Hate Me Today (Save Me #3) (15 page)

Vanessa

I don’t know what’s wrong with Jason today. He’s been withdrawn since he woke up and I can’t get a read on why and that scares the hell out of me. Jason drains the whiskey from his glass and sets it back on the patio table beside him. He stares into the fire pit in front of him and even though I can’t see his face from where I am, I can tell he’s still in the same mood he’s been in all day.

Leaning back against the door frame, I rest my head against it and just stand there watching him. He lifts the almost empty bottle of whiskey to refill his glass and I notice the shake in his hand and wonder how many he’s had before I came out.
Putting the glass to his lips he sips it as he scrapes his other hand through his disheveled hair. He drops his arms, letting the glass dangle from his fingertips. His chest expanding with a deep sigh.

“You gonna stand there and stare all night?”

His voice startles me. Pushing off the door frame I walk to him and trail my fingers lightly across his shoulders as I walk around him. His body tenses when I touch him and shrugs my hand off. Well that hurts.

“Everything al
l right?” I ask, eyeing the glass in his hand, blocking his view of the fire.

Closing his eyes, he slouches back and rests his head against the back chair. He grunts in acknowledgment, sipping his drink without opening his eyes. The sadness etched in his face breaks my heart and I don’t even know why it’s there because he won’t talk to me today.
Grabbing a pillow off the other chair, I drop it on the ground next to my feet. My hands rest on his knees, pushing them apart as I lower myself between his thighs to the pillow.

“Hey,” I reach up and caress Jason’s cheek. His face becomes more pained than it already was when I touch him but he doesn’t pull away this time. “Talk to me.”

He’s silent for a minute before cracking a little. “Can’t.”

“Why not? Jason, it’s killing me to see you like this and not know how to make it better.”

“It’s nothing you can make better. You can’t fix this, nobody can.”

“Then what’s the harm in telling me?” I whisper.

Jason sighs. Leaning forward he frames my face with his massive hands and presses his lips against my forehead, lingering there. “You deserve someone who isn’t fucked in the head. Someone who doesn’t bring you down. A guy that doesn’t fuck everything up.”

“Hey,” I pull back so I can see his face but I don’t stop touching him, “what makes you think you bring me down?”

With an empty laugh, he leans back out of my touch and stares into the empty space beside me. “Vanessa, I’ve been bringing you down since the day I met you. Sooner or later it’s finally going to hit you and you’ll resent me for the rest of your life.”

The glass comes back up to his lips as I try to search for the right words.

“You don’t see it, do you?” Jason’s pained eyes flick toward me and away again. “I’ve never been as happy as I am when I’m with you.”

He’s silent for a few minutes before draining
the glass. The ice clinks as he drops it to the table and stands, towering over me. “I need to get out of here. I just-” he pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just need to get out of here for a bit.”

I can feel the tears stinging my eyes as he steps around me. Jason grabs the bottle of whiskey off the table and heads toward the door.

“Do me a favor since you’re walking out on me,” I call out as he gets to the door. Pausing, he turns and looks at me. “Don’t drive. I don’t want to have to worry about that too.”

In six long legged strides he’s back in front of me. Squatting so he’s eye level, he grabs my chin and pulls me toward him. His eyes plead with me, for what, I’m not sure though.

“I’m not walking out on you. I'd never walk out on you, but I’m so fucked up in my head right now that I need to walk away before something comes out of my mouth that I don’t actually mean.”

He drops his mouth to mine in a quick, but passionate kiss and walks out the door before I can say anything. Leaving me on my knees to wonder what the hell is going on and why he needed to walk away.

My tongue darts out across my lips tasting the whiskey left there from his kiss and I know deep inside that alcohol is a lot of the issue.

~*~*~*~

Hours later while I’m lying in Jason’s oversized bed alone, I keep telling myself that I won’t cry. I refuse to cry. But no matter how much I tell myself that I won’t, I know sooner or later I’m going to be a girl and let it out.

The bedroom door clicks closed softly. I don’t move, pretending that I’m asleep. Jason’s feet shuffle across the rug, stopping next to the bed and it sinks down behind me. He sets
something heavy down on the nightstand. I assume it’s the bottle of whiskey he took with him or a new one, knowing him it’s probably a new one.

Lifting the covers, he slides in behind me. Pulling my naked body back against his chest and I almost lose it when he buries his nose in my hair and I swear he sniffles like he’s been crying.

His solid arms tighten more me. “I’m sorry.”

As soon as his lips press against the sensitive spot beneath my ear the tears leak out onto my pillow.

Jason

I feel Vanessa’s body tremble in my arms as she tries to hide the crying that happened the second I crawled into bed. This right here is what I was talking about earlier when I told her I fucked everything up.
I took this carefree, happy, beautiful girl and turned her into a crying mess. I’ve never cared if I made a chick cry before, so why is it killing me this time? With all the screwed up shit running through my head today the last thing I should be thinking about is making Vanessa feel better. But that’s all I want to do. I want to take every ounce of her pain away because I know that I’m the one causing it.

I roll her over so she’s facing me and wipe the tears off her face, leaving my hand to caress her cheek. “I told you I bring you down.”

When I walked out earlier I had every intention of polishing off my bottle before I came back and passed out anywhere but in bed with this girl, but when I got out of the cab at the cemetery, I couldn’t do it. Instead, I sat there while every reason this day makes me want to drink myself to death came flooding in. The monsters I keep buried deep inside surfaced and there isn’t a damn way to get them back in. Knowing I had to talk to someone, I decided to forgo drinking anymore and come back here. Hopefully to fix the best thing I have in my life.

Vanessa stays silent but the stream of moonlight through the window shows me that she’s watching me, tears still leaking out of the corner of her eyes onto the pillow.I finally break under her stare and the words I should have said years ago tumble out of my mouth.

“I need help.”

As soon as I speak she pushes up on her elbow and kisses me. It’s nowhere near the reaction I was expecting but I will never complain about her kissing me.

“Talk to me," she whispers. "I can’t help when I don’t know what’s wrong.”

I pull her back down against me,
resting her head against my bare chest. There is no way in hell I can do this looking into her eyes.

As I talk, my fingers drag up and down her naked spine. “When I was fourteen I killed my best friend.” I feel her body stiffen but she doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t attempt to pull away so I keep talking, finding the more I talk, the easier it all comes out. “We both thought it would be a good idea to get into my mom’s liquor cabinet and get tanked. We’d done it before, so we thought it was no big deal. After a lot of convincing he finally talked me into taking one of my dad’s cars out for a ride. I knew it was a stupid thing to do but he was my best friend and he was so excited about it, so I did it. We made it about a mile down the road before I wrapped the car around a tree. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt,” taking a deep breath, I clear my throat before talking again. Not before noticing that she had turned her head and was looking directly at me, the look in her eyes begging me to continue.

“He died immediately and I only ended up with some contusions and a nasty bump to the head.”

“It was today, wasn’t it?”

I nod, “Yeah, today. Usually I make it through it all right but with all this shit going on with Carter and the run in with my parents and feeling like a piece of shit when it comes to you… it all hit me a lot harder this year.”

“What happened after?” she asks while drawing her finger aimlessly around my chest, tracing over the tattoos.

“Spent a few years in juvie for it. When I got out my already hard ass parents hated me, so did my brother, Nate. The only person who cared if I was around was Carter. Instead of trying to fix anything in my life, I tried to find the answer at the bottom of a bottle. Guess I never stopped.”

I hold my breath, waiting for her to respond to what I just said and waiting scares the hell out of me. I’ve never told anyone what I just told her so I don’t know what to expect.

“You want help?” Vanessa whispers and I nod again because I really do. I’m tired of feeling out of control.

Before I can even think, let alone say anything, she’s out of bed. She grabs the bottle of whiskey off the table and rushes out of the room. Nerves grab ahold of me so I chase after her.

When she reaches the kitchen sink, she unscrews the cover and starts pouring the alcohol down the drain. Part of me wants to rush over and grab the bottle from her and finish it. The voice in the back of my head whispers that I’ll never be able to go through with this and I will never be good enough without the alcohol. The other part, the part that wants to start making my life better, the part that wants to be better for her, keeps me rooted to the spot I’m in while she finds every bottle in the house and drains them out.

When she finally finishes, she turns to me. Her slow steps toward me tell me she’s afraid of my reaction, like she’s waiting for me to freak out. Reaching out, she waits for me to shake her hand and when I do, I can’t help the laugh that rumbles through my chest in the middle of this very serious moment.

“Hi, I’m Vanessa. I’m a totally mess, I tend to fuck things up and up until recently I was OK with dying. Now, I’m thinking I found something worth sticking around for.”

Her introduction spurs my own and the words tumble out like they’ve been sitting on the tip of my tongue just waiting to be spoken. “Hi, I’m Jason and I’m an alcoholic. It never used to bother me, but now I know there’s something out there that makes me feel better than alcohol ever has.” I pull her into me, my hands wrapping around the back of her neck and whisper my words against her lips. “You.”

Vanessa

Jason opens the door of the truck for me. Before I have a chance to slide out, he turns his back on me, telling me to hop on. I do. I’m not going to complain, I love this playful side of him that I don’t get see very often. This is the first time he’s done anything with the group without alcohol. So, I’m trying to be supportive, rocking out tonight’s bonfire with water. The noise coming from down by the water is loud already and I can see the orange glow of the fire over the hill.

Jason slows down to a stop just as we crest the hill and can see everybody. “What if I can’t do this?”

I lean down, pressing my lips against his neck. “You’ve got this but anytime you want to leave, we’ll leave. But that little girl,” I point to where Izzy is hauling ass up the hill, “she misses her Uncle Jason.”

I slide off his back just in time for Izzy to fly into his arms. I leave them talking, walking down the hill to join everyone by the fire. Looking around I notice that no one is actually drinking tonight and I can’t help but smile at how supportive everyone is.

AJ beats his hands against the frame of the chair he’s sitting in with Sophia sitting in his lap, trying to copy him. They’ve got a pretty good beat going that Tuesday and Evan are bopping along to together.

Jameson pulls Abby gently back against him, resting his hands against her rounded stomach. A pang of jealousy hits me. I know that that’s something I will never experience because of what I’ve been through. Suddenly I feel like I need a drink but that feeling leaves as fast as it comes on when Jason wraps his arms around me from behind. Izzy’s legs settle over my shoulders while she sits on his.

We make it about forty minutes before Jason starts getting antsy, the leg that I’m sitting on starts jittering. He tells me he’s fine though and before I have a chance to push it, Izzy interrupts me.

She leans against my leg, her head resting on her hands as she tries to use all her cuteness to her advantage.

“Will you sing something? I hear Aunnie Abby sing all the time and it’s getting boring.”

“Hey!” Abby whines sarcastically. “I’m right here.”

Jason chuckles against my shoulder. Izzy rolls her eyes before batting her blonde eyelashes at me.

“How about this. I’ll sing if Abby and Tuesday sing with me.”

She flips around, begging them until they finally give in and we settle on "I Feel a Sin Coming On" by Pistol Annies. Mainly because there’s three of us and it won’t sound weird without music. Izzy climbs onto Evan’s open leg and directs us while we all try not to laugh.

I make sure Jason knows I’m singing to him, sliding my hand between us, over his toned stomach that I love so much until I hit the button of his jeans. He grabs my hand, pulling it away from his lap and whispers in my ear.

“You’re pushing your luck tonight, gorgeous.”

Jameson stands, grabbing a now sleeping Izzy and Sophia up in his arms and tells everyone he’s going to tuck them in. I turn, pressing my lips against
Jason’s ear, swiping my tongue across his earlobe.

“What are you going to do about it out here?”

He growls, pushing me so I’m standing and stands up with me. Tossing me over his shoulder, he begins climbing the hill back to the truck.

“We’ll be back,” he throws out over his shoulder.

I laugh but am cut short when Jason’s hand lands hard against my ass, turning my laughter into a moan. We get back to the truck and he slides me down his body, pinning me against the fender.

“You wanna know what I’m going to do about it?” I nod slowly and he steps back, undoing his belt and jeans before pressing back against me. “What I’m going to do, is fuck you right here in the middle of the woods.”

I should be nervous that someone will walk up the hill and see us or we’ll make enough noise that everyone will hear; but I’m not. It doesn’t matter where we are, if Jason wants to fuck me, he’s going to fuck me and I’m going to let him and love every second of it.

His hand slips behind the button of my jeans without breaking eye contact with me, working my already wet and sensitive clit until I can’t catch my breath or keep qui
et. My jeans hit the dirt and with a bit of one handed maneuvering from him, he slides them off, tossing them onto the hood of the truck without pulling his fingers out of me. I want to touch him, but I can’t make myself move as he pulls himself free of his pants. Jason strokes him cock slowly, watching me closely while I watch him pleasure himself until I can barely stand it. He doesn’t speak, but then again he doesn’t have to. I know what he wants just by the way he moves. My legs spread instinctively. He stoops down, bracing my knees in the crook of his elbows and lifts. I lean back, pressing my hand against the hood to keep us balanced and guiding him inside me with the other.

In one swift movement he’s inside me, driving mercilessly into me. I can’t take it, he’s so deep I feel like I can feel him in my heart with every thrust. The fender hurts against my spine so I push up and wrap myself around Jason’s neck. I drag my fingernails over his back, crying out when he latches on to my nipple and bites down.
His arms fold over my legs, one palming my breast, the other playing with clit until I’m on the edge of coming.

“God you feel so fu
cking good. I love the way your pussy squeezes my cock. I could get lost in you for days.” He jerks his head back, eyes filled with confusion. Like he scared himself with his own words but he masks it as fast as he can. “You better come right now, with me. Right fucking now.”

His words are the permission that I’ve been waiting for and I fall head first over the edge with him, screaming against his neck without thinking about what I’m saying. Jason’s breath hits my neck and he drops my legs, stepping back like I burned him.

“What the fuck did you just say?” he growls, tucking himself back into his pants as fast as he can.

I steady myself against the truck, trying to figure out what I said to make him flip gears like this. I barely have a chance to take a breath before he’s handing me my pants, telling me to put them on and leave.

Shit. I think I told him I loved him and now he’s freaking out.