Damaged But Not Broken (New Adult Rockers) (18 page)

“I don’t know!” he says with
frustration. “I just thought you should know.”

“I appreciate you coming here and
telling me this, and I’m sorry that it’s been such an ordeal for you, but I
just don’t know what to make of it. You chose me and then changed your mind. If
you hadn’t caught Savannah talking to her friend, she would still be in your
house now and you would still be together,” I point out.

“I screwed up, Paige,” and his
voice is so pained that I cringe.

“Yes,” I agree. “And you can’t just
show up here and tell me you threw Savannah out and now you want to make it right
with me.”

“Why?” he demands, “Why? I’m sorry.
I know I fucked up. I never should have gone back with Savannah like that, but
I just was so confused. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, and I realize now that
someone was going to get hurt no matter what. And now instead of hurting one
woman, I’ve hurt two.” He quickly adds, “Though I don’t care about hurting
Savannah nearly as much as I care about hurting you.”

I shake my head sadly. “I want to
be with you, Blake. I just feel like I can’t go running back to you right now
after you’ve hurt me. It’s a lot to take in and it seems like you’re still
reeling from what happened with Savannah.”

“I’m reeling from what happened
with
you
! I had a moment of weakness and went back to Savannah. It was
wrong. She's manipulative and conniving, and guilted me into giving up the
fight. I see now that you and I were meant to be together, and I really hope I
would have seen that quickly even if I hadn’t caught Savannah lying! Please,
Paige. Don’t let this be the reason why we can't be together. We’ve waited
thirteen years to be with one another again, and I don’t want this to come
between us.”

I hear everything Blake is saying,
and I feel the same way in so many regards. But I feel like I have too much
pride; I feel like a second choice.

“I wanted to be your first choice,”
I say in a soft voice.

Blake makes a wounded sound. “You
are, Paige, I swear you are. I know I’m a fucked up-asshole-dick head for how I
went about things, but I’m certain now that you’re the only one for me. It’s
you and only you.”

“I want to be with you Blake, I do.
I just can’t do it like this. I can’t have you sitting here telling me you
threw Savannah out and now it’s my turn.”

“God damn it, Paige!” he yells,
pounding his fist on the table and making me jump. “What else do I have to do
to prove I love you? That you’re the one for me?”

“I don’t know. But I think you
should go now.”

I stand up and move towards the
door.

“It’s not ending like this Paige.
I’m not giving up on you like this.”

“Thanks for coming over to talk to
me, Blake. I appreciate you being honest with me.”

“Paige,” he pleads, not making any
move for the door.

I pull the door open and patiently
wait. My heart is breaking inside and the sooner Blake leaves, the sooner I can
curl into a ball and cry my eyes out. Because I want Blake more than anything
in this world, but I don’t want to be with him like this. I don’t want to feel
like he’s settling with me because Savannah was a bitch once and for all, as if
he couldn't see that before.

Blake finally walks towards the
door, and gently cups my face. I don’t move and instead stare into his deep
green eyes. I can see that they are burning with love for me and I almost lose
my resolve. It would be so easy to just throw myself into Blake’s arms and go from
there.

 But how do I know if he is truly
over Savannah? How do I know he’s not going to rebound with me? If he was that
confused before, how can he be so sure now?

“I won’t give up,” he vows and then
he releases my face and walks to his truck.

I quickly close the door, and then
fall against it. I feel the sobs building in my chest, and I sink slowly down
to the floor, holding my head in my hands. The sobs finally burst through my
chest, and just as I knew I would, I curl into a ball and cry my eyes out.

When my chest is raw, and I have no
more tears, I stand up. I’m not sure how long I was on the floor, but I
robotically head back to my room. I clean up the mess that Jami and I had made
and I throw in laundry.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the
mirror and I look awful. I splash water on my face and lay down with a cold rag
over my eyes, hoping that will reduce the redness and puffiness. I’m grateful
that I don’t have to sing tonight, and I marvel at how I’ve literally picked
myself up off the floor and started doing chores.

I realize that if I just keep
going, just keep busy, I might be able to forget about Blake. I can take these
feelings and tuck them away along with all the other feelings I keep bottled up
inside me. So I take out each feeling that I have for Blake – love, hurt,
anger, sadness, desire and carefully examine them before I bury them deep
inside me, tucking them away until I can handle them again.

Once, I’ve pushed all my feelings
away, I decide that I need girl time. At least, I think I do. I haven’t really
had girl time before, but I think this is what I need. The only person I can
think of calling is Becky, so I pick up my phone and prepare to ask her if she
wants to hang out this evening.

SIXTEEN

Blake

Rejected

I’m in shock as I drive back to my
house. I expected that Paige would be hurt, but I did not expect her to flat-out
refuse me. I guess I trusted too much in our feelings and didn’t estimate how
much I actually hurt her. As if I didn’t feel like an asshole already, I now
feel even worse. Paige sat there and told me that she loved me but that she
just couldn’t be with me. She didn't want to be my second choice. If only I
could show her that she isn't.

It was never my intention to make
her feel like she was a second choice. She wasn’t. It was always Paige, it had
always been Paige. I just needed time to adjust to her returning and I had to
sort out my own feelings. And in that process I hurt her so severely that she
wanted nothing to do with me. I can hope that she might come around, but I
needed to prepare myself for that not happening.

Once I get home, I walk through the
empty house. Savannah took some furniture that was mine before she moved in,
but I don’t really care. I prefer the house this way, but I had imagined Paige
spending time here. I try to think of ways that I can prove to her that I love
her, but I know she doesn’t doubt that; she just doesn’t like the way I went
about things.

At a loss for what else to do, I
pull out my guitar and start practicing some of the new songs that the band is
testing out tonight. It’s going to be a long ten days before this tour starts,
and even longer without Paige by my side.

~~~

The days pass more quickly than I
had imagined they would, and I didn’t realize how many last minute details went
into a small tour like ours. We had to firm up cities and hotels, and outfits
and instruments. Suddenly, it’s the morning that we leave for our tour, and I’m
throwing my toothbrush and razor into my duffel bag before the van comes to
pick me up.

Since we’re a small tour, Kenny
didn’t rent a large tour bus, and instead we’re traveling in a van and sleeping
in hotels. The van is coming around to pick us up from our houses, and I’m not
sure what to expect. Kenny is spending the first week or so with us, and then
he’s heading back to Nashville to run his label. I don’t know if he and Paige
will be on the van, or if it will just be the guys and I. We also have a
manager, Liam, who will be joining us and will take over once Kenny goes back
to Nashville.

We kick off our tour in Memphis
tonight, and I feel sick at the thought. I was never one to get nervous, but my
nerves are in full force. This is our chance to make it and we can't fuck it
up.

True to her word, Paige’s given me
plenty of distance since we last spoke, and I’ve hated every minute of it. We
played in the same club a few nights ago and she did nothing more than nod at
me in recognition, and it fucking hurt. I brought this on myself, so I dealt
with, and I keep telling myself that maybe something will change while we’re on
tour, it just takes time.

I do one more check of the house,
making sure all the blinds are drawn and everything is closed. I won’t be back
for a month, and I think I’ve taken care of everything. I haul my bags and
guitar onto the porch and just as I’m locking the door, a big ass van comes
around the corner.

The van pulls up in front of my
house, and Kenny jumps out of the passenger seat.

“Hey Blake!” he calls out, waving
excitedly. He walks up to the porch and helps me grab my things and we lug them
towards the rear of the van.

“We’ve got a big ol’ space back
here to store everything. Of course Paige took up half the damn storage area
with all her bags,” he laughs.

She’s in the van.

Kenny yanks open the rear doors to
the van, and sure enough there’s a large space piled high with luggage and
packed instruments. I seem to be the last one to be picked up. We stow my
things carefully on top, and Kenny slams the doors shut. He pulls open the two
doors to get inside the van and laughs again.

“Good luck finding a seat!”

I climb up the three steps and look
at a number of faces. In the first row, I see Liam, our manager, along with a
roadie Jack who is helping with set up and sound. Ben and Ryan are in the
second row and they call out and cheer when I step on. I could squeeze next to
them if I had to. But seated in the back, playing nervously with her hair is
Paige. And she has the entire row to herself.

She looks up at me, and our eyes
meet. She gives me a small grin as if to say, “Well, here we are.” I can’t help
but smile back at her, and I squeeze down the small aisle and make my way to
the back row.

“Hi,” she says quietly as I sit
down beside her.

“Hi.”

“And this here is our driver –
Elvis!” Kenny loudly introduces. Elvis, who looks to be in his mid-fifties,
turns around and waves to me.

“Named after the king of Rock and
Roll,” he crows, revving the engine and pulling away from my house.

We start making our way out of the
city, and Ryan turns around to talk to me.

“I am so fucking psyched!” he says to
me and then looks at Paige. “Oh, sorry,” he says sheepishly, apologizing for
his language.

Paige waves him off and Ryan looks
back at me. “We are going to kill on this tour, man. Kenny was just telling us
that nearly every club is sold out – they’ve been billing us as the two hottest
upcoming country acts in Nashville!”

Ben turns around at that point and
we spend a few minutes discussing the order in which we want to play our songs.
Kenny has been pretty great about letting us decide which songs we want to do
each night and how to open and close. We’ve been playing clubs for a while, so
we already have a pretty good sense of what works well and what doesn’t when
we’re onstage.

Even though I’m having a
conversation with the guys, I’m hyper aware of Paige sitting next to me. I’ve
carefully taken in every aspect of her appearance without overtly staring at
her. She’s dressed in black yoga pants and a fitted pink t-shirt, and her
blonde hair is in a loose braid, which she’s pulled over one shoulder. She’s
obviously dressed down to travel, but she’s still incredibly sexy. I’m so close
to her that I can smell her raspberry shampoo and I have to stop myself from
leaning in closer to inhale the tantalizing scent.

As the guys and I talk, I notice
Paige playing with an imaginary piece of lint on her pants, and then twist the
silver ring around her finger. She pulls her phone out of the bag sitting next
to her, and scrolls through it absentmindedly before slipping it back into her
purse.

Ben and Ryan turn back around, and
I sit there next to Paige, feeling the electricity crackle between us. I can’t
tell what is actually going on, but it’s clear that we’re both aware of the
other person.

I can’t take it any longer.

“How are you?” I ask in a low
voice, still not looking directly at her.

I see her shrug out of the corner
of my eyes.

“Fine,” she says.

“Liar,” I can’t help responding.

She tenses up for a minute and then
relaxes.

“You’re right. I’m not fine.” It
seems that she wants to say more but she doesn’t elaborate.

“I’ve been shitty,” I admit and I
feel her nod.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispers.

Automatically, I reach for her hand
and she doesn’t pull it away. I squeeze it and tug it into my lap.

“I’ve missed you, too.”

We don’t say anything else for a
long time; we just sit there holding hands, listening to the conversations
around us, and watching the towns pass by from our windows.

“So what are we now?” Paige asks
softly, finally breaking the silence.

“I don’t know, Paige. You know what
I
want us to be. I think the ball is in your court.”

She’s quiet again for a long time
and I glance at her to see if she’s fallen asleep. She’s staring out her
window.

“Let’s see how things go,” she
replies, and because that’s better than “no,” I don’t push it or ask for an
explanation.

~~~

We reach Memphis with plenty of
time to spare, and we get checked into our hotel early. Paige has a small room
to herself, and I'm sharing a larger room with Ben and Ryan, directly across
the hall from her. Kenny, Liam and Jack disappeared to the club to set up.
Apparently, we were booked in one of the bigger clubs in Memphis and they were
nearly sold out.

The guys and I shower and get dressed,
and Liam comes knocking at our door to tell us the van is ready. We make our
way down to the lobby and I see Paige standing outside, dressed in killer boots
and a black and purple semi-see-through dress. Like always, she looks hot
without being too revealing. If she drives the audience half as crazy as she drives
me, she is sure to be a hit on the road.