Page 30 of Her Filthy Mistake

Keep breathing.

I flop on the bed and grab my phone, scrolling through my messages.

A couple messages from Daisy complaining about her sister, her sister’s friends, her mom. I sigh. She’s not having any better of a time than I am.

Me: I’m sorry. I wish I was there to play buffer.

Daisy is my best friend, and I detest how her mother and sister treat her. She isn’t their indentured servant, despite how they treat her. One day, I hope she meets an amazing man who treats her the way she deserves and makes her forget all those times when she was forced to play second fiddle to Julia.

There are two messages from my father prior to him calling me. I ignore them. We’ve already reached an impasse, and I’m not in the mood for another go-around.

I scroll down to one from my boss.

Felix: Hey girl, I hope you’re having a fabulous trip. When you get back, I have a couple of new artists I want you to check out. You don’t have to look now, but here are their socials.

I might as well work. I prop the pillows higher and click on the link for the first artist. It’s a younger guy. Maybe in his early twenties like me. He’s attractive, with dirty blond hair and a crooked grin. If I had to pick someone he looked like, it would be Violet’s Island-boyfriend, only without the tan.

For several minutes, I watch his videos one after another, letting the tone and cadence of his voice fill the space around me. He’s good. A nice, solid baritone. He’s attractive. That never hurts. But he doesn’t have that otherworldly stage presence.

I wrinkle my nose. Few do. Once I’ve seen everything on his account, I click onto the second artist. In his first video, he’s playing a guitar. An instrument is nice. Much like the first candidate, this man has a decent voice, but he doesn’t make my heart flutter either, not like Jace. My fingers itch to search his account. To watch him sing. To hear his voice once more.

Don’t. I toss the phone onto the bed by my feet. He wasn’t that good. Right? No one ever gave him a record deal for a reason, and it’s not just because he used and drank. Hell, half of my father’s clients could drink him under the table on a Saturday night and get up on Sunday and go again until they were spewing vomit.

I snatch the phone off the blanket. If I were to choose one of the two artists, which one would I promote? Artist number one has a deeper voice, but artist number two plays the guitar. Can he play the piano or any other instrument? A versatile artist is harder to come by.

As if my fingers aren’t listening to my brain, I type in Jace’s name and scan through his account while avoiding the ones where he sang with Samantha.

The first song I click on is Jace alone with his guitar. His silken voice fills the room, leaving the hairs on my arms standing.

With no other instruments or backup singers, it’s easy to get lost in the way he strings together lyrics. The words are beautiful. They’re about a girl and how her voice curled around his soul, making it hard to breathe when she was nearby. How walking away was the hardest thing he’d ever done. The pain in his eyes is excruciating to witness, causing my chest to ache.

It’s about her. I swallow over the lump in my throat. He wrote this song soon after his original band broke up. When Samantha and Jack betrayed him and left the band.

I’m not delusional. He does have talent. What do they know that I don’t? Am I so obsessed with him that I can’t see the truth? Or now that he’s sober, would my father finally see his talent?

I click off the phone and shove it to the other side of the bed. Don’t go down this path again.

After I snuggle under the covers, I yawn. When I get back, I’ll tell Felix to pursue the second artist. He isn’t as skilled as Jace with a guitar, nor is his voice as clear as the first artist, but he feels like the better bet.

Chapter Seventeen

Jace

I groan as the sun peeks through the curtains and toss the white comforter over my head. Today is going to suck as badly as last night did. I haven’t slept a second since my head landed on the pillow. All I’ve managed to do is toss and turn and hate life. I knew better than to touch Zoe.

Even before I kissed her, I couldn’t get her out of my head. She’s been stuck there for four years and won’t leave. Now….

Now, it’s a million times worse. I know what her skin feels like. It feels like silk. I know what her hands feel like jammed into my hair, tugging on the strands. It was like an electric current sending chills down my spine. And her mouth? That’s like sliding into heaven and not knowing what in the hell good thing you did to get there.

I flop over and sprawl across the bed with my face in the pillow. I’m a pussy. How many times am I going to listen to that asshole tell me what to do and do it? If I wasn’t a coward, I’d have told him to kiss my ass.

But no. I had to back down once again and walk away. A mistake? She’s not a mistake. She’s the only good thing in this miserable world. No matter how many times I push her away, she still comes back to me. And I shove her away again.

I slam the blanket across the bed and climb out. There’s no point in hiding under the covers and pretending I’m not the biggest dick in the world. If I had my shit together and deserved her, I’d drag her to bed. But what’s the point? I don’t have the connections to save her career in the music industry. She’d lose everything for me.

What a great prize that would be.

After stepping into the bathroom, I shove the shower handle up and wait as the water shifts from cold to scalding. The room fills with steam, and I shuck off my clothes, stepping into the spray. Would she believe me if I told her that it was her father who called? That I’ve stayed away because he threatened to ruin me if I didn’t leave her alone? That he would destroy her as well out of spite?

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