8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Phoenix
Damon comes down to collect us himself, which is how I know the night is already fucked before it has even put on lipstick.
It’s an industry party, which means expensive perfume, cheap souls, and a rooftop full of people who think that wearing a suit makes their bullshit sound more intelligent. Damon says we can’t skip it because the label executives will be there.
Label executives.
In other words, soft-handed fuckers with capped teeth and dead eyes, turning my voice into money and counting our songs as quarterly profits.
The elevator doors open to reveal Damon wearing a black suit with murder tucked neatly behind his eyes. He does polished panic with a clean shave and a sharp collar.
Jax looks him up and down. “You didn’t need to come down. We could have found our own way up.”
Damon steps aside allowing us to get in. “I know what happens when you find your own way anywhere.”
Cruz grins, leaning against the mirrored wall. “That sounds unfairly personal.”
“It’s based on evidence.” Damon hits the button for the rooftop level and turns as the doors close, pinning us all with that manager stare.
“Listen carefully, because I am only saying this once. Label executives will be up there. Radio people. Streaming people. Journalists who still think being invited somewhere makes them important. You just smile, shake hands, and you do not insult anyone important.”
“Define important,” Jax says.
“Anyone who can make my life harder.”
Jett looks at Damon with his quiet, deadpan expression. “That’s most people.”
“Exactly,” Damon says, pointing at him.
“What about sex in a bathroom?” Cruz asks while checking his reflection in the mirrored wall.
Damon doesn’t blink. “Use the fucking lock this time.”
“Look at you,” Cruz says. “Managing the band and keeping my cock out of the headlines.”
Jax frowns. “So, bathroom sex is allowed?”
“It’s not encouraged.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Damon’s stare cuts to him. “No public scandals. No fights. No threatening photographers, and no telling executives their children look weird when they shove a photo in your face.”
Then his gaze lands on me, because apparently, in an elevator full of walking bad decisions, I am still the headline act.
“The kid looked weird,” I say, leaning against the elevator wall. “Anything else, Dad?”
“Yes, Phoenix,” Damon says. “Try not to call anyone at the label an asshole.”
“You want me to lie at an industry event? That feels off-brand.”
“I want you to smile and shut the fuck up.”
“What if they are an asshole?”
“Especially then, Phoenix.” Damon’s eyes narrow. “You will survive ninety minutes without telling the truth.”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Honesty is part of my charm.”
“No,” he says. “Your face and singing voice are part of your charm. Your mouth is a fucking liability.”
I grin. “Funny. That’s not what most people say about my mouth.”
Damon’s mouth tightens. “You are not here to be yourself. That goes for all of you.”
The elevator climbs, dragging us toward a room full of fake smiles, expensive liquor, and people pretending they aren’t desperate to stand close to the thing they plan to sell.
Me.
I hate these parties but I love them even more. Because the second those doors open, every suit and every pretty little wannabe on that rooftop remembers exactly who the fuck I am.
The elevator doors open on the rooftop and the party is already doing what industry parties do best. Lying in good lighting.
Black marble. Glass walls. Gold everywhere, as if enough shine could make rich people appear less dead behind the eyes.
Waiters drift between bodies with trays of champagne no one is drinking for the taste.
Executives laugh too loudly. Journalists hover at the edges, waiting for someone famous to bleed in a direction they can turn into front-page news.
And fuck me, haven’t I been generous with the scandals?
A woman in a silver dress looks up first. Then another.
This is the part I like. Not because I need it. Fuck that. Need is for people who wait by the phone and call it hope.
I like the way a room gives itself away before anyone opens their mouth. Conversation thins. Stares sharpen. Smiles come next, greedy and dressed up as polite, because people are at their most pathetic when they pretend they don’t want anything.
Women straighten.
Men notice them straightening and pretend they don’t, which is almost funny. Power always looks cleaner on those who think they still have it.
Executives lift their glasses with that smug little sense of ownership in their eyes. As if a logo on the back of our records gives them rights to the voice tearing out of my throat.
Cute.
They own the paperwork, the signatures, and the clauses Damon pretends I give a fuck about.
But I own the air.
Before Damon even finishes muttering, “Remember, charming,” a photographer near the bar raises his camera.
I give the room a smirk. The sexy one women pretend they are too smart for, right before their common sense hits the floor along with their panties.
“Phoenix,” someone calls.
A woman touches my arm before I take five steps.
Blonde, silver dress, big tits spilling out, red mouth, with a laugh already waiting for whatever ugly thing I decide to make sound pretty.
Another woman appears on my other side, her hand sliding onto my shoulder as she offers a compliment about the last tour.
I fucking let them tell me whatever they want.
Being wanted is easy. Honest, in its own dirty little way.
A hand on my arm. A number slipped into my pocket.
A woman leaning close enough that her breath warms my neck as she tells me she followed the band since the early days.
Which means she learnt my name after we got famous and thinks nostalgia will look good with her mouth around my cock.
I let them look. Let them touch. Let them think they are getting something real, because I am bored enough to make the lie feel expensive.
Charming. Yeah, I fucking nailed it.
Damon moves through the room with his polished manager’s smile, shaking hands and pretending none of us are human enough to embarrass him. Jax and Jett are already near a cluster of women and two men wearing label lanyards.
Cruz slips into a group of models before the first glass of champagne reaches his hand. Cruz treats beautiful women like hotel minibars. Expensive, badly behaved, and there for his entertainment if he gets bored enough to open one.
I move through all of it because this is what I’m built for.
Smile. Touch. Laugh. Accept the worship. Let them believe they have seen something real because I looked at them three seconds longer than necessary.
A label executive with a tan too expensive to be natural traps me near the champagne tower and tells me the new single is tracking beautifully.
“What the fuck would you know about beauty?” I ask. “You hear me rip my throat open over a song about bleeding for someone who doesn’t love you back and all you fuckers care about is whether the pain sells.”
He laughs too hard because men with money laugh harder when they worry you might not need them.
“Well, I’m just saying the album has heat,” he says.
I stare at him and let the silence hang long enough to make him sweat.
“Yeah?” I say. “And I’m just saying you wouldn’t know heat if it crawled down your throat and fucked your vocal cords raw.”
His smile slips.
Good.
A woman slides between us with a laugh, saving me from another sentence about market momentum.
Dark hair. Gold dress cut low enough to make subtlety look unemployed.
Tits pushed high, mouth painted red, nails dragging down my forearm as if she is trying to find where the tattoos end and the bad decisions start.
“You were incredible on that tour,” she says.
“I usually am.”
Her smile widens. “Arrogant.”
“More like accurate.”
She laughs and I let her lean in. Let her press her hand to my chest. Let the fucking room see her touch me, because why the hell not.
That’s what they dragged me up here for, isn’t it?
Product. Performance. Proof that Phoenix Stone can stand in a room full of hungry people and still be the one everybody wants to bite.
I know what I am in rooms like this. A prize with a fucking pulse. A mouth people want to hear, kiss, photograph, or own, depending on the person.
I glance around the room to see who is watching and my gaze lands on Willow.
She stands near the bar with a glass in one hand, her hair pinned messily at the back of her head, loose strands falling around her face as if she got tired of being beautiful halfway through.
Her dress is black, fitted, bare-shouldered, and tight enough to make my mouth remember every bad thing it has ever wanted to say to her.
It’s simple, too. No flashy sequins or glitter.
No desperate little look-at-me bullshit.
Just Willow in black, making every other woman in the room seem overdressed and underfucked.
Long black fuck-me boots run up her legs, all filthy leather and sharp heels, turning that simple black dress into something dangerous enough to make my hands itch.
That’s the problem with Willow. She can stand there, holding a drink, looking bored and untouchable in a pair of filthy black boots, and my hands start thinking for me.
On her hips. Under that dress. Dragging it up her thighs until she either slaps the arrogance out of me or says my name because it feels so good.
My cock goes hard in my jeans and it has nothing to do with the woman pressed against my side.
My temper flares when I notice the man beside her.
Memphis, fucking, Cross.
Solo artist. Golden-boy fucker. Pretty voice, pretty face, a pretty little career the label probably keeps in a glass case and jerks off to during strategy meetings.
Sharp jaw. Black shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled to his forearms, all easy confidence and clean hands, standing beside Willow as if he has any right to be that close to her.