2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Phoenix
Present Day
The crowd screams my name, and it is the best sound in the whole fucking world.
Better than whiskey burning down my throat or a woman’s nails carving half-moons into my back. Better than the first drag of something illegal when the night is too loud and my head is too full.
Thousands of voices.
One name.
Mine.
Phoenix.
Phoenix.
Phoenix.
It rolls through the stadium in a violent wave, shaking the floor beneath my boots, crawling up my legs until my whole body hums with it.
I stand at the edge of the stage with my guitar strapped across my chest, one hand curled around the neck, the other wrapped around the mic stand. Sweat slicks the back of my neck and my pulse pounds hard enough to turn my blood into noise.
The air reeks of smoke machines, spilled beer, hot metal, expensive perfume, and bad decisions waiting for me after the show.
My favorite kind of air.
Behind me, Jax spins one drumstick between his fingers, shirt half unbuttoned, grin already feral. The reckless bastard looks born for noise. Messy dark hair, tattooed arms, shoulders made for breaking drumheads and possibly laws.
His twin stands beside him in silence, bass hanging low, face unreadable.
Jett doesn’t grin at the crowd, he just watches it. Studies it.
He is the kind of guy who sees too much and says too little, which is annoying as shit when he looks at me as if I am one bad choice away from proving him right.
Cruz rolls his shoulders on my other side, fingers sliding over the neck of his guitar—his rings flashing under the stage glow. He gives the crowd a filthy grin, the kind that makes half the women out there think he is about to ruin them personally.
Cruz has never meant a damn thing personally in his life.
That is his charm. That is also why someone will probably stab him one day.
The man fucks through women the way other people work through cigarettes. Uses them, ruins them, forgets their names before they have even found their underwear. He says love is for men who enjoy being leashed and settling down is just a prettier way to say buried alive.
Cruz would rather choke on his own guitar pick than belong to one woman. Or so he says.
The opening tune rumbles through the speakers, low and dirty, vibrating through the stage as the crowd loses its mind.
Bright lights explode overhead as the music hits the first beat, white and gold and blinding enough to turn the whole stadium into a living, screaming thing.
The scream of the crowd hits me straight in the chest.
And fuck, there it is. That thing no drug has ever managed to beat. That violent, beautiful, filthy rush of being wanted by people who don’t know me well enough to hate me.
They know the voice, the hair, the mouth, the tattoos, and the swagger. They know the songs that cut them open and the version of me that stands under lights and makes pain sound pretty.
But they don’t know the boy underneath.
Good. The boy underneath is a pathetic little thing with his father’s voice still rotting in his head and old shame sitting in his bones.
The man onstage is untouchable.
I raise one hand and the stadium explodes.
The sound punches through me so hard my ribs feel too small to hold it. Thousands of people scream as if I’m something worth losing their minds over and I let them. I fucking let them because this is the only place I know how to be worshipped without being known.
I pluck the mic from the stand and move forward, heading for the edge of the stage with my guitar heavy against my chest and the lights burning hot against my skin.
Girls scream from the barricade. Hands reach for me. Signs bounce in the front row. Someone has my name painted across her big tits in glitter, her tiny shirt doing sweet fuck all to cover it. Someone else is crying before I have even got there.
I feed off it. Every hungry gaze and outstretched hand. Every mouth forming my name as if it tastes good. Every girl staring at me as if I am the bad decision she came here hoping to make.
I take it all and let it fill the hollow places I pretend do not exist.
Being wanted feels better than breathing.
Breathing only keeps you alive.
This makes living worth the damage.
Jax smashes into the drums behind me, the beat slamming through my spine hard enough to rattle bone.
Jett comes in next, his bassline dragging the song lower, dirtier, giving all that pretty pain something ugly to crawl through. Cruz’s guitar screams across the top of it and the crowd surges forward as if the music has wrapped a hand around their throats and pulled.
The first line of the chorus leaves my mouth. The stadium sings it back and my grin spreads slowly.
Yeah. That’s it.
Willow’s words in my mouth. My voice carrying them. Their pain becoming mine for three and a half minutes before it turns into applause, money, sweat, and girls screaming themselves hoarse for a man who didn’t even bleed enough to write the song.
The crowd gets louder. I could tell them the world was ending and half of them would ask if I wanted company while it burned.
Fuck yeah. The more company, the better.
I play to the front row because I know exactly what it does.
I shift closer, mic hot in my hand, sweat sliding down my throat as the lights burn across my skin.
I let my eyes drag over the girls pressed against the barricade, slow enough to make them believe I see them.
Slow enough to make them think this moment belongs to them.
One blonde in a tiny black shirt reaches for me with both hands, lips parted. Beautiful mouth. The kind I could do so much with after this show. Her eyes are glossy with want.
I know that look.
I live off that look.
I step closer.
Security stiffens at the barricade.
I grin down at her and drop into the next line as if I wrote it for her.
But I didn’t write it. Willow did. She wrote the wound. I just make it bleed in public.
The blonde screams when I crouch near the edge of the stage, her whole body pushing forward as if three more inches of space might change her life. Her fingers brush my wrist, quick and desperate, and her face crumples with it, as if touching my skin means she has touched something real.
Poor girl. There is nothing real about me under these lights.
Another girl grabs at my boot. Someone yells that she fucking loves me.
I love that she thinks she does. Love is easy from a distance. It gets ugly up close. Up close, love sees the bad parts. The selfish parts and the rot under the grin. The places where a man stops being a fantasy and starts being a problem with a pretty mouth.
I stand again, body slick with sweat, the crowd roaring my name so loud and faces tilted up at me as if I have something sacred to give them.
I don’t. All I have is a voice, a guitar, a filthy smile, and enough damage to make people mistake me for art.
The whole place turns holy and obscene. This is a church for the emotionally unstable. And I am their favourite sin.
The verse builds.
Jax drives it harder, smashing into the drums.
Cruz stalks across his side of the stage, all loose hips, sharp grin, and bad intentions, throwing a wink at a group of girls who immediately go rabid. Knowing Cruz, he will have a handful of them tonight, all falling over him, begging for a turn to be the girl he forgets before sunrise.
Jett stays back in the shadows, head tipped down, bass steady, eyes lifting every now and then. He probably sees me looking for her the way I always do.
I hate that.
Not only that, I hate that I do it at all. But I do it anyway.
My eyes cut to stage left and there she is.
Willow Hart. Black dress. Big boots. Notebook pressed against her chest. Standing half in shadow as if she is not the reason this whole fucking stadium is screaming.
Her honey-brown hair falls loose around her shoulders, soft under the side-stage lights.
Her eyes are on me, calm, dark brown and unreadable.
She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even smile at me as if I hung the moon.
She’s not impressed by the noise, the lights, the smoke, or the women reaching for me.
She just stands there watching. Grounding me without even realising it.
The second I see her, something inside my chest steadies. The way it always does. That pisses me off more than it should.
I am twenty-three years old. I have sold out stadiums, trashed hotel rooms, had women wait outside my door in lingerie, fucked so many I have lost count, been so high I did not know which city I was in, and still, one glance from Willow Hart makes the stage feel less insane.
Makes me feel less insane.
So I do the only thing I know how to do with anything that gets too close. I turn it louder. I sing harder. Not for the crowd. For fucking her. Which is stupid as shit, because the crowd is screaming my name and Willow is probably standing there making notes about the second verse.
That’s Willow. Everyone else hears the song. She hears every place I get it wrong.
The crowd screams the chorus back at me. Thousands of voices throwing Willow’s words into the air until they don’t sound secret anymore.
I drag my mouth close to the mic and let the last line tear out of me.
Not pretty.
Not clean.
Raw enough to hurt.
The stadium shouts it back. Their pain. Her words. My voice.
That has always been the trick.
Willow gives me the heart. I give it a body, sweat, smoke and teeth.
The song crashes to an end with Jax murdering the final beat, Cruz holding the last guitar note until it bends into feedback, and me standing centre stage, head tipped back, sweat sliding down my spine beneath my shirt.
For one second, there is silence.
One sharp, impossible second where the whole stadium hangs there, breath caught, lights burning, smoke curling around my boots.
Then the place comes apart.
I laugh into the mic. “Fuck, I love you guys.”
They scream again. Louder. Needier.
So I take every scream. Every girl at the barricade who thinks she wants the real me, when the real me would only disappoint her by morning.
I take all of it.