The Bad Boy's Princess

Ch. 10 - Shattered Hopes

Avoiding at Jace at school was probably the hardest thing to do when we had English together and an important project neither of us could afford to fail. Not to mention that I missed him. Yeah, pathetic as it was, I missed seeing Jace around. But I couldn't.

Not after that night.

He probably didn't understand why I was so dramatic for avoiding him when all he did was grab my wrist when he was drunk out of his mind. But I wish I could tell him, tell him why it did more damage than he would ever know.

Jace made me open up to him the way I have never done with any guy beside Landon. He just brought it out of me. I liked having Jace Vanderbilt as a friend, his presence became oddly comforting.

Until that night.

I remembered walking to the diner because Nicole got hungry during our group study date at her place. But then we ran into a drunk and angry Jace whom I was at first happy to see, then I realized how drunk and scary he was. He was so close to me that I could smell the terrifying amount of liquor he had drank.

When he grabbed my wrist so tight and wanting me to go with him, I got flashbacks of what happened in that warehouse that night. With them. The stench of liquor and the pain. Jace reminded me of them.

And I couldn't look at him the same, I was terrified of his once-warm eyes turned cold and dark. The expression on his face wasn't the same as the one I was used to. He reminded me of how he looked when I bumped into him on the first day of school. But this was worse.

But I couldn't blame him, he didn't know that I had PTSD from alcohol and being touched. It was unfair for me to blame him when I never told him how terrified I get of drunk guys who touch me.

The comforting feeling sober Jace gave me, drunk Jace ripped it away that night. And whenever I saw him now, I would get scared. No matter how much I tried to suppress it. I started getting more nightmares and my anxiety attacks came back, so Dr. Amary told me to stay away from Jace for awhile until the nightmares get better.

So, despite how much I wanted to see Jace, I couldn't. To make things even worse, I got sick this past weekend and I still didn't feel any better but thank god for DayQuil for keeping me alive enough to go to school.

But I hated the fact that they were from Jace. He dropped them off at my house, along with many other things like movies and especially my favorite ice cream. I didn't even know why he was being so nice to me when that wasn't who everyone thought Jace Vanderbilt was.

I was walking to the library to work on my assignments during lunch when my phone went off, it was uncle Andrew Lodge, my dad's younger brother. He was the only one from the Lodge family I still kept contact with as he was probably the only Lodge aside from my dad, who still considered me a Lodge.

"Hey sweetheart, how are you?" Uncle Andrew was only two years younger than my dad was, and their voices sounded so similar that I teared up from how much I missed my dad.

"I could be better, but how are you?"

"Andrea misses you, come visit us in New York soon, Ave." He sighed, I knew he was sad that I kept refusing to come live with them after everything that happened. But I was happy here, with my adopted family. "We can also go visit your father. Next weekend is his visiting days."

Dad's visitation days.

The only days I looked forward to the most every month. I never miss a single visitation day, except for last month when we were busy moving. I spoke to dad and he was understanding. But this month, I didn't have any plan on missing seeing him.