A Little Bit Dirty - Jenika Snow Page 0,64

the floor, and knew that what he should do was just leave Zoe alone.

She hadn’t tried to contact him this whole time, and although he had sent a few texts to her, the responses had been short, yet friendly.

He had hurt her, he knew that, and although that had not been his intention, the effect had still been the same. He picked up his phone and pressed all but one of the numbers to call her. But what could he say? How would he make this situation right? Did it even matter?

He shook his head. Yes, it did matter, because he cared about her, and he wanted her in his life more than anything. He dialed that last number and brought the phone to his ear. It rang, and rang, and rang for the third time, and when the voicemail kicked on he was tempted to hang up.

But he didn’t, and when there was that beep for him to spill his heart out to her, he did just that.

“Zoe, I don’t know what to say that I haven’t typed out and deleted a hundred times before. I’d rather talk to you face-to-face, but until we can do that—if we can do that.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply before he continued. He picked at the frayed edge of his pant leg. “Please, call me back so we can talk.” He disconnected the call and grabbed his headphones.

After plugging them into his phone, and slipping them over his head, he put on “Frank Sinatra” by Cake, and leaned back on the bed. It was up to her if she reached out this time, but Beats didn’t know if he’d be able to stay away now that he forced himself not to ignore what he felt for her.

Zoe listened to the voicemail from Beats for the third time, and was forcing herself not to cry. She was done talking, done worrying about what she could have with Beats, and was just ready to move on.

Maybe things had never fallen into place because it just wasn’t meant to be. There was a plethora of emotions moving through her, but anger was the fiercest one of all. Since she left him in the room after the kiss, all she had been trying to do was put it behind her and move forward.

But then he had been texting her, and she had tried to act as though nothing was wrong.

It was hard though, and all she had wanted to do was call him, hear his voice, and tell him that she wanted so much more. She set her phone down and wrapped the towel around her body tighter.

Life moved on, and that was what she wanted to do. She didn’t want to rehash what had happened in his hotel room, didn’t want to hear him say how he saw her as a little sister.

Her fingers itched to pick the phone up again and call him, but she didn’t, because they both just needed to focus on other things, and what would never happen between them. She picked up the phone, went to his voicemail, and deleted it.

Doing that hurt, but she couldn’t dwell on things, and needed to find happiness with someone who wanted to share that with her, too.

Epilogue

After the tour

They all sat in the basement of Jacks’ home. He’d bought a small piece of land in Brookstone, and although he spent a lot of his time in California, where the record label he was signed with was located, he still came back home on occasion.

The house was huge compared to the other houses in Brookstone, and surrounded by several acres of land. He had it custom built, and currently they were in the basement where his sound studio was.

Tanner was sitting on the couch pressed against the wall and watching the guys play an acoustic version of one of their number one hits. Jacks sang softly and played his guitar while Matty, Beats, and Five sang along with him. It was strange seeing this part of them, and even stranger because Zoe wasn’t sitting here with them.

It had been months since the situation with Beats had happened, and although Zoe hadn’t gone into detail about it again after that, and Tanner hadn’t asked, she knew there was thick tension still there.

But Zoe was with someone now, a pre-med student who was in school with her brother Lane. She seemed happy, and Tanner supposed that was all that mattered.

Over the rest of the