5. Chapter Five #2
I almost laugh. It would hurt less than wanting to believe him.
“No,” I say. “You remember when it gets you something.”
His gaze lifts and he steps closer. Just enough to make my stupid body notice.
His fingers brush my arm and every nerve under my skin reacts before my pride can tell it to fuck off.
“Wills,” he says.
“Don’t.”
His brows draw together. “Don’t what?”
“This.” I gesture between us, forcing his hand away before it can make me forget how angry I am. “Look at me like you remember who I am, then walk away and be him again.”
His mouth goes hard. “Him.”
“Yes. Him.” My voice cuts sharper than I expect, but it’s good. Let it cut. “The asshole with women reaching for his cock. The one who pretends I’m just part of the band when it suits him. Not after everything, Phoenix.”
Something moves behind his eyes. It’s fast, but then Phoenix does best what he always does to cover the wound, with a smirk.
“You sound jealous, Wills.”
“And you are so insufferable.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
The hallway is too quiet. My heart beats hard enough to piss me off.
His eyes move over my face, lingering from my eyes to my mouth as if he has the right to glance there. As if he is remembering something he has no business taking.
It would be so easy for him to lean in. That’s the worst part. One tilt of his head. One filthy little mistake, dressed up as a kiss.
He has only kissed me once. At a party when we were fifteen. Cheap beer and bad music. His mouth tasted like beer, weed, and the kind of trouble I should have known better than to want.
I have spent eight years pretending I had forgotten it.
But Phoenix looks at my lips as if he knows I didn’t.
Footsteps echo down the hallway and Phoenix’s eyes leave my mouth.
We both turn as a security guard stops a few feet away, one hand pressed to his earpiece.
“Phoenix. There’s a blonde out front. She says her name is Mickey. She says you told her to come by.”
For one second, Phoenix is motionless. The almost-human he was seconds ago disappears so quickly I feel stupid for having seen it at all.
“Yeah,” he says.
And just like that, the boy is gone and in his place stands this asshole, already making room for another girl.
Phoenix walks off with the security guard, swagger in his step and that filthy rockstar skin sliding back over him.
The guys are exactly where I left them and their conversation dies the second I step inside. They glance at me, at the door behind me, before looking back at me.
They know.
Whatever lives between Phoenix and me is too ugly to hide and too fucked up to bury. It follows us into every room, lingers in the air, seeps into the songs, and turns quiet things sharp.
Not one of them has ever said a word to me about it. And right now, that’s the only thing in this room I’m fucking grateful for.
The studio door opens again. Phoenix walks in with the blonde beside him. Tiny skirt. High fuck-me boots. Glossy mouth. Big eyes fixed on him as if he were already a story she plans to tell tomorrow.
Damon knocks on the glass. “Who is that?”
“This is Mickey,” Phoenix says, a cocky smile already in place. “She’s here to watch the magic.” He turns slightly. “Meet the rest of the band. Jax, Wills, Jett, and Cruz over there.”
Damon’s voice sharpens. “Groupies are not permitted in the studio while we are working.”
Phoenix ignores him and walks past us with Mickey beside him.
None of the guys move.
Jax mutters, “For fuck’s sake.”
Damon points toward the hall. “She can wait outside.”
Phoenix barely looks at him. “No.”
He finds a stool in the corner, gestures for Mickey to sit, and then smiles at her.
The blonde smiles back, nervous and thrilled, and I hate that I feel sorry for her. She has no idea she’s not special. She’s just another pretty place for Phoenix to put his cock in tonight or in the next twenty minutes if he gets bored enough.
Damon’s jaw tightens. “Phoenix, I said groupies aren’t allowed in here.”
Phoenix’s gaze flicks to him, bored and cold. “Then don’t call her that.”
“Phoenix, don’t,” Cruz says.
Phoenix looks at him. “Don’t what?”
Jax’s eyes cut to me, then back to him. “Be this much of a dick, man.”
Phoenix lets out a quiet laugh. “Bit late for that.”
Jett leans back into the couch. “I’d say read the fucking room, but apparently you only read screaming chicks and room numbers on hotel key cards.”
Phoenix ignores the guys and their comments.
I can’t do this. There is no way I can sit here and watch him turn himself into someone I barely know just to prove he can.
I stand.
“Well, I’m needed elsewhere.” My voice comes out flat enough to pass for bored, which is lucky, because bored is cleaner than hurt.
“Songbird,” Cruz says.
I keep walking. Out of the studio and into the hall. I pass the vending machine humming in the corner, the stack of black road cases, the half-open office door, and the faint thud of bass still bleeding through the studio walls behind me.
I don’t look back.
By the time I shove through the side exit and reach my car, my hands are shaking.
My apartment is dark when I walk in, except for a thin strip of sunlight leaking through the heavy blinds I have yet to open, cutting the living room into pieces.
It’s small, overpriced, and too quiet. A songwriter’s apartment with notebooks on the coffee table, loose pages on the floor, and numerous mugs in the sink.
I drop my keys into the bowl by the door and kick off my boots.
I cross the room and sink onto the couch.
The silence sits too close. It crawls under my skin, slips behind my ribs, and touches all the places I have spent the day pretending don’t hurt.
I can still see him. That is the shittest part about it. His mouth in the hallway. His eyes on mine. The way he almost looked at me before the blonde with fuck-me boots dragged the rockstar persona back over his face.
Fuck, I miss him.
I press my palms against my thighs and try to breathe through it. Of course, it doesn’t fucking work. Breathing is for people with healthier coping mechanisms and fewer songs written about men who should come with warning labels.
I sit up and open the drawer in the table beside the couch. The little amber bottle of pills rolls toward my fingers as if it has been waiting.
I stare at it for a long time before I tell myself the lie gently. Because gentle lies go down easier.
I’m not falling apart. I’m just taking the edge off. There is a difference, as long as I don’t examine it too closely.
I twist the cap, tip one pill into my palm, and close my fingers around it before I talk myself into being sensible.
I swallow it dry because I cannot be bothered to get water.
My phone rings and Mom’s name lights up the screen at the worst possible moment.
I close my eyes for a moment.
I could ignore it, and I probably should, because Mom has always been too good at hearing what I don’t choose to say.
I answer anyway. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart. How are you?”
I stare at the ceiling. “Fine.”
The pause on the other end tells me she doesn’t buy it.
“You still haven’t told me about the tour,” she says gently. “How was it?”
I let my head sink back against the couch and wait for the pill to take the sharp edges off the room.
“It was amazing,” I lie, because this is the version she gets.
“That’s wonderful. I saw a clip online. The crowd was singing so loudly. All those people singing your words, Willow..”
My throat tightens.
“They were loud.”
“You must be so proud.”
“I am,” I lie.
“And Phoenix? How is he?”
There it is. His name in my mother’s voice, soft with old affection. She still thinks of the boy who sat at our kitchen table, eating toast, his hair too long and his eyes too guarded, looking at me as if I were the only person in the world who made sense.
She is unaware of the man he has become or perhaps she is and cherishes the past so dearly that she cannot truly see him.
Dad does. He sees more than Mom lets herself see. Every time I go home, he finds a quiet way to warn me that Phoenix’s ego will drag him down one day. He never has to say the rest out loud for me to hear it. Stay clear of the wreckage, Willow. Don’t stand close enough for him to take you with him.
“He’s fine,” I say. “You know how he is, Mom.”
She is quiet for a moment. “And you’re happy, Willow?”
The pill begins to kick in.
“Yes, I’m happy, Mom.”
She lets out a breath and the relief in it makes me hate myself. “Good. That’s all I ever want for you, sweetie.”
“Me too,” I say, and the lie slips out so easily it makes me feel like shit.
We’ve barely spoken since I got back. I’ve been meaning to call her properly, to sit still long enough to be someone’s daughter instead of a voice with excuses, but I keep putting it off.
That’s the thing about guilt. It doesn’t stop you from being awful. It just sits there, watching as you do it.
“Well, I have to go,” I say, staring at the ceiling. “Someone is waving at me to hurry up.”
“Okay,” Mom says. “Love you.”
“Love you too, Mom. Say hi to Dad for me.”
After I hang up, I lie back on the couch with my phone still in my hand, and the apartment is too quiet around me.
The pill keeps working, sanding down the sharpest edges until everything feels farther away than it should.
My body starts to soften, not in surrender, but in the awful, boneless way something does when it has been held together too long.
I stare at the ceiling and wonder how much more of myself I can hand over before there is nothing left under my skin but lyrics, caffeine and all the shit I never say out loud.
Another song and page torn out of me. Another piece of my chest dressed up in a melody so the boys can stand beneath hot lights and make strangers scream for pain that was never theirs.
No one sees that part. Me afterward, sitting in the dark with ink on my fingers and a hollow ache behind my ribs, emptying myself for men who get applause for singing the things that nearly killed me to write.
And for the first time, the thought comes to me: What would happen if I stopped?