Home is Where the Heart Is (Home #1) (3 page)

“Now I need to go and fix myself up, no one’s going to want me when I look like this!”

“I’ll take care of Isabelle while you do that,” Jason told her, a smug smile pulling at his lips.

Hannah looked between the two of them as if trying to weigh something up.

“Its fine,” Isabelle told her quietly, appreciating the concern but wanting more than anything to see where this night could go.

Hannah glared at Jason fiercely. “I won’t be gone long.”
There was both a promise and a threat in her words.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” he told her defensively.

“Yeah, right. Be careful,” she told Isabelle firmly before sauntering away, turning back to glare at Jason a few times.

“She hates me,” Jason said simply as he took a seat next to her.

“Well, you did mess her hair up and some girls find that unforgivable,” Isabelle replied.

“What about you?” he asked teasingly. “Are you going to forgive me?”

He must have realised as soon as the words were out, that there could be a double meaning to his question because he immediately went quiet. Isabelle let the silence drift between them, the tension saying the words they couldn’t themselves say. It was awkward. Being this close to him, sitting silently while the party raged on around them, was so freaking awkward. This was not a good start to her night, maybe she shouldn’t have come after all?

“I miss you,” he whispered softly.

Isabelle kept her eyes down, unsure if she’d heard him right.

“Izzy? Did you hear me?”

His hand landed clumsily on her bare knee. “I miss you.”

She faced him then and took in his handsome face, framed with unkempt blonde hair and unfocused grey eyes. “You’re drunk.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” he countered.

“Jason…” she began.

“No. Stop. Just stop. I just want to be with you, ok?” he told her as he moved closer, the stench of beer covering him like a wet blanket.

“Be with me?” she whispered, trying to work out how the hell they’d taken a turn down this road and if she was game enough to continue down it.

“Just for tonight, can we drop the bullshit and hang out?”

He tilted her chin up with his finger, hands gentle on her face.

“Come inside and we’ll talk, ok?” He sounded so reasonable and she had definitely come here tonight so they could talk through their past and move on without regrets.

Isabelle looked over to where Tate was laughing as Sylvia attempted to get her pin thin body to twerk. She didn’t want to miss out on her chance with Jason, but Tate would kill her if she just disappeared.

She remained frozen in indecision.

“I’ve just gotta tell Tate where I’m going, ok?” she told him, rising from the log and moving towards her friends.

Jason grabbed her arm and pulled her back a little more forcefully than she expected.

“Don’t worry about that,” he crooned as he gestured to his friends. “I’ll take care of it.”

He turned and whispered to his best friend Thomas who looked surprised at first but then smirked at Isabelle and with a nod walked away.

What the hell was that smirk about?

“The boys are going to take care of it for us. Come on, we’ll head to my room and we can watch a movie, talk, whatever you want.”

Isabelle hesitated, torn between the two guys in her life but, with a final tug from Jason, she gave in and followed him back inside, vowing to leave with Tate like she promised if he came looking for her.

*

The stench of alcohol was nauseating and so distracting, Isabelle was having a hard time focusing on the movie, with Jason watching her and breathing heavily on her face.
Why had she even come in here with him? He had avoided any and all questions she’d tried asking about their relationship and just watched her like a dog ready to devour a steak.

She shivered as his breath settled on the side of her neck.

“You look so hot,” he whispered, turning her face from the TV screen to his.

Isabelle smiled at him, the foolish butterflies in her stomach going crazy. “It’s the dim lighting.”

“No,” he slurred slightly. “You’ve always been so hot. It’s been killing me the past few months not being able to slide up against that body of yours.”

Isabelle smiled tightly and didn’t reply, because what the hell was she even meant to say to that?

She was regretting more and more coming into his room with him. He was definitely way too drunk for reason and the movie was almost forgotten. Soon she wouldn’t have a distraction from the hungry look in his eyes.

She shifted uncomfortably, pulling her skirt down a little, feeling a little exposed in her short outfit alone with him on his bed. She thought she had loved him and she wanted to lose herself in his arms just one last time, but her stance on sex hadn’t changed.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he purred as he shuffled closer and closer to her.

Isabelle stiffened. “Jason, you’re drunk.”

“You’re sexy,” he whispered, pressing his lips roughly against her cheek.

Isabelle was beginning to feel too warm and trapped, confined by his big body. She knew that if she didn’t put a stop to it, this moment was going to get away from her and she would end up with nothing but regret.

“We’ve been gone awhile, I’ve gotta get back to Tate,” she told him, her voice wavering a little.

His hands grabbed her waist hard for a moment but then quickly relaxed.

“Stop worrying so much about Stevens, he can survive for a couple of hours. I just want to be with you, I’ve missed you so much.”

His hands pushed at her skirt as his lips moved sloppily on her neck.

“Jason, what are you doing?” she asked, her voice starting to hitch. “I don’t want this.”

“Sure you do, baby,” he slurred, smacking away her hands that struggled to push him away. “You love me, right? You want to be with me as bad as I want to be with you. I’ll be gentle, I promise, I’ll make you feel real good, you want that, don’t you?”

“No,” she said, her voice thick with nervousness. “I don’t. Get off me. I want to go home.”

“You said you loved me, I’m just giving you a chance to prove it,” he purred.

Yeah, she had told him she loved him. She could still feel her traitorous heart pounding away and pining for him, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him tonight, and not just because he was drunk. It was because in all their time together he had not once said he loved her back, and she wanted her first time to be all about love and building that connection.

“Jason, I’m serious,” she said firmly, trying to push him off. “Let me go.”

“Just relax,” he whispered. “Let me give you your going away gift.”

“No,” she cried, kicking out from under him so that her knee hit his stomach. “Is that what this is about? You…you get to just take what you want and then I leave so there’s no strings attached? Tate was right about you.”

She pushed away from him and shuffled off the bed, her knees weak as she stood trembling in front of him.
“You bitch,” he snarled, moving swiftly to lunge across the bed and grab her before she could bolt.

Fear pressed down on her and cut off her voice as his hands roughly yanked hard on her shirt until it ripped, buttons falling across the floor and bouncing away.

Hot tears fell relentlessly down her face. She struggled uselessly and shook her head
backwards and forwards as he lowered her to the floor, his grip iron tight.

She lay trembling on the floor crying, terrified with rough, uncaring hands pulling at her clothes as the hard floor dug into her back. She tried covering her chest with her hands, feeling too exposed and afraid that if he touched her again she was going to throw up, but he held her still, her body immobilised as his hand crept up her skirt and stroked her inner thigh.
Oh god, he was going to do it, he was going to take everything from her - the one thing of hers she had left, and he was going to tear it away from her just as he had done her heart and trust.

“Jason, please,” she managed to choke. “Not like this.”

He stopped and stared down at her, his eyes were grey pools of emptiness looking right through
her. She had never seen this side of him, never even guessed at this cruelty he was capable of, and in that moment she had no idea who he was. She began to realise after being together nearly six months she had never truly known him.

“You made it this way. I would have been gentle, loving even, but you wanted to play rough,” he told her coolly, pulling her shirt further away from her chest, exposing her black bra. She lay paralysed beneath him as he moved his hands below her underwear and touched her in places no one had ever been before as his lips worked clumsily on her neck.

Something hard was pressing against her inner thigh as his fingers violated her and she felt the true meaning of helplessness. She was very ready to retreat into her mind and lock herself away from this moment when the noise from the party picked up and Isabelle heard footsteps come closer.

This was it. This was her only chance help

“Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Someone, please help me!”

It came from nowhere.

One minute she was screaming, and the next her voice had been cut off and she was
choking on blood as a fist came down on her face.

“Shut up!” he screamed as he smacked her again, driving his point home. “Are you stupid? Shut up!”

The hits finally stopped as he watched her with blind fury, panting.

“Why’d you make me do that?” he whispered, shame colouring his cheeks as he eased away
from her slightly, his body not pinning her down as firmly.

Get it together Isabelle
, she told herself.
This is the last chance you’re going to get to save
yourself and you need to take it.

With a deep breath she gathered all the energy she had left and hit him hard in the nose so
that he reared back in pain.

Scrambling to her feet, Isabelle kicked him in the groin to make sure he wouldn’t follow her and then she ran on shaky legs out of the room and back into the party where everyone was oblivious to what had almost happened.

“Belle? Tom said you went to get ice?”
Tate called in surprise.

Isabelle froze for just a moment and then she began to run like she was in the Olympics, too ashamed to face Tate and desperate to get home and scrub at her skin. She lost one of her shoes in her panic so her gait was uneven but she didn’t care. Her sole goal was getting away and going home so she could collapse in private. Thank god she only lived a couple of streets away.

Sweat and blood dribbled into her eyes and rolled down her clammy skin as she continued to run. How was she ever going to be able to face her parents like this? There would be questions, questions she wasn’t willing to answer, questions that would break her completely if she had to relive the memories.

“Isabelle!” Tate bellowed.

She froze, he’d come after her. Damnit Tate, did you always have to be so dependable? She could not let him see her like this, could not allow this sort of weakness in front of him.

Fresh tears wet her cheeks and she began to feel anxious and trapped. What was the lesser of two evils?

She pulled out her phone and checked the time. One in the morning.

She turned towards Tate then back to her house weighing up her options. With only a moment’s hesitation she ran towards her house, praying her parents were fast asleep.

With shaking hands she turned her key in the door and barely made it inside before Tate was slapping his hands on the wooden door.

“Isabelle! Open up this door!”

“Just go away, Tate,” she rasped.

“What the hell did he do to you?” he demanded. “You disappear for ages and then when I see you there’s blood on your fucking face and you’re sprinting away from me!”

“You’re seeing things, I’m just tired and want to go to bed.”

“Stop treating me like I’m a fucking idiot, we both know you would never just leave me there without saying anything, and I
know
what I saw.”

“I… I tried to break up a fight and got caught in the middle,” she lied, speaking through the sobs trying to force their way out. “I knew you would over react and I just wanted to go home.”

There was a long pause and then a shuffling noise as he slid down the door. Isabelle did the same so that they were back to back with the solid wooden door between them.

“I’m going to kill him,” Tate said matter of factly.

Panic gripped her chest again. Tate couldn’t hurt Jason without raising questions that would lead back to her parents and her dad going to prison when he heard and reacted with violence against Jason. No one could know, not here and not ever.

“Just go home, Tate.”

“Belle, I love you and I would do anything for you but...”

“But you won’t do that?” she quipped, resting her pounding head against her knees.