The Ex Factor - Erin McCarthy Page 0,78
is a two way street, you know that.”
“I’m pretty certain ours is a dead end, with a cliff drop for good measure.” She unbuttoned her jeans and let out an exhalation. “That’s better. I’m so damn sick of being squeezed.”
That didn’t stop her from heading right to the freezer for a pint of ice cream. Some nights you just had to eat the ice cream. Tonight was one of them.
“Hey, Buddy, how are you?” Chance asked, biting his fingernail on his front porch. He’d never bothered to get chairs, so he was just sitting on the steps, feeling anxious and frustrated. He desperately wanted a drink, but how much he wanted one scared him into not going to the store for a fresh bottle. He needed to handle his emotions without liquor and despite the fact that conversations with his immediate family were always a bit uncomfortable, he was going to bully through this.
“Hey, pipsqueak. I’m good, can’t complain. What’s going on with you besides you’re banging the Hart girl again?”
Charming. “I’m not banging anybody. Jolene and I had a relationship, which is now over again.”
“What did you do? Cheat on her? Women are always overly sensitive about that. They act like it means something.”
Chance stiffened. It did mean something. It meant a whole hell of a fucking lot of something. “It wasn’t cheating.” He explained what had happened.
“I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Stop overthinking things. Lord, son. If you want a woman, you fight for her, not tell her to go off and find herself.”
His grandfather had a way of confirming for him everything that he had already known, though never actually in the way Buddy intended.
He owed Jolene true emotion. Not what he’d done his whole life, which was to stand defensively behind an emotional wall, while expecting others to be fully open and honest. He had to meet her half way, if not more, and he realized he’d fallen into that old pattern. He had basically offered her a cut-and-run.
He couldn’t do that. Not if he wanted any sort of adult relationship with the woman he loved.
“That’s an interesting perspective, Buddy.” He rubbed his jaw. “How’s your liver, by the way?”
“My liver’s fine. Cirrhosis is for quitters.”
Sensitive and politically correct as always, that was his grandfather. Chance wasn’t sure where to go from there in their conversation. The safest bet always for him and his family was to talk music. “So you’re not sick or anything?”
“Nope. Fit as a fiddle.”
“Good, glad to hear it. So let me tell you about the album I’m working on.” It was a much safer topic than anything else.
What the hell was he doing?
When Chance got off the phone ten minutes later, he called Jolene.
He called her house. It rang and rang.
He called the front gate of her neighborhood and was told he was no longer on the approved list.
He texted Elle, who didn’t respond.
He called Ginny, who said if Jolene did the tour with Wayne Rush, she was dumping her as a client for going behind her back, which sounded harsh, but not surprising.
He called Shane, who claimed to have no idea where his sister was.
He called everyone there was to call and got nowhere.
So he stood up, went into the house, locked the front door, and went to bed before he made love to a bottle of whiskey.
Nineteen
Time was supposed to heal all wounds, so Jolene figured another old adage had bit the dust. She wasn’t feeling any better about her split with Chance, despite the fact that a month had gone by. If anything it felt worse. Festering. Infected. Oozing. There was just no other way to describe the pain she was feeling.
“Hart! Are you for real right now?” Wayne barked at her. “What the hell is that, woman?” Wayne was sitting on his ass, in his pajamas, looking like a mountain man who had no access to a shower. There were pastry crumbs on his burgeoning gut, yet he had already had the nerve to make a crack about her curves.
Jolene was not fond of Wayne. He may be a musical genius but that didn’t make him any less of a prick. She sighed. The joke was on her, for damn sure. She had ruined things with Chance to take this deal with Wayne and it had been nothing but a booby prize. “I’m singing,” she said shortly.
“You’re caterwauling.”
He was being a diva. There was no other way to put it. He had