3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Willow
Phoenix Stone is talking about my lyrics while another woman has her hand on his cock.
He lets her touch him. Of course he does, because Phoenix has never met attention he didn’t want to fuck, snort, drink, or turn into applause.
He sits on the couch across the green room, still wearing the sweat of seventy thousand screaming people, all dark hair, silver rings, and arrogance that should come with a warning label.
His jeans sit low on his hips. His legs are spread in that lazy, cocky way men sit when the entire world has spent too long making room for them.
Damon stands in front of him, talking numbers.
He never stops fucking talking that shit, as if that is the only thing in this world that matters. Streams. Spikes. Engagement. Momentum. Money dressed up as art. Pressure dressed up as success.
Phoenix is loud enough to hear from this side of the room when the brunette tilts her pretty head and asks, “What did she mean by ache?”
She. As if the girl who wrote the song is not standing twelve feet away with ink on her fingers and a stupid heart trying to crawl its way out through her ribs.
Phoenix lifts his beer, takes a slow swallow, then grins at her over the rim.
“Ache is the part people pretend they don’t want,” he says, voice rough from the show and lazy with all that effortless charm. “It’s the part that gets under your skin. The part that makes you sing something back even when it hurts.”
The brunette blinks at him as if he just handed her the meaning of life with his cock still hard under her palm.
Phoenix’s gaze flicks across the room to me before drifting back to the brunette as she continues to stroke him through his jeans.
Then he says, “That line tonight. If you leave me bleeding, don’t call it love.” He taps two fingers against his chest, right over his heart, as if the words belong there. “That’s ache. It sounds pretty until it cuts your throat.”
My fingers tighten around my glass.
That’s my line. My lyrics. The song I wrote at two in the morning with my knees pulled up to my chest and his name sitting behind my teeth so hard it almost cracked them.
The one I should never have handed over to that arrogant asshole.
The one I did hand over because I am a fucking idiot with a notebook and a long history of giving Phoenix Stone the sharpest parts of me.
Now he talks about it as if he found it lying around backstage between empty bottles and bad decisions.
As if I did not bleed first so that he could sing pretty later.
The brunette giggles into his neck. “God, you’re so deep and wounded.”
I nearly choke on my drink.
Deep. Phoenix is deep the way a grave is deep. Pretty from the top if you don’t think too hard about what is rotting underneath.
He smirks.
The bastard gets called wounded by women who have never watched him bleed. They see the tattoos, the voice, the mouth, the stage lights turning him into something holy and filthy and they think they know him.
They don’t. They only know the myth.
I know the mess. I know the boy who once sat under a tree with a battered guitar and grass stains on his jeans, looking at my lyrics as if they were something precious instead of something he could sell out a stadium with one day.
I know the boy who told me I was the talented one.
The boy who said he would be shit without me.
I miss that boy sometimes.
That’s the pathetic part. Not because he is gone exactly, but because he is still right there, sitting across the room with a woman’s hand on him and an ego big enough to block out the sun.
He has turned himself into a brand with a heartbeat. A pretty disaster with a record deal. A walking bad decision everyone wants to survive just long enough to brag about later.
I look down at my drink and remind myself of the facts because facts are cleaner than feelings, and feelings are embarrassing little traitors that should be locked in a basement and denied water.
This is the job, I remind myself. I write songs. Phoenix sings them. Damon sells them. And crowds scream them.
I have no right to hurt. None.
Because Phoenix is not mine. He has never been mine in any way that matters. I’m not his girlfriend. I’m not his almost or his dirty little secret.
I’m just the girl who hands him lyrics and watches him sing them while everyone claps and tells him he is so fucking special.
Across the room, Cruz is leaning against the bar with two women angled towards him.
Cruz doesn’t flirt. He hunts slowly, calls it conversation, then fucks a different woman or two every night as if commitment is a disease and he was born vaccinated.
One woman is touching his arm. The other is laughing too hard. Cruz could read a grocery list in that voice and girls would still end up wet.
He catches me watching and tips his glass. “Careful, Songbird. Stare any harder and I’ll start believing you’ve finally come to your senses.”
I arch a brow. “If I ever come to my senses, Cruz, you’ll be the first thing I avoid.”
His grin sharpens.
Jax barks out a laugh from near the snack table, shirtless, sweaty, and shoving pretzels into his mouth while ignoring the three women waiting for him to turn around and give them a reason to fuck up their lives. “Fuck, I love when Willow starts swinging.”
“I’m barely stretching,” I say.
Jax points a pretzel at me. “That’s what makes it terrifying.”
I let my gaze drift, stupidly, traitorously, back to Phoenix.
His eyes are on me. Not on the brunette. For half a second, the room pulls tight between us.
Then the brunette whispers something in his ear and his mouth curves. His hand slides over her thigh, possessive and lazy, and whatever softness almost existed gets buried beneath a performance with tits.
Cruz follows my stare and makes a low sound. “You know Phoenix is a dick, Wills.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, lifting my drink.
I swallow the hit and turn it into a smile with teeth.
Jax strolls over, still shirtless, chewing his pretzels. The three women who were waiting for his attention follow him over. They stand there behind him, awkward and pretty, holding their drinks and smiling.
Jax points a pretzel at me. “You got any lyrics about fuckheads with God complexes and small brains?”
I glance at Phoenix, then back to Jax. “Enough for a whole damn album.”
Jax grins. “Good. Make the chorus catchy. Men with God complexes love singing about themselves.”
“Do they?”
“Absolutely. It’s how they pray.”
I take a slow sip of my drink. “That explains Phoenix.”
Jax snorts. “Phoenix doesn’t have a God complex.”
I raise my brows.
“He has a fucking God subscription,” Jax says. “Monthly premium ego package, no cancellation option.”
The woman behind him giggles too loudly.
Jax turns his head slightly. “See? She gets it.”
“I think she just wants you to turn around,” I say.
A smirk flickers across his face. “Probably. I’m painfully wanted. It’s a burden.”
“Tragic.”
“Devastating.” He points the pretzel at me again. “Good thing we keep you around, Wills. Someone has to write pretty words about all our emotional baggage.”
Jax’s grin stays easy, all reckless charm and no idea he has just stepped on something bruised.
I realize he is teasing. I understand he doesn’t mean it the way it comes across. Still, the words scrape.
This is why they keep me around. For the songs. For the way I can turn their fucked-up lives into something people want to scream back at them.
The band needs lyrics. Damon needs a product. The label needs a fresh wound to slap on vinyl and sell in three limited-edition colors. Phoenix needs my songs.
None of them need the girl who wrote them, though.
Jax, oblivious to the little bit of damage he has just done, turns back to the women behind him and gives them a grin made for trouble. “Right, ladies. Which one of you wants to tell me I’m pretty first, and which one wants to lie and say she came back here for the music?”
One of them blushes. The other bites her lip. He walks them back towards the couch.
Jett appears beside me as I reach for another drink. He materializes from shadows and judgment.
Where his twin, Jax, is noise and impulse, Jett is the aftermath. The brother who sees the broken glass before anyone hears it fall.
His gaze drop to my hand. Then lifts to my face. “Have you eaten?”
I force a bored look. “That’s a rude question.”
Jett does not smile. “Have you?”
“Are you checking on me or judging me?”
“Both.”
I huff a laugh that doesn’t quite make it out properly. “Helpful.”
“You know what happened last time, Wills.”
My stomach tightens. I’m aware that my body sometimes forgets it needs food and rest instead of being a machine for lyrics, deadlines, and men with God complexes.
“I’m fine, Jett.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Well it’s the only answer you’re going to get.”
His eyes stay on me, steady and far too gentle for a room this ugly. “Willow.”
I hate the way he says my name in his quiet voice because it sounds too much like concern. I would rather be a bitch than a wound with eyeliner on.
“I ate earlier,” I lie.
Jett holds my gaze for another moment, long enough for me to realize he knows it’s bullshit.
Damon ruins the moment with perfect timing and a five-thousand-dollar suit.
“Willow.”
I look up.
His smile is so polished I’m sure he practices it in a mirror between profit margins and soulless phone calls. “Can I borrow you for a moment?”
I already have a notion of what he wants. It is always the same thing with him.
“Sure,” I say.
He guides me away from the chairs, away from the guys and their little collection of backstage hookups with lip gloss and eye-liner. His hand barely touches my elbow, but somehow it still makes me feel handled.
That’s Damon for you. He never grabs, just directs. Men in power love making control look polite.
Near the wall of black road cases, he turns to me. “The label wants the new album moving faster.”
I stare at him.
“They want demos,” he adds.
“They always want demos.”