𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜 | 𝚓𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚊𝚗 𝚙𝚘𝚘𝚕𝚎

fourteen: i wish i hated you

Third Person POV

(Author's Note: Thank you for the patience because this chapter took me FOREVER to write. So I hope you guys enjoy!)

☆☆☆

When Arielle agreed to go along with the facade of a fake relationship with Jordan, she never expected it to get as serious as it did. Then again, she never expected it to ever be serious.

She had told herself again and again to not get emotionally involved, but after finding out about the events of what could have been throughout her and Jordan's past, she couldn't help but to be emotionally involved.

She didn't expect to get close to Jordan's teammates. She didn't expect to have to go with him to both home games and away games. She didn't expect to get back close to Ralen and J2. And she definitely didn't expect to defend Jordan to the one friend who hated his entire existence, but here she was.

Arielle had always taught herself to expect the unexpected, but this was one of those unexpected things that she didn't want to expect.

Falling for Jordan was one of the things that she considered to be the biggest mistake of her life. She had loved him. Maybe she loved him too much, and here she was, making the same mistake that got her heartbroken in the first place.

She was beginning to think that she was a gluten for punishment the way she ran back to the things that hurt her most.

If her mother was alive, she would tell her that it is better to have loved than lost, then never to have loved at all. But in the words of Ashe...

That can be a load of shit.

Learning the news that Jordan had planned to propose to her when they were in college had somehow managed to reopen wounds that she had once mended.

It was safe to say that, at one point, Arielle had planned her entire life out with Jordan. Jordan would've gotten drafted, they would've gotten married after she graduated from Michigan, have three kids—preferably a girl and two boys—Jayla, Jaxon, and Jamari. They would've lived in a nice sized house, Arielle would be a successful hairstylist, Jordan would be one of the best in the NBA, and they'd be happy.

But that rug got swept from underneath her the moment that Jordan decided to cheat on her with Messiah. A moment that she once thought was unforgivable, a moment that she forgave him for in order for her to move forward; a moment that still haunted her every time she closed her eyes to go to sleep.

At one point, Arielle would have been able to go to Jordan about these feelings that were circling inside of her, but those days were long gone. She would also go to her mother, but those days were also long gone for her, so, she turned to the one person who she felt like she could solely trust.

Someone who had proven themselves to be trustworthy from the moment they meant three chaotic months ago...

Corey.

Corey had grown to be one of Arielle's favorite people. He served as the big brother she never had. He knew it, and he took his big-brother-from-another-mother role extremely serious; almost as serious as he took basketball.

Corey sat in one of the empty salon chairs across from Arielle as she walked around, sweeping the floors and cleaning the salon—one of her several duties seeing as though she was closing tonight—shock etched into every line of his face as he tried to process everything that Arielle had just told him.