Sweetheart…don’tcry.
I’ll behomesoon.
ChapterSixteen
Brody
Iarrivedhome to find a smallish party getting underway in the party room at the back of my house. Just the band and some close friends having a jam and a few drinks. They were pretty settled in and things were starting to get loud. They’d probably go allnight.
I made the rounds, quickly, but my head wasn’t in it. The only person I really wanted to talk to was nowhere to be seen, so I wentlooking.
I ran into Maggie in the hall. “Jessahere?”
“Yeah,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me a little. No idea what that look meant. Didn’t wanna know. “Not sure where. Haven’t seen her in awhile.”
“Thanks.” I walked past her, ignoring the look she was still giving me. “Good job, yeah? Keep… uh… holding down the fort.” Then I grabbed my travel bag from the foyer and disappearedupstairs.
I poked my head into the other rooms—two guest bedrooms that friends sometimes crashed in, and one that I’d meant to make into some kind of proper gym but never had—then headed to my room at the end ofthehall.
No sign ofJessa.
Maybeshe’dleft?
I dropped my bag and sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling out my phone—but then I saw her. Through the glass door, out on the rooftop patio. She was lying on the outdoor couch in front of the fireplace, where a fire was burningsteady.
I couldn’t see her face, but I could see her long legs stretched out and her long hair spilling over the cushion. She was wearing some kind of knit leggings and furry slippers, like something out of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue—winteredition.
I tossed my phone on the bed and went to the door, watching her. I paused there, my hand on the doorknob and my chest tightening, as I suddenly remembered, vividly, the last time I saw her before she left, six-and-a-halfyearsago.
Right here, in mybedroom.
She was almost finished her first year of college and I was home with the band on a break, part way through the tour. It was the night before we went back out on the road and there was a huge party. It’d been a great night for everyone but me… and maybe Jessa. She’d shown up with a date, for one thing. Some greasy piece of shit who got kicked out by Jude when I caught him dealing, which, at any Dirty party, was un-fucking-welcome; party favors at a Dirty party came courtesy of Piper and the Kings, and anyone with half a brain cell knewasmuch.
Jessa knew as much, but she wasn’t happy when her little friend gotthrownout.
Still, shestayed.
Christy and I had broken up long before I’d gone on tour and I wasn’t with anyone that night. Didn’t want to be. Spent the entire night trying to get Jessa alone, while she just kept trying to get me to talk to this cute little Maggie girl she’d met in college. I couldn’t help grinning a little at that memory. Looking back, it was clear she was trying to get Maggie a foot in the door with the band, and good thing; Maggie had proved ten times her weight in gold over the years. At the time, though, I thought Jessa was trying to hook us up, and I was the least bit interested. She could’ve been trying to introduce me to the entire Victoria’s Secret runway lineup and I wouldn’t have been interested. I just wanted to get Jessaalone.
I’d spent the last hour or so before she left arguing with her in my room. It was the only place we could be alone and I’d dragged her up here when we started fighting. It was the same fight we’d had for months before the tour. I was still angry about it; I just tried to pretend not to be. Because clearly, no matter how I felt about it, it didn’t change a fuckingthing.
But that night, when she’d shown up with that piece of shit, it rubbed me the wrong way and then some. I’d had a few drinks and my defenses had slipped. I could no longer pretend it didn’t bother me that we were leaving, again, and she wasn’t coming with us. I knew she was sick of the same fight, and maybe nothing I could ever say or do would make her change her mind, just for the fact that she was sick of the same damn fight. But I wasn’t gonna give it up. Icouldn’t.
And that fight ended like they almost always did—with Jessa walking out. But that time… it was the first time it really got through to me. That this wasn’t a temporary thing. That Jessa wanted out—forgood.
Out of the band… and out of any kind of possibility of a lifewithme.
I still couldn’tacceptit.
The next day, before we left town, I had a bunch of roses delivered to her. White ones, with a card that said,Call me when you changeyourmind.
Sheneverdid.
The thing was, I always thought shewould.
I’d never stopped waiting forthatcall.
And maybe that was what scared me most of all. That I could lay everything I had at her feet and she could just walk away—and now, I could do it all again. Open the door to her, offer everything I had to give… and she could still walk away and leaving mehanging.
