He Said He Only Pretended to Love Me, So I Left Him Chapter 03
When she caught me staring, Carla lifted the pendant. “You like it too? Can’t give you a link, though. Jace gave this to me.”
Jace, who was right behind us, stepped forward and glanced at the necklace, then at me. He paused. “Yeah, I gave it to her. But I forgot where I bought it.”
Of course he didn’t know where it was from. That necklace was a gift from me to him.
I’d never seen him wear it.
And now I understood why. He’d just passed it off to someone else like it was nothing?
I looked at Jace’s face and suddenly felt like I’d never actually known him.
He seemed to sense my stare. His voice was still that same gentle tone. “What’s wrong, Lena?”
I pushed down the tremble in my voice and pinched my thigh hard, trying to sound steady. I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m heading up.”
I practically fled.
Back in my room, I saw two new comments under his post.
Carla: [I know exactly why you’re happy.]
Jace replied: “[Yeah. Exactly what you’re thinking.]
So that thing people always say—”If you can’t tell who a post is for, it’s not for you.” That was me, wasn’t it?
And those two posts he deleted this morning—they weren’t for me either?
I was still staring at the comments, my chest tightening, when a message from Jace slid down my screen.
[You still haven’t answered my question.]
After tapping into his message, for some reason, I clicked on his profile picture.
His username… his username!
He’d changed it to the exact one I’d just dropped.
Shock flashed through me, and before I could think, I typed back, [What about you? Why did you change yours?]
Half an hour passed. No reply from Jace.
Instead, a new post appeared on his Instagram.
[So fun.]
It was a gaming screenshot of him and Carla.
Right there beneath that post, I watched them exchange probably twenty-something comments. But he couldn’t spare a single minute to reply to me.
I let out a soft sigh, a bitter smile tugging at my lips. Forget it.
We really were just neighbors anyway.
Early the next morning, I was grabbing breakfast in the dining hall when a message from him smacked my screen.
[Just woke up.]
He hadn’t answered my question, and I was too drained to ask again. The whole thing just got buried beneath those two words.
About a week later, my mom suddenly mailed me two boxes of fresh peaches.
“One box for you, and one for Jace,” she said. “He went out of his way to go to school early with you. We really should thank him.”
After I hung up, I stared at those two boxes and felt this heavy knot in my stomach.
Before, I would’ve been thrilled to have an excuse to talk to him. Now, maybe because of my bruised pride or the way he blew hot and cold, the idea of messaging him actually made my skin crawl.
I kept putting it off and putting it off, until the day I ran into Jace in the cafeteria.
He carried his tray straight over and sat across from me. “How’s the club fair? Finding anything good?”
I shook my head, not wanting to look at him directly. Why was he checking on me? “It’s fine.”
He tapped the table. “I checked your required books. Same ones we used. Don’t buy new—I’ll just give you mine.”
I nodded slowly, a sharp, aching tug in my chest. Probably because the food today wasn’t sitting right. Why was he helping me again?
“Okay. Thanks.”
There were a million things I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t get a single word out.
After we parted, he showed up at my dorm not long after, hauling a huge box of textbooks.
I took the box and turned to go inside, then suddenly remembered the peaches. I doubled back. “Can you wait by the dorm entrance for a sec? My mom sent some peaches and told me to give you a box.”
A light rain was falling.
He stood there under his umbrella and nodded. I spun around and rushed back to my room, grabbed that heavy box of peaches, and bolted back outside.
As I neared the entrance, I heard his voice, loud and fighting.
