11. Chapter Eleven #3
Phoenix moves fast, shoving her away as he leans forward. “Wills.”
I turn away because he doesn’t get to use my fucking nickname now. He doesn’t get to put softness in his mouth after sticking his cock in someone else’s. He doesn’t get my fucking tears or the satisfaction of watching me bleed where he can see it.
I keep walking.
“Willow,” he calls to me, louder this time. “Wait.”
My heels hit the hallway floor with steady thuds. Every step feels too calm, as if my body has decided to be graceful even as my heart tears itself apart.
He calls my name again, but I keep walking.
By the time I reach the main room, I am moving too quickly for anyone to stop me.
I collect my bag without looking around and make it to the elevator.
The doors close and for a few seconds, only my reflection remains in the metal. Pale face. Bright eyes. My mouth clamped tight enough to hurt.
Still standing. Still not crying.
The elevator drops me into the lobby, and I walk straight through it. Past polished floors and soft lighting, then out the front doors.
Cold air hits my face hard enough to sting. Good. I need something to feel that isn’t his hand in her hair. Not his mouth falling open for someone else less than a week after it was at my ear, telling me things I was stupid enough to believe.
I step onto the pavement and pull out my phone.
My fingers shake, but not enough to stop me. I open the app to call a ride because I didn’t bring my car. I planned to drink tonight, not to run from a man who made me feel used.
My phone rings before I can confirm the ride.
Phoenix.
Of course now he wants to fucking talk. Now that I have seen him with his cock in some chick’s mouth, he has decided communication might be useful.
Well, fuck him. Fuck his ego. Fuck the man he has become and every rotten thing he hides behind.
I decline the call.
It rings again almost immediately.
My thumb hovers over the screen, and for one sick second, the girl who used to know him tries to rise within me. The girl who wrote songs with him beneath trees. The girl who believed there was still something good beneath all that fame, arrogance, drugs, and women.
Then I see him again in my head—head tipped back and her mouth on him—and my stomach turns so hard I nearly bend with it.
No. He is not that sweet boy anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time. He is this man now. A man who uses people to get through whatever ugly thing is eating him alive.
The phone keeps ringing and I let it. I’m fucking done answering him. He can be someone else’s disaster. I’m fucking done.
The ride home is quiet, except for the sound of my phone lighting up in my lap, showing Phoenix’s name.
I decline him once. Then again.
By the third time, I stop looking at the screen and instead open a message to Dad.
Willow: I’m coming home tonight.
His reply comes through almost straight away.
Dad: Good. We’ll be here. Drive safe, sweetheart.
By the time I get back to my apartment, something inside me has gone cold in a way that feels almost clean.
I pull my suitcase from the wardrobe and set it on the bed.
Clothes go in first. Jeans, shirts, underwear, a pair of boots.
I don’t bother to fold them neatly because I am not packing a life with care.
I’m stripping one down to what I can carry.
My notebook sits on the bedside table, its black cover worn soft at the corners from years of being dragged through airports, studios, buses, green rooms, and every place I convinced myself was home because Phoenix was there.
I pick it up and, for a second, my hand tightens around it. Then I pack it up, too.
My phone lights up again.
Phoenix.
I decline his call before I block him. Delete him. Two quick taps and all those years sit there with nowhere left to go.
I open Damon’s name next and type.
Willow: I’m fucking done. Find some other writer to boss around.
I send it before some exhausted part of my brain tells me to stay. Then I block and delete his name, too, because I know Damon. One reply from him, one hard little lecture about contracts and schedules, and he’ll try to make my leaving sound selfish.
Dad told me to come home and that is exactly what I’m going to do.
I take one last glance around the apartment, and it already feels as if it belongs to someone I no longer want to be anymore.
I pull the door open and step into the hallway, my suitcase trailing beside me. The wheels sound too loud on the floor, but I keep walking. I don’t look back at the apartment because some places stop being home before you are ready to leave them.
The elevator doors slide open and I step in. As the elevator descends to the underground parking level, my phone lights up with a message from Jax.
I don’t open it.
The doors part.
I load my suitcase into the trunk of my car, slide in behind the wheel, and start the engine. When I drive up the ramp and the building disappears in the rear-view mirror, I don’t bother to look back.
I am done with this life and everything it has taken from me. But more importantly, I am fucking done with Phoenix Stone.