Page 86 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

Chapter Thirty-Two

THE WRECKING THORN

My name is Shepard Thorne and I’m in love with a girl named Jupiter Jones.

She has hair the color of strawberries and she has cinnamon-colored freckles scattered like stardust all over her creamy skin.

She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen but more than that she’s the bravest girl I’ve ever met.

She can work multiple jobs and take care of her sister singlehandedly.

She can make any house a home, even the one fraught with bad memories and laced with tragedy.

She can cut through the poison of any toxic snake or an asshole.

But most of all, she can kill you with only a few words, wreck you to pieces, make you fall apart, all so you can be born again. So you can be made again. Into something that she deserves. That is worthy of her rather than a coward and a liar like me.

The moment she told me I loved her I knew I did. I knew it was the truth. I felt it deep within me, in the center of my being.

It was as if I was waiting for someone to tell me, for her to tell me—I love her—so I could realize it was the truth.

Because those three words are something I’d never say myself, something I wouldn’t even think because why would I put her name and a certain death that I think love is in the same sentence?

Why would I do that to her when I know how toxic love can be?

I mean, I was fucking pushing her away because I thought she had fallen in love with me and that was the opposite of what I wanted.

I was doing her a fucking favor and then…

So I had to get out of there. I had to leave. I had to do the right thing even if it killed me.

But the moment I climbed into my rental car and started driving away from her, her words echoing in my head, things started to fall apart. I started to fall apart only so certain things could become clear. So I could finally see the truth.

The truth is that I fell in love with my Little Strawberry the first moment I saw her. In that green t-shirt and a purple barrette. When I saw her long and thick red hair and couldn’t look away.

And that’s because I never loved Isadora.

I thought I did. I thought for the longest time that I’d found someone who was perfect for me.

Someone easy, someone I could spend my time with, maybe even my life with.

I hadn’t gotten that far ahead in my future planning of course, but I can see that was where I was headed.

Never got the chance though because she chose my twin long before that.

In any case, I realize now I thought that Isadora was it for me because everyone else in my family had found someone perfect for them.

They’d made their own family, found their own person, like my Little Strawberry said that I got so…

adrift after that. So fucking purposeless and lonely that I latched on to the first girl I thought would give me what my siblings had.

It wasn’t love that made me want Isadora, it was loneliness.

Sheer and utter and fucking pathetic loneliness that I still have trouble accepting.

It was that gaping hole that I’ve been trying to fill for the past couple of years, that made me bitter about my siblings’ relationships and happiness.

That made me jealous, so jealous that I couldn’t stand to be around them.

I couldn’t stand to be around my twin. When finally, fucking finally , we were starting to build something.

We were starting to put his issues aside and be actual brothers. Turns out though, I had issues too.

I guess this is what happens when you bury things, your emotions and your feelings.

Your thoughts. They decay and waste away in a dark corner of your soul and become something unrecognizable.

They become something you can’t identify.

So you think the poison running in your veins is love when it’s your miserable loneliness.

What you consider a passing distraction is actually love smacking you in the fucking face.

And I also realize I know nothing about love. Not one thing. I can’t even recognize it for what it is so it’s safe to say I have no idea how to love someone. All I know is I want to. I want to love her because I do love her.

She’s it for me.

She’s my sweet dream and my dark desire.

She is my lost bird and my good girl. She’s my Little Strawberry and Little Whore.

She can make me touch heaven just by letting me breathe her air and she can destroy me just by taking a step away from me.

She’s everything that makes me and wrecks me.

And if she can make me realize all these things about myself, make me see the fucking truth of my twisted, tarnished soul, then I sure as fuck can learn to love her like she deserves.

Because I’m the only one who can. Call it arrogance or self-confidence or whatever the fuck but it’s the truth. We’re connected, aren’t we? In a soul-shattering and earth-standing-still way. In a way that I never in a million years could’ve imagined myself be connected to someone.

Of course, it took me the entire night of driving around to piece it all together when I should’ve been with her, when I should have fallen down on my knees, and licked her feet, worshipped her body and told her I loved her too.

But it’s okay. I’m going to fix it.

I have a game in an hour but once it’s over and we’ve won—and we will win because I’m not letting her down, because I promised I’d focus on the game—I’m going to win her back.

I’m going to show her I’ll do anything for her.

Anything at all to have a chance with her again.

The right way, this time. No secrets, no sneaking around, no potentially hurting people.

I’ll find a way to make this fucking work because failure isn’t an option.

So I play the best game of my life. I play like the Wrecking Thorn they call me, not letting anyone stand in my way.

No defense, no hurdles. No fake passes or side tackles.

No amount of pressing or any fucking strategy will make me give up the ball.

Not until I’ve scored the goal, and I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun playing the game.

In fact, my poor performance aside, I hadn’t even realized I was losing interest in the game.

I hadn’t realized soccer had become a chore, not my passion.

I guess, loneliness eats away at every little joy in your life.

And I never would’ve realized that if not for her.

She’s what completes me, completes this.

My life, my goals, all my dreams. So as soon as the game’s done and we’ve won; 5-0, I take off across the field.

I don’t wait around for victory laps or congratulatory hugs.

I don’t give a fuck if they thought I played well because I know I did.

I played for her. I have to go find her, apologize, explain, tell her all the things she’s always wanted me to say.

But then of course, the media rushes in and the fucking crowd thickens, swarming like a bunch of flies.

I’m navigating my way through them, through the questions, the cameras, the fucking mic thrust your way as if you’re supposed to just lean over it and confess your deep dark desires to them so they can make a quick fucking buck.

Still though, I’m polite. I don’t push or shove. I simply say ‘no comment’ as I notice Ledger, Riot and the rest of the boys picking up my slack and answering questions on my behalf. I’m all the way on the other side when I hear something that halts me in my tracks.

“Do you have comments on the leaked video of you with your stepsister?”

The question is thrown at me from the side so I don’t know who posed it.

But it freezes me to the core. It fucking makes my heart slam in my chest. Slowly, I turn around and there’s a weasely looking guy with black-rimmed glasses who appears ecstatic at having caught my attention.

He pushes his mic in front of my face but before he can say anything, I grab his collar and growl, “What the fuck did you say to me?”

His eyes bug out in fear, and he scrambles to explain, “The v-video that leaked this m-morning. Of you and your stepsister at a party. In a m-maze. The video is grainy but the color of her hair?—”

I punch him in the face to shut him up because no one is going to talk about her hair.

No one is going to fucking talk about her .

He crashes into another reporter talking to Ledger and screams erupt around us.

These ones of fear because I’m charging toward that fuckface again, ready to lay another one into him.

But someone stops me from behind or rather a few people—I sense three or even four—and pull me back as I shout, “Don’t you fucking talk about her, you understand?

No one fucking talks about her. Not her. ”

I love her.

It’s a short clip.

Extremely grainy so it’s hard to say who’s who.

But it’s a clip of her on her knees on the ground, her red hair spilled around her face and flowing down her back, her deep purple dress flipped up and me behind her, driving into her body with a force that seems violent.

That seems like I’m fucking her like I’m trying to kill her.

But in reality, I’m fucking her like she’s saving my life.

Like she’s saving me . My lost little bird.

While I’m more recognizable in the video, mostly because my face is in clear view even if it’s my profile, her face is turned away and hidden.

Her body is hidden as well except for her flanks and even though the angle is from the side and the distance is huge, it still makes me want to strangle the bastard who did this.

Who fucking intruded on our private moment.

On her private moment, where she was showing me.