“Well, I appreciate that, but I guess it’s me that needs some space right now.” He pressed his lips together, his voice once again nearly devoid of emotion.
“Oh. Okay. Wow.” I couldn’t process it. “I still don’t understand how we go from planning our future together twenty-four hours ago to breaking up.”
“C’mon, Alex don’t go down that path.” Jace dropped my hands and raised an eyebrow at me.
“Why not?” I hissed.
“We both need to take some time, Alex. Life isn’t the same today as it was yesterday.” Jace moved around me to head out to the living room.
“It is for me.” I crossed my arms and followed him. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“Ah, but I do.” Jace grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and guzzled it. “Plus, it works out okay. I know you don’t like to be at band events where I have a ton of stuff to do. For these gigs, I’m going to be dealing with all of this press stuff about Zoey, so we wouldn’t even really see each other than at the premiere, so no harm no foul.”
“So, you just get to make the decision?” I said disbelievingly.
“Yeah, I guess I have to be the one that does what is best for both of us.” Jace leaned against the counter.
“Jace!” I sobbed as though my life was over because it felt like it was. “Don’t do this.”
“It’s for the best, Alex.” Jace patted my shoulder, almost like he couldn’t bear to touch me again. “I need to get going.”
Stunned, I grabbed my suitcase and backpack and rolled it out the door, which Jace closed behind me without even a wave goodbye. When I got to my Range Rover, I sat in the driver’s seat and bawled and bawled and bawled. Not sure what to do, I stayed put because I was afraid to drive erratically.
About fifteen minutes later, Jace’s truck emerged from the garage and sped off, he didn’t even notice me. Although I was tempted to follow him, I was frozen. Uncertain why my life had disintegrated before my eyes.
Chapter 23
JACE
New York was going to suck without Alex, but fielding questions about why she was there with me would have been even worse. Especially with all that I had on my mind. Ordinarily, I loved flying private for a number of reasons, but my mood hadn’t improved and now we were en-route to New York. Trying to show the guys all the metrics that tracked our media impact was getting on my last nerve. Ty couldn’t keep his eyes and hands off Zoey, which was just one more reminder that Alex wasn’t in her rightful place on the plane with us.
Snapping my fingers in front of Ty’s face, I snarled, “Fuck, Ty. I’m doing this for her own good, you could at least fucking pay attention.”
“Shit, Jace. I’m sorry, she’s distracting.” Ty shrugged; his expression was so joyous that it was hard to stay mad at him.
It was true that due to my own pending scandal, I was disproportionately stressed about the press coverage about Ty and Zoey. She had always been terrible at social media, but now we were coming up with an entire strategy that involved her for the band’s benefit, and for her own benefit too. Even though I knew that no matter what we did she’d probably be publicly shamed and ripped apart, it was important for me to try to stop it from happening.
To take my mind off things, I threw myself into implementing a social media plan to incorporate Zoey into the LTZ fold during the entire flight. She wasn’t super receptive, which annoyed me further. Then I became really pissed when she kept challenging my ideas by spewing nonsense about her own brand identity. I couldn’t tell if Zoey’s obstinance stemmed from her true feelings about her media presence or if she had spoken to Alex and was pissed at me.
Truthfully, Zoey was a reminder of Alex and any thought about her made my heart feel like it had been stabbed. I knew that I’d fucked up, treating her the way I did. While it killed me to pull away, it was best for both of us if I let her go before things went too much further. I knew that I couldn’t expect her to change her stance on having kids. If she had been conflicted about having my baby, there was no chance she’d stick around for a baby I’d fathered with a different woman.
I couldn’t blame her.
My emotions were further on edge when, after we landed, I saw that I’d missed half a dozen texts. One was from Alex, simply asking if I was okay. The rest were from Jessica demanding that we set a date for the paternity test or else. Her threats were a complete distraction. Which meant that Alex’s text got lost in the shuffle. It wasn’t like I was going to answer in the affirmative. Because I was not okay.
Not by a long shot.
There was no time to deal with either of them anyway, when we arrived, we went directly to a PR meeting in our manager’s office.
While trying to listen to our publicists’ idiotic strategy for Zoey, I finally responded to Jessica and ended up in the middle of a text war. Distracted by two very different but intense situations, I decided to ignore my own problems. As Zoey got more and more upset, I was about to intervene when Ty jumped in and gave them a piece of his mind. This gave me an opening to back him up, take over and get the fuck out of there.
Once I shared my plan and Zoey and Ty were on board, we were able to leave. As we navigated the labyrinth of hallways to avoid the paparazzi, Zoey reached out and grabbed my arm. “You’re amazing, Jace. Thank you.”
I tried to play
