13. Chapter Thirteen #2
Cruz: Songbird. You don’t have to answer.
I just wanted to warn you that Damon is on the warpath about contracts and unfinished songs.
His corporate claws are probably coming your way next.
Also, I miss your face and your smile in a way that is a handsome guitarist tragically deprived of his favorite songbird. Totally normal. Mostly.
I smile and turn the phone over.
All the guys have reached out over the last few weeks.
Jax: I’m sorry Phoenix is a stupid fuck.
Jett: Call me if you want to talk. Miss you, Wills.
My chest aches so badly that I shove the phone under my pillow, as if burying it could bury them too. Because if I answer any of them, I am back in that studio, back inside the life I walked out of.
I turn onto my side and bury my face in the pillow, but nothing helps.
Sometime after two in the morning, I get out of bed, go to the closet for a sweater, and find an old box on top of the folded blankets. The cardboard box has my name written across the lid in Mom’s handwriting.
WILLOW.
SCHOOL STUFF.
I should leave it there, but instead I pull it down and sit on the floor with it between my knees.
Old notebooks, certificates, photos with sun-faded edges, and the leather friendship bracelet Phoenix made me when we were thirteen—all black cord, cheap beads, and white letters that spell Wills across the middle.
I remember him tying it around my wrist under that tree, acting cocky as hell while his ears went red, telling me it was not a big deal, even though it was the biggest thing he had ever given me.
I wore it all summer until the leather softened against my wrist.
There is also a dried leaf, pressed between two sheets of paper, brittle and brown now, from the tree where we wrote our first song. I kept it safe because thirteen-year-old me believed that saving pieces of the past would keep them alive.
God, I was such a hopeful little idiot.
Then I find the notebook. The first one. Blue cover, bent spine, corners worn soft from being carried around by two kids who thought songs could save them from becoming their parents.
Our names are written on the cover in my handwriting. Willow + Phoenix Songs.
My throat closes around something too old to still hurt this much.
I open it anyway.
The pages are full of pencil marks, crossed-out lyrics, half-finished verses, stupid arguments in the margins, and all the careful little pieces of who we were.
Phoenix’s messy scrawl cuts through mine in places.
This line is fucking awesome. Don’t get a big head.
A smile tugs at my mouth, but it doesn’t last. It collapses into a sob before I can stop it, and suddenly I am sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom with the past open in my lap and no idea how something so innocent could still know exactly where to cut.
I turn the pages until I find it near the middle of the book. The first song that ever felt authentic.
The one we wrote under the tree in my backyard, summer clinging to our skin as we pretended we were just writing lyrics, not making promises neither of us knew how to keep.
You’re the talented one, Wills. I’d be shit without you.
The memory hits so hard that I fold over the notebook.
That boy is dead. The boy under the tree no longer exists and the worst part is not that I lost him. It’s that I kept loving his ghost while the man he became learnt exactly how much of me he could take before I finally called it quits.
I cry into my hands for the girl I was back then and for the boy who looked at me as if I mattered before the world taught him to look past me. For the songs we wrote before they belonged to everyone else. For the version of us that never grew old enough to know better.
When the crying stops, I pick up a pen and turn to a blank page near the back of the book.
My hand shakes. For a moment, I just stare at all that empty space.
Then I write the only line that comes to mind.
I loved him before the fall, then bled beside him as we fell.
The line sits there, small and more honest than anything I’ve written in weeks.
Anyone else would read it as a song lyric. To me, it reads more like a confession that leaves blood on the page.
A knock sounds at the door.
“Willow?” Mom’s voice is soft on the other side. “Sweetheart, are you awake?”
I close the notebook too quickly. “I’m fine.”
There is a pause before she speaks. “Can I come in?”
I wipe my face with my sleeve, but there is no hiding what crying does to a person. It leaves evidence—red eyes, wet cheeks, and that raw, fucked-up softness I hate wearing for anyone to see.
The door opens and Mom stands there in her nightgown.
Her face shifts when she sees me on the floor, the box open between my knees, the old notebook in my lap, and the past scattered around me.
“Oh, Willow,” she says, stepping into the room and stopping just short of me.
Those two words almost undo me.
“Don’t,” I say.
Before she can say anything else, Dad appears in the doorway behind her.
He looks from Mom to me, then to the floor beside my bed, where the tiny bottle of pills sits in plain sight. I never put them away because I knew I would need them in the morning.
Everything inside me drops.
For one terrible second, no one moves. No one speaks. Then Dad steps into the room and picks up the bottle.
I push myself off the floor too quickly and the notebook slips from my lap, landing open at my feet.
“What is this?” he asks.
“Graham,” Mom whispers.
He turns the bottle in his hand, looking at the tiny white pills because there is no label. Then he looks at me.
My shame turns sharp because it has nowhere to go. “Give it back.”
His jaw tightens. “That is not an answer, Willow.” He keeps it out of reach. “How many are you taking?”
My skin burns. “It’s none of your business.”
Mom shifts slightly between us, one hand pressed to her chest. “Can we all just breathe for a second?”
“No,” Dad says, eyes locked on me. “I want to know how long this has been going on.”
“Of course you do.”
His brow tightens. “What does that mean?”
“You want a number so you can decide how fucked up I am.”
“I want a number because I need to know if my daughter is in danger.” Dad steps toward me. “You are my daughter and you are scaring the hell out of me.”
His voice cracks at the end.
I turn to the closet and yank out my suitcase with more force then necessary.
Mom’s face drains. “What are you doing, Willow?”
“Leaving.”
“No,” Dad says.
That single word hits the worst part of me, the part that’s already burning.
I throw the suitcase onto the bed and unzip it. “You don’t get to say no.”
“Willow, will you stop for one second?”
“No, I’m done stopping.”
Mom moves toward the bed. “Sweetheart, please. You don’t have to leave tonight.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t,” I say, shoving clothes into the suitcase. “I can’t breathe in this house.”
Dad stays right where he is, the bottle still clutched in his hand. “You’re upset. You don’t need to drive anywhere tonight.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, Willow.” His voice is firm. “Right now, you’re not.”
I whirl on him. “Stop saying that.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s not your job to decide what I am.”
“It’s my job to keep you alive.”
For one stupid second, I feel the crack in Dad’s voice more than I feel my own voice. Then I remember the bottle in his hand.
Once my bag is packed, I hold out my palm. “Give them back to me now.”
“If you think I’m putting these back in your hand, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”
Something cold moves through me. “Fine.”
I grab the suitcase because I have more pills at my apartment. I snatch my charger on the way out, dragging the suitcase behind me as Mom starts to cry.
“Willow, please don’t leave angry.”
“I’m not angry, Mom.”
Mom follows me down the stairs. Dad comes after us more slowly, still holding the bottle.
At the front door, Mom catches my wrist and I look down at her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, letting go immediately.
I swallow down the ache in my throat and walk out the front door.
“Call us when you get there,” Dad calls after me.
I hate that I am doing this to them. I hate that they are loving me the only way they know how and I’m still walking away from them simply to protect the one thing that is slowly destroying me.