Love Struck (Miss Match #2) (33 page)

But Lacy didn’t turn her head. Her focus was pinned on Eli.

He kept his gaze on her as well. His head shook slightly. “Not all this time.”

“Look, you two seem to be having a happy enough chat without me.”

Jax seemed to be talking to her and Eli now, but she refused to acknowledge anything but the man in front of her who said, “I’ve only known for the last couple of weeks.”

“And since I have other plans that start, like, right now. I’ll just be going.”

Seriously, Lacy wished Jax would stop talking. It took energy to block him, and she was beginning to realize she needed all her energy for her conversation with Eli. “Like since when exactly? Before you broke up with me online?”

“If you don’t mind, man. Gir—woman. People. Peeps.” Jax’s voice droned on like a fly buzzing in the room, distracting and irritating as it tried to steal the attention. “Eli…? Lacy…?”

“Go!” Lacy said in unison with Eli.

“Awesome. Catch you two later.” There was relief evident in Jax’s voice as he shot out of the green room with his guest. As if he’d been let off the hook, and for half a second Lacy wondered if she should feel hurt by that.

But there wasn’t any room for that offense in her well of emotions. She was too hurt at the moment from Eli’s disclosure. Or Eli’s potential disclosure because he hadn’t said it yet, but she felt the truth in her bones like she could feel the change of weather from fall to winter.

Still, she pressed on, needing to hear it verbalized. “Before you broke up with me online, Eli?”

His shoulders fell and his eyes lowered. “Yes. I figured it out earlier that day. That morning.”

She wanted to ask him how. It was a fairly interesting question and her mouth opened to ask it, but no sound came out. Her mind was already past that, already at the what-he-did-with-the-information-when-he figured-it-out part. She didn’t have to try to remember the details of that day—they were cut into her memory like etched glass. He’d come to her room to apologize. Then they’d made love. Not had tour-sex. Made love. And then he’d ended things both in real life and online.

He’d figured out who she was and then he’d broken off all intimacy.

Which meant … “Oh, God.” She swallowed, hard, but she couldn’t swallow hard enough to push down the truth—Lacy Dawson didn’t live up to LoveCoda so Eli cut his losses while he could.

“I’m such a fool.” Such a ridiculous fool. Tears were springing at her eyes, and the pain in her chest wrenched and twisted. She didn’t know she was still capable of this much heartache. She thought living through the worst would make her capable of living through everything else. It turned out that “worst” was a category, not an absolute.

Lacy needed space. Needed air. Needed to be anywhere but where she was right then.

She turned and left.

“Lacy…”

She heard Eli call after her, but she couldn’t acknowledge him. How could she? She was utterly humiliated. Instead, she kept walking down the hall looking for the door to the parking lot. She’d come in this way only a few minutes before with Lou. He’d come over from the hotel to check on the guys at The Night Owl, the venue for the night, and she’d tagged along, hoping to catch a snippet of their rehearsal. While the manager talked with the band, she’d gone looking for the bathroom. Thankfully she’d found it before she’d overheard the loud voices coming from the green room, because she really couldn’t have held it this long and there was no way she was looking for anything but the way out now.

The first knob she turned, however, led her not outside but to an office. And spread out across the desk in an intimate—and rather awkward—position were Jax and Chelle. Damn, they were fast.

They paused their foreplay to glance at their intruder.

“Seriously?” Lacy slammed the door shut before either of them could respond.
Not that one, then this one.
She turned the next knob and this time was met with sunshine.
Thank God.

Lacy bent, her hands clutching her thighs for support as she took in large gulps of air. Her mind was dizzy with the revelations. There had been a moment earlier, when she’d realized that Eli was really FolxNotDead27, where she’d felt relief. Elation even. No more pretending that she and Jax would ever have more than an occasional passing in the drunken night. No more fighting what she wanted to freely shout out to the world—her love for Eli.

But that moment had scurried out faster than it came, and the joy that had flooded through her still lingered under the horrid layer of betrayal.

She heard the door swing open behind her alerting her to his presence long seconds before he spoke. It didn’t do any good to run. Where would she go? Besides, she couldn’t hide from horrible feelings anymore. She’d learned that from hiding from Lance.

It didn’t mean she had to turn and face him, though. So she didn’t.

Long seconds passed before he spoke. “Look, I know what you’re thinking…” His voice trailed off, then she could swear she heard his head shaking. “Actually, I don’t know what you’re thinking. But I know none of this looks like what it really is.”

Grief and rage balanced for a moment, and then rage tipped the scales. She couldn’t help herself—she spun toward him. “And what is it really, Eli? Because let me tell you what it looks like. Like when you found out that I was really LoveCoda, you were disappointed. The girl you were holding out for really wasn’t all that special in real life and so you found a way to kill two birds with one stone and ended it with both me and her.” She crinkled her brow as she reevaluated her last words. “Me and me, I mean.” Dang if two identities wasn’t the most confusing thing ever.

Eli scratched at the back of his neck, and it gave Lacy a small bit of satisfaction to see that his expression seemed lost and desperate.

His jaw worked and his eyes grew dark. “I fell in love with you, Lacy.”

A ball formed in her throat. Man, he did know how to get to her. She wanted to fall into his words, fall into his arms, but so much left unsaid held her back. And even when the words
were
said, she had to remember that he was a natural poet. A professional liar, like all writers.

Her guard remained up. “Yeah, sounds pretty plausible.”

In contrast, Eli’s hands fell to his side, leaving him open and vulnerable. “I did. I fell completely. I love music, you know that, and you make me feel like there’s music everywhere. In crab shacks and blanket forts. And I’m not talking about the sound, but the feeling. Possibility hiding behind every moment. The feeling that music gives me—you give me that. You’re my songbird.”

Lacy’s heart squeezed in a way that was simultaneously painful and paradise at once. The ball in her throat thickened. There were things she wanted to say, but she couldn’t get them out if she tried. It was like all the months of writer’s block had swum back up to strangle her.

Which was fine, it seemed, because Eli had more to say himself. “But I had a commitment to LoveCoda—to you—and when I realized … God, Lacy, when I realized you were her … I was thrilled. Ecstatic. Over the moon. It was the best moment of my life and I’m not even being a little bit dramatic about that.”

It was too much—the emotion, the ache, the poetry. And none of it could possibly be true because he wouldn’t have dumped her if it were.

She dug deep and found her voice, pulled it out through the block, choked though it may be. “Why are you doing this? Why would you say all of that stuff? Are you trying to be the biggest dick in my world? Because right now you don’t really have to try.”

“That’s what sh—” He realized it wasn’t the time for comedic relief when she met his eyes. “I’m saying this because it’s the truth, Lacy.” He took a tentative step forward, but stopped when she retreated. “Listen to me. You know me. I’m the guy you’ve been talking to for months. We’ve been through it all together. You’ve trusted me and I’ve never lied to you.” His lids closed halfway as he realized that wasn’t true. “Well, mostly never.”

“Exactly.” That was the point. She really couldn’t trust him. Especially not with something as precious as her heart.

Except that she
wanted
to trust him. Which was why she hadn’t walked away.

“I only lied that once, Lace. When I told you there was someone else.” He ticked his head back and forth as he reconsidered that. “In a way that wasn’t a lie though either because there
was
someone else—you. There was you.”

“And you dumped that version of me too. After you made love to me like I actually meant something to you. Or did you forget that?”

“No. I’ll never forget that.” Eli’s voice was soft. Sincere. “It was everything.”

When he said things like that, she was crippled with doubt. She wanted to believe that her night with him—that every moment with him—had meant as much to him as they had to her. “Then why? Why would you dump me after?”

His lips parted to speak then closed, his chest falling with the release of air. These words were hard for him, she could tell. “Because you wanted Jax.”

“I wanted Jax because I thought he was you. Because I thought he was Folx.” For someone as brilliant as he was, it struck her that he was also the biggest dolt to not have figured that one out.

“I considered that. I did. And, at first, I’ll be honest, whatever reason you liked Jax didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let him stand in my way of getting you. For once, I wasn’t going to back down.” He paused. “But then your song…”

“What about my song? Which song?”

“The song you played for Jax. On the roof. You said it was for him. That you’d connected with him, and I realized that he’d helped you break through. Not me. Him.”

Lacy frowned. “But that wasn’t … I didn’t…” Never mind that he’d just admitted to spying on a moment that she’d thought had been private. She was upset and distracting herself, but what he was saying was wrong.

Plus, Eli had yet to explain why any of that had even mattered.

As if reading her mind, he said, “He helped you do what I couldn’t, Lacy. I’d tried and tried to help you with your writer’s block.… Then Jax comes along, spends one night with you, and your block is over. He fixed you. He was the one who deserved you.”

“He didn’t…” She halted her explanation as the meaning of his words settled through her. “So you decided that since Jax cured me—which he didn’t, by the way—that I shouldn’t have the right to choose that I might want to be with someone else?”

“No, it wasn’t like that.”

The hurt and despair she’d felt only moments ago made way as anger again pushed forward. “You mean that you didn’t completely pull the wool over my eyes then? How long do you think it would have worked with me and Jax before I realized that he wasn’t what I thought he was? Don’t you think we’d have talked about it eventually?”

“I guess I didn’t really think about that.”

She’d caught him off guard. Good. She wanted him to feel as unbalanced as she did.

Except then he regrouped. “But then would it even matter? If you were already into each other?”

“God, are you a matchmaker now? I have one of those already.” A matchmaking sister who had said point-blank that Eli was the one for her, but that was beside the point. “And why did you make love to me if you were just planning to pair me up with Jax and break my heart?”

Aw, fudge nugget.
She bit her lip hoping he hadn’t realized she’d revealed as much as she had. The whole situation was messy enough without him knowing how messed up in love she was with him.
So much for being a professional liar myself.

“I wasn’t planning—” He stopped mid-sentence. “Wait, I broke your heart?”

Double fudge nugget.
“Yes! Of course you did. I was in love with you too.” Crap, past tense wasn’t truthful. “
Am
in love with you, I mean.” Except she didn’t really want him knowing that necessarily. “I mean…”

She met his eyes, found him smiling. Which pissed her off more because she was not through all her anger yet and because he’d tricked her into saying things she hadn’t planned to say. Pissed her off most because his response was a triumphant smile, and not reciprocation. That pretty much proved it, right there. She was a conquest, not a love. “Are you happy now? I admitted it. There. Point is I was devastated when I found your shitty, arrogant note.”

His smile faded. “And how was I supposed to know that? You asked for one night. Every time we were together you followed it up with ‘we can’t do this again.’ You had me spinning in circles. I was trying to honor your wishes. And … I wanted the note to be sweet.”

His chin nudged up, and she saw sparks of irritation in his eyes. “And, come to think of it, you thought Jax was Folx and you still kept jumping me. What was that about? At least I wasn’t cheating on someone I’d actually met.”

“Oh, don’t try to make my actions any worse than yours.” As if. “And we’d said just friends so neither of us was even cheating on anyone.”

God, it really was a mess.

Eli nodded in a reluctant concession. “It felt a little like cheating, though.”

“Yes. It really did.” There was something soothing about that point of agreement, and she let herself take a brief moment to recognize that before heading back into the fight. “But sex with you wasn’t about emotion. Not at first. That was about orgasms. For the songs.”

“What?”

She flushed, not wanting or knowing how to explain that one. That she’d first thought orgasms led to lyrics was ridiculous in itself, and then that she’d put the time and energy into researching the theory was simply bat-ass crazy.

And then she realized she didn’t need to explain any of it at all. “Actually, that’s a lie. The sex wasn’t for the songs. That was an excuse I told myself.” As long as they were being honest and all.… “I was drawn to you, Eli. It didn’t matter who I thought Jax was. I was pulled to you.”

“Maybe that should have been a sign that you weren’t supposed to be with him.”

“And maybe I would have figured that out, but you didn’t give me the chance when you chose for me.”

They faced off for several seconds, the tension pulled taut. Lacy let her shoulders sag first. She shouldn’t have said that last thing. They’d already been over that, and Eli’s preceding statement would have been a perfect chance for her to say,
You’re right. I shouldn’t have been with Jax. I should have realized he was the wrong guy.
It was a flaw of hers that Andy often pointed out—not letting the argument die long after the rounds had all been fought.