“No.” I moved away from him, holding a hand out to ward him off. “This was a mistake. We’re…” I trailed off, not really knowing what to say as I tried to catch my breath.
We stared at each other in tense silence.
That’s when I came to the hardest decision of my life.
I felt like someone had stuck burning needles into every muscle in my body, and all I could feel was torturous pain, and I didn’t know why it was necessary. What point it had? Why it had to be that way? I started to imagine that perhaps those needles were my family, and horribly in that moment I resented the hell out of them. “We’re done for good. We can’t be friends and we can’t be this. Lose my number, Jake.”
He looked grief-stricken. “You can’t be serious?”
The tears slipped down my cheeks now and I brushed them hastily away. “Deadly. I won’t answer if you call.”
“Why?” he shook his head, his own resentment building his gorgeous eyes. “Just tell me why. A real answer this time.”
“I told you why. You didn’t listen.”
And just like that, I turned and walked out.
It was hard to make sense of something to someone else when you had a hard time figuring out if it really made sense to yourself. But I wasn’t crazy.
The truth was I’d made a promise. This was me keeping it.
Chapter Eight
I left Dad at his hotel talking to Mom on the phone, reassuring her that he was all right, I was all right, and that we were… talking things out. Although I still didn’t feel one hundred percent certain that we’d reached an understanding, I hoped we would by the time he left.
For now, I headed to my boyfriend’s apartment.
Something had shifted inside me when Jake sprung to my defense. It didn’t seem like much, but in reality, knowing he had my back was a huge step toward me trusting him. The old Jake was too determined to keep on my dad’s good side to ever interfere in any small parental disputes I might have had. He’d once sat quietly in the corner of the living room while my mom and dad refused to listen to me about being a cop.
He’d changed.
Anxious to see him, I hurried up to his apartment.
“Jake’s not here,” Beck said as I followed him into the kitchen.
Sitting at the kitchen table were Claudia and Lowe. I smiled at my girl. “Have you seen him?”
Claud shook her head. “Nope. But—”
“She’s been too busy planning our summer tour,” Beck interrupted, offering me a can of soda.
“No, thanks.” I raised an eyebrow at Claudia. “Summer tour?”
Lowe grinned. “It’s what we were talking about at Teviot. Claudia is amazing. She’s already helped us book eight gigs for the summer, and she thinks we can turn it into a state tour. It could get us noticed.”
“Isn’t that expensive?”
Lowe shrugged. “We’re pooling our resources. And these are paying gigs.” He nudged Claudia. “Now I just have to convince Claud to be our manager and come on tour with us.”
“If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to,” Beck said, trying—and failing—to sound casual.
I studied them carefully, wondering what I was missing. “Well… that sounds great. And you should think about it, Claudia. It might be a lot of fun to tour with them.”
Claudia shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Jake is—”
“A sappy, overachieving, broody little son of a bitch and you could do much better.” Beck grinned up at me.
I made a face at him and had just turned back to Claudia when I got a text.