Chapter 6
PHOENIX
She’s magnificent when she thinks she’s holding all the cards, absolutely radiant in that sweet, poisonous delusion. I’ve let her wear the crown tonight. Let her believe the power was hers. Every calculated step, every cruel jab—I fed it.
That mask, that mouth, the pure conviction in her voice when she delivered what she thought was the final blow—it was almost adorable, like watching a kitten bare its teeth, convinced it was a lion.
Fierce.
Beautiful.
But so off the mark.
She ripped the mask away like it was the climax of a story she thought she was writing, as if she was revealing some devastating truth that would destroy me.
And yeah, her voice was all pride and fire, but underneath that?
I heard it. I fucking felt it. Her pain.
That raw, hollow ache wrapped in false bravado.
The kind of agony that cracks ribs from the inside.
I know that pain intimately.
I’ve been drowning in it for years.
“Happy fucking Halloween, Phoenix,” she said, thinking she was closing the door on me.
God, she has no idea.
I let the silence stretch between us like a second skin. I let her sit in it, squirm in it, and try to figure out why I’m not crumbling the way she expected. But why would I crumble? Why would I lash out or fall to pieces when I’ve been dreaming of this moment since the day I lost her?
Eventually, I reach for my jacket, letting her keep her little fantasy for a few seconds longer.
When I take a step toward her, I swear my cock gets harder.
Because this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
Now I get to drop my own mask and peel away the golden-boy quarterback act, the one she left behind, and show her who’s really been waiting for her all these years.
I reach into my coat pocket, and the second she sees the envelope, I hear it. That tiny, involuntary hitch in her breath. That beautiful sound that tells me her world just tilted off its axis.
Realization washes over her slowly, starting in her eyes—those perfect golden eyes that used to look at me like I hung the stars. Her skin begins to bloom with that flush she gets when anger and confusion start slipping into fear, and maybe I shouldn’t love it, but I do.
She’s exquisite like this.
I’ve watched her from the shadows. I’ve seen the way her jaw tightens when she’s angry and the grief she tries to hide behind that fake smile. God, the way her fists clench when she’s seconds from tearing the whole world apart—it does something to me. It always has. It’s that fire… that fury.
But what I’ve never really seen is her happiness—the kind that sets her glowing from the inside out.
I’ve watched clueless fucks touch her like she was a thing to be used, not a force to be worshipped. Every time she kissed lips that didn’t belong to me or let hands that weren’t mine touch her delicate skin, I bled for it.
I let it happen, year after year, because that was the price I had to pay. It was my penance for destroying the only good thing I ever had.
I accepted the pain, and I never looked away. Even when it broke me, I kept watching.
But now she’s right here. She’s inches away, and I swear I’ll never let another man near her again. That version of her life is over, and she’s not walking out of this room the same girl who walked in.
Jesus, if I could bottle the look on her face right now and inject it directly into my veins, I would.
I’d fucking overdose on it with a grin on my face and her name on my lips.
Because watching her realize she never escaped me, that she’s still mine in every way that matters, is the only thing that’s kept me together for the last ten years.
“You remember this one, right?” I say, flipping the envelope toward her like it’s some fucked-up medal I’ve been waiting a decade to present her with.
“This was year four. You were so wine-drunk that night, you misspelled my name twice and scratched it out until the ink tore the paper. But you still got it right in the end, didn’t you, baby?
” She goes still, her breath stalling like I just cracked open a part of her she thought no one would ever see.
“I’ve read them all, copied every single letter, and slept with them right beside my pillow.
I traced your handwriting with my fingers until I didn’t need to see them anymore because I already knew them by heart. ”
She says nothing, but the silence is louder than any scream.
This is good. It needs to sink in.
She needs to understand what she’s walking into.
“You’ve spent so much time trying to forget me, but you never could. Instead, you made a home for me inside your hell, and I moved in. You just never knew it.”
I can feel the heat pouring off her through that fucking dress, and it’s making me feral.
I don’t need to imagine what’s underneath.
I’ve already seen her stripped bare and memorized her long before tonight.
I know her body better than my own. I’ve studied it, obsessing over the curve of her spine, the line of her throat, and the perfect path I’d trace with my tongue from the base of her neck to the top of her ass.
One day.
“No,” she chokes out, her voice cracking. “This isn’t possible. No one knew. I never told anyone… I never—” Her hands shake, and she looks like she’s about ready to scream. “No one knew I wrote those.”
“Except me.”
“I don’t understand,” she says, her golden eyes wild. “How the hell did you—where did you even?—?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions,” I murmur, my gaze locked on hers. “That’s not what you want to know. You want the why .”
“You don’t know anything about me or what I want,” she bites out.
“Baby,” I say, dragging my thumb across her lips like I own the breath caught behind them, “I know everything about you.”
She jerks her face away, those amber eyes flaring with fire again, but I don’t chase the contact. I don’t need to because it’s already too late for her. She just needs time.
“Don’t fucking touch me, Phoenix.”
“Nine letters,” I say softly. “Nine years of bleeding for me on paper. Thinking no one would ever read them. Thinking you were alone with your pain.” I shake my head, just once. “You were never alone, pretty girl.”
She squeezes her eyes shut like she’s trying to block it all out—me, the truth, the gravity of what she’s always felt but never wanted to admit out loud.
“The first year, you were fucking furious. It all poured out of you—rage, hate, every single thing you wanted to scream in my face. You said you wished I had never come into your life and that I ruined everything… that I never should’ve existed.
” Her throat bobs like she’s trying to swallow the memory, trying to bury it somewhere deep, but I’m nowhere near done.
“You couldn’t even bring yourself to write my name the second year.
Just five words: ‘Why did you destroy us?’ That’s all you gave me.
Five words and then nothing. It was like you had nothing left to say, and it tore me apart because I needed more.
I needed to know what you were thinking, what you were feeling, and whether you still thought about me at all.
Those five words left everything open and unfinished. ”
I drag my hand through my hair, remembering the obsession that consumed me after that.
“And you think that would’ve been mercy, right?
Like maybe if you kept it short, if you left it vague, I’d finally be able to let go and move on.
But baby, that question wrecked me. I must’ve read it a thousand times.
” She turns away, but I don’t miss the way her hands tremble, knotted together so tight her knuckles turn white.
“I spent months wondering if that would be the last letter. If you’d found a way to cut me out completely.
The thought of you moving on, of you healing without me—fuck, it was unbearable.
” My voice drops to something raw and desperate, brutal in all of its honesty.
“I needed your pain because it meant you still felt something. Even if it was hatred, it was still something, and I’d rather be your monster than your ghost.”
I draw in a breath, forcing myself to get my shit together because I’ll be damned if I waste this moment by losing control now.
“Year three, you wrote mostly about them .” I gesture toward the door—to the people laughing and drinking below, unaware of the storm above them.
“You listed every vile, despicable thing they did to you in detail. You didn’t hold back, and at the end, you asked why I just stood there like a fucking statue while they destroyed you piece by piece.
Why did I watch it happen and do nothing to stop it?
You said watching me choose my reputation over protecting you was worse than anything they ever did, and that my silence caused you the most pain because you expected it from them but not from me.
” The shame threatens to choke me, but I force the words out because I don’t get to hide from this.
I deserve her wrath. “You said I was the only one who could’ve saved you, and instead, I was the one who broke you. ”
Her shoulders are quivering now, and I can’t tell if she’s about to collapse into sobs or drive her stiletto straight through my throat.
“Year four, this one.” I wave the envelope in my hand.
Yeah, this one. “This is where you wrote about the kiss. You got wasted just to do it, but you did it.” She stiffens, and her eyes scream at me not to go there, but fuck it, I’m going there.
“You said you believed it was real, and for a second, you thought I’d come back to you.
You said how your heart felt like it was going to explode and how you thought all the pain had been worth it if it led to me feeling for you what you felt for me.
But then you saw the phones and heard the laughter, and you knew it was a lie. ”