Love Struck (Miss Match #2) (31 page)

Then she remembered why she’d told Eli she wanted Jax in the first place. Because of Folx.

Thinking of Folx made her heart squeeze and twist. He meant so much to her. He’d been so instrumental in her life. But honestly, he hadn’t been what Eli had been. And maybe that wasn’t fair to compare when one was online and one was standing in front of her, but that was just it—
one was standing in front of her.
Why would she turn down the man who would hold her in hopes of a man who only
might
hold her someday?

It hurt to think of letting Folx go. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she was thinking? She wasn’t sure she wanted to be thinking about it at all anymore. Not before coffee and a shower. Also, “Godric’s Hollow” was over now. Time to stop thinking Eli thoughts.

And maybe all of this would feel different when she faced the light of day.

Lacy opened her eyes.

The room was still pretty dark, though, with the blackout curtains mostly shut. A sliver of sunshine poked through the open crack, enough light to see a piece of hotel stationery propped up on the bedside table. It stood next to the folded sheet with Lance’s vows, and though she was somewhat afraid to read what Eli had written her, it couldn’t possibly be as intense as the words she’d read from her dead fiancé.

Still, her hand trembled as she brought the note closer. She clicked on the table lamp and forced herself to read Eli’s words.

Songbird,

I can’t begin to express what I’m feeling right now. I’m honored to have been able to comfort you when you needed someone the most. And last night was beautiful—every second in your presence is like a melody that I want to play over and over. A beautiful song that I want in my head, in my body.

But we have to end things here. I have someone, and I have to be true to her. I have to give her what she needs.

And you have someone too.

So thank you for the song. I’m sorry it has to be a single instead of an album. I promise though, it’s a greatest hit.

Eli

Well, dammit.

Eli’s note made it harder to think that choosing him was even an option. And what was with the tears gathering in her eyes? One emotional breakdown and now she was going to be a regular waterworks? She sure hoped that wasn’t the case.

She swiped her hand across her eyes before anything had a chance to spill and sat up, determined. So Eli’s good-bye was an obstacle, but, hey—any good-bye could be erased with a good hello. She simply had to decide if she had a good enough hello. Or if she even wanted to say it in the first place.

Lacy groaned and got up to find her phone. She should at least check in with Folx even if she wasn’t quite ready to deal with anything else. His message sent the day before had made her beam, but it also confused her. He’d said he was thinking of her—LoveCoda—and he’d sent it when he—Jax—had been hanging out with Lacy. It bothered her a little to have Jax thinking of anyone else while he was with her, even if the anyone else was herself. God, the whole thing was so confusing. Perhaps, though, Folx was as torn between the real-life love interest and the virtual one as she was.

She’d have to forgive him for that then.

Her phone turned up on the floor, hidden under her bra. And it was dead. She grabbed her robe and trudged over to the desk to boot up her laptop instead. She logged into SoWriAn and waited for a notification, hoping that Folx had missed their date the night before as well.

But there was a message waiting from him. So now she hoped he’d say something that would make it easier for her to choose to fight for Eli.

She didn’t miss the fact that hoping those things at all indicated her choice had already been made. Still, she wasn’t acknowledging that because then she’d have to figure out how to end things with the others—aka Jax and Folx—and she didn’t want to deal with that yet.

So Lacy opened FolxNotDead24’s message, and read it.

And what it said changed everything.

She read it again.

This is one of the hardest messages I’ve ever written, but it’s been a long time coming. I should have told you sooner, but the truth is, I’ve met someone. I wasn’t looking for her—I swear. She completely caught me off guard. Then she swept me away. Though I meant to meet you, I can’t now. I also think it best that we end our dates and our conversations here. You’ve been a great friend so I know you’ll understand. Good luck. I know you’re going places.

Lacy shut her laptop, put her head on the desk and moaned.

Folx had met someone. Which meant Jax had met someone. And, considering that Jax had kissed her the very day he sent that message, she was pretty sure that someone was her.

Well. Her decision was made then. She’d be with Jax. And this really was the end of thinking about Eli. Really, she didn’t know what was so sad about the idea. That had been her original plan. She’d been perfectly fine with it before last night. She could embrace it again.

Jax. She’d be with Jax.

She forced herself to smile about it. He really was a great guy. And if she could somehow get him to be his real self, his Folx self, then he’d be an even greater guy. It might be easier for him once he realized she was LoveCoda. She’d tell him, of course. Eventually.

But not now.

Now she needed time to mourn the loss of Eli before trying to connect like that again with someone else face-to-face. He’d released so many emotions in her that needed a chance to breathe before being reined in, transformed into feelings for someone new.

There were songs too. Now that her block was fully lifted, now that she had so much to say—there were many, many songs to write.

And tears, it seemed. Because her eyes weren’t just filling now, waterfalls were streaming down her face. She refused to let this be the new norm. She would not become a leaky faucet.

But Eli deserved tears. Deserved a good cry. Maybe even two.

*   *   *

The next two weeks blurred together as the tour turned back north, stopping at cities more inland. Hagerstown, Harrisburg, Allentown, Scranton. Eli didn’t pay attention to where he was anymore—just where he wasn’t. He wasn’t in Baltimore. He wasn’t in SoWriAn. In fact, he’d closed his account.

And he wasn’t with Lacy.

He barely spoke to her, making sure he sat away from her at breakfast and that he didn’t work next to her in load ins. He sat as close to the front of the bus as he could manage, though that wasn’t really necessary since Lacy was always in the back with Jax.

He’d found that helping Sammy pack up after each show kept him occupied and out of the way from the rest of the tour members. Which was exactly what he needed. Because more than needing to not spend time with Lacy, he needed to not spend time with Lacy and Jax. Together. And Sammy’s stupid pitiful glances weren’t freaking helping.

It was what he wanted for her, of course. The night he’d gone to her room, it was so obvious. Jax was helping her. He’d been there in a moment of weakness, something he would never regret, but it wasn’t him she’d needed that night. So yes. He’d meant for them to become a couple. But he didn’t have to watch it enfold in detail. It hurt too much, and he wasn’t a masochist.

He did allow himself one concession of pain, however. Every night, without fail, he watched her set. It seemed she added a new song to each show, each better than the last. With each unfamiliar note that rang out from her voice across a restless crowd, he fell more in love with her. Each word seemed to sing his own anguish. He felt them in that vague place Jax always gestured to—part groin, part heart. They wrapped around him and wrung his misery out of him so that his shows were also the best he’d ever performed. So many believed the theory that heartache bred art. He’d never realized how much that was true for him until now.

Along with his agony, though, Lacy’s songs gave him validation. He’d done the right thing by letting her go. She’d been so desperate to tear down her block, and now, not only had she found her words but also she’d become prolific. It made him feel good about himself. Made him feel honorable despite the heavy ache he carried.

While avoiding Lacy, Eli also avoided Jax. It was pretty much impossible to see one without the other anymore, and though Eli recognized the strain his avoidance had put on the entire band, he wasn’t sure how to remedy the situation. And that depressed him almost more than anything. Music was his fallback. It was where he lost himself when he most needed to be found. Though his performances were stellar on a nightly basis, the broken connection with the lead singer hurt their overall sound.

Eli still worried about Jax, too. He was so volatile, so fragile—it was another reason Eli felt miserably good about Jax and Lacy as a couple. Hopefully Lacy grounded the man, gave him strength. Lord knew she’d done that for Eli.

If she did do that for Jax, Eli couldn’t be sure. There was too much tension between him and Jax to know anything going on personally. Unfortunately other people noticed too.

In Albany, Lou advised, “Whatever’s up between you, kid, you need to fix it.”

In Springfield, Wes got involved. “Dude, one of you needs to suck it up, and we both know it isn’t going to be Jax.”

No, it would never be Jax. Quite the opposite, actually. In Hartford, Jax called another impromptu rehearsal before the show that night in order to “fix” a few of the songs. Eli suspected it was a power move rather than a true displeasure with the arrangements.

But whatever it was meant to be, it was also Eli’s chance to repair things with Jax. So for the whole practice, Eli played nice. He complimented Jax’s observations. Then he sucked it up, as Wes recommended, and conceded to every change Jax suggested. By the time the rehearsal was over, the strain among the group seemed to have lessened.

Too bad it made Eli feel so shitty about himself. Since when did being the better man require being such a pussy? It really blew. Not to mention the total suck of watching his art suffer for the sake of someone else’s ego.

But since he’d already begun mending their friendship, he might as well see it all the way through. Reluctantly, while the rest of the guys cleaned up the area in prep for the show later that night, Eli took the moment alone to catch up with Jax in the green room.

“Great session, Jax.” He was such a prick to his own art; dismissing the death of his songs for the sake of keeping the peace. “Good call to add that rehearsal.” Jesus, he couldn’t stop himself.

Jax’s lip ticked up in pleased astonishment. “Glad you think so. I’m a little surprised you went along with my changes. Usually it takes you a while to see the vision.”

“Guess I’m more in tune with you than usual.” In tune with what Jax wanted to hear anyway. Which wasn’t the point of the conversation at all. Instead of sucking up and blowing steam up his friend’s ass, he meant to be fixing the things he really was sorry about.

Eli grounded himself, both feet flat on the ground. “Hey, I never got a chance to apologize. For Baltimore.” He could still defend his position and reasonably convince even himself, but the truth was that he’d intervened for the wrong reasons. Reasons he needed to let go of now.

“For Baltimore?”

Lord, had Jax already forgotten the whole thing? “For the argument after the calling-the-police thing.”

Jax nodded as understanding spread across his features. He fell into a ratty old armchair and kicked his feet up on the empty keg cum coffee table. “Oh, no worries, man. I get it. It had to be an icky situation for you. You were interested in the girl and she happened to like someone else better. I should really be apologizing to you.”

Eli debated between simply walking away and kicking Jax where it hurt, in that vague region between his junk and his stupidly toned abs. It would feel good to let his anger out in a physical altercation. It would also feel good to leave the asshat to his narcissism and never look back.

He had to admit by now—Jax was no longer the guy who’d pulled him from the shower to join a band, rescued him from loneliness and given a brotherhood.

Eli was committed though—to the band anyway. That made him committed to Jax. They had been best friends once, he needed to remember that for the sake of the Blue Hills. And for the good of Jax—and Lacy—he had to perpetuate the story that he had a woman waiting for him elsewhere.

Of course it had been the truth when he’d first said it. He’d had LoveCoda waiting. Even then it had been hard to say he wasn’t interested in Lacy. Now, it practically devastated him.

Still, he managed to get the words out. “I told you I wasn’t into Lacy. I was worried about
you
.” Then, to make sure the lie was really out there, “I have someone else.” Eli kept eye contact through his blatant fabrication, which made him feel more like a tumbling dickweed than he’d felt before. As if lying poorly would somehow make up for the fact that he was lying in the first place.

Jax narrowed his gaze. “Oh, yeah. From that hookup site?”

“Does it matter where from?”
See? There. I don’t make up stories that well after all.

“Just asking, dude. Thought we were having a bonding moment. Guess I read it wrong.”

“Jax…” God, talking to him just wasn’t going to be easy no matter what. It would be one thing if Jax really were trying to bond, but he wasn’t. He was trying to poke fun at Eli and his attempt to reconnect.

Well fuck that. He needed to stick to the script. “So you accept my apology then? We’re cool?”

“We’re cool.” Jax popped a peanut into his mouth from the jar that sat next to the chair. Then, with a sour look on his face, he proceeded to spit it out. Back into the jar, in fact, which he examined briefly before tossing it across the room into the garbage can with a dramatic swoosh of his hands. “Two points!”

Eli should have left it there. He meant to. He even turned to walk away. It was a good note to part on, after all—the
we’re cool
, not the
two points
from tossing expired peanuts into the trash—and not as dangerous as the note floating around in his head, nearing his tongue, begging to be spoken. Not nearly as painful either.