Page 73 of Before You Fell

Jax usually has smart-ass comments, bad timing, dirty jokes, and a grin that can make a funeral feel inappropriately entertaining. This morning, there is none of it. Just his gaze on me and the whole place goes so fucking tense it feels like it’s about to split.

Jax sits behind the drums as Jett stands near his bass, sipping his coffee in silence.

Cruz leans against an amp, one shoulder to the wall, watching me as if waiting for me to make one more wrong move.

And the sad part is, I probably will.

I glance at the door again, waiting for Willow to walk through.

The next ten minutes are thin and ugly. Jax taps one stick against his palm, then stops. Jett doesn’t touch his bass. Cruz pretends to check his messages, but his eyes keep flicking toward me.

They know something is off.

The guys aren’t aware Willow saw me with my cock in another woman’s mouth less than a week after I fucked her in that storage room and convinced myself I could have her without ruining us. But I can read a fucking room. They know Willow is missing and every set of eyes in here keeps finding me as if I dragged that shit into the empty space behind me.

Damon storms in twenty minutes later, his phone pressed to his ear and murder in his eyes.

“No,” he snaps. “No, I don’t give a shit what legal says yet. I want options before lunch.”

He stops when he sees all of us and lowers the phone. His eyes land on me first.

“What?” I say.

Damon ends the call. “Willow, fucking quit.”

Cruz’s head snaps up, his eyes locking onto me.

Jax stops moving entirely. “Fuck.”

Jett’s jaw locks so tight I can see the muscle twitch.

My hand tightens around the guitar neck. “What?”

Damon throws his phone onto the nearest chair. “She sent me one text last night. One. Said she was fucking done, then vanished before I could remind her that contracts do not give a shit about feelings.”

The words hit wrong because they confirm what some ugly part of me already knew.

The second my messages stopped going through, she had not just walked away from me. She had walked out on us. The band. The one thing none of us were supposed to fuck with.

“She’s probably just pissed,” I say, because it is easier than admitting she is gone.

Jax laughs but there is no humor in it. “Don’t you fucking do that.”

My eyes flick to him. “Do what?”

“Stand there and fucking act as if this is some tantrum she is throwing because you finally pushed her too far.”

“You got something to say?”

“Yeah.” Jax stands slowly and for once there is nothing loose or easy about him. “I’ve had plenty to say since the club, but everyone keeps acting like we should wait for you to grow a fucking conscience on your own.”

Cruz’s mouth tightens.

Jett looks down, then back at me, his voice colder than Jax’s. “Wills is gone because of you.”

I bark out a laugh that doesn’t sound like one. “You don’t know shit.”

“No,” Cruz says, pushing off the amp. “We don’t know everything, but we know enough. We saw her leave, then come back after you fucked her. We saw her face. We saw you go to the bar and act as if nothing had happened.”