My need to protect myself.

The old Jade.

I stepped closer to Stella, sure to encroach on her personal space. “You don’t know a thing about my friendship with Reid. If he wanted me out of his life for good he would have told me himself.”

Stella’s mouth twisted and her smile turned sinister. “You poor, stupid girl. Reid feels too sorry for you to say anything, but I don’t. So here’s the deal, stay away from him, and we won’t have any problems, got it?”

I shook my head, and started to turn. “No, we don’t ‘got it’. I don’t take orders, least of all from Reid’s latest bed fly. So if I were you, I’d turn the fuck around and pretend this conversation never happened.”

I started walking away, but a sharp tug of my hair had me stumbling backwards.

“You bitch!” Shrieked Stella. I fell to the ground, hitting my elbow on the floor, and lifted my arm just in time to deflect Stella’s fist. My head hit the floor so hard my vision blurred but at least there was no way Psycho Hobbit was going to bruise my face.

“Get off me!” I yelled, deflecting another punch.

“He’s mine!” Stella’s shrill voice echoed around us. “He doesn’t want you!” She spat. She’d somehow managed to straddle me, and I struggled to keep her from clawing at my face. “He said all you were was a fuck, and that it meant nothing to him. Get it yet? He doesn’t fucking want you!”

She was lying. She had to have been. Reid would have never said anything of the kind.

Before I could tell her as much, she was lifted off my body, and Kennedy was at my side. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Let go of me!” Stella fought Dane’s grasp. She elbowed him in the face, but he didn’t let go of her.

“I don’t think so,” he grunted.

Kennedy helped me up, and I rubbed the back of my head.

“What did she do to you?” Asked Kennedy, her eyes looking me over. “Did she hurt you?”

“She deserved it!” Snapped Stella. “Let go of me, or I’ll scream!”

“I’m going to get Reid,” said Kennedy.

“Do you think he’ll believe any of you over me?” Stella laughed, sounding like a maniac. “She attacked me, I was just defending myself. I came around the corner, and - ”

“And what?” Kennedy asked angrily. “We found you on top of her, swinging like the crazy bitch that you are!”

Dane dropped Stella onto her feet, and stepped away from her. “Reid is going to hear about this,” she said, walking away briskly. She disappeared around the corner, and all I could do was stare after her.

What.

The.

Fuck.

“You okay?” Asked Dane, his brows furrowed.

“Fine,” I replied. “She just...”

I shook my head, and winced when a slow, steady throb reverberated through my skull.

“You need to find Reid,” Kennedy told Dane. “I’ll take Jade upstairs, and make sure she’s okay.”

I grabbed onto Dane’s arm, and stopped him. “No, don’t. Just drop it. I’m fine.”

“She was hitting you,” cried Kennedy. “We have to tell Reid!”

“You’re probably too late,” I replied. “She’s probably already spinning him some fucked up version of what happened. I just want to go to bed.”

Dane and Kennedy both looked at me with concern, and as much as I appreciated it, I couldn’t stand their pity. I wanted to be left alone.

“I’m okay, really. I’ll just see you guys in the morning.”

Kennedy pursed her lips, ready to argue, but Dane spoke up. “If you’re sure...”

I nodded, and started walking towards the elevator. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

They let me go, and as soon as I was in the safety of the elevator I let the tears fall. What the hell had just happened? Stella’s cruel words bounced around in my head, stuck on repeat.

He doesn’t want you.

All you were was a fuck.

The doors were about to close, but they opened up again, and my head lifted.

“Jade?”

Reid was standing on the other side of the open doors, his face marred with a glower.

“Reid.”

“You want to explain why you hit my girlfriend?”

A sick laugh escaped my mouth, the sound ripping through me like a blade. Sure enough, Stella had presumably told him what had happened, only in her version, she was the victim.

“Is that what she said?”

“No, I saw her face.”

It was my turn to glower - only it wasn’t so much in anger as it was confusion.

“Her face?”

Reid threw his hands up in the air. “Yeah, her busted lip and swollen cheek. Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t,” I replied, leaning against the elevator wall.

“Oh, so she ran into the fuckin’ wall and did it to herself?”

Probably, I thought.

She’d proven there were no limits to her crazy.

“I can’t believe you,” he said when I didn’t respond. “Why, Jade?”

I stared at him, and wondered when we had fallen so far from where we’d been. I was looking at a complete stranger, and yet everything about him was still so familiar. He was all I knew for so long, and now he looked...disappointed. In me.

Oh, the irony.

I was disappointed in myself too.

For allowing myself to become so disconnected from who I was and for allowing his psycho Hobbit girlfriend to goad me. I wasn’t this girl. I didn’t just lie down, and tolerate people walking all over me.

I straightened from my position against the wall, and stuck my chin out.

“You need to ask Dane and Kennedy what they saw, because you won’t believe anything I have to say. Stella attacked me, Reid, and she made it pretty damn obvious you want nothing to do with me anymore.”

I wanted to tell him the rest, how she said I was nothing more than a fuck to him, but saying it loud would only drive the knife in deeper, and I wasn’t sure I was willing to bleed any more than I already had.

Not for Reid, and not for the remnants of our friendship.

I was done.

“Jade - ”

“No,” I intercepted. “The fact that you believe her, after knowing me all my life, says it all. We’re done here, Reid.”

“No, we’re not,” he snapped. “Tell me what happened!”

“She already told you. What’s the point of repeating it if you won’t believe me?”

He roughly pulled his fingers through his hair, and expelled an exasperated breath. “She said - ”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re done Reid, for good. I’m done. Now let me go.”

He looked at me one last time, his eyes filled with everything he wanted to say but couldn’t. My lip trembled, and the tears fell as I looked away. I felt him move away from me, and when the doors shut with him on the outside, I felt the tear, the loss, the end.

GRADY HELD MY HAIR back as I spewed the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl. My body heaved, and my muscles cramped with the exertion. There was nothing left, but my body kept heaving. It was physically painful, and I had tears running down my cheeks as a result. After the showdown with Stella, and the conversation with Reid that had followed, I’d come back to our room, and taken a hot shower before climbing into bed. Two hours later, I was running for the bathroom, ready to hurl my insides out.

And I sure as hell did.

“I think we need to get a doctor up here,” said Grady. He was rubbing my back while I shook, and continued to be sick, despite having nothing left to bring up.

I wiped my mouth, and gladly took the wet washcloth he handed me. “No, but I think I need to leave.”

I didn’t want to be there any longer, and it had nothing to do with spending the last hour praying to the porcelain Gods.

“You sure?” He asked, crouching down in front of me. “We can always wait it out, and see how you feel tomorrow morning. It might just be something you ate.”

I leaned my head against the cold tiled wall behind me. “Get me my phone please?”

He left, and returned minutes later, handing me my phone. There was only one person I knew to call at times like this, one person who would always come to my rescue.