Page 47 of California Wild

The real her—the soft-hearted, big-dreaming, soul-sick girl who still believed in fairytales—was curled up in the corner, crying behind her glitter eyeliner, waiting for Jesse to come back.

He didn’t.

He never did.

Somewhere close to the end of the night, Hayley didn’t fully remember how she got into the cab. Didn’t remember what she told Jesse’s friends as she slipped away. Didn’t remember what song was playing when she left.

She just knew she was alone.

Back pressed to the cool leather, legs curled beneath her, mascara smudged beneath her eyes.

She wiped at her face, cursing herself for the tears.

It always came back to this.

She could be anyone on stage. Could dazzle and distract and drown herself in sound.

But the second the lights faded?

Jesse lived in her.

She could kiss someone else.

Sleep with someone else.

Record songs about someone else.

But Jesse was the ache in her throat every time she tried to move on.

She laughed, cracked and broken and bitter. “Goddamn you, Jesse.”

The cab kept moving.

The city blurred past.

And Hayley Fox wrapped her arms around herself like armor, humming the song she wrote about him that no one had ever heard.

Because she was still his.

Still wrecked.

Still waiting for a man who only ever showed up in pieces.

Chapter 7

Jesse woke up alone.

The silence in his apartment felt aggressive. Stale. The kind of quiet that scraped the inside of his skull and made everything feel a little too real.

He lay there for a minute, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the weight in his chest to lift. It didn’t.

His cock ached, hard and ready like clockwork. He palmed it, stroking rough, fast. But the usual morning release wasn’t working—not without her. Not without the image of her mouth, her voice, her body burned behind his eyes.

He rolled over with a curse, dragging a hand through his hair before throwing the covers off and standing up fast, like movement could drown out memory.

It couldn’t.

He laced up and hit the streets before sunrise, running hard—legs pounding pavement, lungs burning, sweat pouring.

---