Chapter 5
INSIDE, THE MURMUR of patrons and the clink of glasses feels distant. No one glances our way. We might actually have a night without screaming fans. He leads me to a booth, calm and in control. Me—I’m still catching my breath, wondering if I’m brave enough for whatever tonight holds.
“Table for Phoenix,” he says to the waiter who greets us.
“Oh my God, I was right, that’s Travis Phoenix!” A woman shrieks from behind us. Well, that didn’t last long.
Travis looks to the waiter. “Keep all the fans away from me, and I’ll give you one heck of a tip.”
The waiter smiles and nods, then turns and gives the staring women a warning. They pipe down right away. I release the breath I was holding.
“What can I get you to drink?”
“Your best wine, the whole bottle.”
“Very well, sir.”
The waiter walks away, and Travis smiles over at me.
“What if I don’t drink wine?”
His face changes and I laugh. “I’m kidding. Sorry.”
He grins, slow and easy. “Finally got one back on me.”
“About time.”
“So tell me, woman with a cold heart, what do you do at the firm?”
“A secretary.”
“Ah.”
“What about you? Chief said you’re working while you’re here. I didn’t think rockstars worked?”
He grunts. “You’d be surprised. I own a company. So when I’m in town, I have to go in occasionally and sit in a very big office, no pretty lights or skulls, but I do have a wicked couch.”
My eyes widen. “You have a company?”
“What, didn’t think I had it in me to do something good with my money?”
I blink. “What? No. I didn’t say that. I just...it’s so hard to see you being a CEO of a company. Do you wear a suit? I can’t picture this.”
He grins. “I wear a suit, just like any CEO and sort out stuff on a day-to-day basis. All the boring stuff. Mostly, I pay people to do it for me.”
“Lifestyles of the rich and famous, hey?”
He grunts. “Something like that.”
“It’s like you are two different people, don’t those two worlds collide?”
“Sometimes, but I make it work.”
“What exactly is your company?”
I feel bad that I don’t know this, but in saying that, it has been a long time. It’s not like Travis and I are close anymore.
“I own a record company. Figured I might as well give others the chance I had, to share their music with the world.”
My eyes widen. “Wow, that’s amazing. Good on you.”
He winks at me. “Not just a pretty face.”
I blush again.
God, he is going to think something is wrong with me again.
He is the only man who has ever been able to make me blush.
“What about you, what do you do aside from working?”
How to answer that without sounding tragic? “Not a lot really, I go to Chief’s on the weekends but otherwise... a party here and there if Reagan begs enough.”
“Not a lot? So you sit at home on weekends and do...nothing?”
“Well, not nothing...”
God, why do I sound so pathetic. Here he is, with his life together, and me...not so much.
“Well, Mischief, tonight you and me are going to have some fun.”
“Whoa, back that up a bit. I never said I was going to do anything with you, you’re lucky I agreed to this.”
He grins and leans back in his chair, fiddling with a napkin. “You don’t get a choice.”
We lock gazes intensely, almost like a challenge, until the waiter brings us our wine, and we put in our orders.
I sip the sparkling white liquid, and feel myself relaxing.
Chatting with Travis is easy, as much as I hate to admit it.
It has always been so natural with him, and it makes my heart ache.
He’s the missing piece in my heart, he always has been.
That kills me.
“So have you been dating?” I ask, picking at the green beans, even though they are delicious.
He tenses, just slightly. “Couple. Nothing major. What about you, has anyone captured that stubborn heart of yours?”
I stiffen and he notices. “Oh, someone has?”
“It’s a long, boring story,” I shrug.
“Ah ah, I’m intrigued, do tell or I might have to make a scene until you do.”
I shake my head, exhaling and then sipping more wine.
“His name was Dan, we got together a year after you left. I cared about him, and he helped me...cope with things. It was good for so long, and then he just stopped looking at me. You don’t realize how much you take someone looking at you for granted until they aren’t anymore.
I found out he was cheating on me, and when I confronted him, he told me he was with her and had been for six months.
It crushed me, mostly because of his betrayal but partly because.
..well...I didn’t even know and he was with her for so long. I felt stupid.”
Travis stares at me for a long moment, his gaze unreadable, finally he says, “He’s a fucking idiot.”
I snort a laugh. “Yes, I could have told you that.”
“To cheat on a girl as beautiful as you, he’s stupid.”
I swallow. “Maybe I just wasn’t interesting enough. I mean, I was going through so much...”
“Look at me.”
His voice is firm, and when I look up, his eyes lock with mine. “There is never, not ever, an excuse to do something like that. If he didn’t want to be with you, he didn’t have to be. He made a choice, and that choice isn’t on you, kid.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I guess.”
He gently slams a fist on the table. “Fuck him anyway, his loss is my gain.”
I raise my brows. “I’m sure you have a lineup of girls, Travis, that are far hotter than me.”
“Is that what you think men really want?”
I raise a brow. “Are you going to tell me it isn’t?”
“Yes, in fact, I am. I have had enough women, and do I regret some of it? Yes, but they weren’t all hot models. Women are beautiful for what’s inside, not what’s outside. You are beautiful, it radiates off you. It’s not all about looks, Violet.”
My heart skips a beat.
“So you are saying I’m ugly, but that’s okay because I’m beautiful on the inside?”
He laughs and leans over the table, catching my chin in his hand and making my breath hitch. “I’m saying you are beautiful on the outside and the inside, and that is a rare combination.”
“Well, if this was your game plan to make me stay, I suppose you’re doing okay,” I tease lightly.
He releases me, clapping his hands together. “Oh, we’re only just getting started. Now, it’s time for some fun.”
I blink and then shake my head. “No way, I don’t trust you at all. You are a dangerous man, Travis Phoenix.”
“It’s that, or I kiss you again. Do you want your face all over the internet tomorrow?”
I scowl at him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously, let’s go.”
He stands and gives me no choice but to stand with him. The bar has come to life a little more now, and when I realize he is leading me to the jukebox in the corner, I dig my heels in. That doesn’t stop him, he pulls me over and then comes to a stop when we reach it.
“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s a no,” I mutter, but he ignores me. He flicks through the songs, and I continue to glare at him, which he doesn’t notice. He pulls out two microphones from the cabinet next to it, and plugs them in, then the song begins and he stares at me with a wide grin.
“Really Travis,” I whisper hiss. “Mr. Bombastic?”
He winks and turns to face all the people watching. The women aren’t screaming because they have been threatened not to, but their faces say it all. There are phones everywhere, and I know we’re going to be the talk of the internet again tomorrow.
I press my lips together.
Travis starts singing the song in a husky, deep voice. Everything inside me turns to mush. I know how much I am in love with Travis Phoenix, I have always known it, but when he sings, my entire world stops.
I thought I’d forgotten this part of him, the way Travis could overtake a room with nothing but a challenge and a grin, how he could drag me right out of myself and into whatever madness he decided was next. I’d spent years pretending I was immune to it. I’d spent years lying.
The air in the bar has changed, electric and predatory, everyone watching for a trainwreck or a miracle, or like this is some sort of romantic movie they’re about to see the ending to.
Travis leans in, his voice scraping velvet, “You’re not getting out of this, Mischief.
Sing with me, or I kiss you again.” He says it just loud enough for the nearest table to make a swooning sound.
I roll my eyes and snatch the microphone from his hand. “You’re such a child, Phoenix.”
His lips curl. “Takes one to know one.”
God, this song. I know why he picked it. The lyrics are burned into my bones; it was always our favorite, and we have sung it a thousand times, the two of us howling into hairbrushes. I shake off the memory that feels like a lifetime ago and start singing.
If it wasn’t for the wine, I absolutely would not be doing this.
I expect humiliation, maybe even heckling.
But the bar slips away when I see the look on Travis’s face, somewhere between awe and nostalgia and a hunger that nearly detonates me from the inside out.
He finds the harmony right on cue, and for the first time since everything went to hell, it’s easy, effortless, like we’ve never spent a day apart.
The way our voices mesh, clash, blend—nothing has ever come close.
The crowd is into it, roaring, clapping, and howling, but the only thing I can focus on is the arc of his cheek as he grins at me. My hands tremble even as I try to command the room, and a part of me hates him for how badly I still want this. Want him.
We go into the next song, “Ex’s and Oh’s,” because why not lean right into the ironies, and I nearly blow out the microphone on the first line.
Travis throws his head back, howls with laughter, and dives in.
Each chorus is louder, messier, angrier, and the old wounds come bleeding up with every note.
By the bridge, my voice cracks and I feel myself unravelling.
I can’t take it.
It’s like suddenly, I can’t breathe.