“Did you forget that Courtney was here?”
“Why would I forget that? She’s my girl.”
“And yet you stood on a stage and crooned a song of lost love to clearly your ex-fiancée. A fiancée you were recently seen in an embrace with?”
What? No. That was not what he’d done.
He’d sang a breakup song that came to him. Linx had helped with the arrangement, and he had said nothing.
“That’s not what it was.” Bax shook his head. It wasn’t.
Was it?
Fuck.
“Oh my God.” The groovy vibe? Totally gone. “Where’s Courtney?”
“Becca took her back to the buses.” Hans pursed his lips. “Take care of that so you can get to the VIP meet and greet.”
Of everything important to Bax in that moment, the meet and greet was not one of them.
The other guys could handle that.
It looked like he’d be cleaning up a mess he hadn’t realized he was making.
“She loves you,” Hans said. “Probably doesn’t realize it yet, but she does. Probably has since before you two got pregnant.”
Bax did not understand what the hell gibberish Hans was spewing.
“You need to handle that heart with care.” Hans stared at the ground before looking back up. “I think you probably love her too.”
Maybe he already loved her. He hadn’t spent too much time thinking about it, because things had been good. He didn’t find a need to focus on labels or brand things into little boxes.
“Before you can love her, you’ve got to let Em go,” Hans said, stabbing Bax right in the heart.
“I let Em go.” Bax’s blood beat a ticked-off race from his heart. “Let her go and moved on, and am with a new woman who I adore…”
“Then why’d you write a whole song about her?” Hans lifted his eyebrows, and it took everything in Bax not to continue arguing with him.
Now wasn’t the time. If Courtney was hurting, he needed to get to her. Explain things. Make it clear that Em was in the past. Courtney was the present.
He turned to jog back to the buses.
It wasn’t like he couldn’t honor what he’d once built with Em. Just like he savored what he’d built with Courtney.
He didn’t love Em anymore.
His jog slowed as his heart hurt.
Fuck.
Did he still love Em?
He stopped completely.
No, he didn’t love Em. Didn’t want to love Em. Didn’t like the feeling of the hurt that came with loving Em.
Who would’ve thought there would ever be a time when Courtney was the simple choice?
