all of the waste that filled the room. He shouldn’t be staring at her so blatantly, and if he was a better man he would have taken her away from the drugs, the tits and pussy that were on full display right in front of them, and told her all the things he should have said.
But Beats had never told anyone how he felt for her, never wanted to risk breaking up the tightly knit bond they all had.
There was a part of him that said acting platonic with Zoe, almost to the point that he could disregard the way she looked at him, talked to him, and clearly cared for him, was a totally fucked up thing to do. And then there was another part that asked why should he hide the way he felt because he was afraid to rock the boat?
But it wasn’t just about them all being best friends, but also that he was just as close to her older brother Lane as he was with Matty, Jacks, and Five.
He curled his free hand into a fist, and brought his beer up to his mouth with his other one and finished off the beer. He would have set it on the table, but the pink haired chick was still getting coke snorted off of her pussy, and was getting her tits felt up by two different guys. He looked at Zoe again, saw how big her eyes were, and felt like the biggest fucking prick in the world.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and stood, pulling her up in the process, too.
“Where are we going?” Her long blonde hair was in a low, loose ponytail, and a few strands fell from the confines of the elastic holding it together.
Shit, he wanted to touch her hair, brush it away from her face and see if it was as soft as it looked. He should have won a fucking Academy Award for his acting skills in playing it off like she was one of the guys. He had never even told his band-mates, and they knew every disgusting detail of his life and downfall.
How would Zoe see him if she knew at one point in his life, not long ago in fact, he had been a slave to the chemical kind of comfort?
He shook his head and gritted his teeth, but he didn’t stop moving through the crowd and right out of the room. He wanted to be alone with her, just to talk and catch up.
This life was great, but he wanted to go back in time to a place where he wasn’t snorting coke, popping pills, and passing out on the bathroom floor of too many hotel bathrooms to count.
5
Tanner’s heart was beating fast and hard, and she rolled what Jacks had just said in her head over and over again. She had thought about the way she had left Brookstone not long after they had slept together, and how up until she had left she had kept her distance.
There was no denying it was a shitty thing to do, but at the time it had felt like the right thing to do.
Of course she had been young and stupid, and even though five years wasn’t really a long time in the grand scheme of things, Tanner had grown and matured a lot. That night had been the most wonderful experience she had ever had, but once the euphoria had settled and reality crashed back into her, she had realized that what she had done was probably the biggest mistake of her life.
A lot of fears had slammed into her, ones of a ruined friendship, the awkwardness and confrontation, and then the silence. They were all things that petrified her. She didn’t just love Jacks as a friend. She had been in love with him—still was, too.
She exhaled, knowing that this would eventually come up, but not thinking it would have been on the same night they reunited. “Leaving, at that time at least, just seemed like the right thing to do.” They were quiet for several seconds, and she was actually afraid to look at him to see his expression.
“The right thing to do?” The way Jacks spoke was almost deadpan, like he didn’t have any emotion left inside of him.
“Yeah.” She licked her lips and glanced down at her feet. “I was a scared eighteen-year-old girl that had just let one of her best friends take her virginity. I worried about losing everything we