All Strings Attached

41. Encore

Zak stayed behind with her friends to wait for their equipment at LAX, her eyes following Chase as he walked away.

He was only calling his sister to pick them up at the airport, but anxiety bloomed when he turned his back. In the span of seconds, the overwhelming sense of rightness between the two of them rusted over, and her words had caused the chemical reaction. It didn’t seem like he knew she was just as heartbroken as he was, but it would have been unfair for her to show it.

She owed him more than misplaced hope.

“Tell me I did the right thing,” she said, “because it really didn’t feel like the right thing.”

Edge followed the line of her vision. “I’m going to need more context.”

She had already spent the six-hour flight back reliving their talk in New York. The last thing she wanted was outside confirmation of just how much the context did not favor her choices. Her friends would all ask her the same question she had been trying to cast aside: Was the band really the reason she couldn’t be with him? Or was it something else?

“Is it too much to ask for a little mindless support from a friend?”

“You definitely did the right thing,” Alex obliged.

“Nah, you probably fucked it up,” Dallas said. “Let’s be real.”

“You’re important to me.”

That was the truth she kept safeguarded, though she doubted Chase had read everything into those words that she meant by them. When she said “important,” she meant that he made her feel seen, in a crowded room where no one remembered her name. In a city of somebodies where she was a nobody. In an industry where she was undesirable and invisible. She meant that all her bad days weren’t so bad at all when he was there with her. That she couldn’t picture going another five years without speaking to him again.

But she knew without asking which part of their conversation he held onto.

“There won’t be an ‘us’. Ever.”

How easily those words had escaped her. How easy it must have seemed for her to diminish the time they’d spent together like a cheap convenience. And it had been easy. As painful as it was to hurt him, she knew it would only hurt them both more to pretend there was a future where someone like him would be happy with someone like her.

“You shot the guy down,” Edge guessed. “Saw that one coming from a mile away.”

“I didn’t shoot him down. I just reminded him of our arrangement.”

He waited for the buzzer to end before he responded. “Props to him for sticking to his word about not abandoning the band, then. That’s confidence-inspiring.”

“Yeah, he’s a good dude.” Dallas turned to watch Chase talk on the phone, too.

“I know he’s a good dude. That’s precisely the fucking problem.”

Way too good of a dude for her. Sergio could have his opinion about actresses and models, but what Chase really needed—more than someone hot and popular, and more than her especially—was a woman who could offer him more than work and sex on an endless loop for the rest of his days.

Zak didn’t realize her gaze was trapped on Chase until he made eye contact with her, an expression that went from wounded to confused in milliseconds. As a result of that unceasing stare, she hadn’t realized all her friends were also watching him stand at the phone booth with the same fascination as toddlers viewing a zoo animal.

“Look, chica.” Edge wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m not telling you that you did the right thing or the wrong thing. What I will tell you is, you’ll never know unless you sort it out with him. And maybe you need to take it easy? I’m not thrilled about losing, so I can only imagine how stressed out you are right now.”

“You’re right.” She tried to clear her head. “I can worry about all of this later. We have a lot to sort out. Finding new jobs, recording a demo, researching labels. Meetings, marketing—”

“Moving,” Alex added, though she was just about to get there herself. “God, I can’t wait to have my own room.”

“Preachin’ to the choir,” said Dallas.

Edge squeezed her arm. A reminder that things would work out. The path ahead was clear and bright, even if a few unkempt branches were hanging in the way.

Though Saint of Spades remained unsigned, they could leverage their newfound audience to book higher-paying gigs. She could quit bartending and live comfortably, doing what she loved, even if they weren’t under contract with one of the Big Three.

“I thought you’d tell me, ‘Of course you did the right thing. You need to get over him. Next time, try going out with a guy you don’t work with,’” she said.

“I mean, that would be the sensible thing to do,” Edge said. “But sex isn’t the only thing that strains relationships, and it’s not the only thing that breaks bands apart. Making this work is everyone’s responsibility, and you’re still the person I trust most with that.”

“Your neuroticism has its perks,” Alex added in agreement.

“What’s going on over here?” Chase said as he returned to the group looking as happy as ever. So happy, it made her question if she had imagined the way he’d crammed his form against the window whenever her thigh pressed against his in those narrow airplane seats. “I’ve watched your guitar case go by three times.”

Zak’s full attention snapped to the baggage conveyor, where she spotted one of her guitars on, apparently, its fourth trip around the winding track. She ran to grab it while her friends carried on.

“We were talking about apartment complexes,” Alex was saying when she returned. “I’m thinking one with a pool.”

“We have a pool at Tropical Terrace,” Edge said, making a sour face at what Zak assumed was a vivid mental picture of the pool in question.

“Sorry.” Alex held up a hand. “A pool with clear water that doesn’t have cigarette butts clogging up the filter.”

Chase seemed unconvinced, but he laughed it off as he caught her eye again.

The truth threatened to spill over.

We were talking about you. How I’m not half as brave as you think I am, because I’m too scared to be real with you.

“Um.” Chase cleared his throat. “So, we have a problem.”

Great. Of course they had a problem. Her spiral started with the most reasonable thought—Lydia was having car trouble, and they would have to pay for a cab. But with everything that had gone wrong in the past few weeks, it wasn’t a huge leap from there to the other worst-case scenarios.

“Sergio changed his mind about not suing you.”

“All your other guitars are lost, and the airline can’t find them.”

“I’m quitting the band. Working with the raging bitch who rejected me isn’t really my jam.”

She leaned against her guitar case. “Why is there always a problem?”

“Lydia was super pissed off at me.” Chase grinned. Wide and genuine, and something that might have once been followed by a hug, had he not spent the past twelve hours shying away from the slightest physical contact with her. “Because she keeps getting calls, and now the voicemail box is full of messages. From agents.”

Zak’s posture straightened. “For us?”

He nodded. “For Saint of Spades.”