Seeing her again and seeing she wasn’t what I had built up in my head would help me deal with forgetting her. She was still sitting on a damn pedestal in my head, and the girl on the phone who had told me she’d slept with Krit didn’t match the girl who had told me she loved me. The only way to prove to myself what she really was, was to see her.
I walked into Live Bay, and the jackass she was sleeping with was singing into the microphone. She’d be here. I scanned the crowd for someone I knew, but I didn’t see anyone familiar and I didn’t see Jess. I stepped through the crowd and looked back at the stage just as the eyeliner-wearing douche looked at me. He stopped singing and squinted his eyes against the stage lights as he stared at me.
I was ready for this. I wanted him to say something to me. I needed one good reason to knock the shit out of him. I took a step forward, and his eyes focused enough to realize it was me he was seeing. I saw one of the band members nudge him, trying to get his attention. He shook his head, not breaking his angry glare he had leveled at me.
He pointed at me. “You!” he roared, jumping off the stage and stalking toward me. I heard the rest of the band behind him as they started moving, but I couldn’t look away. What was this guy’s problem? He looked ready to murder me. I was the one who had the fucking right to be angry. Not him.
When he reached me, he drew back his fist, and it connected with my jaw in a vision-blurring punch. I staggered backward, unprepared for his swing, but managed to get myself together in time to duck his next swing and take one myself. My fist hit his face with a solid hit.
Two band members grabbed him from behind and the other one stood in front of me, holding up his hands. “Easy,” he told me, and I cautiously dropped the fist I had drawn back to take another satisfactory punch. The blood on his lip wasn’t enough. I wanted to see him on the fucking floor, unconscious. He’d taken her from me.
“I’m gonna kill him! He’s a sorry motherfucker, and I want him dead!” Krit yelled as he fought against the hold the other guys had on him.
“Calm your ass down, Krit. Fighting with Jason ain’t helping her. It ain’t about him and you know it, so stop putting blame there and go calm the fuck off,” Rock said as he stepped beside Krit. “Walk this off,” Rock told him.
Krit swung his angry glare back to me. “He left her. Like the spoiled, arrogant piece of shit he is. Didn’t even try to help her. She loves that sorry sonuvabitch!”
Rock stepped in front of Krit and said something low enough that I couldn’t hear him. I wanted to know what he thought I had done to Jess, because he sure as hell didn’t have his facts straight.
“Let him talk,” I said. “I want to know what it is I did exactly, ’cause the way I’m looking at it, I was the one who got screwed over,” I said to Rock’s back, and everyone around us went quiet.
Rock slowly turned around, and his attention was completely focused on me now. “Excuse me?” he said. The warning edge to his voice just added to my confusion. What had Jess told them I had done?
“I didn’t do anything to Jess. She slept with him and broke things off with me,” I said, pointing at Krit.
“She didn’t fucking sleep with me!” Krit roared, fighting to get loose again as they held him back. “She just wanted you! Trust me, I tried like hell, but she only wanted you and you ran, leaving her at the first sign of trouble. What’s the deal? A stripper not good enough for you? Being forced to fucking strip to pay her momma’s hospital bills too low for your uppity ass?”
“Enough!” Rock said, stopping Krit. “Get him the hell outta here before I shut him up myself.”
I no longer cared that Rock was the size and build of a brick wall. I needed to know what the hell Krit was yelling about. “No!” I said, moving toward him. “I want to know what he’s saying,” I told no one in particular. “Who is stripping to pay her mother’s hospital bills?” I stopped as the words coming out of my mouth clicked. “No,” I said, shaking my head. They didn’t mean . . . “No!” He was lying.
Krit looked at me incredulously. “You don’t know,” he said, almost too quietly. “She didn’t fucking tell you.” He shook his head and slung off the guys holding him. “Motherfucker!” he roared. “You don’t even fucking know!”
I turned to look at Rock, still feeling the horror of what he was saying register in my brain. “What hospital bills?” I managed to ask through the gripping tightness in my throat.
“Her momma’s. She’s got cancer. They don’t have insurance, and she’s got to have a mastectomy. They had to move to a cheaper place, and Jess had to get a job that paid the bills and paid the large monthly payment she has to make to the hospital for her mother so she can get the surgery and get chemo.”
My chest felt like someone had just dropped a load of fucking bricks on it. “When did she find out?”
“About four weeks ago.”
“He doesn’t even fucking know,” Krit was still ranting. “She told me it wasn’t his problem. I thought she was fucking protecting him, but she hadn’t even told him.”
I looked at him and her story all started to make sense. “She never slept with you four weeks ago.” It wasn’t a question. I knew the answer.
“Fuck, she wasn’t even talking to me four weeks ago. She was too busy escaping town without telling anyone. I ain’t had Jess since you took her away from me.”
My blood pounded in my head, and I knew I was heaving, as my breathing was difficult. “Where is she?” I asked Rock.
“She’s in Mobile at Delilah’s,” Krit answered instead. “Rock don’t know shit. I’m the one who goes there and pays for all the damn lap dances so she doesn’t have to give them to those horny-ass men.”
The image of Jess’s body being on display to a bunch of men was all it took. I turned and took off running.