feelings for him and that they are returned.”
“They might not be anymore.”
“He wouldn’t have been that upset if he didn’t have feelings for you. Remember that when he pushes back,” she said. “Sometimes we have to gently nudge our loved ones to see what is right in front of them.”
That was exactly what it felt like she was doing with me now.
After I polished off my ice cream and a glass of wine, and my mom had gone back upstairs, I swiped my phone on and clicked on his name.
My heart clenched at the flirtatious and funny tone of our previous messages to each other. Could we get that back?
TRISTAN
I was a fucking mess—and hungover.
I couldn’t remember the last time that’d happened. Oh right, it’d happened yesterday, and the day before.
Jamie.
I leaned back in the chair on my deck and pinched the bridge of my nose, which did not help my headache.
My friend had a kid he never knew about. A kid with a woman that I’d managed to fall for in under a month. What were the fucking odds? I’d spent the rest of the night after kicking Evie out trying to process everything, while soothing myself with a bottle of whiskey.
I guess if I was going to get loaded, it was go big or why bother.
Then she’d texted me last night. I’d stared at the message as I drank, hating the situation that I was in.
I’d read her text more times than I wanted to count.
And here I was, pulling it up again.
Evie: I know I said I’d wait to hear from you, but I hate that now you know something that Cassie doesn’t know, when it affects her more than you. I want to make this right and talk to her. And I agree that you should be there when I tell her, if you still want to be. I know you think you can’t trust me anymore, but I never set out to hurt or deceive you. My cowardice got in the way of telling you the truth as soon as I met you. I wanted to savor what we were developing. That was selfish on my part, and I’m sorry.
Evie: If you don’t want to talk to me right now, I get it. I’ll reach out to her on my own.
Evie: Please know that you mean a lot to me and I wish things were different, but all I can do is move forward and hope you’ll be able to trust me again, one day.
Evie: I miss you.
I threw my phone back down on the table; the rubber case was soundless and didn’t give me the satisfaction I needed.
I fucking missed her too. I hated this.
Fucking hell. I didn’t know what I wanted. No. That’s not true. I wanted her to have never slept with my bandmate. But then we wouldn’t have James, a little piece of my friend walking and talking and breathing.
And the more I dragged my feet, the longer it would be before Cassie would find out the truth. I had no clue how she would react. Probably beyond happy to have a nephew. But could she get past what Evie had done?
Could I?
“What crawled up your ass, Moody Blues?” Jax said, kicking my foot later that day as we sat in the new studio.
I’d successfully cleaned myself up and no longer reeked of booze and despair—at least I’d thought I’d cleaned up both, but my new nickname was starting to ring true. I’d been snippy and antsy with my bandmates since they’d shown up at my door two hours ago.
Luckily, Cassie wasn’t here. I didn’t think I could face her yet, knowing about James. As mad as I was at Evie, it wasn’t my secret to tell. Especially when she clearly wanted to be the one to come clean with Cassie.
Her unanswered texts were burning a hole in my pocket, but I still hadn’t responded. I needed to figure out what to say before she reached out to Cassie first, thinking I didn’t want to be involved anymore.
Part of me wanted to pull Bash aside and get his opinion first, to see what the easiest way would be to tell Cassie, but Bash was Jamie’s best friend and I was afraid of what the news would do to him. Would he spiral? He already shouldered a shit ton of the blame for not stopping Jamie before he overdosed. It was unwarranted, but I knew it was a demon that Bash continued