“Of course it is.” He slashes the air with his hand. “I’m their goddamn manager! What did you think?”
“I thought,” I answer with a shaking voice, “I meant enough to you that you wouldn’t make ugly assumptions. That you wouldn’t worry about soothing Killian’s feelings at the expense of mine.”
All emotion wipes from his face, and he straightens to his full height, rolling his shoulders back as if to brace himself. “This is real life, Sophie. Not some movie. You don’t get to use this as some test to see how much I’ll blindly accept, as if that somehow will make me worthy of you.”
I stand there, mouth open, unable to form a word. A test? He thinks this is some stupid test? But a small, dark part of me wonders, am I testing him?
I would explain all of it if he gave me half a chance to get a word in.
And yet I am hurt that he immediately thought the worst of me. How could I not be? We’re better than this. I gave him my heart; I would never intentionally hurt him or anyone he loves. If he doesn’t know that now, I’m not sure he ever will.
His voice is cold and methodical as he keeps picking, his fucking logic stomping on my heart with every word. “You think I don’t understand what you’re doing? Give me a little credit. I know you as well as you know me. Did it become too much fun, believing you could manage me?”
This pain is dull and hollow, and somehow worse because of it. I close my eyes against him. “First I’m a sleazy schemer, and now I’m some jerk who enjoys leading you around by the balls for fun? Is that it?”
“Goddamn it, you don’t get to be the injured party here. Not this time.”
My eyes snap open. He looks so genuinely put out and hurt that I don’t know what to say. But I won’t apologize now, that’s for damn sure.
“Well, too bad, because I am injured. And you don’t get to tell me how to feel.” I take a step closer, my fists balling at my sides. “And right now, you’re making it really fucking hard not to hate you.”
He rocks back on his heels. Silence wells up between us like a living, dark thing. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and unsteady.
“You have always pushed me to express myself. This is me expressing myself. I can concede that I need to let myself live more in the moment and enjoy life. But you, Sophie Darling, need to grow the hell up and take responsibility when things go into the shitter. And if you cannot do that, you don’t belong on this tour.”
I hear him. I know he’s right about this. But his ugly conclusions and the way he jumped to them loom large as well.
Licking my dry lips, I make my voice as calm as I can manage. “Right now, the tour and whether I should be on it are the least of my worries.”
He frowns, tilting his head as if he can’t understand me. Part of me wants to laugh, only I know I’ll end up crying. Maybe we are too different, our priorities too far apart.
A knock on the suite door has us both flinching. Gabriel turns toward it, his mouth pinched, weariness lining his face. In this light, he’s almost haggard. He runs a hand over his eyes.
“That’s Jules. She’s here to give me an update—”
“I’ll leave you to it.” On wooden limbs, I head to the bedroom.
He doesn’t try to stop me.
And I don’t cry once I close the door behind me. I pack.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gabriel
* * *
“Report?” I ask from one of suite’s dining room chairs. My head is too heavy to hold itself up, so I rest it in the cradle of my hands.
“The girl you caught on the elevator is Jennifer Miller. She’s a roadie, working in lighting.” Jules’s voice is hesitant and soft.
Regrettable, but apparently I’m quite good at cowing women. A lance of pain drives through my heart. I clear my throat, having trouble finding my voice.
“Go on.”
Jules takes a breath that sounds more like a sigh. “According to her statement, she’d been wanting to hook up with Jax. When she saw him having trouble getting to the elevator, she offered to help.”
Well, give the girl points for being an opportunist. I shouldn’t care, but I’m so bloody bitter at the moment, it’s all I can do not to sneer.
“And that cockwank? How did he get in?”
From between my fingers, I see Jules’s lip quirk in a smile before she presses down on them. “He, ah, approached them at the elevator. Told Jennifer he was an old friend of…” Jules coughs, her eyes darting away.
“Of Sophie’s?” I offer. Goddamn it, it hurts to say her name. I don’t know how I manage to utter it without inflection.
Sophie. She retreated to our bedroom after I ripped into her worse than anyone I’ve ever had a go at. She went with quiet dignity, and I felt small and full of regret. I don’t even remember the last person I cared about with whom I’ve truly lost my temper. There’s a reason for that. I cut people open with my words, as surely as a surgeon with a scalpel.
That fucktrumpet Martin, however… My hands curl into fists. It’s all I can do not to hunt the tit down and bash his fucking gob in. A shudder works through me. I’m regressing back to my feral youth, when I was a few steps away from becoming a chavvy thug.
Jules watches me with weary eyes.
I force what I hope is a bland expression. “Well?”
“Yes, that’s what he said. And he offered to give them a hand. Jax let them both up.”
My hand is cold and clammy as I rub it over my face. “What happened in the room?”
“Ah, Jennifer says she started…ah, making out with Jax. He didn’t appear to mind.”
Which means he was so out of it, he let the twit do what she wanted. I wave a hand, encouraging Jules to speed things up. I can hardly stomach sitting here, listening to this. I want to pace. I want to hunt down Sophie and crawl into bed with her, beg her to forgive me for shouting.
No, I cannot be a complete doormat. She was in the wrong too. She lied, refused to explain, and held my exacting nature over my head. We’ll never go forward on equal ground if I’m the only one to admit my failings.
It’s not like you gave her much of a chance to explain, mate.
It’s not as though she tried to explain.
Sod it all, I’m arguing with myself now.
Jules is talking, and I force myself to focus.
“…Martin started taking pictures of them. Said he thought they looked cute together and Jennifer would like a…” Jules winces. “A souvenir.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Yeah,” she agrees quietly. “Anyway, Jax suddenly threw up. On Jennifer.”
She pauses, and our eyes meet. I can’t help but smile a little. Jules does too.
“Go on,” I say, fighting that smile.
“She runs, gets caught by Sophie, who apparently detained her, demanding to know what was going on, and tried to drag her back to the scene.”
My Sophie. She’d acted as I would have. Guilt settles in my throat like shards of glass.
“Jennifer broke free, and presumably that’s when you found her in the elevator.”
“Yes.” It had been an unwelcome surprise to discover a hysterical, vomit-covered woman in the elevator when the doors opened. Killian and I had stared at her in shock before snapping out of it and delivering her directly to a security guard manning the area.
With a sigh, I sit back in my chair. I ache. All over. And I know it is from sorrow. “Relay all of this to Killian and the rest of the guys.” Since I know full-well Killian will have told them everything by now. “I don’t want them thinking badly of Sophie.”
It hurts to say. It hurts to even think. Sophie hadn’t understood that the mere idea of them disliking her would be a wound in my heart. She’s too important to me for there to be discord.
Jules nods. “And Jennifer?”
“She’s out. Give her two weeks severance and a ticket home.”
“I’m guessing not in first class?” Jules’s joke falls flat. And her smi
le dies. “Too soon?”
Not bothering to answer, I stand and squeeze the back of my stiff neck. “And go over the NDA she signed. Make certain she understands the repercussions if she talks.”
We both turn at a noise from the living area. Sophie stands at the threshold to the dining room. Her hair hangs damp and limp around her shoulders. She appears smaller somehow, diminished. The light has gone out of her pretty eyes.
I did that to her. My heart thumps in my chest, pushing against my ribs, which squeeze tight at the sight of her.
“Sophie. We were finishing up here.”
“Yeah, I see that.” She sounds like a ghost of herself.
Dimly, I’m aware of Jules leaving. I only have eyes for Sophie, however.
Silence ticks by. I take a step in her direction, but her voice stops me.
“You were right. I don’t belong on this tour. It’s no longer fun for me.”
“Fun?” The word is like a slap to the face.
“Yeah, fun. You know that concept you have a hard time embracing?”
I wince.
And she winces too. “I’m sorry. That was shitty. I didn’t mean it.”
“You wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it,” I say quietly.
Her eyes narrow. “So you meant every word you said to me then?”
There’s a trap here. I can see it laid out, waiting for me to fall into. Only I have no idea how to circumvent the damn thing.
“I shouldn’t have shouted at you,” I say. “I regret being so…” Vicious. “Aggressive.”
“But you don’t regret what you said.” A flat statement.
Irritation flares. “What do you want me to say, Sophie? We had words. All couples fight.” And then they make up. Why can’t we get to the make up part of the program?
Apparently, we aren’t anywhere near that segment.
Her expression goes colder. “Couples trust each other.”
“This again? You lied to me,” I bite out. And that hurt me. Somehow that is harder to admit.
“And I apologized,” she snaps.
I should let it go. I know this. “You lied to me about someone who…fuck all, Sophie. He’s been inside you.”
I don’t even know what I’m saying, only that the thought of him being with Sophie turns my stomach and makes me want to pummel something.
Her mouth falls open. “You’re jealous? Of Martin?”
Her voice saying his name sets me off. “More like disgusted by your life choices.”
Shit.
She gasps. I can’t take the words back.
“Sophie…I didn’t—”
“First I’m immature, now I’m disgusting?”
“You are not disgusting.” I take another step toward her. “I spoke out of turn. I am a jealous prat. I didn’t expect to be, but I am.”
I move closer. If I can just get to her, simply hold her, things will be all right. They have to be.
But she holds up a hand, warning me off. “Look, I’m going to stay with Brenna tonight.”
This is wrong. She shouldn’t go. “You should stay.”
A bitter smile pulls at her lips. “But I don’t want to.”
I swallow so hard it hurts. “Oh.”
Brilliant rejoinder. Bloody brilliant.
She makes a noise in her throat as if she’s thinking the same thing. “Like I said, I don’t want to stay on the tour either.”
My body strains toward hers. “Why?” It sounds more like a plea than a question.
She huffs out a toneless laugh. “Jesus, you can’t be this thick. You gave me an ultimatum. Either grow up or get off the tour. And by what I’ve heard from you tonight, all this is moot anyway. And you know what? I don’t want to grow up. Not if it means being coldly clinical like you, so I guess I’m out.”
She grabs the bag I’m only now seeing and heads for the door. My feet are rooted to the ground. I have to force them to move, to follow her. I feel hollowed out and numb. My head pounds with her angry words.
“Wait,” I say.
She doesn’t turn. “You know,” she says. “I like you just as you are, faults and all. But you clearly don’t accept me for who I am.”
“That’s not true!” I’m walking faster now. But she’s already at the door, opening it. “Sophie.”
She pauses, but still doesn’t look my way. “Leave me alone, Gabriel. I’ve reached my limit tonight. I can’t talk to you any more.”
Give her space. That’s what men are supposed to do when a woman requests it, aren’t they? I don’t know. I’ve never had a woman I wanted to call my own before. It feels wrong, but I’ve done everything wrong at this point. So I shove my protests aside.
“All right. Good night, Sophie.”
“Goodbye.”
The door shuts with a soft click, and I am alone.
* * *
Sophie
* * *
Just get to the door. Just get out of the room and then you can lose it.
He lets me go with a softly offered, “Good night.” As if he hasn’t just torn me apart all over again.
As if he hadn’t just told Jules I was out. No first class this time? Well, fuck you and your first-class tickets.
A sob tries to break free, and I hold it in by sheer will. My feet propel me down the hotel corridor, but my body is throbbing with this horrible, dull pain. He fired me? And then acted like it was all on me?
I should have thrown it in his face. But I’m so hurt, so shocked. I don’t know what to say. I can’t think properly. I thought he loved me. True, he never said the words, but every look, every action… That was love. It had to be.
And yet here I am again, coming in second to a man’s business needs. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have warnings this time. I knew Gabriel put the band above all things. But I had hoped there was equal room for me.
I make it to Brenna’s room. My knuckles feel brittle as I knock on her door.
The second she opens it, I start to cry.
“Honey,” she says, pulling me in. “Honey.”
Everything that happened comes out of me like word vomit. And she holds me, letting it all flow.
“He did what?” she shrieks when I tell her about Gabriel ordering Jules to fire me.
“He told her to remind me of the fucking NDA I signed,” I say bitterly.
“No.” Brenna shakes her head. “No way. That is not the man I’ve seen with you. He’s crazy about you, Sophie.”
I wouldn’t have thought so either. A sigh shakes me. “I heard him.” I walked in just in time to hear those orders loud and clear.
“You have to talk to him. Because I cannot believe it.”
She guides me to a chair as I shake my head. “I just talked to him. I said I was leaving the tour, and he let me go.”
Why didn’t he come after me? Tell me that he loves me? Is that what I want? I’m so battered and tired of the whole thing, I can’t think straight. I only know that I hurt, and I miss him. Even when I want to hit his stubborn, thick head, I miss him. Life is an empty road if he isn’t on it beside me.
I hate this weakness. Being in love is akin to losing my mind and having my heart flayed open all at once. It sucks.
“Look,” Brenna says gently, “you two have had a bad night. Let it settle and discuss it in the morning.” She grows quiet and then bends her head to peer at me. “You really want to leave the tour?”
It occurs to me then that she’s not just a friend. She’s my boss.
“I’m sorry,” I say, twisting my fingers. “It isn’t just Gabriel. Killian wouldn’t look at me tonight. Logically, I don’t blame them. But it was as if all that we’ve been through means nothing.” I shake my head. “And call me a wuss, but I just want to go away and lick my wounds in privacy for a while.”
Brenna appears to think that is a terrible idea, but she’s kind enough to let it go. “Let’s get you to bed. It will be better in the morning.”
I’m fairly certain that m
eans Brenna is going to try to talk me out of things, or into things. Either way, I can’t face being asked to review the stinking NDA I signed. The humiliation would level me.
Maybe Gabriel has it right; maybe it’s better to take a step back and protect yourself. I’ve always been a walking ball of emotion. Maybe if I take some time for myself, get away from the heady experience of being wrapped up in Gabriel, I’ll see things clearly.
Brenna stands, cutting into my thoughts. “I’ll leave you to get ready.” She takes a few steps, then turns back. “If things turn out for the worst, Harley Andrews is very interested in working with you.”
“That’s flattering.” I feel absolutely nothing. I don’t care anymore if I’d be working with a huge movie star. And yet Australia sounds like an adventure right about now. I could go there, take in the country, get some perspective.
A little voice whispers that I’m running away like a chicken. I ignore it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gabriel
* * *
The guys find me the next morning in a pathetic heap on the couch, a pillow over my face. I would say it is my lowest point, but that’s already happened. The second Sophie walked out the door and out of my life will always be my lowest point. No, the second I doubted her and tore apart her trust in me was my lowest point.
“Jesus,” Jax says, somewhere above my head. “He’s wearing sweats. Dirty ones.”
And rather foul-smelling ones at that. I don’t bloody care.
“Is he drunk?” Whip asks with some concern.
“Naw,” Killian drawls. “All I see are empty water bottles.”
“Drowning his sorrows in bottled water. At least he’s not cliché,” Rye murmurs before sitting next to me. His hand comes down on my shoulder and he gives me a shake. “Scottie, man, what’s up?”
It takes true effort to make my mouth move. But I know if I don’t answer, they’ll never leave.
“I’m fairly certain Sophie wants to leave me.”
They’re all silent, which grates even more.
Then Jax sighs. “Fuck, man. That sucks.”