More Than This (More Than, #1)

by Jay McLean

It was one night. One night when everything changed. It was so much more than just the betrayal. It was the tragedy. The deaths. The murders. But it was also that feeling . . . That feeling of falling.

“Was I not good enough in bed? Is that what it was? Did I do it wrong?” She sounds so sad now. “If you didn’t want to be with me, you could have just broken up with me, James. You didn’t have to cheat on me, over and over again with my best friend. You could’ve just told me you didn’t want to be with me anymore, and you could’ve had all the girls in the world. It didn’t have to be like this.” She looks up at him and whispers, “You didn’t have to break my heart.”

when you're cheated on, it's hard to avoid the thought that something you did or you as a whole is not good enough. you question yourself and your worth. the fact that they did this and they can look her in the face every day like nothing was wrong hurts worse, I think. did they ever feel guilty at all?

“So, that just happened, huh?”

Jake's first sentence to Mikayla

you don’t fuck with Dylan. There’s only one thing Dylan loves more than basketball, and that’s his girl. Physically, they’d be a decent match, but to Dylan there’s a huge difference between sports and Heidi. Doug would probably not survive that fight. We’d give Dylan shit if he weren’t so serious about her. He’s not the hearts-and-flowers kind of guy—he’s the heart-and-soul kind, and fuck if every girl would rather have that than the flowers.

i want a Dylan 😭

Jake is wiping away tears I didn’t realize were falling. He places his hands on either side of my face, looking into my eyes. He must see so much sadness, hurt, anger, and regret, but all I see in his are comfort and understanding. He brings my head to his lips and gives me one short, sweet kiss on my temple. It’s all I need to keep going and believe that everything will be okay.

“To not letting bad people dictate whether you have a good time.”

Then I hear her gasp, and she seizes my arm again. I turn to face her. All the blood has drained from her face. Her body gives out and I struggle to help her fall to the ground gently. I envelop her small frame. Then she wails, a scream so deafening that the crowd instantly falls silent. I look toward the house and see them. Three gurneys. Three body bags. And one so small it can only be a child’s.

I fall asleep in Jake’s arms, sheltered from all the evil in the world.

“I know it’s strange, and I know it might just be circumstantial. We shared an experience that somehow makes us closer . . . But Aunt Lisa.” Kayla looks up from her lap. “Jake makes things hurt a little less. He’s home for me now. If being around him takes the pain away just a tiny bit, then it doesn’t matter how or why he’s here with me. I just . . . Oh, you can’t understand . . .”

“Go to sleep, baby . . .”

first time he called her "baby"

“Wow, Jake.” She looks at me wide-eyed. “Your mom wasn’t kidding—you really are kind of a big deal.” “Shut up.” I laugh.

Loved ones. I think I do. Love her, I mean. I think I’m in love with this beautifully broken girl. I carry her upstairs to my bed, and that’s how I spend the night—with her crying in my arms.

She’s just different than anyone else. We haven’t even slept together . . . yet she somehow means more to me already.

I’m staring—more like ogling. I’ve had my hands all over her, so I know she has curves, but damn. Mom’s in front of me. “You have a little drool,” she says quietly, playfully wiping my mouth. I swat her hands away and continue pouring drinks into the jugs.

🤣

But it hurts less today than it did yesterday. Being here with them—it’s familiar, in a good way. And I think, for just a second, that maybe my heart can learn to love again.

It’s hot as fuck that she’s feeding me while sitting on me. It takes everything in me not to devour her mouth.

“Why does he get to call you Kayla, and everyone else calls you Micky?” I shrug. “Because my family called me Kayla.”

It’s at this moment that I know. I don’t just think it anymore—I know it. I love this girl. I’m in love with this girl.

I am in too deep—way too deep. I spent the rest of last night with a hard-on, and I don’t think it’s fully left me yet. This girl is driving me crazy—that dress she wore, then she sat in my lap, laughing, touching, joking, flirting . . . Then she kisses my hand so intimately—my fucking pitching hand. It’s by far the sexiest thing a girl has ever done, ever. I don’t say this to be a dick, but girls have done a lot of shit to me.

Nothing says awkward like coming in your pants while dry humping.

🤣

“I more-than-a-lot like you.” He’s quiet for so long again that I don’t know if he heard me. Then he says, “I more-than-a-lot like you, too—so much more-than-a-lot.”

“Because I’m your Jake,” he says, “and you’re my Kayla.”

I believe in it, too—that instant, intense love. It’s fate.”

“I believe in happily-ever-after.”

I hope to hell that I’m reading her right—that the look she’s giving me is telling me everything I want to know. She believes in fate, in love—in us, forever.

“It’s just you. It’s only ever been just you. It will always only ever be just you.”

The position is so intimate—like we’re more than whatever it is we are, more than this. For a second, I close my eyes and imagine that this could be our life.

“I see you guys together—how you get each other, how you want to be around each other all the fucking time—and you’re there, you know, through all of it. I finish my days and I got no one to go to. Nobody gives a shit if I have a bad day or not.”

oh, Logan 🥹

Can you imagine finding someone you can’t keep your hands off of?” He laughs. “Yeah, Kayla, I actually can.” He’s looking straight at me. “Then, like, twenty years from now still feeling the same way? Can you imagine how good that would be?” He’s still staring at me, concentrating on my words. “Yeah, Kayla. I can imagine exactly what it would be like.” His gaze is so intense. Like looking into the sun. I have to look away.

“If you really want me to live with you, why are you asking me now?” “Because I don’t want you to be a stripper!” I blurt out. “What?” she says through a laugh.

🤣

“Are you doing this because I asked you to move in with me?” She laughs. “No, Jake. I’m doing this because I want to—I’ve wanted to for so long. Because you turn me on so much, because being around you all the time is driving me fucking crazy. And because I so much more-than-a-lot like you.”

There’s no point in hating him, because it’s so much harder to hate than to love someone.

“I wish I could, Micky, but that fucking bitch has it all—ten out of ten in everything. She’s super smart—like, Harvard smart. She’s nice to fucking everybody. And she’s always looked like she belongs on the cover of a fucking magazine. I hate it so much! If I could get away with it, I’d fucking cut a bitch for you.”

“You sure, bitch? It’s our last time to party before we’re all thrown into the real world. Don’t let fucking stupid shit get you down . . .” I love drunk Lucy.

Every day she’s here, and I can’t have her. To have to be around the person you love, and not be able to love them, is the hardest thing to do.

I’m so fucking close to throwing in the towel and going pro. But I don’t, because I know she won’t follow me. And none of this shit makes sense without her.

I don’t understand why she wants to find herself without me there, when I plan on being a part of her life forever—when I love her so damn much, it hurts.

“I’m sorry, baby. I’ll never hurt you again, I promise.”

“I swear to God, Micky,” Lucy snarls. Cam’s pretending to hold her back, amused by her drunken state. “I’ll cut a bitch for you. Just let me go, Cam. Let me go!” she yells, trying to fight his grip.

drunk Lucy!!! 🤣🤣🤣

“This is, um . . . This is for my girlfr—” He cuts himself off when he sees my eyes bug out, because I’m not his girlfriend—not yet. It wouldn’t be fair to him, because I’m not ready. But I’m also not ready for him to move on. “I mean, my Kayla. Just, um, mine.”

I’ll never understand how some jerk-off had her and treated her like shit. I’m going to be the luckiest asshole in the world when she finally lets me love her.

The love that’s so instant and intense and easy, it feels like all the world’s forces collided and fate gave you a push, and you’re there, in front of the person who’s now a part of you. The world spins and your heart explodes, and you want nothing else at all in the entire universe as long as you can be with that one person all the time. When you’re not, you think about him until your mind is consumed, and it’s almost like you’re suffocating and drowning . . . But in a good way, because your love is all around you.

“What the fuck have I ever done to make you feel like I don’t want you here? Or that I don’t want you at all?”

“God, Kayla. I kept my mouth shut because I knew it was important to you to be out on your own or whatever. But it’s not what I want! Not for a fucking second. And you should know that without my having to say a goddamn word. You should feel that. Have I not shown you how I feel about you? Have I not been clear in the way I act toward you? I don’t know what else I could have said or done without actually coming out and saying the words.”

“God, Jake, I more-than-a-lot like you.” “Kayla, I passed that stage a long, long time ago.”

“I want to kiss you so bad.” He looks at my lips and licks his before returning his gaze to my eyes. “So why don’t you?” “Because if I kiss you, I’ll want to taste you. And if I taste you, I’ll need to fuck you. And when I fuck you, it means you’re mine.

She shouldn’t have to learn to love me like that—she just should. Somehow, Kevin knew that she didn’t. And now I see the way she is with you, the way she looks at you, and that’s how it should have been. Like you’re the only one. You’re it, Jake—you’re all of it. Her forever.”

I know why it’s called “heartbreak,” because my heart really does feel like it’s physically breaking. I feel every single excruciating bit of pain that comes with it. I feel like I’ve died.

I want to remember every single piece of him in the last few moments we have together. So I open my eyes, and he’s there. We’re in his bed. Under my comforter. Surrounded by boxes of my things.

Jake Andrews was so wrong. He didn’t need to kiss me to make me his. I was his the moment he asked me to move here with him and the moment he held my hand at the funeral. I was his when I had nowhere else to go, and he took me into his home. I was his the moment he held me while I cried in the back of that ambulance.