Hustle Me (Bank Shot Romance #1)(54)
Author: Jennifer Foor

I wondered if everything I had ever known about my father wasn’t true. Lydia had told me about a completely different person than I knew him to be. "Your Mommy was a fool. Anyone that meets you loves you. I will never ever leave you, Ry. We are a team forever, I promise." I wrapped my arms around my brother and realized that he was hurting just as much as I was. He’d lost everything, but together we could get through it.

"I want Jammer to come back."

I stood up and leaned against the counter. The pain of that letter and the words it contained ripped into my mind again. I wanted to scream out how angry and hurt I felt. Jammer knew all about my life and all that I had lost. How could he think that spending every single second of the last month with me was going to be easy for me to forget? I just wanted to wake up from the nightmare that was obviously my reality.

Knowing that my brother had to go to preschool, I focused on getting him ready. I cried the whole time, while my brother pouted in his own way. I knew he was just as sad. Sure, he didn’t feel the connection like I felt to Jammer, but he loved him in his own way. Jammer didn’t just walk away from me, he left my brother too. He showed us what it was like to be a family and then he walked away, leaving us even more broken than we were before.

To solidify his actions, he had gone as far as going to the attorney’s office and signed over ownership. Then it came to me…

This was all premeditated. He knew he was going to leave me before he did it. He knew last night that he was leaving me, but he still slept with me anyway. Who does something like that?

It took all of my strength to get my brother off to school. I didn’t even make it upstairs before I lost it. I slouched down at the base of the stairs and let myself struggle to find meaning to what was going on. For the first time, I had let myself love and for the first time I had hope of a future. That hope was gone and I was left with pain. It was a pain that I swore I’d never let myself feel again. I knew I needed to shut down, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to think about the way he touched me, or about the way he always protected me. It killed me to know that I’d given myself to someone that had lied to me the whole time. He was so good at it, to be able to convince me that his feelings were real, when they clearly weren’t. He said those words that changed my life. I’d been a fool, to let myself fall so fast for someone that clearly had used me. I shouldn’t have been surprised, with our family history the way it was, he probably saw me as a charity case.

I managed to get myself together enough to call Elle. I think she was already running off the campus to her car when she heard me crying. She was sitting in front of me about an hour later. I couldn’t talk to her about it, but she held me and let me cry without asking. After she read the letter, she seemed more confused than upset for me. From crying so much, I’d exhausted myself, so Elle suggested I go lie down and let her attempt to work the lunch shift downstairs. Shaun was there for support and I told Elle not to tell him what had happened. I didn’t want anyone saying they told me so. I woke up around two and had calmed myself enough to walk downstairs. Halfway down the steps, I met Zach. He pulled me into his arms and carried me back upstairs.

Once he sat me down on the couch, he backed away and waited for me to tell him what was going on. "Elle called me. She told me to get my ass here pronto. What did that f**ker do to you, Charlie? I knew he was trouble. You can’t let a guy into your life that fast."

"I know, I mean, I know that now. Oh my God, I messed up so bad. How could I have been so careless?"

He pushed my hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ears, and then he leaned his forehead against mine and kissed it. "I’ll stay with you for a couple days until I know you’re okay."

I shook my head. "I can’t ask you to do that. You can’t miss your classes."

"I insist. My schedule is easy this semester and I have straight A’s. You’re my best friend. No matter what, I have your back."

I reached down and grabbed his hands. "It hurts so much. I feel like I love him even more now that he’s gone. Is that possible? I mean, I feel so empty. I just want it to not be real. I want him to walk in that door and hold me like he did every night. How am I ever going to get over this? I don’t want to let go, I just can’t."

"You’re going to be okay."

I shook my head. "No, it’s not. I’m never going to be okay. He’s all I want but he doesn’t want me. I’m never going to forget about him. There was this connection between us. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. This isn’t right. I know he loves me."

"Charlie, don’t do this to yourself."

I kept shaking my head. "He has to come back to me. I don’t want this without him."

"You’re talking like you’ve been together for years. It was one month."

I got up and started pacing. "No, you don’t understand. He called me Lena. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t love me. He’s always loved Lena."

Zach looked at me like I was crazy. "Who the hell is Lena?"

"I’m Lena. I’m his Lena."

"Charlie, you’re losing your mind."

I sat down in front of him again. "I’m not giving up on him, not when every bone in my body is telling me that something is wrong with all of this. You can tell me that I’m crazy, but I refuse to give up on him."

This couldn’t be the end of me and Jammer. It just couldn’t be.

Chapter 32

Jammer

It had to be a lie. I just kept telling myself that. There was no way that Charlie could be my sister. As creepy and sick as it sounded to say, I had trouble convincing myself that it was not a possibility.

I knew my mother was home when I saw her car in the driveway. I rang the bell, and was fully prepared to climb over the damn fence. This shit needed to be dealt with immediately.

"Hello?"

"Mom, open the gate."

It began to open and I wedged my way inside of it before it stopped moving. My mother met me at the door and I think she recognized the look on my face as being pissed. I didn’t wait to be sitting to talk to my mother. I grabbed her by the arm and swung her around to face me. "Is she my sister?"

Her eyes got real big. "What are you talking about?"

"Charlie, is she my sister?" I stood there staring at her, just waiting for her to give me an answer.

She shook her head from side to side. "Of course not! Why would you even think something like that?"

"Mom is there any way she could be. I need to know. The things I’ve done…we’ve been living together as a couple."

She put her hands up and grabbed my arms. "John, there is no way that Charlie is your sister. Come sit down."