Before You (Before You #1)(75)

Cam stalked back toward Jax. “I’m a joke?” He shoved Jax in the chest. “You’re pathetic. What kind of guy sleeps with his friend’s girlfriend?”

“Don’t fight!” Bre shouted through her tears. Both Jax and Cam ignored her.

Jax returned Cam’s shove, his face only inches from Cam’s. “She’s your ex-girlfriend. You never got back together.”

“Oh, I get it. That’s why you offered to fly to Aspen to give her the plane ticket. You knew that we broke up, you saw your opening, and you decided to take it. I didn’t know you were so desperate that you had to resort to sleeping with my sloppy seconds.”

Jax opened his front door. “I bought a ticket to Aspen for her opening before you decided to bail on her. Unlike you, I understood how important the opening was to her.”

“Fuck you. You don’t know anything. You think you understand Bre? Well, you’re wrong. You’ll never understand her like I do. We have a history.”

“You may have her history, but she’s my future. Get out of my house before I hit you again, and this time I won’t stop,” he responded through clenched teeth.

“You two can have each other.” Cam grabbed his keys off the entry table.

Jax held out his hand as Cam walked by him. “Give me the key to my house.”

Cam twisted the key off his keychain and dropped it into Jax’s open hand. “I can’t believe you’re going to throw away the band for a woman. You two won’t make it a month.”

“Who says I’m throwing the band away? I invited you into the band, and I can disinvite you.”

“Fuck you. I have connections, too. I can find another band.” Cam stormed out of the front door.

Slamming the door behind him, Jax cautiously looked over at Bre, who was sitting on the floor with her knees curled up to her chest. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were glazed over, as though she were lost in her thoughts. He walked toward her.

“Bre,” Jax said, crouching in front of her. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want everything to go down like that. That sucked.”

“I know. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have come here last night.” Bre shook her head as though she wanted to erase the last twenty minutes from her memory.

“Don’t say that. Last night was perfect.” He didn’t want Bre to dwell on what happened with Cam. He wanted the rest of the weekend to be about them. Besides, if Cam cared for Bre as much as he said he did, Jax suspected that Cam would forgive Bre at some point. They had too much history for either of them to hate the other for any length of time. As for the band, he didn’t think Cam would walk away when they were so close to getting signed, and if Jax were honest, he didn’t want Cam to leave the band. He wanted to smooth things over, but if that wasn’t possible, he could find someone else. The band had done it before and they could do it again.

“And what about this morning?” Bre leaned her hand against her forehead.

“This morning was perfect, too,” Jax said, flashing his bright white signature grin, trying to cheer her up. “I thought you enjoyed the guitar lesson.”

“Jax, stop it!” she replied with a small, wry smile. “That’s not what I was talking about and you know it. You’re trying to change the subject.”

“Is it working?” Jax ran his hand over the top of her head.

“Absolutely not. What are we going to do about Cam?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I’m still digesting the whole thing.” Jax held out his hand to her to help her up from the floor.

“I don’t want what we did to mean the end of Chasing Ruin. You guys are so close to being signed. It makes me sick to think that what I did could destroy everything.”

“Look, I’m not worried about it, so you shouldn’t be, either. I’ll call Cam later. I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out. No more discussions about Cam or the band for the next few hours.”

“We need to talk about this. We can’t let all this craziness fester.”

“No, we don’t need to talk about it right this minute.” Jax traced the line of her jaw with his fingers. “Do you want to go out for lunch?”

She groaned. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m up to it.”

“Well, I don’t have anything to eat in my house, and I think a change of scenery will be good for both of us.”

Bre’s stomach rumbled.

“See? Your stomach agrees,” Jax smiled mischievously.

“If I agree to go to lunch, will you agree that we can talk about this mess there?”

“That’s my plan. Let’s get dressed.”





Chapter Twenty-Eight



An hour later, Bre found herself sitting in a rounded corner booth in a dark restaurant bar in West Hollywood. Bar food wasn’t her preference, but Jax claimed they needed comfort food after the morning they had. Apparently, this place served the best burgers in town. Bre was skeptical and made a small grunt of protest as they walked into the bar, but it was more for show than anything. The idea of a greasy burger made her stomach grumble, and she had to admit the corner booth provided a lot of privacy, which was a plus for the conversation they were about to have.