6. Chapter 6
Chapter 6
T he bar throbbed with energy—music vibrating through the floorboards, bodies pressed too close, heat rising from spilled drinks and too many conversations at once. Hayley smiled on instinct, like she was playing a part she knew by heart. Rockstar. Heartbreaker. Girl everyone wanted to touch but no one really knew.
Laughter spilled from her lips, bright and effortless, as someone shoved a tequila shot toward her. “Come on, Fox! Take it!”
She gave them a wink, her lashes fluttering like she meant it. “Fine. But you owe me a lime.”
Cheers erupted as she tipped the glass back. The tequila hit her throat like fire and gold—burning and brilliant—but she barely tasted it.
Because she wasn’t here.
Not really.
She was still anchored to that flicker of a moment.
That impossible flicker.
Jesse Navarro.
Here.
Then gone.
She had seen him. She was sure of it. Tall frame in a gray T-shirt, inked forearms, that familiar cut of his jaw catching in the bar lights like a memory come to life.
But the booth he’d been leaning against was empty now. The crowd had swallowed him whole, and the room felt colder for it.
Her stomach twisted in protest.
Why did he leave?
More importantly—why did it matter?
“Hayley.”
A voice at her ear.
She didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
Caiden.
Of course.
His arm slid around her shoulders with the ease of someone who thought he belonged there.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, his tone too soft, too knowing.
Hayley blinked, willing the noise of the bar to distract her. The crowd pressed in. The laughter, the drinks, the music. She clung to it, like it could drown out the knot in her chest.
“Nothing,” she said lightly, voice laced with that practiced charm. The one she used in interviews, backstage lounges, green rooms full of strangers.
But Caiden wasn’t buying it.
He tipped his head, those pale blue eyes narrowing. “You sure?”
She peeled his arm off gently—polite, graceful, like the princess she knew how to be. Smiled as she stepped out from under his touch. “I just need some air.”
He sighed through his nose, already annoyed, but didn’t stop her.
“Don’t disappear,” he muttered.
She didn’t answer.
Because she already had.
The second the cold night hit her skin, Hayley felt it slice through the haze of tequila and static in her chest.
The back alley behind The Holding Company was dim and grimy, the kind of place that smelled like cigarettes and stale beer, lit only by a tired streetlamp flickering above the dumpsters.
But Jesse was already halfway down the alley, walking like he needed to outrun something burning in his blood.
She didn’t think.
Didn’t stop to ask herself why.
She just followed.
“Jesse!”
He stopped.
Didn’t turn. Didn’t speak.
Just stood there with his back to her, shoulders squared, fists clenched like he was holding the world in his hands and didn’t know where to put it.
“Go back inside, Hayley,” he said, voice rough, steady, too calm for what she felt clawing under her skin.
“No.”
She hated how petulant it sounded. Like a dare. Like she was thirteen again, testing the rules she already knew she’d break.
Jesse turned, slow and deliberate, stepping into the narrow ring of light.
Her breath stuttered.
God, he looked—
No. Not going there.
Not noticing the way his shirt clung to every muscle, or the way his jaw tightened at the sight of her. Not the amber eyes that used to trace over every inch of her body like scripture.
“You left,” she said, walking closer. “Why?”
He scoffed, like the question was so fucking obvious he couldn’t believe she asked it. “Why do you think?”
“You saw me with Caiden.”
His mouth twisted. “I saw you,” he agreed. “Didn’t give a damn who you were with.”
“Liar.”
Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “You’re drunk.”
“Not enough,” she snapped, lifting her chin. “Not enough to forget the way you looked at me.”
“I was trying to be careful.”
She blinked, surprised by the honesty in that.
But then he was moving—fast, sure, taking up space like he always had. His hand wrapped around her wrist before she could flinch. The touch was firm, grounding. Dangerous.
Her body reacted first. A stuttering heartbeat, a rush of heat. God, she remembered this. Him.
“Careful?” she echoed, breathless. “You’re never careful with me.”
“That’s the problem.”
He pulled her in, chest to chest, the air sucked right out of her lungs. His hands were on her hips now, hot and possessive, like he didn’t know how to touch her gently. Like he never had.
“This isn’t a fucking game, Hayley,” he said, his voice low and trembling, like the truth cost him something to speak aloud.
“I know that.”
“No, you don’t.” His grip tightened. “You think we can just pick up where we left off? Like I didn’t rip you apart? Like I didn’t leave you curled up on my bathroom floor, crying into a towel because I didn’t come home for two fucking days?”
She flinched. Hard.
“I remember,” she whispered.
“I was so far gone I barely knew who I was,” he said. “Half the time I didn’t know if I’d wake up in my bed or some stranger’s. That’s what you’re chasing right now, Hayley. The wreckage.”
“No,” she said, fast, desperate. “I’m chasing the part of you that loved me.”
He went still.
Her hands were on his chest now, his heartbeat wild under her palms. His eyes were fire. His jaw clenched. And then—his voice cracked.
“I did,” he said. “So much it scared the shit out of me.”
She froze.
He looked at her like he wished he hadn’t said it. Like it slipped out from a part of him he couldn’t keep locked up anymore.
“I’d have the most beautiful girl in my bed,” he said, “and I’d still go looking for the high. Because loving you made me feel too fucking much.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“I hated you for it,” he whispered. “Hated how you saw me. Hated that you could look past all the bullshit and still believe there was something worth saving.”
“Was there?” she asked, tears catching in her throat.
He didn’t answer.
Instead, his hand slid to the back of her neck, his forehead pressed to hers. They stayed there like that—quiet, trembling, too close.
And just when she thought he might kiss her—
“You’re leaving in two days,” he said.
Like it undid everything.
Like it rewound the clock.
Hayley stiffened.
“I forgot,” she admitted.
“I didn’t.” His voice dropped. “I’ve been counting every fucking hour.”
The silence yawned between them.
And then—he stepped back.
Hands falling away.
Warmth gone.
“You should forget me,” Jesse said.
The words weren’t cold. They were broken. Fractured.
She stood there, blinking against the tears in her eyes. “You think I don’t want to?”
He looked wrecked.
And still—he didn’t ask her to stay.
Hayley turned, heels hitting pavement, each step harder than the last. Her chest ached. Her throat burned. She felt like she was bleeding under her skin.
But she didn’t look back.
* * * * *
The alley swallowed her heels like it was swallowing her pride.
She didn’t look back.
Couldn’t.
Because if she did, she might do the one thing she always did when it came to Jesse Navarro.
Forgive him.
Beg him.
Let him kiss her into forgetting all the ways he’d already broken her.
So she marched straight through the back door of the Holding Company, straight into the pulsing lights and pulsing bass, straight into the arms of the version of herself who didn’t feel.
The rockstar.
The myth.
The mask.
Someone shoved a shot into her hand before she even made it back to the table.
She downed it without thinking.
Because thinking was dangerous.
Thinking led back to Jesse.
The burn barely touched her.
She was already burning from the inside out.
Somewhere between tequila and neon and a crowd that didn’t know her name, she made her way onto the rooftop stage.
Blink-182 blared over the speakers, and she screamed the chorus like it was a lifeline, her hair whipping in the breeze, her boots stomping the beat, her blood screaming.
And suddenly she was surrounded by Jesse’s friends. The SEALs. The guy beside her—grinning, charming, trouble—tossed a wink her way. She barely clocked his name. Isaac introduced them before they jumped onstage, said something about him being a fan.
She didn’t care.
And when the song ended, when the applause crashed around her like waves against a cliff, she smiled.
Wide. Bright. Fake.
The kind of smile that could convince a hundred thousand fans she was fine.
She made it back to the booth, still laughing, still riding the high.
Zach tossed her a grin. Dominic Laredo slid her a drink—water, thank God—and gave her that quiet, observant look he always wore. The one that said he knew more than he let on.
“You good?” Dom asked softly.
She nodded, too fast.
He didn’t push.
That’s what she liked about him.
Dom could see people like x-rays. But he never ripped you open unless you invited him in.
“Jesse used to love that song,” he said after a beat, almost absentminded.
She blinked.
Swallowed.
“Did he.”
Dom nodded once. “Said you sang it once in some shitty garage in National City and he thought he was gonna marry you on the spot.”
Her throat tightened.
“Cool,” she said.
Dom looked away. “I didn’t say that to hurt.”
“I know.”
But it still did.
God, it did.
Caiden found her somewhere between water and another shot she never should’ve taken.
He grinned, leaned in close, put his hands on her hips like he had a right to.
She didn’t push him away.
She didn’t do anything.
Because Jesse wasn’t here.
Because Jesse didn’t want her.
Because Jesse had told her to forget him.
So when Caiden kissed her, she let him.
His mouth was hot. Skilled. A little too confident.
And it tasted like nothing.
No spark.
No ache.
No hunger.
Just noise.
Her hands slid into his hair anyway. Because this was what she was supposed to do. Let the guy who wanted her have her.
She felt like she was watching herself from across the room.
The real her—the soft-hearted, big-dreaming, soul-sick girl who still believed in fairytales—was curled up in the corner, crying behind her glitter eyeliner, waiting for Jesse to come back.
He didn’t.
He never did.
Somewhere close to the end of the night, Hayley didn’t fully remember how she got into the cab. Didn’t remember what she told Jesse’s friends as she slipped away. Didn’t remember what song was playing when she left.
She just knew she was alone.
Back pressed to the cool leather, legs curled beneath her, mascara smudged beneath her eyes.
She wiped at her face, cursing herself for the tears.
It always came back to this.
She could be anyone on stage. Could dazzle and distract and drown herself in sound.
But the second the lights faded?
Jesse lived in her.
She could kiss someone else.
Sleep with someone else.
Record songs about someone else.
But Jesse was the ache in her throat every time she tried to move on.
She laughed, cracked and broken and bitter. “Goddamn you, Jesse.”
The cab kept moving.
The city blurred past.
And Hayley Fox wrapped her arms around herself like armor, humming the song she wrote about him that no one had ever heard.
Because she was still his.
Still wrecked.
Still waiting for a man who only ever showed up in pieces.