17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Phoenix
Exhaustion doesn’t hit me all at once. It crawls in slowly, under my skin, behind my eyes, and into the hand I have kept wrapped around Willow’s all night.
It slips into the ache in my spine from the plastic hospital chair and into the grit coating my tongue.
It finds every part of me I thought was still standing and presses down until even breathing seems heavier than it should.
Morning comes in and the hospital room is too bright, full of machines that beep and hiss, constantly reminding me that her body needs help doing what it should be doing on its own.
I hate every sound in this room. The monitor beside her bed. The faint squeak of shoes in the hallway. The quiet crying from the woman on the other side of Willow.
Elise sits in a chair, a tissue crushed in her hand.
She has been trying not to sob for hours.
Every now and then, her shoulders will shake and Graham moves closer, resting a hand on her shoulder because that is what good men do.
They stay. They comfort and they know how to be useful when the worst thing in the world is watching the person you love lie in a hospital bed.
I keep my eyes on Willow.
Graham doesn’t look at me unless he has to. And when he does, I feel it.
I don’t glance his way because I am not stupid enough to give him another reason to tell me to get the fuck out.
Instead, I take in Willow’s pale face and the hair brushed back from her cheeks.
The same hair Elise has smoothed almost every hour since I sat down.
I guess she feels as useless as I do and this is the only thing her hands know how to fix.
A cannula is taped to Willow’s hand. Another line disappears beneath the sleeve of the hospital gown. Machines surround her as though they own part of her now and every single thing touching her makes something dark and violent twist inside my ribs.
Her hand is limp in mine. It has been limp all night. But I keep holding on anyway because letting go feels too much like agreeing to the worst outcome that could happen.
My phone lights up again on the small table beside me.
I don’t bother to look at it. It has been doing that since yesterday. Calls. Messages. All from Damon. His texts and the major headlines. As if he is trying to pull the leash he thinks he has around my neck.
Damon: Local launch performance canceled.
Damon: Fans furious.
Damon: Media speculation grows after Static Hearts walks out of press conference.
Damon: Label sources concerned about upcoming world tour.
Damon: Phoenix Stone punches manager after overdose question.
I want to throw my phone at the wall the second it buzzes again, but that would mean letting go of Willow’s hand, and I’m not doing that. Not for Damon or for any of the greedy fuckers lining up outside this hospital room, each with a price tag and a headline.
Jett tried to make me eat sometime after midnight. I told him to fuck off. He did. Then he came back ten minutes later and left a bottle of water near my chair. I haven’t opened that either.
Elise wipes under her eye.
I lift my head to look at her.
Her face crumples a little and it almost does me in because the Elise sitting across from me now is not the Elise I remember.
That memory hits hard enough to make my chest tighten. For a second, I see her kitchen instead of this room. Willow sitting across from me at the table. Elise at the stove, asking if I was hungry even after I’d said no.
I was always hungry back then. I hated anyone knowing it.
My house had food, but it was nothing like Willow’s.
Mine was cold, full of slamming doors and screaming voices cutting through the walls.
My mother crying one minute before smiling the next.
My father was the kind of asshole who expected perfection, even though he was not a fucking saint himself.
Everything had strings. Everything cost something.
Even love came dressed as a fight, a guilt trip, or a debt you could never pay back.
Willow’s house was different. It was warm.
Elise would put a plate in front of me without me having to ask.
Graham would grumble about boys eating them out of house and home, then pass me more bread.
Willow would kick me under the table and tell me not to act weird because her mom made the best pasta and I was ruining the experience by pretending I had manners.
I would grin at her and steal the garlic bread off her plate.
I loved that house. I loved being allowed to sit there and that no one expected me to perform to earn my place at the table.
Now Elise is watching me from across a hospital bed, her daughter lying between us, and I don’t know how to exist under the weight of what I have dragged back into their lives.
Graham turns from the window and his eyes lock onto me. “You should have seen it, Phoenix.”
Elise glances at him. “Graham.”
“No.” His eyes remain on me. “You saw her every day.”
His voice stays low, but there is nothing calm about it. “You were with her the whole time.”
Elise looks down.
I keep my hand around Willow’s because if Graham decides to tear me apart, I probably deserve to be holding the reason for it.
He steps closer. “I could see she was slipping and I wasn’t even in that life with her. I could see it in her face, in her voice, in the way she stopped sounding like my girl. So why the hell didn’t you see it?”
Because I am a selfish prick who has spent years turning away from anything that could make me vulnerable, and Willow was the only thing in my life big enough to make me feel that way.
I stare at her hand in mine.
“I should have,” I say, my voice rough from the night.
Graham’s nostrils flare. “That’s it?”
My thumb glides over Willow’s knuckles. The gesture seems pointless, but I keep doing it anyway.
Graham’s voice drops lower. “She loved you.”
The words hit harder because he says them with disgust. My grip tightens on Willow’s hand.
He keeps going. “I don’t forgive you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want you here.”
“I know that too,” I say.
“But she might.”
I close my eyes. Hearing that almost breaks me. It’s not forgiveness. It’s a father standing beside his daughter’s hospital bed, hating that the asshole who hurt her might still matter to her.
I open my eyes and gaze at our joined hands because if I look at Graham while I say this, there is no way I will get through it.
“I didn’t know how not to fuck it up with Willow.” My voice comes out rough, scraped down to the bone. “Everything I ever saw called love was ugly. My parents loved with knives behind their teeth. They loved me by keeping score, by making sure every soft thing had a hook in it.”
My thumb drags across Willow’s knuckles. “So I thought that if I wanted her too much, I’d turn into them, or she’d leave, or I’d destroy her before she could.”
I swallow, but it does nothing to ease the burn in my throat. “Turns out I did it anyway.”
No one says anything.
A moment later, Elise stands and comes around to my side of the bed.
She touches Willow’s hair first, smoothing it back from her face with trembling fingers. It doesn’t need fixing. But I get it. I fucking get it. Sometimes your hands have to do something.
She lowers herself into the chair beside mine. Her hand rests on the blanket near my arm. “Phoenix.”
I make myself lift my head and meet her gaze.
The tear tracks on her cheeks have dried, but the worry remains, carved deep around her mouth and sitting heavy under her eyes. She looks tired in a way sleep won’t fix.
“You love her,” she says quietly. “I can see that.”
I draw in a deep breath, trying to force the tension out of my body.
“But love is not what you feel when someone is dying,” she continues. “It is what you do if they wake up.”
The words hit so hard that my thumb stills over Willow’s knuckles.
The whole room seems to narrow around them.
“I don’t know how,” I tell her.
It costs me to say it. More than I want it to.
“Then learn, Phoenix.”
I stare at Willow’s hand in mine.
Learn. As if it were that simple. As if I could unlearn every selfish, dirty, cowardly thing that made me choose ego and fear over her.
But maybe that is the fucking point. I don’t get to sit here, praying for her life, and still cling to the asshole I became because he is familiar. Losing Willow is not something I can survive.
I nod. “I will.”
Elise watches me, then glances at the untouched sandwich. “You need to go get something to eat.”
“No.”
“Phoenix.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“She is not going to wake up because you starve yourself in a chair. Go get me a coffee, Phoenix, and bring it back.”
This time, I understand. She needs me out of the room. Needs one minute with her daughter, without me sitting here with all my guilt taking up space, as if I have any right to make her pain share a chair with mine.
I lean down and press my lips to Willow’s hand.
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper.
I force myself to let go and it feels wrong the moment I do. The second her hand leaves mine, panic claws up my throat, but I stand anyway. My legs are stiff, my back screams, and every step toward the door is like walking away from her all over again.
Graham follows me out, arms crossed again—a guard dog with bloodshot eyes and every reason to bite.
The waiting room is quiet. Jax paces near the vending machines. Jett sits with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Cruz leans against the wall, arms folded, jaw set. Graham moves to the window, looking out at nothing.
None of the guys have left since we came here yesterday. They all glance my way when I enter.
Jax looks at me first. “Anything?”
I shake my head.
His face falls for half a second, as if he thought I might have walked out of that room with the words we have all been waiting to hear. That she woke up. That she is going to be okay.
Instead, I bring nothing back.