“Hey, Jax,” a high-pitched voice said from his right. He swung his head to regard the raven-haired girl in a barely there bikini.
“Hey,” he said, his tone flat and uninterested. He really didn’t need some girl hitting on him and making this entire situation worse.
“I was hoping you and me could go out sometime. Maybe relive the other night?”
Jax cocked an eyebrow at her, trying to figure out her angle. “The other night?” he asked.
He remembered talking to her the other night, but nothing about the encounter stood out.
She nodded. “Yeah. You know, when you took me in the back…”
“Right,” he said, smirking. “When I took you in the back and we talked.”
“What? No! When we fucked.”
“We fucked?” he asked, feigning surprise.
The girl shifted on her feet and looked between him, Bailey, and Harry. Jax stole a glance at the two of them and bit his lip to keep the smile that threatened to break free at bay. Harry looked amused with a half smile on his face and Bailey looked thoughtful.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding unsure.
“When was this again?” he asked.
“Well, ummm…”
An awkward silence took over. Bailey finally said, “Girl, I think you need to move along. I assume you didn’t sleep with him and you’re trying to.”
The girl blushed and scurried away. The three of them watched her go and Jax turned his attention back to Bailey.
“I’m not ready to give you the benefit of the doubt. I still think you’re an asshole that doesn’t deserve my best friend.”
“Okay, I can live with that,” he said, nodding.
“You’re gonna have to do a hell of a lot more than what you just did to even get close to winning Karlie back.”
“I know,” he whispered. His chest ached as he thought about their break up. He had wanted to just move on and go back to what he did before. He wanted to be the man all the girls wanted because he was hot and good in bed. He hadn’t counted on falling for Karlie. He'd thought she’d just be another conquest and he’d be able to move on.
“You know one way to do that?” Harry asked, pulling Jax from his thoughts.
Jax shrugged.
“Actions speak louder than words, my friend.”
Jax scrunched his face in confusion. “What does that even mean?”
Harry cocked a brow. “Think about it.” He stood and Bailey quickly followed.
Jax watched the two of them walk down a few chairs and sit down. They started talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying, not that he wanted to. Instead, he mulled over Harry’s words as he laid back on his chair. He watched the people swimming and playing in the pool without really seeing them as he tried to figure out what Harry was trying to say. How could his actions speak louder? He wasn’t doing anything with anyone.
Finally, time seemed to stand still as he realized what Harry meant.
The girls that Jax was seen with weren’t helping him at all. If anything, they were making it worse. It looked like he was sleeping around so he could save face, but that wasn’t what was important. If he wanted Karlie to seriously consider talking to him or even taking him back, then he needed to show her that he was serious about them.
The first step to doing that? Getting rid of the groupies. He glanced to his right where some band members were sitting with girls. He knew some of the guys wouldn’t like Jax’s suggestion, but he thought it was something they needed to agree on as a band.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this shit.” Grayson collapsed onto the couch in the green room backstage at Whiskey Dicks.
Jax shrugged but didn’t say anything. Grayson and Bentley had been very vocal about the banning of groupies from backstage before, during, and after the show. Unfortunately for them, it was put to a band vote and they were outvoted three to two.
“Sorry guys,” Veronica said sounding anything but. “Guess you’ll have to try and hook up elsewhere.”
“I shouldn’t have to work this hard,” Bentley said, shaking his head. “Normally, chicks dig the whole drummer, on the beat thing. I mean, come on, I can finger a girl to any song.”
“Dude, way too much info,” Harry muttered.
Jax laughed at Harry’s discomfort.
Bentley continued talking over Harry. “But I can’t even do that because there’s no pussy to be had!”
The band continued going back and forth about the issue while Jax tuned them out. He'd thought it would be difficult to completely cut himself off from the girls that liked to hang around the band, but he actually found himself enjoying the quiet.
Before, girls would come into the green room with them to flirt, drink the free booze, and try to become the lucky winner of a night with a band member. He didn’t realize how distracting they'd been to the entire band until he didn’t have to contend with them.
Their absence also made Jax really take a look at himself and his relationship with Karlie. Looking back, he realized he didn’t treat her with respect except for when he was trying to get her to go out with him. That was a problem because his Mom had always told him growing up to treat women with respect.
He didn’t appreciate or understand that until he met Karlie, and now he was faced with the realization that it might be too late.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Harry asked, leaning against the wall next to Jax.
Jax shrugged. “Nothing much. We had a great show, didn’t we?”
Harry nodded and sipped his beer. “We did. One of our better ones for sure.”
They lapsed into silence. Harry eventually asked, “So, I know you figured my advice out. What’s the next step?”
Jax’s brow furrowed. “Next step?”
“Yeah. How are you going to get Karlie back if she won’t talk to you?”
Jax scratched his chin as he thought about it. Honestly, he hadn’t considered anything past making sure no girls claimed he slept with them.
“Well, I don’t know.”
Harry clapped him on the shoulder, making Jax lose his balance. “That’s what I’m for. You need to make sure she doesn’t forget you.”
Jax snorted. “And how do I do that, oh wise one?”
“Send her things.”
“You mean buy her gifts? Or annoy the shit out of her?” he asked.
Harry shrugged. “If that’s how you want to look at it, sure.”
They leaned there for a few more minutes before Harry pushed away from the wall and ambled to the other side of the room to talk to Veronica. Jax looked at his bandmates as he thought over Harry’s advice. They were all a bit ragtag and had some weird personality traits, but he wouldn’t trade them for anything, even when they were bitching about missing out on girls.
Harry’s words gave Jax something to chew on. Gifts might be the way to get Karlie to talk to him, but he wasn’t sold on it. He didn’t have anything else to go on, however, so gifts just might be the way to go.
Nodding to himself, he pulled his phone out and started doing a search to see what he could get in the area, smiling as he formed a plan.
Chapter Seventeen
Karlie
Karlie sighed as she pressed her phone between her ear and shoulder. She was cleaning her house from top to bottom and didn’t want to deal with a phone call. She didn’t want to deal with anyone, honestly.
“Bailey, for the last time, stop going on about this.”
“I can’t help it—”
“—because you made me go out. Whatever. You didn’t know. Move on. I have.”
Karlie smiled triumphantly as she finished scrubbing the vanity in her bathroom. If there was one good thing that came from this whole debacle with Jax, it was that her house was sparkling. She’d scrubbed the floors, washed her baseboards, and wiped her walls down. She was now in her bathroom, scrubbing every inch of it.
“Karlie, this isn’t healthy.” Bailey sighed into th
e phone.
“What isn’t?” She turned her attention to her bathtub.
“Whatever it is that you’re doing that has you sounding distracted.”
“I’m cleaning, Bailey. How is that not healthy unless I forget to vent the bathroom?”
“Karlie.”
“Bailey.”
Karlie paused in her cleaning to give her full attention to the phone conversation. “I’m serious when I say you need to stop calling. You call me throughout the day to check on me. I’m not five. I’m twenty-six and a grown woman. If I want to be babied, I’ll call my mother.”
“Maybe I should call your mother to check on you since you won’t take my concern seriously.”
Karlie pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. She loved Bailey, she really did, but she was being overbearing.
“Bailey, this is the last time I’ll tell you: I don’t need you checking on me. I am fine. When I’m ready to go out, I’ll go out. Otherwise, let me live in peace.”
An oppressive silence followed and Karlie cringed, knowing she’d probably offended her friend.
“Right. Well then. I’ll leave you to it.”
A click sounded over the phone and Karlie’s hand dropped, clutching her phone. She sighed and leaned back against the cabinet behind her. She shouldn’t take her frustrations out on other people, but she honestly was tired of it all.
Tired of their hovering. Tired of their curiosity disguised as sympathy. Tired of their meddling. She was also tired of the gifts that had started showing up at her house a few days before. No one knew about those though. It started with flowers and stuffed animals. Then food deliveries. She'd had a singing telegram just this morning.
Each time, she smiled tightly, accepted whatever it was, and promptly threw it away. She didn’t even bother reading the cards. She knew who they were from and she wasn’t interested.
Sighing in disgust, Karlie decided she needed to get out of the house. Decision made, she finished cleaning her bathroom and set about showering and changing. In no time, she was parking outside Common Ground and salivating at the thought of one of their coffees and sandwiches.
As she gathered her things from the passenger seat, she briefly worried about seeing people she knew, especially Jax. She just had to hope that wouldn’t be the case today.
Inside, she was pleased to see it wasn’t too busy and found a table tucked toward the back of the dining room, away from prying eyes. There was also a large indoor tree that blocked her from view. She ordered something from her waitress and pulled out the book she snagged from her house before leaving. Though she didn’t have a lot of time for reading, she had a large selection of books to choose from and she tried to read some in the summer. Today’s choice was a popular fiction novel that recently released to rave reviews.
She quickly got lost in the fiction world, and she startled when her waitress returned with her food and drink. She set her book to the side and dug into the food, not realizing how hungry she was until she started eating.
She finally felt herself relax and thought about ordering dessert when she heard chairs scrapping near her. She looked around and noticed a group of girls settling into a table a few feet away. They were discussing what to order—the running order seemed to err on the side of skinny non-fat something or other—and Karlie refrained from rolling her eyes. She fully believed in enjoying her coffee and couldn’t see herself ever trying to order a skinny anything.
She was reaching for her book when a comment one of the girls made gave her pause.
“Can you believe it?” a waify brunette asked.
“What?” a stockier brunette asked.
“Southern Sands. Didn’t you hear?”
Karlie perked up even though she didn’t want to. She grabbed her book and opened it to where she'd stopped reading. She didn’t want it to seem like she was eavesdropping on their conversation.
“I didn’t,” the blonde said, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
The waify brunette clapped her hands together and squealed. Karlie winced at the high-pitched noise. “You won’t believe this then. Last week, they stopped taking groupies into the back with them.”
“What?” a redhead asked.
“I know, that was my reaction, but the band is no longer taking girls backstage before, during, or after the show.”
“Why?” the blonde asked.
The original girl shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is the band members have been very standoffish towards anyone that tries to get backstage.”
“I’m sure they aren’t having any issues getting anyone to go home with them.”
“I don’t know about that. You know I’m only interested in one guy.”
The entire table tittered and Karlie refrained from rolling her eyes.
“You and every girl in a twenty mile radius. Everyone wants to be with Jax so they can say they were.”
“That’s something else that’s weird.”
“What do you mean?”
“A few weeks ago, he took me backstage—”
Karlie felt like she was going to be sick as the brunette talked.
“—but we just talked. We didn’t do anything else.”
“You just talked?” the redhead asked dubiously.
“I thought the same thing. So, I tried coming onto him again, because come on, there’s no way he could turn this down twice. He didn’t even give me the time of day and left me standing at the bar.”
Karlie heard a snort, but couldn’t figure out who it was.
“No need for that, Samantha,” the brunette chastised the other brown haired girl. “Anyways, I did some asking around to other girls I heard slept with him recently. You won’t believe what I found out.”
Karlie perked up, more interested than she was willing to admit.
The brunette continued. “He hasn’t slept with any of them. Turns out, he takes them into the back, talks to them, and then they leave. He hasn’t slept with anyone recently that I can tell.”
Karlie tuned the rest of the conversation out as she thought over what she'd just overheard. She stared at the book in front of her unseeing. She found it hard to believe that Jax wasn’t sleeping with anyone, especially since she heard from Bailey that Jax had taken the girl Karlie found sitting on Jax’s lap backstage.
None of it made sense. Desperate for fresh air, she quickly paid and gathered her things, bursting out the door to the sidewalk. She gasped for air, sure she looked like a lunatic. Her mind raced. She couldn’t reconcile anything.
She walked briskly to her car and unlocked it, sat down, and turned it on. She then pulled her phone out, dialing Bailey with shaking hands. The phone rang four times and Karlie was starting to think that Bailey was ignoring her until she picked up in the middle of the fifth ring.
“Hey,” Bailey said. Her tone was flat, and Karlie winced, remembering how rude she had been to her friend earlier.
“I’m sorry about earlier. I know you’re just trying to be a friend and I appreciate that, but I wasn’t ready to hear it earlier.”
Bailey sighed and remained quiet. She finally said, “I forgive you, but don’t do that shit again.”
“I won’t, I promise! I have a question for you.”
“Alright.”
Karlie took a deep breath before she recounted the conversation she overheard in the cafe. Neither of them spoke for several moments before Bailey asked, “Okay, why are you telling me this?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t think my thoughts here are relevant. It’s really more important to know what you think.”
“Well, I don’t know what to think!” Karlie burst. “I mean, I saw him with the girl on his lap. You told me that Harry told you he took her backstage. I’ve heard that he’s slept with anything that moves since our breakup. What the fuck is going on?!”
“Girl, take a breath,” Bailey said.
Karlie was panting and her face felt hot. She
didn’t realize how upset she was until it burst out of her. She took a few moments to breathe deeply, working on slowing her heartbeat down.
“You good?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Now, you overheard them saying something that you’re not sure about, right?”
“Right,” Karlie agreed.
“I hate to break it to you, but you know the easy way to get your answer.”
“I’m not talking to him.” She still wasn’t ready.
“Well, I guess you’ll live in ignorance.”
“You could ask Harry,” Karlie said, crossing her fingers.
“You’re on your own with this,” Bailey said. “I won’t be asking Harry or anyone else to verify anything. If you want to know, you can be a big girl and do it yourself.”
Karlie felt properly chastened after Bailey’s words.
“Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.”
They both clicked off and Karlie’s head dropped back onto her seat’s headrest. She needed to know what was going on with Jax, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to talk to him. She bit her lip as the gifts Jax sent her entered her mind. While she threw the gifts themselves out, she'd kept some of the cards. Maybe they held the answers.
Plan in place, she backed out of her parking space and drove home as quickly as she could. Upon entering her house, she frantically started rifling through the loose papers that littered every flat surface to find the cards she saved.
“Ah ha!” she yelled triumphantly when she found them in her mail basket. She opened them and read through them all. She then read through them again. Disappointment settled into her gut as she realized they didn’t answer any of the questions she had. They just said they were all from Jax, that he missed her, and he wanted her to call him. Nothing more, nothing less.
Karlie sighed as she flopped on her couch. She lay on her stomach, considering her options. The obvious thing to do was call Jax. The thought of breaking their silence gave her chills, however. She wasn’t sure she could do that right now. Even if what she overheard was true, did that mean she wanted to give them another shot?
Jax (Southern Sands Book 1) Page 14