Chapter 99: Jake
Reid’s eyes went pitch black. His lips curled, and the growl that came out didn’t sound human.
“You fucking bastard.”
Then his hand hit my chest, hard enough to throw me backward into the couch.
I hit it, bounced, stood right back up. “At least I don’t scare her,” I spat.
He laughed—one sharp, humorless sound. “She’s definitely been scared of you.” Then, lower, “And she’s never—never—looked at you the way she looks at me.”
That one landed deep. Because it was true.
I knew it the second he said it.
The next second, my fist flew.
The crack of knuckles against jaw echoed through the house. He stumbled back half a step, blood at the corner of his mouth, and before I could even breathe, his punch came flying back—split my lip open in one hit.
Then we were both moving—blind, furious, all instinct.
He slammed me against the wall, and I drove a fist into his ribs. He grunted, caught my collar, shoved me again. The couch hit the side of my knees, and we went down hard, grappling, fists finding every target they could.
“You think you’re better for her?” Reid snarled between hits.
“I know I am!” I shouted, catching his arm, twisting, landing one to his side. “You’d break her before you’d even touch her right!”
Reid’s fist hit my shoulder, hard enough to send pain shooting down my arm.
“I see her, Jake,” he snarled, voice low and ragged. “I know her. Just by looking at her, I know her.”
“So do I, you fucking prick!” I roared back, shoving him hard in the chest.
He staggered half a step, then surged forward again, teeth bared. “I can’t let her walk away from me.”
“You’ll have to,” I shot back, every word fueled by rage, blood, jealousy, all of it burning at once. “If she chooses me, you’ll fucking have to!”
Our words were as violent as the blows, each one heavier than the last, each one something that had been sitting between us for too long.
I caught him once across the cheek; he grabbed me by the collar, dragged me up with him.
“Who do you think she’d pick?” I panted, the words raw, reckless. “If she had to choose, uh?”
Reid’s eyes burned into mine.
He was breathing hard, chest rising and falling like he’d just surfaced from drowning.
“Me,” he said, low and certain. “Every. Single. Time.”
My fist connected with his mouth again before I could stop it.
The next few seconds were chaos—furniture crashing, blood, ragged breathing, the taste of copper and fury thick in my throat.
By the time we stopped, both of us were heaving, split lips, bruised knuckles, blood on our shirts, glaring at each other across the wrecked living room—two halves of the same animal, still waiting for a reason to go again.
But we didn’t.
Not this time.
Everything that needed to be said had already been ripped out of us, raw and ugly. Every low blow, every truth, every word we’d both been choking on for months—it was all out there, bleeding into the silence between us.
We just stood there, breathing, shaking, watching each other like we didn’t recognize what we were looking at. Then, slowly, it faded. The rage, the heat, the need to throw another punch—it burned itself out.
Reid’s chest still rose and fell hard, the muscles in his jaw twitching. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling, knuckles raw and slick with blood that wasn’t all mine.
The room stank of sweat and metal. A lamp was on its side, a smear of red on the wall.
We didn’t say a word. Not for minutes. Maybe for an hour. Just sat there in the dark, across from each other, heads bowed, breaths finally even again.
When Reid finally moved, it was quiet. He reached into his pocket, unlocked his phone, and typed something with slow, deliberate movements. Then he tossed it onto the couch beside him.
I looked at him, too tired to ask.
He didn’t look back when he said, voice low and flat, “I cancelled work tomorrow.”
I nodded once. My throat felt thick. “Yeah. Good.”
We both knew why.
There was no way in hell we could face the others tomorrow—face her—with our faces marked like this. With the truth of what we’d done written in bruises and split skin.
So we just sat there in the dark again, the silence heavy and alive between us, pretending we hadn’t just tried to tear each other apart over the same girl.
It’s what came out of my mouth next that shocked the both of us.
Even Reid.
“I can’t let her go.”
The words hung there, heavy, final, and I realized the second I said them that there was no taking them back.
Reid’s eyes flicked up, slow and sharp, a muscle in his jaw jumping.
And then, after a long beat, he said it too.
“I can’t either.”
The air changed. Thickened.
He leaned back against the couch, knuckles split open, blood drying in thin lines down his wrist. I watched his chest rise and fall once before I said, quieter this time, “She’s not going anywhere. We’re not sending her back to the city. Not to whatever’s waiting there for her. Not so we can feel better about our own shit.”
He didn’t answer. Just stared at the floor, jaw tight, thinking.
I went on. “We need to figure this out without screwing her up any more than she already has been. Without making her pay for our… whatever the fuck this is.”
Still nothing from him.
Then finally, his voice, low. “What are you getting to?”
I thought for a long time. Too long. The silence stretched until it was unbearable, until I could hear the rain start again outside.
We’d shared everything, our whole lives. Degrees, houses, the company. We rarely separated. Even when we hated each other, it was always together. Always side by side.
The thought that came next was so insane that I almost laughed. But when I looked at him—really looked at him—I saw it hit him, too.