15. Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
Willow
Iwake up on the couch in the afternoon, still in last night’s dress, with one heel digging into my calf and a hangover trying to chew its way out of my skull.
Classy.
For a few seconds, I don’t move. My head pounds hard enough to have its own drum solo.
My stomach hurts and I press one hand against it while I stare at the ceiling, waiting to see if I’m going to throw up, pass out again, or simply lie here regretting every choice I have made up to this point in my life.
My dress is twisted high around my hips and my underwear is showing. My hair sticks to my neck. One of my earrings is missing, probably off somewhere, living a much better life.
I should have made it to my bed. Apparently, even my body knew better than to aim that high.
I sit up too fast and pain cracks behind my eyes so sharply I almost see God. Except God would have better things to do than visit this shitshow.
“Fuck.”
I drop my head into my hands and breathe through it because my stomach is already threatening violence and my skull feels as if it’s one bad thought away from splitting open.
When I finally lift my head, the apartment is waiting.
Not my apartment. Not really.
My apartment used to be orderly. Clean counters. Folded laundry. Now it looks like every bad decision I’ve made over the past two months moved in and refused to leave.
Clothes are everywhere. A black dress is twisted over the armrest of the couch. Jeans are kicked across the floor. A bra hangs off the back of a chair. One heel sits near the kitchen, from God knows which party. The other is under the coffee table, half-hidden beside an empty glass on the floor.
Dishes crowd the countertops—plates and glasses shoved wherever I left them.
I stare at it all, hungover and hollow, and the ugliest part isn’t the mess. It’s that I’ve started getting used to it.
My notebooks are still on the kitchen table. One of my notebooks sits open on the coffee table, blank and smug, its empty page staring back at me as if it already knows I’ve got nothing left to say.
I stare at it until the nausea in my stomach turns into something more intense.
Two months and I haven’t written a single fucking lyric.
Writing used to be the one thing I could always do when everything else in my life went to shit. It was the one place I knew who I was.
Now the notebooks sit there, full of blank pages, while I just breathe through days I don’t want, calling it surviving because that sounds less pathetic than admitting I have no fucking clue how to live this life without them.
I look for my phone and find it wedged between the couch cushions.
I press the side button and the screen lights up with proof that people still love me even when I am doing my best to become unreachable.
Missed call: Mom.
Missed call: Dad.
Missed call: Mom.
Mom: Willow, please call me. I just need to hear your voice.
Dad: Answer your mother, sweetheart. Or answer me. We’re worried.
My throat tightens so fast that I almost hate them for loving me the way they do.
So I do what I do best lately. I stare at the messages until they hurt too much and still I do not answer.
Cruz: Hey, songbird. Just checking in.
Jax has sent memes I haven’t even attempted to open. Probably stupid ones, since they usually are.
Jett sent a message.
Jett: How are you?
Three words and I still couldn’t answer them because the truth isn’t cute enough for a text bubble.
“Hey, not great. Totally fucked up. I haven’t written a line in two months, keep waking up in yesterday’s makeup, and I have no fucking clue what I’m doing unless there’s a drink or a party loud enough to drown me out.”
It doesn’t really have the same casual vibe.
So I ignore them too. Ignoring people is easier than admitting I miss them or explaining that I’m not even close to okay and that partying helps because it gives me somewhere to put my body while the rest of me falls apart.
Sometimes I lie on this couch, thinking about all the times Phoenix has come to my door.
The first time, I sat on the bathroom floor with my knees pulled up to my chest, listening to him pound on my front door hard enough to rattle the lock.
“Willow.”
Bang. Bang.
“Open the fucking door.”
Bang.
“Wills, I know you’re in there.”
I stayed where I was, my hands clamped over my mouth and my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.
The next time was worse. He sounded drunk or high.
“Please, Willow. If you’re in there, open the fucking door.”
That word broke me because Phoenix Stone does not beg. He walks away with his ego polished and his cock still warm, leaving others to clean up his mess. But that night, his voice cracked on my name and I stood on the other side of the door with my hand on the lock.
One twist. That was all it would have taken to see him. His dark hair falling into his eyes. His lip ring catching the light in the hall. Those eyes I miss more than I will ever admit, even to myself when I am drunk enough to tell the truth.
I wanted to open it. God, I wanted to open it so badly that it made me hate myself.
But then I remembered the way he fucked me as if I were the only thing he had ever needed, then went cold afterward as if I were another groupie he could use and step over once he got what he wanted.
So I left my hand on the lock and I let him stand there outside my door, saying my name, while I was trying not to break out loud enough for him to hear.
He stayed for twenty minutes.
I know because I heard him slide down the other side of the door and sit in the hallway, his back against the same wood my palm had been pressed to.
For one stupid, terrible second, it felt almost intimate. Me on one side, him on the other.
Then someone walked past.
Phoenix’s voice cut through the hall. “What the fuck are you looking at, asshole?”
A door shut somewhere down the hall and the silence returned. He got up and left.
Last night comes back in ugly little flashes.
My new friend, Sienna Voss, was laughing under the lights, glossy hair over one shoulder, her mouth painted red, all wild party energy and expensive perfume.
She works with another label, which means she knows everyone worth knowing and half the people worth avoiding.
She calls herself connected. I call her dangerous because of her contact list.
She is fun in that reckless, glittering way that makes bad ideas feel less pathetic. The kind of girl who can get you past a locked gate, into a private party, and three mistakes deep before you remember you were supposed to be healing.
The house where we party had too many people pretending the night was harmless because the drinks were expensive and the drugs came in pretty little packages.
Memphis Cross watched me across the room. He watched me with those dark eyes and that slow, dirty interest, as if he already knew I was one bad decision away from letting him touch me.
“Come with me,” he said.
So I did.
I wanted to lose myself in him.
We ended up in a bathroom. Memphis kissed me against the counter, hard enough to knock the breath out of me and slow enough to make sure I felt every second of it.
His hands were warm on my hips, fingers digging in through the thin fabric of my dress, pulling me closer until the hard press of his cock made it very fucking clear what he wanted from me.
Good. I wanted him to want it.
I wanted his mouth. His hands. His body. The dirty, simple heat of being wanted by a man who did not come with a decade of emotional damage stitched into my skin.
His mouth moved down my neck, teeth scraping, tongue following, and my body answered because it was a traitorous little bitch with a pulse and no loyalty to the heart that was trying to crawl out of my chest.
For a moment, I thought I could do it.
Let him push my dress up and spread my thighs. Let him make me come so hard I stopped remembering the exact sound Phoenix made when he lost control inside me. As soon as he pushed my panties to the side, the whole room shifted under me.
His fingers swiped through my wetness, his mouth hot on my neck. I should have been able to let it happen. But my body went cold and I shoved Memphis back, hard.
“I can’t.”
He blinked at me, his mouth swollen from mine. “Willow?”
“I can’t.”
I yanked my dress down with trembling hands.
His hands came up, palms out, no wounded male ego. No ugly little comment to punish me for changing my mind. “Okay.”
“I said I can’t.”
“I heard you.”
My phone buzzes again.
Sienna: Private party tonight. Come be bad with me.
A second message lands before I can pretend I’m not interested.
Sienna: Memphis will be there. He asked about you.
I stare at the screen. My body feels off from the inside out, jittery and hollow, as if every nerve has teeth and is chewing.
I should stay home, drink water, and eat something. Call my mother and let her hear my voice before she starts imagining the worst.
Instead, I reach for the bag of pills I left on the coffee table the night before.
The thought of not being able to make it through a few hours without one to take the edge off should scare the shit out of me. It does. But I take two anyway and swallow them down before that scared little voice inside me gets loud enough to stop me.
Then I pick up my phone and type a reply.
Willow: Send the address.
By eight, I look hot.
The red dress is tight enough to seem intentional and short enough to invite bad decisions.
My smoky eyes are dark, my mouth painted red, and my hair is down my back in loose waves, messy enough to seem effortless, not as if I spent forty minutes trying to style it perfectly.
The mirror shows a woman who looks as if she knows exactly what she is doing.
But the mirror is a lying asshole.
I’ve been popping pills most of the day. By the time I step into the party, I am already high, but no one notices because everyone in this room is either high, getting high, or pretending their glassy eyes are from the lighting.
Sienna finds me the second I enter the room.