Breaking Point

Chapter 36 // Jesse

[Nashville, TN]

Chantelle and Preston were set to land in the next fifteen minutes.

Lewis, Tyler and I were camped out in a van near the airport in Nashville where they were set to land from their week away in Florida. For this excursion only we'd hired a professional local bodyguard (after acute vetting and reference checks with prior employments) as we didn't want to use anyone recognisable such as Tyler because the contract with Kennedy was still valid and people were in overdrive with the kiss last night.

After Kennedy had kissed me, she pulled back with a twinkle swimming in her eyes and a self-satisfied smirk plastered on her lips. "Goodbye, Jesse. I'll see you around," she said, and then she strutted off, leaving me utterly dumbfounded and irate in her wake.

"You nervous?" Lewis asked me gently, amputating that me from my reverie.

Tyler shifted in the driver's seat so he could engage in our conversation. "As soon as you two are back together again on tour, it'll be like this never happened," he offered, and I appreciated the solacing words.

Restless and unable to sleep last night, my mind was torturing me with replaying the kiss over and over again. The only thing I struggled to recount was the unimaginable anger I felt initially when she kissed me. Since then only pain and sadness has bridged over that ire. My mind wouldn't relax enough for me to slip into a peaceful slumber. In the end I even paced around my hotel room, my phone between my twitchy fingers as I ached to message Chantelle or call her and ask her if sleep eluded her too. I'd even resorted to scanning through the comments on my Tweet from that moment of sheer insanity. There was a mixed reaction, but my heart swelled triumphantly for the ones that rooted for Chantelle and I being together.

Pauline had been the first on my case about that unplanned Tweet, demanding I take it down immediately. Lewis had to intervene and he fought in my corner. The Tweet remained. Pauline succumbed, despite this not being in her initial strategy, and she notified us of the new plan for damage control.

"We'll spin this to make it seem like you were confused between the two. The kiss with Kennedy made you realise you want Chantelle back. And the Tweets were how you got back in contact with one another. We'll say you and Kennedy were never exclusive during this month."

She began to tap furiously on her phone, and I presumed she was sending over the notes to Kennedy's team to inform them of this, though what the fuck did they care? The contract ends in a couple of days.

"Hopefully," I replied to Tyler. "And yeah, I am nervous. I don't know how she'll be. We haven't spoken all day."

Lewis watched me carefully for a moment as Tyler surveyed the airport entrance, scouring the vicinity to spot the temporary bodyguard, Preston or Chantelle. Lewis and I would have to conceal ourselves immediately, though luckily the airport wasn't teeming with presence and no one had recognised our car yet. We might get away with it.