. She was going to tell the truth, goddamn it, admit that she was a coward. And a liar.

He shrugged. “Seems like it would be better to clear the air now that we’ve got everyone here, don’t you think?”

She shook her head, swiftly side to side, obviously expecting him to protect her from her parents one last time. Too bad she was assuming they were still on the same side, when she had clearly defected to the enemy camp.

The sick thing was, just like he’d always known but hadn’t wanted to admit during the past three years, a guy like Steven was a perfect fit for her. They would have blonde, dull kids, who got straight As and went into the family business.

Fuck.

Forcing his lips up into some resemblance of a smile, Jason turned to her mother. “Jane, your daughter and I have been dating.”

Jane gasped. “You? That’s impossible. Emma, tell me it isn’t true.”

But Emma just stood there, one tear tracking down her cheek.

Any other time Jason would have brushed it away. Now, he barely watched it fall.

“Walter, looks like you’ve found a much better candidate for your daughter, haven’t you? I assume he’s going to work for you upon graduation, keep everything neat and tidy in the family?”

Steven let go of Emma’s hand then, puffing out his chest and moving toward Jason. “You’ve got that right, buddy. You’re history. Emma doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. She’s with me now.”

Bile rose up into Jason’s throat and he had two choices: Be sick or beat the crap out of Steven.

He chose a swift right hook into Steven’s bedrock jaw. It hurt like hell when his fist hit bone, but the pain was good, reminding him that he was still alive. That he’d move past today, forget all about Emma.

One day she’d barely be a memory.

Steven came at him, but Jason was quick from years of holding his own in the kind of neighborhoods that Emma’s parents wouldn’t be caught dead driving through.

Jane cried out to warn Steven just as Jason was about to lay another slam dunk on his pretty face.

“He’s not worth it, Steven,” Emma’s mother screeched.

The wordsnot worth it, not worth it, not worth itslammed around Jason’s brain, getting louder and louder, running into each other.

“Don’t say that,” Emma cried. “They don’t mean it,” she said, moving toward him, but already Steven had turned his back on Jason.

“You’re mother’s right, baby. He’s not worth it. Let’s go. We’ve sullied Easter enough with this trash.”

Jason watched Emma stand there, watched her assess her two choices: Turn her back on her family, the perfect Wonder Bread, picket-fence future she would have with Steven, or risk it all with a boy who didn’t look to have much of a future outside of a kitchen.

Another tear followed the first down her pale cheekbones. She’d made her choice.

He turned to walk away, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

“Tell me this is what you want and I’ll leave you alone.”

She licked her lips, the very mouth that he’d been loving just hours ago, and said the words that condemned their love straight to hell.

“This is what I want.”

Jason relived the scene as