Page 74 of Give Me What I Want

Any love that I had for Jordan had vanished the moment I had heard his confession, but Bea, she still cared about him. It was her biggest downfall. My girl gave far too many shits. It made her passionate, a thrill to battle with, but it also made her vulnerable to harm.

I wouldn’t allow anyone else to harm her again though. Not while she allowed me in. I had fallen for that girl, thrown myself smack bang into the ground face first without realising what I was doing. I loved her in a new light. I loved her like she was mine. I hadn’t lied when I told her that we did belong to each other. We were tethered. Connected by something we’d both been too stubbornly blind to see. But we felt it. I had felt it long before I understood it.

Now that I did understand, I wasn’t going to let her go.

I’d share her heart, her body, her life, with those other men—my family—if it meant keeping her forever. And I would protect her like my life depended on it.

In time, we’d need to discuss what we were, and I wouldn’t accept any answer from her that didn’t end with usallgetting our happily ever after. But first, I needed to remove a snake from our lives.

I found Jordan on One Last Time’s bus, he was sitting on the sofa, playing a card game with their drummer and bassist.

“You,” I snarled, pointing a finger in his face. “Come with me.” My tone brokered no arguments, and Jordan was on his feet in an instant, his cards tossed face up on the table, showing that he had the winning hand, but he wouldn’t be claiming his prize money.

I grabbed the collar of his t-shirt before he could snatch a single note up and dragged him with me off of their bus. Elijah called after me, asking what the fuck I was doing, and I snapped back that I’d fill him in later. Jordan had been spending most of his time on their bus, but he wouldn’t be returning. Once I was done with him, I’d send him to stay with the crew, but I’d tell everyone what he did. Not a single person connected to our tour would be kept in the dark, and it would be up to them to decide where he’d stay until his temporary replacement arrived.

Jordan tripped up the steps as I shoved him onto the bus, barking orders at him to go and sit on the sofa, keep his head down, and not speak a word to anyone. Then I went to find Bea and Cole.

They were in the bedroom, she was dressed now, her eyes lined with black, making her look a little more like herself than she had when I had left her to freshen up. Cole had re-dressed in a loose linen shirt, and was pacing the small strip of the floor as Bea twisted her hair into a braid.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her, feeling calmer in this room away from Jordan.

“Not great, but I’ll be okay. I feel weird, not having you there,” she admitted, peering up at me.

I pressed a kiss to her temple. “You have Cole and Mav, you’ll be—”

“I’m not worried about me,” she cut over me. “I’m worried that if you don’t come, you’ll regret it. I know it’s not the same, but you saw how Mav was over Steve’s funeral, he regrets not going, I don’t want you to feel that too.”

“I won’t, and if I do, that’s on me,” I said, giving her a ‘don’t argue with me’ look as she opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Cole took her hand, pulling her towards the door, and I gave him a sharp look. ‘Look after her’ I said with a glare. He rolled his eyes back at me, almost laughing as his reply came silently back, ‘What do you think I am, some kind of idiot?’

“We’ll be back in a while, love you, bro,” he said out loud, then blew me a kiss. Bea giggled and copied him, the pair of them kissing their hands and blowing my way, stumbling backwards until they were out the front door. They had taken no notice of the piece of shit sitting on the sofa, and I was glad of it. The last thing they needed to see before they left was his lying face.

I stormed down the bus, my feet falling loud and heavy, and then I was towering over him as he sat on the sofa with his head in his hands, dipped low between his widely spread thighs.

“If you hadn’t guessed, Jordan, you’re out,” I said flatly, inspecting my fingernails as though I wasn’t even slightly bothered. Except, secretly, deep down, I was a little. I was hurt, but I could transform all of that hurt into hate. I could hate the man before me, and I could throw all of the crappy feelings I had about the unexpected loss of last night his way too. The guilt I felt, the blame I was putting on myself for arguing with Bea yesterday, I could channel it all into the task at hand.

He didn’t speak, he just sighed, dropping his head lower.

So I went on. “We’ve called around, and unfortunately for us, no one we know is free to come out here and take your place at such short notice, and with One Last Time down a member too, we can’t exactly rely on any of them to step in. So you’ll be staying for a few days until we’ve made more calls, but you won’t be staying with us.”

“Where?” he asked, his body slumping like a deflated balloon.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” I said in a clipped tone as I continued to inspect my nails. “But you will not be here, you will not speak to us, look at us, anything. And if you do, you will regret it. But I’m not a complete cunt, Jordan, so before I kick you off of this bus is there anything you’d like to say?”

It took him a few moments to raise his head, and when he did, he fixed me with an unexpectedly flat, cold glare. “We're the same, you and me.”

“No,” I spat, dropping my hand and taking a step towards him. He didn’t back up, didn’t try to get up and run, and a small smirk twisted my lips for barely a second before I spoke, calm and low. “We're not even close to the same. You hurt her and then you begged her to keep your betrayal from the rest of us. You put your greed above her, above all of us. You don’t care about anyone except for yourself. I will never be like you. I may not be sweet like Cole, or compassionate like Mav, but I willneverbe a lying, desperate coward like you. You fucked it all up for yourself, Jordan.”

Confidence knocked, he bowed his head, his hands rubbing together between his parted knees, and then he started to pick. His nail scraped over the tattoo on the back of his hand, the symbol of us sitting just below the webbing between his thumb and finger.

My gaze dropped, locking onto the marking. “And I hope that every time you look at that...” I pointed to the ink then grabbed his chin, jerking his head back so that he was forced to meet my eye. “…You think of us all. And you remember that we loved you once. But that now, you're dead to us all.”

“Bea said yesterday that—”

“I don't care what she said. She's too gentle sometimes. But don't mistake her kindness for affection. You arenothingto her now. You're only staying with us until Stuttgart because you need to be sufficiently replaced, something that will be far easier than you think. Now fuck off, and don't bother coming back until soundcheck. We don't want to see you.”

Releasing his chin, I turned my back on him, waiting for him to get up and scurry off. But the idiot didn’t move. He just sat there, breathing loud and shaky, but he still sat.

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