18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Willow
My body claws its way toward consciousness, as if it’s furious at me for forcing it to clock back in. My mouth is so parched my tongue clings to the roof and every swallow scorches my throat. A dull ache pulses behind my eyes, sharp enough to register as a grudge.
My eyelids flutter before they close again.
For a brief period, I’m disoriented. My senses pick up things before I understand them. A soft, steady beep. The sharp odour of disinfectant. Someone holding my hand.
I pry my eyes open, closing them immediately as the light stabs straight through them.
Jesus. Waking up is like someone switched on a fucking spotlight only for me.
I try again, blinking until the room steadies and shapes crawl out of the blur.
Phoenix.
He is the first thing I see.
For a second, I’m confused. Why would Phoenix be here? Why would he be holding my hand, sitting too close, bent forward with his head down and his fingers wrapped around mine as if letting go might cost him everything?
His skin is warm on mine, rough in familiar places, callused by guitar strings. His hair is a mess, falling across his forehead. His jaw is covered in stubble and his shirt is wrinkled.
He looks exhausted. No. Scared. Nothing like the arrogant asshole I left behind.
He exhales the kind of breath you take when the world has been crushing your chest, then he lifts his head and our eyes meet.
For one strange, stupid second, I think I’m dreaming him, because this version of Phoenix doesn’t make sense.
Phoenix Stone doesn’t sit at hospital beds looking broken. He breaks things and acts offended when they bleed.
Then his mouth parts, and I realize it is not a dream.
“Wills,” he says, shifting in the chair.
His voice rearranges the room. Suddenly, everything snaps into focus, as if my mind had been too busy surviving him to register anyone else.
Mom is there.
Dad too.
“Oh, baby,” Mom whispers.
Her voice cracks and the sound slips beneath my ribs before I can block it.
Dad moves to the end of the bed, but I cannot take my eyes off Phoenix.
Because for one fucked-up second, he is the boy I remember who once told me he would be shit without me and looked at me as if I had hung every star he planned to chase. And he is also the man who took pieces of me with greedy hands. Both of them are here. Both of them are holding my hand.
His thumb moves over my knuckles.
My thoughts crawl back, slow and clumsy. Then my stomach flips and shame floods in so fast the room tilts.
The party returns in broken, flickering pieces. A glass in my hand. The pill I took from Sienna. A bathroom mirror that would not stay still. Me losing my balance. Cold tile against my cheek. Someone screaming for help while the only names left in my head were Mom, Dad, and Phoenix.
Phoenix leans closer and his hand holds mine a little harder. “Willow?”
I pull away. The movement is small, but it costs me. His fingers slip from mine and something flashes across his face before he can bury it.
Good. Let him feel it. He doesn’t get to sit here holding my hand after what he did.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes. My lips are dry and sore. My whole body feels wrong in a way I don’t want anyone to see.
“How long have I been here?” I ask.
Nobody answers quickly.
Dad’s eyes flick to Phoenix for one second before they come back to me and the expression on his face makes my stomach fold in on itself.
“You were brought in two nights ago.” Dad swallows, and I hate that my father, the strongest man I know, has to force the words out because of me. “You overdosed.”
The word drops into the room like something dead.
Overdosed. It sounds disgusting out loud.
Dirty. Public. The sort of word people lower their voices around before they decide they always saw it coming.
Headlines, pity and strangers whispering that I was a mess.
As if being broken is entertainment when it happens to someone with a song credit and a famous asshole sitting beside her bed.
Heat crawls up my neck, but it’s not enough to touch the cold sitting in my chest.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper.
The words are small and useless and I hate them the second they leave my mouth, because what the hell else am I supposed to say? Sorry I scared you. Sorry I stormed out of your house acting like I knew how to save myself when I had already started slipping under.
Mom touches my hair.
“We know, love,” she says, and her voice shakes so badly it hurts to hear. “Don’t worry about that now. All that matters is that you’re okay.”
But I can see her face. I can see Dad’s. And I understand being okay is not going to be that simple.
Phoenix shifts in the chair. “Wills.”
God, that fucking nickname.
I know myself. I am familiar with the bruised, reckless part that will always crawl toward the faintest warmth from Phoenix Stone and call it the fucking sun, even when he is the one who left me out in the cold.
“No, Phoenix,” I say. “You don’t get to do this.”
His throat works. “Do what?”
“You don’t get to sit beside me and turn what happened to me into proof that you care.”
Mom’s hand closes around my wrist. “Willow, love.”
Phoenix looks down at his hands, then back up. His eyes are red, and there are shadows beneath them.
I fight the urge to ask if he slept because that part of me can fuck right off.
“You treated me like I only mattered when it suited you,” I say.
His jaw shifts, but he doesn’t answer.
Dad’s face hardens.
There are things I want to say to Phoenix that don’t belong in front of my parents. They don’t need to know how he fucked me, then stood there afterward acting as if I was another bad decision he could rinse off in the shower.
But his face tells me he knows every ugly thing I am not saying.
Good. Let him choke on the silence for once.
“I let you take pieces of me for years,” I whisper. “And I called it love because I was too scared to call it pathetic.”
His head jerks slightly, as if I slapped him. “You were never pathetic.”
Of course that is the part he argues with. Not the love I kept handing him while he treated it like loose change in his pocket.
I glare at him, exhausted, furious, and still so in love it makes me want to punch my own heart for being so goddamn spineless.
“Don’t do that,” I say.
His mouth shuts.
“Don’t pick one word out of this fucking mess and try to save me from it because it makes you feel better.” My voice drops and the ache under it is so raw I can barely stand hearing it. “I deserved more than what I kept accepting from you.”
His hand lifts an inch, then stops.
For one terrible second, I want to let him reach me. To believe the hollow man in the chair is proof that somewhere under all that fame, poison, and ego is the boy I remember. I want to believe the softness is not a lie, buried beneath that cocky mouth that has done so much more damage.
My longing for him is so strong it’s like a physical sensation. As if my body is drawn to him even as I compel it to remain still.
That stupid, stubborn wanting that drags itself back to him on scraped knees and no survival instinct left. But loving Phoenix was never the problem. Letting him wreck me and calling it devotion was.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Dad steps forward. “Stop. She doesn’t need this shit.”
Phoenix goes still but his eyes don’t leave mine.
“That’s enough,” Dad says, his voice is protective, angry without being cruel.
“Graham,” Mom says softly.
“No.” Dad moves closer to the bed, and for once, Phoenix doesn’t get to own the room because he is sitting in it. “She just woke up. You need to leave.”
Phoenix’s shoulders go rigid and his jaw clenches. “I’ll sit in the corner.,”
“You’ll sit outside.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“You don’t get to decide what she needs.”
“I know that.”
“Then fucking act like it.”
The room goes silent.
Phoenix drags a hand over his face. “I need to know she’s okay,” he says.
Dad’s voice cracks around the anger. “She is not okay. Look at her.”
Phoenix’s eyes move over me and I watch him swallow whatever sound tries to climb out of his throat.
“Willow,” he says.
“Go,” I say, as my own chest rips open around the word.
He looks as if something inside him has been told to step away from oxygen.
“Please, Phoenix,” I whisper. “I can’t have you in here.”
Phoenix closes his eyes. It hurts him. I can see it in the way his face pulls tight for half a second before he gets it under control.
Then he nods.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
Dad comes closer and Phoenix moves because he has no choice. His gaze stays on me as he stands. His boots sound heavy against the floor as he moves toward the door. Each step dragging like it wants to come back.
Dad walks him to the doorway and Phoenix pauses there without turning around. For one second, his shoulders rise with a breath that looks painful.
Then Dad glances back at me. “I’ll go get the doctor.”
He follows Phoenix out.
I blink at the ceiling. “Why do I feel like shit that I sent him away?”
Mom’s hand rests over mine. “Because doing what is right for your heart does not always feel good at first.”
I almost tell her that it sounds like something she found printed on a mug in a gift shop, right between Live Laugh Love and Healing Is a Journey, but my throat hurts too much.
The next few hours turn into one long hospital-flavored punishment.
Doctors come in. Nurses follow. They check my vitals, ask the same careful questions, shine lights in my eyes, take blood, adjust lines, unhook one machine.
Everyone is kind. But kindness doesn’t make it less humiliating to become a checklist in a hospital gown with your worst night scribbled across a chart.
I answer what I can. My name. The date. Where I am. What I remember.
Then the easy symptoms. Dry throat. Headache. Sick. Tired.
Ashamed doesn’t make the official list, which is bullshit, because it is currently doing the most damage.
Dad stays close. Mom stays closer. Neither of them says much, which almost makes it worse.
Dad doesn’t let Phoenix back in. I know because every time the door opens, some stupid part of me looks.
A knock sounds at the door and I turn my head to see Jax. He comes in first. Cruz follows. Jett comes in last.
For a second, none of them say anything. They simply observe me.
Jax swears under his breath and tips his head back toward the ceiling, as if he is thanking God and cursing him in the same breath. Cruz crosses the room and kisses my forehead. Jett stays at the end of the bed, his hand resting on the blanket.
These guys are trouble with pretty mouths, filthy words, egos too big for most rooms, and impulse control that should come with a public safety warning. But they are also family. And for the first time since I woke up, the room is full in a way that doesn’t crush me.
Jett glances toward the door, then back at me. He doesn’t say Phoenix’s name. None of them have to. Because Phoenix is here anyway, filling the room the way he always does, even in his absence. He sits in the silence between us, in every word left unsaid.
Time slips after that. It drags by in nurse checks, low voices, half-finished sentences, and everyone pretending not to look at me as if I might break if they blink too hard.
Eventually, the guys leave.
Jax kisses the top of my head and tells me not to scare the shit out of him again. Cruz squeezes my foot through the blanket. Jett gives my hand one careful touch before he walks out.
Mom and Dad stay longer. Long enough that Mom looks ready to fall over.
“We’re going to the motel to shower,” Mom says. “We won’t be long.”
Dad lingers near the door. “You call if you need anything.”
I nod and then they are gone too.
For the first time since I opened my eyes, I am alone in the room.
The quiet settles differently now. I turn my head and look through the glass doors. The curtains are pulled back just enough to show a thin slice of the hallway and there he is.
Phoenix sits across the hall with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
He’s still here even after I told him to go.
My chest aches so sharply I have to breathe around it, because he stayed. Of course the asshole chooses now to become impossible to leave behind.
I love him.
God help me, after everything, I still love him.
I have since I was too young to know better, wanting him so badly I mistook hunger for devotion. I took crumbs from his hand and called it dinner. Let him hurt me, then blamed myself for bleeding too loud.
But the pills are mine.
That ugly truth sits in my chest.
Phoenix broke pieces of me, but he didn’t put every pill on my tongue. Nor did he make me chase numbness every time my life got too loud.
That part is mine.
I need help. Real help that doesn’t come in a pill from someone’s palm or a powder line on a bathroom counter.
I keep watching Phoenix through the glass, my heart tugging toward him like the reckless idiot it always is.
I have never seen him like this. Phoenix never looks small or lost as if the world finally found a way to kick him hard enough to make him stay down.
I want to tell him to come back. To sit beside me and hold my hand and make all of this hurt less. But wanting Phoenix has always been the easy part.
Surviving what I let myself become because of that wanting is the part that scares the shit out of me.
I leave him on the other side of the glass. Close enough to shatter my heart. Far enough to save whatever scraps I have left.
Please, God, let me be strong enough to keep him there.