4. Chapter Four #2
Not Cruz, standing by the bar with his filthy grin wiped clean for once.
Not Jax, who looks as if he has forgotten how to run his mouth.
Not Jett, observing too carefully from the edge of the room.
Heat blooms across my cheek. The sting crawls under my skin, bright enough to wake up every part of me that had no business being this close to her in the first place.
Slowly, I turn back to Willow.
Her chest is rising hard and her eyes are blazing. Her hand is still half lifted between us, fingers trembling from the slap she had every right to give me.
She is breathing hard, looking at me as if she could tear my throat out with her teeth and still sleep peacefully after.
I touch my tongue to the inside of my cheek.
I should apologise. A decent man would. Fuck, a better man would step back. But I’m neither.
I stare at Willow, with my face burning and half the room staring, and I smirk.
She looks at me for a long second. “Why do you fucking care?”
Because Marcus looked at her and she looked back.
Because I can have a woman’s hand on my cock in front of everyone and still nearly lose my shit the second some roadie with steady eyes asks her if she wants air.
Because I am a selfish hypocrite. The worst fucking kind.
“Because you’re part of the band,” I say, and the second it leaves my mouth, I realize it’s shit. A pathetic coward’s little blanket thrown over something with claws.
Willow goes still. “Part of the band.”
I hate the way she says it. As if she cannot believe I have found a way to make her sound useful and unimportant in the same sentence.
“You know what I mean,” I snap.
“No,” she says. “I fucking don’t.”
Her eyes move over me slowly. The open shirt. The mark from her hand burning across my cheek. The lipstick on my neck while I stand here acting as if Marcus is the one who crossed a line.
For once, she doesn’t look furious. She looks tired. Disappointed. As if she is staring at the man in front of her and trying to find some trace of the boy who used to sit under a tree with a busted guitar
“I don’t even recognise you anymore,” she says.
I smile because that is what I do when something cuts too close. “Then maybe you should stop looking.”
Her face changes. “You’re such an asshole, Phoenix.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You knew that already.”
“No.” Her voice is quieter now and somehow that makes it worse. “I knew you were cocky. That you were selfish when you wanted to be.”
She looks at the room behind me, then back at my face. “But this? This version of you? I don’t know him. I knew the boy under the tree. I don’t know this.”
Something in my chest freezes and I hate her for causing it to.
Willow steps back before I can find something cruel enough to throw between us. She doesn’t storm out or give me the satisfaction of making this loud. She just simply walks away.
She crosses the green room and sits alone near the far wall, away from the couch. Then she pulls out her phone and looks down at the screen as if I have not just stood here and proved every ugly thing she has ever thought about me.
I notice the tight line of her shoulders. The way her thumb moves over her phone. How she makes herself look bored when I know damn well I just put another crack in her.
I turn and move over to the bar.
The room feels too loud now, which is fucking hilarious considering I just stood in front of seventy thousand people and let them scream my name until the whole stadium shook.
But this is different. This noise has edges.
I grab a bottle from the bar and pour too much whiskey into a glass.
“Jesus Christ,” Jax says beside me. “You are a dumb fuck.”
I turn my head. “Want to repeat that?”
Jax leans against the bar, his eyes cutting between me and Willow across the room. Jett is beside her now, talking to her, as if she is something fragile enough to need guarding.
Jax looks back at me. “I said you’re a dumb fuck.”
My fingers tighten around the glass. “Careful.”
“No,” he says. “You just acted like a territorial prick in front of half the crew because a roadie asked Willow if she wanted air.”
“He wanted more than air.”
Jax barks out a laugh. “Of course he fucking did. She’s Willow. Men notice her. Shocking fucking development.”
My jaw tightens so hard I might crack a tooth.
Cruz appears behind Jax with a drink in one hand. “What are we doing?”
I ignore him and take a drink.
“Watching Phoenix shit himself because another man saw Willow has legs and a pulse,” Jax says.
“Ah.” Cruz glances over to Willow. “For what it’s worth Marcus noticing Songbird is not exactly shocking.”
My whole body locks up.
Cruz keeps talking because he has never respected survival as a concept.
“She’s hot. She’s sharp. She looks at men as if she can see every stupid thought in their skulls and decide whether it deserves her attention.
But she’s not some wide-eyed girl who needs you snarling at roadies for her, Phoenix. Willow knows how to handle herself.”
His grin cuts sideways. “Fuck, she’s been handling your ass for years.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I say.
Cruz lifts his glass. “I’m just saying, let her have her fun before you fuck it up completely.”
Jax snorts. “Bit late.”
“Both of you have a lot to say for men who have spent the past hour collecting women like backstage souvenirs.”
“Yeah,” Jax says. “But I don’t march over and piss on the floor when one of them talks to someone else.”
“Classy image,” Cruz says.
“Accurate image,” Jax shoots back.
I drain the whiskey because my hands want something worse than a glass. “You two finished?”
“Not even close,” Jax says. “You don’t get to treat her like band property when someone else sees her.”
“Fuck off, Jax.” I turn on Cruz before Jax can keep digging. “And you can fuck off too. Go get your cock sucked by your little entourage before one of them sobers up and remembers she has standards.”
Cruz’s grin sharpens. “Careful, Phoenix. You keep talking like that and people might realize the big bad frontman is jealous as fuck.”
“I don’t get jealous.”
“Sure,” he says, glancing at Willow again. “You just threaten roadies for breathing near the one woman you actually give a shit about.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what everyone with eyes thinks,” Jax says. “You’re just the only dumb fuck still pretending it’s about the band.”
I look past them to the couch where Cruz’s girls are still waiting for him. One of them is blonde, all bare legs, red lips, and fuck-me confidence, leaning forward as if she has been waiting all night for someone to give her attention.
Fine.
I can do that. Be the one who takes what is offered and never looks back long enough to care what it costs.
Jax and Cruz want to stand there and talk about jealousy as if they know a damn thing about what is crawling under my skin? Fuck them.
I push away from the bar and move past Cruz.
“Phoenix,” Jax warns.
I ignore him.
The blonde looks up as I stop in front of her. Her eyes widen, then heat.
It’s so fucking easy it almost bores me.
“You with him?” I ask, nodding towards Cruz.
Her gaze flicks over my shoulder before coming back to me. “Not officially.”
“Good.” I catch her chin between my fingers and kiss her before she can decide whether that was a question.
It’s not soft or sweet. It’s a dirty little fuck-you to Cruz and Jax because jealous men don’t kiss someone else to prove they are fine. Desperate ones do.
She makes a soft, hungry sound against my mouth and grabs the open front of my shirt.
I kiss her harder. Filthier. Not because I want her more. But because I need everyone watching to believe I do.
I need the room to see the version of me they understand.
The blonde presses closer, her nails scraping down my chest, and I let her because it is easier than looking across the room to see if Willow is watching.
So I give the room what it expects. I give them the frontman. The cocky fuck with a swollen cheek and a girl already melting under his hands.
The blonde clings to me as if I am a bad idea she has been praying for all night. Red lips swollen from my mouth. Eyes glassy. Fingers twisted in my shirt like she can already feel the story she is going to tell tomorrow.
She wants the version of me on the posters. The one who sings pain and fucks like a sin worth confessing.
Fine. I can be him.
I pull back, smirk down at her, and let every ugly piece of me settle into place.
“Come on,” I tell her.
Her smile turns greedy and her hand slides down my stomach as if she already knows where the night is going.
I catch her wrist before she reaches my jeans, not because I am decent, but because I’m done giving this room a show.
I slide my hand around her wrist and start for the door. Because fuck them all.
Fuck their opinions. Fuck Willow for looking at me like she still knows me. And most of all fuck the part of me that stays behind with her anyway, bleeding in the corner.