Page 122 of Dirty Like Me
“Katie—”
“Look.” She turned on me, practically pleading. “I know I’ve been a coward before but please understand, I just can’t do this again.”
“Do what again?”
She sighed and her shoulders sagged, like everything was just too fucking heavy. “What I did with Josh. I didn’t know how to say goodbye. I didn’t know how to end it, even though it was over. And look at it. It’s still dragging around behind me wherever I go.” She stepped closer. “So I’m saying goodbye.”
She kissed me on the cheek. Then she looked at me, her big blue-greens bright with unshed tears.
“Goodbye, Jesse Mayes.”
CHAPTER 34
JESSE
“I can’t do it, man. I’ve gotta fly back and make this right.”
I was so fucking tired I was practically slurring. It was an ungodly early hour and I was standing in my hotel room in San Francisco in my underwear gripping my phone like a lifeline. It was seventeen hours since Katie walked out and I was falling apart. I’d barely eaten. I hadn’t even slept.
At the other end of the line I heard a very tired Brody sigh. “Not today, brother,” he said. “There’s not enough time.”
“I can fly up there and make it back for the show. There’s gotta be a way.”
“And then what? Even if we could make the flights work, what are you gonna do? Talk to her for an hour, turn around and fly back out to do another show? Risk getting held up at Customs and fucking over your fans? What’s the point of that?”
I paced the length of the hotel room feeling like a fucking caged lion, all the things I should’ve said to Katie while she was here broiling in my head.
“The point is I need to see her. Right fucking now.”
“We’ll take care of Katie on our end. Flynn got her back safe, and he won’t let her out of his sight. You do what you’ve gotta do out there, finish the tour, then you come home.”
I held a sharp breath.
“Flynn’s got this, brother. No worries.”
I sat on the bed and punched my thigh. Hard. I’d never been so pissed off at myself as I was for letting Katie get on that plane.
“You care about her, give her everything you’ve got. Not just a slice of time between your other commitments.”
“I don’t know, man.”
“It’s only three more shows,” Brody said. “Finish the tour. Then you can have all the time you need with her back home.”
“Fuck, Brody. It can’t be like this. Family first, remember?”
“I do remember.”
“So?” I said.
“You telling me she’s family?”
I didn’t answer that.
“If she is, then give her all you’ve got. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
“This is me giving my all. It’s taking everything I’ve got not to go after her right fucking now and leave you all without a fucking show tonight. Family fucking first. You know that, Brody. I told you that from the start. That if it ever came down to it, if Jessa needed me in the middle of the night, any fucking day of the week, if she called me and needed that, I was gone.”
Brody was silent for a long while. So long I checked my phone to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
