23. Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
Willow
The car is too quiet for two people who have spent half their lives making noise together.
Phoenix drives with one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the gearshift, his fingers loose, his rings catching the light as we pass beneath the trees.
I keep my hands in my lap—one thumb rubbing the edge of my sleeve—trying not to think too hard about the hug outside the center.
He held me for a long time and didn’t let go. I want to know what it meant. Or whether I’m still that pathetic girl I have always been whenever Phoenix gives me even a little attention.
I promised myself I would never be her again because I deserve so much better than being treated by him the way he has. But when he does shit like that, every wise word I have spent weeks learning packs a bag and fucks off without leaving a forwarding address.
We have not hugged like that since we were eighteen years old at graduation.
I remember that one too clearly. The two of us were standing together after everyone had finished smiling for photos, caught in that strange space between the life we knew and the one waiting for us.
Phoenix turned to me, pulled me into his arms, and rested his cheek against my temple, holding me longer than he needed to.
I could lie and say it didn’t mean anything.
But the truth is I have thought about that hug more times than I should admit.
I have often wondered if he knew what the future had in store for us.
If that was the day he said goodbye to me before the world got loud, before fame, women, drugs, and the ego turned him into the asshole he became.
Before he forgot how to hold on to me.
Now, sitting behind the wheel, he keeps glancing at me. Quick little looks from behind his sunglasses. Road to my face and back again. It’s as if the asshole thinks tinted lenses make him subtle.
They don’t.
It annoys me, mostly because some soft, idiotic corner of my chest reacts every time he turns his head.
“What?” I ask.
His mouth tugs at one side. “What?”
“Do I have something on my face?”
His arrogant smirk deepens and I brace myself for one of his usual lines. Something filthy or cocky, meant to make me roll my eyes.
But it never comes. He simply looks back at the road.
I turn toward the window before he sees too much on my face.
After a few minutes, he asks, “How are you feeling?”
I laugh under my breath. “Careful. Ask me that again, and they might hand you a clipboard and make you the group leader.”
His fingers flex around the wheel. “I know. I fucking hated it the second I said it.”
A surprised laugh escapes before I can stop it.
He smiles when he hears it. A real smile. Warm. Almost boyish. One I haven’t seen in years. Instead of comforting me, it unsettles the hell out of me.
“I’m nervous about going home,” I say, leaning toward the window so I don’t have to look at him.
I can still sense Phoenix’s eyes on me. Part of me wishes he would make a joke, something sarcastic and inappropriate that gives me somewhere familiar to hide.
“Goldie said I should let you sweat for at least ten minutes before I was nice to you.”
“Goldie sounds terrifying.”
“She is terrifying. And kind. And she does not take anyone’s shit.” I go back to tracing my thumb along the edge of my sleeve. “She helped me more than anyone else in there. She understood the music industry and what it can take from you if you let it.”
I peer out the window and pretend the trees are fascinating. “What about the guys? How have they been?”
“Jax and Jett keep snapping at each other over some shit. Cruz has started asking them what crawled up both their asses and died there.”
“And Damon?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Still a parasite lodged up my ass,” Phoenix says. “The man has built a luxury apartment in there and keeps complaining about the neighborhood.”
A laugh slips out of me.
He smirks. “On the last day of the tour, he called me a dickhead with the impulse control of a horny teenager.”
That sounds about right. Phoenix has never met a willing woman he did not feel personally obligated to climb into. Even without me there, it sounds as though the tour went exactly as usual.
“Let me guess. You wanted to punch him, right?”
“Yeah, I wanted to.” His fingers tap once on the wheel. “Someone has to correct that shitty behavior.”
I let the silence envelop us for a moment before I speak again, “Mom wanted me to stay with them.”
His head turns slightly.
“Dad is being short with me now.” I drop my hands into my lap. “He still thinks you’re the last person I should be around while I’m this vulnerable.”
Phoenix lets out a humorless huff. “Your dad is probably more pissed at me.”
“He’s had years of practice.”
“Yeah, well, I have given him excellent material.”
What I couldn’t explain to either of my parents was that Goldie and I talked about this. Not about Phoenix changing. Building my recovery around that would be another form of self-destruction dressed up as hope.
She helped me understand that being stronger around him doesn’t mean I stop loving him. It means I stop letting that love make all my decisions for me.
Phoenix will always reach parts of me no one else can. Maybe he will only ever be this. My oldest friend and my worst weakness. The man I love in a way that may never leave me.
But I can live with that.
What I can’t live with anymore is letting him decide how much loving him costs me.
Being around him now is not about waiting for him to become someone else. It’s about seeing him clearly enough to understand who we are, who we are not, and how I fit him into my life without disappearing into his. I need to learn to love him without abandoning myself.
This time, I come first.
A few minutes later, he signals and turns off the main road onto a narrower street. This is not the way to my apartment.
I sit up straighter. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Phoenix.”
“Willow.”
“Tell me.”
“No. It’s a surprise.”
I stare at him. “You hate surprises.”
“I hate other people’s surprises. Mine are fucking excellent.”
He drives through a quiet little town with old shopfronts and trees lining the main street.
There is a bakery with a chalkboard sign out front, a hardware store with faded paint, a drugstore, a bookstore, and a handful of people moving at a pace that suggests nobody here has ever been photographed stumbling out of a club at two in the morning.
Warm light settles over the roofs and for a moment the whole place feels stolen from another life. From another time.
He pulls into a parking space near the end of the street and shuts off the engine.
I watch him. “What are we doing?”
“Come on.”
Without elaborating, he opens his door and climbs out. He walks around the front of the car and opens my door.
I stare up at him, still having no idea what the fuck we are doing here. But I don’t ask again. I just get out.
Phoenix falls into step beside me as we walk down the street, his hands buried in his pockets. A woman pushes a stroller toward us, talking softly to the baby until she notices him.
Even without the stage, the lights, or thousands of women screaming his name, Phoenix is still impossible to look away from. Too tall. Too beautiful. And too sure of the space he takes up.
The woman catches herself and flicks her gaze away, but not before it briefly lands on me.
Phoenix doesn’t seem to notice. Or perhaps he does notice and, for once, does not care.
He steers me toward a small café tucked between the bakery and an antique shop with dusty lamps crowded in the window.
I follow Phoenix into the café.
A bell rings as we step inside. There are old booths along one wall, small wooden tables by the windows, handwritten specials taped behind the counter, and a handful of people speaking in low voices over mugs and plates.
An older man with gray hair and a towel draped over one shoulder looks up from behind the counter. His eyes pass over Phoenix without recognition, instantly making him my favorite person in this town.
“Two?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Phoenix says, then catches himself. “Please.”
I smirk at him.
“What?” he says.
“You haven’t said please since my mom forced it out of you at the dinner table when we were kids.”
“I’m still capable of being polite, Wills.”
“Since when?”
“Don’t make it fucking weird.”
“Too late. I’m witnessing personal growth before coffee.”
The owner leads us to a booth near the back, where sunlight falls across the table and the window looks out onto the quiet street. I slide in on one side. Phoenix takes the seat across from me and sets his sunglasses on the table.
Menus land between us with coffee arriving soon after.
I wrap both hands around my mug and take a sip.
Real coffee.
Not the rehab shit, which always tasted as if it had been filtered through old socks.
A sound slips out of me before I can stop it, causing Phoenix’s eyes to meet mine.
The second he hears it, I know exactly where his mind goes.
“Don’t,” I warn.
His mouth curves. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to. I can hear your brain unzipping its pants from here.”
His grin turns slow and filthy, as his gaze drops to my lips for a moment before lifting back to mine.
“So you did miss me.”
There he is. That cocky dickhead, already making this about himself.
I lean back against the booth. “I missed coffee.”
He lets out a quiet laugh and looks back down at the menu. “What are you going to order?”
Before I can answer, he lifts his head again.
His eyes move over my face, slow enough to make me feel every inch of it, before stopping at my mouth.
It’s only for a second. But it is enough to send my pulse tripping over its own feet.
I stare at him, confused. The owner appears beside the table before I can make the terrible decision to ask him why the fuck he keeps doing that.
I order eggs and toast.
Phoenix orders pancakes and bacon.
“You still eat like you are fourteen and unsupervised,” I say once the owner walks away.
“I was fourteen and unsupervised.”
I shake my head, smiling into my coffee despite myself.