11. Chapter Eleven #2
But Cruz doesn’t move.
I get up before anyone can look at me. But nobody notices because Phoenix and Cruz are too busy staring each other down, and Damon is still snapping through the glass as if volume could stitch the band back together.
My bag is beside the couch. I slip my hand into the front pocket while nobody is looking, my fingers finding what they want without needing to see. The tiny pill shape against my fingertips and that ugly little pulse of relief that beats before I’ve even taken anything.
I hate the way my body now reaches for it before I can tell myself to stop. One has turned into a few, spaced throughout the day in quiet little lies I tell myself so I can keep standing. Morning. Afternoon. Whenever my skin gets too tight and my heart starts making too much noise.
Every negative emotion has begun to come with the same answer. Swallow something. Make it quieter.
I keep my face turned away while the guys are still at each other’s throats, then press the pill onto my tongue and grab my water bottle.
One drink.
One swallow.
It’s simple enough to appear innocent.
I chase it with more water until there is nothing left but the cool slide down my chest and the waiting. That small, pathetic part of me listens for the moment my skin stops being too tight, when the room loses its teeth and my heart finally shuts the fuck up.
Phoenix storms out of the room. “Go fuck yourself, Cruz.”
The door slams behind him, hard enough to crack through the studio.
Cruz looks at the door.
Jax looks at his drums.
Jett looks at nothing.
And I sit back down, anticipating the chemical stimulus to diminish my sense of feeling that I don’t want to have anymore.
One week later and the album’s first single launches.
I’ve stayed away from the studio since that fight in the recording booth.
Not because I wanted to. I stayed away because I couldn’t stand being the reason the guys were looking at each other with clenched jaws and trailing off mid-sentence.
The album is due in a month. Tracks need to be finished.
Vocals need to be cleaned up. The machine doesn’t stop grinding just because Phoenix Stone fucked me in a storage room and then decided eye contact was too intimate.
So I gave them space.
A few texts came through during the week. Jax and Cruz sent memes and shitty jokes, dressed up as check-ins. Jett asked if I was okay and somehow I could feel the worry beneath his words.
Phoenix gave me nothing. Not even the bare minimum of checking whether I was still alive. No half-drunk apology at two in the morning. Not even a stupid dot-dot-dot that vanished before he could turn it into another excuse.
Then Damon texted me, telling me I had to be here tonight.
Not asked. Fucking told. Because the new single hits radio tomorrow and lands on streaming sites, and apparently that means I need to stand in a room full of strangers while everyone applauds.
The label has hired a private event space.
Photographers crowd around the backdrop.
Executives drift through the room, wearing expensive watches and speaking in voices trained to make bullshit sound important.
Music journalists hold recorders to their chests, assistants move with clipboards, and trays of champagne slide between bodies.
The new single plays overhead for the tenth time in an hour.
My words. Phoenix’s voice, so polished that people can now clap for it.
Everyone keeps congratulating the band. They clap Damon on the shoulder and tell him the single has a darker, sexier tone and represents a true progression in the band’s music.
Phoenix stands near the media wall with Jax on one side and Cruz and Jett on the other. All four of them lit by camera flashes.
Jax looks every inch the trouble he is, with messy hair, an open jacket, and a grin that should probably come with a warning label.
Jett stands beside him in darker clothes, wearing the same lethal mouth with half the effort, which somehow makes it more dangerous because he doesn’t need the room to know it.
Cruz has the guitar-hero brooding down to a science. All hard jaw, dark eyes, and rolled sleeves.
They look obscene together. Every girl’s fantasy lined up against a media wall. All pretty mouths, ruined edges, and camera-ready smiles.
And then there is Phoenix. His black shirt clings to him in all the right places, sleeves shoved up, tattoos visible, lip ring glinting with every camera flash. Beautiful. Arrogant. Untouchable. A bad idea with cheekbones.
He laughs at a question from a reporter, tips his head back, and the whole cluster around him leans in as if he has gravity built into his bones.
“What was the inspiration behind the single?” someone asks.
Phoenix’s eyes cut across the room. For a dangerous second, they lock onto me. My body goes still. Then his gaze slides away and he smiles for the camera.
“Bad decisions,” he says. “They usually make the best songs.”
The room laughs.
I take a sip of champagne and let the bubbles linger on my tongue.
Across the room, Phoenix shifts for another photo.
A woman from Voltage magazine touches his arm and laughs at something he says, leaving her fingers there a second longer than needed.
He gives her that look, the one that is mostly performance, all lazy mouth and manufactured badboy vibe, polished enough to make her special for three fucking seconds.
My stomach turns.
He has treated me with the kind of cool distance reserved for work colleagues who accidentally fucked in a supply closet and are now pretending that silence counts as maturity.
And still, some stupid, exhausted part of me has been waiting. Waiting for him to corner me in a hallway. To look at me and say he panicked. That he got scared and did what Phoenix always does when something matters too much, which is to act as if it doesn’t matter at all.
I can survive his cruelty. Fuck, I have had years of practice. But it’s the hope that keeps cutting me open.
The launch party drags on in flashes. Promotional photos.
A quick interview where Jax carries half the charm and Cruz throws in dry, dirty one-liners.
Phoenix stands at the center of it all, giving perfect frontman answers about the album, the sound, and the upcoming tour they’re not supposed to announce for another month.
By late afternoon, the event’s bright shine begins to fade. The press thins out. The label people loosen their ties and drink more. Photographers pack up their equipment, and the room starts to appear less glamorous and more exhausted.
I place my drink on a high table and gaze across the room.
Phoenix is gone.
For one second, relief hits. Then anger follows hard on its heels.
No. Fuck that.
I am not doing this anymore. He doesn’t get to fuck me, freeze me out, and then smile for cameras. I’m done avoiding him.
I pass Jax near the bar, where he is talking to a journalist, one hand wrapped around a drink. His gaze flicks toward me as I walk past.
The event space has a side corridor that leads to a smaller lounge reserved for the band.
My anger keeps me walking. Underneath it, buried deep enough to shame me, lies one fragile, pathetic little hope. Maybe Phoenix is afraid this will end our friendship. Perhaps if I compel him to face me, he’ll say something real.
It’s a stupid hope. I know that. Hope has been making an idiot of me for years when it comes to Phoenix.
But I cannot keep going on like this. We need to sort out what the fuck happened that night.
I find him at the end of the corridor, tucked into a private corner, half-hidden behind a tall arrangement of white flowers.
Phoenix is sitting in a chair with his legs spread, his head tipped back slightly, eyes half-closed.
For a second, I think he is alone.
My heart moves before I can stop it, stupid enough to reach for him before I can drag it back.
I take a few steps closer. Then it all comes into view.
I stop because my body understands before my brain can protect me.
Phoenix is sitting back with his legs spread, head tipped back, eyes half-closed, his hand buried in a woman’s hair. The woman from Voltage magazine.
She is kneeling between his legs, half-hidden by the tall white flowers and the angle of his body, but it’s still not enough to block it out.
I see her glossy hair. Her hand braced on his thigh. His fingers flexing near the back of her head. His cock in her mouth.
I know I need to get the fuck out before he opens his eyes and sees me standing here with my heart in my throat and my dignity bleeding all over the floor. But the hurt hits first and the world narrows to that hand in her hair.
Those fingers. The same fingers that dug into my hips. The same touch that made me believe, for one stupid, filthy, devastating minute, I was not just another body he could use to run from himself.
Phoenix’s mouth parts. A low moan leaves him, rough and close to the edge, and it goes through me harder than any shout ever could. Because I know that sound now, I know the way his breath breaks around it.
“Oh my God,” I whisper and his eyes open.
At first, he looks dazed, still caught in the selfish, lazy haze of pleasure. Mouth parted. Head tipped back. Body loose in that awful way that makes my skin remember him before my heart can properly hate him.
Then he sees me and the heat drains from his face. His expression empties so quickly it seems violent.
“Willow.”
The woman jerks back, startled, but I don’t look at her. I can’t. If I gaze at her, I’ll have to face all the parts of this that are real.