12. Chapter Twelve #2
A few seconds later, the reply arrives.
Willow: I’m not there. I’m at my parent’s house for a while.
For a moment, I don’t move. It shouldn’t hurt this much. It’s just a fucking text. A few words on Jax’s phone. But it lands straight under my ribs and tears something open anyway.
She answered fucking Jax.
That’s the part that guts me. How easily she makes silence look when it is meant for me. And how fucking fast she breaks it for him.
I turn back, move into the studio, and put Jax’s phone back. The guys and Damon are still arguing.
“I have to go,” I say.
Damon turns on me. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I fucking am.”
“The album is due soon.”
“Then sing it your fucking self.”
His mouth tightens. “Don’t tell me this is about Willow.”
Nobody moves. I should deny it. That would be the smart, easy thing to do. Lie first, breathe later, but her text still burns behind my eyes.
“For fuck’s sake,” Damon says. “Don’t tell me you’re going to chase her because she finally realized she is replaceable.”
Replaceable. Something in me goes black.
I cross the space before anyone can stop me. My hands hit Damon’s chest and I shove him into the wall hard enough to punch the breath out of him.
“Come on say that shit again,” I growl.
“Phoenix,” Cruz snaps.
“Say it again,” I spit at Damon.
Damon’s eyes flash. “Get your hands off me.”
“Call her replaceable one more fucking time.”
Jax grabs my arm. Jett grabs the other. Cruz comes in from the side, dragging me back before my fist can finish the thought.
“Let go,” I snarl.
“No,” Jett says.
Damon fixes his jacket with trembling hands. “You think the label gives a shit about your childhood attachment issues? She writes the songs. We can find someone else to replace her.”
I lunge again. This time, all three of them drag me back.
Cruz gets in my face. “Enough.”
I shove against them, breathing hard, rage burning so hot.
“What? That word pisses you off now?” Cruz says. “Replaceable? That is the one that gets you?”
I glare at him. “Back the fuck off.”
“No,” Jett says, his voice low. “She gave you everything, and you still fucked her, then went looking for someone else. What the fuck did you think that would do to her, asshole?”
The words hit so hard that they turn the room white.
“Careful,” I snap.
Jett’s eyes do not leave mine. “Why? You were never fucking careful with her.”
My jaw tightens as he keeps talking.
“With the one person in this whole fucked-up circus who kept showing up for you, even as you acted like being wanted made you untouchable.”
I shove against him. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
“No,” Jett says. “You shut yours for once.”
I shut my mouth because what he says has some truth to it. I’ve known it for years. I’ve watched Willow stand by my side, seen her give and give while I took, until taking became as natural as breathing.
And I have no idea what the fuck to do with that.
So I cross the room, grab my jacket, and walk out, ignoring Damon shouting at me to get the fuck in here.
No one follows me.
The drive to Willow’s parents’ house takes two hours.
Two fucking hours in a rental car with my hands locked around the wheel and my phone sitting uselessly on the passenger seat.
I haven’t been back here in years. Not to see my parents. Not to sit across from my father as he looks at everything I have achieved and still finds a way to make it seem insignificant. Or to watch my mother sit there, saying nothing, the same way she said nothing when I was a kid.
That’s why I spent more time at Willow’s house than at my own. Her place always seemed more breathable.
I pull up out front and park badly. Willow’s car is parked across the front lawn, which tells me she is here.
My hands remain on the wheel.
For once, I have no speech ready and no fucking idea what I’m going to say.
This kind of shit has never been where I shine. Hand me a stage, a microphone, and a crowd yelling my name, and I know who to become.
Put me outside Willow’s house, with everything I broke sitting behind that front door, and I’m just an asshole in a rental car with nothing useful in my mouth.
The front path feels longer than it should. Every step gives me another second to figure out what the fuck I am going to say and every second gives me nothing.
By the time I reach the door, I have neither a plan nor a decent excuse dressed up as honesty. Just the need to get to her, see her, make her listen, and make her understand that what she saw was not what it looked like, even though it was exactly what it looked like.
I knock once and Graham opens the door.
Willow’s dad has always had the kind of face that makes bullshit crawl back down your throat before it can embarrass you.
He isn’t big. He doesn’t need to be. Graham just stands there, steady and hard-eyed, looking at me as if he has been waiting years for me to show up on his porch with every awful thing I have done to his daughter hanging off of me.
“No,” he says. “Fuck no.”
He starts to close the door but I press my hand against it. “Graham, I need to talk to Willow.”
His eyes drop to my hand, then lift back to my face. “Get your hand off my door.”
“I just need five minutes.”
“You have had years to treat her right.”
For one fucked-up second, I wonder if she told him about what I did. But I know he doesn’t need details. He has hated the man I became for a long time now.
“This is between her and me.”
“No,” he says, his voice hardening. “It became my business the second my daughter came home looking as if someone had taken something from her. I have watched you for years, Phoenix. Watched the ego. The fame. The women. The way you walk into a room and expect it to rearrange itself around you. And I watched Willow stand beside you through all of it, acting strong while you treated her as if she were something you owned.”
He leans closer. “So don’t fucking stand on my porch and tell me this is between you and her. I may not know the details but I know enough to know who hurt my daughter.”
My throat aches. I hate him for saying it. But I hate myself even more because he’s right.
My hands curl at my sides. “I know I fucked up.”
His laugh is short and humorless. “You think this is one fuck-up? This is years of you taking from her because it made you feel better.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Don’t insult me in my own doorway.”
“Please,” I say and the word tastes fucking humiliating. “Just tell her I’m here.”
“No.”
“Graham.”
“I said no.”
“I need to see her.”
“You need to get the hell off my property.”
For a second, we just stare at each other.
I want to push past him.
The thought sits right there, ugly and stupid, because I have always been better at taking than at asking. I could move him and get inside. I could call her name until every wall in this house knows exactly how desperate I am.
Graham sees it on my face.
“Go home,” he says.
The door shuts in my face.
I just stare at the red door, breathing through panic that has nowhere to go.
Willow has always been the steady thing in my life.
The one person who could stand in the noise and make it feel less fucking impossible.
I never had to think about losing her. That was the problem.
She was so woven into me that I stopped seeing the stitches and started acting as if she were lucky I let her stay close.
Now there is a locked door between us. And for the first time, I understand that Willow leaving does not just take her out of my life. It takes the ground out from under it.
She was never just standing beside me. She was the part I leaned on. The quiet beneath the noise. The breath between all the screaming. Never once have I wondered what would happen if the girl holding me together finally let go.
Now she has and I have no fucking idea who I am without her standing beside me.