***Jack's POV***

                I paced around my room, unable to stop thinking about Ace's face at the store. I'd never seen anyone look so terrified in my entire life.

                His whole body had seemed paralyzed and he looked like he wasn't even there anymore. He was right in front of me, but he was a million miles away.

                But what the hell had terrified him? There'd been some guy behind us, but after a second glance, Ace's face didn't show any actual recognition of that guy. So what had freaked him out so badly?

                I heard the door downstairs open and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. I had to stop worrying about it before Delaney noticed something was up. I'd go over and check on Ace if I didn't hear from him within three hours.

                My bedroom door opened and Delaney stepped in. He looked at me with eyes that were wildly hurt and betrayed.

                "Dex?" I asked, frowning.

                "How could you do this to me, Jack? How?" he asked.

                "Do what? Dex, quit acting like I shot your puppy," I said. "What did I do this time?"

                "Ace," he said.

                Oh. Oh shit.

                "I did not do Ace," I said.

                "He said he thought you'd told me," Delaney said, watching me for my reaction.

                I felt my face fall, but not for the reason Delaney would think. Ace had really sold out our relationship to Delaney. God damn.

                "Jack," he said, shoulders dropping in sadness. "You knew I liked him. I told you. And you went ahead kissing him and taking him out on dates. You get the guy again. Congratulations."

                "Dex, wait!" I said, moving towards him. "It's not what you think, I swear."

                "Then what is it, Jack?" he cried, eyes desperate. "Why did you have to ruin this for me? Why did you have to hide it from me and pretend you hated Ace while you were sucking face with him behind my fucking back?"

                "Hold on!" I said, throwing my hand up. "It hasn't been going on that long."

                "Ace showed me the CDs," he said, dropping his head. "The dates on them, Jack...this has been going on long enough."

                I mentally groaned. What the hell had Ace done? He knew as well as I did that those first couple of CDs hadn't been dates or romantic things. Just me trying to do some damage control so he didn't hurt Delaney.

                "Delaney," I said, which caught his attention. "You know I wouldn't want to hurt you on purpose. I was going to tell you eventually. It didn't become serious until after he turned you down."

                "You were kissing him while I was talking to him! You could've at least told me!" he said, voice getting loud again.

                And I knew why he was hurt. I knew every guy he'd ever been attracted to or had a crush on since we met ended up asking me out instead. I knew he was sick and tired of always watching his chances slip away into my hands.

                "I told him I wouldn't date him because it would hurt you," I said. "It wasn't until he turned you down that I...You were taking it well so I just..." I let out a frustrated sigh and pulled off my hat so I could run my hand through my hair.

                "I get it, Jack. You're cursed with good looks. You can't help it that guys flock to you," Delaney said bitterly. "I'm more pissed that you didn't tell me. Ace isn't a fucking toy to fight over. It's the lying that pissed me off."

                He looked like he couldn't decide whether he was angry or sad about this situation. He turned his head away from me.

                "Fuck you, Jack. I'm going to stay with some friends for a little. I can't believe you lied to me like this. I can't believe you went behind my back with the guy you knew I wanted to date. You kept telling me it wasn't safe to date him, but that was just because you wanted to tongue him. Fuck you." He left my room, shutting the door quietly.

                I sat heavily on my bed, knowing it was no use trying to talk to him when he was like this. Shit.

                I snatched my phone and pressed Ace's contact, holding it to my ear as it rang. And rang. And rang.

                Voicemail. I hung up.

                I knew a relationship with Ace was dangerous. I knew he was manipulative. But I'd taken my eyes off of his ugly truth to look at the human side of him instead. He'd shown me a raw version of himself and stabbed me when he knew I was distracted. Shit.

                I had a couple of options here. I could go to his house and demand answers, which was the most appealing. But the most sensible option was to try to figure out how to contain the aftermath so that as minimal damage as possible was managed.

                Sighing, I grabbed my wallet and got up. I left the already empty apartment, knowing Delaney and Nico would be gone for a while. Delaney was mad, Nico was preoccupied, and I was busy myself now.

                I got in my car and started driving. This was my first real encounter with the kind of damage a guy like Ace could cause, but from what I'd gathered, he'd set off these kinds of explosions before.

                My mind wandered as I drove, calling up that image of a terrified Ace in the store earlier. Did that have something to do with this?

                I knew that, later, anger would hit me. But right now, I was still confused and lost and betrayed. What a fool I was. Of course someone like Ace couldn't be trusted so quickly. Lowering my guard around him just made it easier for him to attack.

                I parked my car and got out, heading into Dunkin' Donuts. It was fairly quiet inside, with only an elderly couple sitting at a table and a woman reading the newspaper in the corner.

                Ike met my eyes as I walked up to the counter. I'd noticed that everyone Ace lived with had a carefully composed face that they worked hard to maintain.

                Ace's façade was playful smugness. Christian's was distrustful indifference. Jer's was violent anger.

                And now Ike looked at me with his façade, one of bored disinterest. His eyes were sharp but the rest of his features were carefully arranged to look like he couldn't care less why I was here.

                "I'll take a medium hot chocolate," I said, pulling out my wallet. "I'll also take your friend Alexis's phone number."

                Ike rang up my order. "What did Ace do now?"

                "What I should've expected all along," I said, holding my money out to him.

                Ike handed me back my change and pulled his phone out of his pocket, carelessly tossing it to me. "Help yourself. He's out of control. Maybe Alexis can do something before he winds up dead somewhere. I can't afford a funeral."

                "You really think he'll die young, don't you?" I said, scrolling through his contacts. There was only one Alexis in his phone, and I typed the number into my own phone.

                "Realistically? Yes." Ike grabbed a cup to make my drink. "He's been digging his own grave for years. It's just a matter of when he'll finally fall into it."

                "So pull him away from the edge," I said. "You're content to let him fall in?"

                "Ace doesn't listen to anyone. Alexis is the only person who ever had any luck with him." Ike capped my drink and slid it across the counter to me. "You think we haven't tried? Jer camps out on the porch until Ace comes home. Christian slips money into his wallet while he's not around. I buy him books every holiday to keep him busy with something that won't kill him. We've been trying for years to keep him out of trouble. He likes the rush of it. Sometimes I think he wants it to all be over."

                I picked up my drink. "Yea, well, I guess you should know. We were at the store today and he...I don't know, he went a little catatonic. He just stood there with this terrified face. I don't know what happened, but I had to slap him to snap him out of it."

                "He's coming apart," Ike said.

                He turned away from me, ending our conversation. I took my drink and left, going back outside and getting in my car.

                I set the drink down and dialed Alexis's number. I held the phone to my ear as it rang, hoping he wouldn't ignore me too. Shit, what if he was at work?

                "Hello?" answered a faintly familiar voice.

                "Alexis, right?" I said, wondering if there was a less creepy way to do this. Eh, whatever.

                "Yes. I'm sorry, who is this?" His voice was polite, probably his façade.

                "I'm Jack. Ace's, uh...Well, when I met you I guess I was sort of his friend but not really?" I tried.

                "Oh, I remember you. I'm sorry, I didn't recognize your voice. Is Ace okay?" There was a slight fracture in the polite tone when he asked about Ace. So he thought Ace would be a goner sooner rather than later, too.

                "He's...I don't know. Look, is there any way we can meet up? This would be easier face-to-face," I said.

                "Sure. If it's not too much trouble, you could come to my apartment." He gave me his address and we hung up the phone.

                I drove myself down to the apartment and got out of the car. I knocked on the door and Alexis pulled it open.

                "Sorry. Micah is sick, so I can't leave today," he said, letting me into the apartment. "That's the only reason I'm even home right now."

                He led me to a living room area and we both sat in chairs there. Alexis looked tired, heavy bags seemingly permanent under his eyes.

                "Is that your natural color?" I couldn't help but ask, nodding to his dark red hair.

                "Yea," he said, running a hand through it.

                "Shit, man, I had to dye mine to get it to look anything like that," I said. "Oh, right, sorry, totally off topic there."

                "Ace?" he said, infinite patience in his voice.

                I explained what had happened, briefly bringing him up on how I met Ace and how our relationship had progressed, and focusing mostly on his reaction at the store earlier today and the way he'd used our relationship to hurt Delaney.

                Alexis listened until I was done. He leaned back in the chair, his exhaustion seeming to grow even more.

                "I don't know," he said at last, shaking his head a little. "We all knew something was wrong with Ace. PTSD? Trauma? I'm not a doctor. I don't know. All I know is that Ace has very dark things eating him alive, and he refuses to face them."

                The anger hit me.

                Anger at Ace. Anger at Delaney. Anger at myself.

                "So, what, he just destroys everything around him until something finally kills him?" I demanded. Alexis didn't deserve the force of my anger, but he took it easily, watching me with the eyes of someone who had dealt with misguided anger many times before. "He just comes into our lives and ruins things and then leaves because he's scared? He needs to face some goddamn consequences. All he's good for is running away!"

                "He lives in a fragile reality," Alexis said. "We all banded together when he was alone and desperate, and if anything threatens that little world he created around us, he lashes out. He's a child, really. He might be a 21 year old man, but inside, he's still that scared 16 year old kid."

                "Well he fucked up my relationship with my best friend!" I said, smacking the arm of the chair as if that would fix everything. "God, shit, I'm sorry, I need to find my chill."

                Alexis didn't seem bothered by my anger. "You can't reason with Ace. One of his survival instincts is to place the blame of what he's done on everyone except himself. He tells himself they brought it on themselves or they deserved it. The same lies his father fed to him when he abused Ace. He never left his father's grasp."

                "His past might explain his behavior, but it doesn't excuse it," I said.

                "No, it doesn't," Alexis agreed. "But good luck telling Ace that."

                "Your friends, they thought you might be able to help," I said.

                "I can't help. I'm sorry." He looked away from me and rubbed his eyes, exhaustion dominating every feature of him. "I can't fix Ace. I tried. We all tried. We've been trying since we met him. If I could, I would. Every time they call me and say it's about Ace, I'm afraid they'll tell me he's hurt or in jail or dead. He doesn't have any dreams to chase, so he just runs through life looking for anything that gets his heart racing just to know he's still alive."

                "I wish we never met him at the bar that night," I said.

                Alexis met my eyes again. "He's not all bad. I trusted him with Micah, and until Ace got jealous of my boyfriend, he didn't betray that trust. His specialty lies in emotional manipulation. If your friend is mad at you, it's because Ace wants him to be."

                "Or it's because he's genuinely mad at me," I said.

                Alexis shrugged. "Ace is good at making people even angrier, and directing that anger at whoever he chooses."

                "I just want to clean up this mess and let Ace deal with his own consequences," I said, standing up. "Look, I care about him way too much and it sucks. But I'm not going to have a relationship with a guy who always runs away."

                "Don't leave him," Alexis said, his voice suddenly serious. "Please, I know it's not fair of me to ask you. I know what he did was wrong. I know you're angry at him. But the guys told me he's been different since you showed up. He needs to get through this running away habit and face his past. I'm not asking you to date him or anything. I'm just asking you to please not give up on him."

                "I can't fix people," I said, wishing that I was lying. I wanted to fix Ace. Maybe for a selfish reason, or maybe because I was my mother's son. Either way, I lacked the ability.

                "You don't need to fix him. He just deserves to know he's not unwanted," Alexis said. He leaned back a little. "He manipulated Micah, and I got mad at him. I moved out. I couldn't forgive him for putting Micah through that. Now he thinks I don't care about him. Jack, he doesn't think that about you."

                "I have to go do some damage control. I'm sorry for bothering you," I said.

                "I'm sorry about what Ace did. I hope everything works out. Have a nice day." His voice was back to a neutral politeness.

                I left the apartment and got in my car, gripping the steering wheel far too tightly as I started driving. It wasn't my job to assure Ace that he wasn't a little shit. Ace was a little shit. He thought he could do whatever he wanted and pass the blame off to someone else.

                I blew out a sigh, hating how Alexis's words swam around my brain. They were a raw reveal, something I had a feeling Alexis didn't do very often. He cared about Ace, and he wanted to see someone else care about Ace, too.

                And unfortunately, I was that idiot who also cared about Ace. Goddammit.

                Once I was back at my apartment, I pulled out my phone and tried Ace's number again. I had a feeling I was going to be well acquainted with his voicemail before this was all over.

                Sure enough, Ace didn't answer the phone. I groaned and leaned back, rubbing my eyes. I wasn't blameless in this mess, and I had to own up to that. All I could do now was try to fix what I could and clean up what I couldn't. As for the future of Ace and I, hopefully my brain would win out over my heart this time.