Five Weeks (Seven Series #3)(34)

When he sang the line about why she had to go away, Isabelle wiped her cheek and tilted her head.
No one else in that room existed—only her.
His yesterday.
The crowd swayed to the sound of his smoky voice that mimicked some of the greats. Soulful and broken.
Isabelle lowered her somber eyes and shook her head. He sang louder and tried to reach out to her with his words, but she turned around and headed toward the restroom.
Then he was alone.
Alone in a room full of people who clung to his every word, except for the one person who mattered. His heart splintered.
Chaz suddenly appeared and leapt onstage, hooking up his gear. “Fuck, man. Sorry ’bout that.” He wiped his nose and widened his eyes at the crowd.
Jericho wrapped up the song and released a heavy breath. Time would never erase his mistakes, and he wished more than anything that he could go back and do it differently. All that regret—why did he have to be such a fuckup?
That girl still owned his heart. All the bullshit aside, he wanted Isabelle back in his life. But it was too late. She had a man, and all Jericho had was his guitar. That’s all he’d ever wanted, and that’s exactly what he ended up with.
He wondered what she had done with his first guitar—the one she’d swiped from their motel room. Isabelle knew how much that instrument had meant to him. He used to fool around with the guitars backstage when he worked as a roadie, setting up equipment for bands. Isabelle had said he had a God-given talent. Wouldn’t you know it? That girl had taken every penny she’d saved waitressing and bought him a butt-ugly Fender Stratocaster with a powder-blue body from the local pawnshop. She’d told him he was destined for greatness. Despite its second-rate quality, he loved that damn thing.
In the end, Jericho had destroyed everything he valued in his life because of his addictions. She must have realized she was too good for him. And she was right. But how could she have just left him there to die? He wanted to follow Denver’s advice and hate her with every fiber of his being.#p#分页标题#e#
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t.
 

Chapter 8
“Hon, wake up.”
I moaned and lifted my head from the wooden table where I’d dozed off. Rosie peered down at me with her purse slung over her shoulder.
“I’m about to head out. There’s a bubble bath waiting for me with my name on it. Don’t you need to be going home? Rush hour is over and the birds will be chirping soon.”
I sat up and stretched out my arms. “I was just waiting around until the donut shop opened.”
She gave me that look. The one a person gives when you’re shoveling manure and they can smell it. The bracelets on her wrist slid up her arm when she touched her hair. “Take care of yourself.”
“See you tonight,” I said with a pitiful smile.
“I have the day off.” She jutted her curvaceous hip. “The mister is taking me out to dinner and salsa dancing.”
“Salsa?”
She winked and waved her fingers as she walked toward the door. “Hold down the fort, honey.”
I yawned and took a sip of warm water from my glass. Only a few customers remained, mostly drifters. We stayed open twenty-four hours since some immortals worked odd shifts and had no qualms about having a few beers at six in the morning with their breakfast plate of sausage and eggs. Because of the tumbleweeds that blew through this time of day, only one girl worked the floor from five to nine. From what I’d heard, moms brought their kids in for breakfast, but they weren’t big tippers, so most of the girls didn’t want to waste their time working the early shift.
Remembering how Jericho had sung that Beatles song gave me the shivers. Hell’s bells, he was phenomenal. I’d heard him sing plenty of rock songs, but the ballads had always been my favorites, especially that one. He used to play it in our hotel room late at night when he thought I was asleep. His voice had poured through the microphone like smooth bourbon, and I’d become drunk listening to him. But for a fleeting moment, I could have sworn he was looking right at me. I knew Jericho often looked toward the back when the women became a distraction in the front row, but it just felt like his eyes were on me.
It was a good thing they weren’t, or he would have seen me running to the bathroom in tears. I’d stayed in there for another full song and finally found a way to pull it together and put the past behind me.
It wasn’t just that he’d slept with that woman all those years ago, because we had never been exclusive or even in a relationship other than being friends. But walking in on him having sex had made me realize I didn’t matter to him. I’d falsely believed I was special, and when things had heated up between us the night before, I’d thought it meant we might be moving in a serious direction. To be fair, I was young and too foolish to realize a man like Jericho could never settle for just one girl.