25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
Willow
The guys left hours ago, taking the noise with them and leaving behind half-empty beer bottles, crumbs on the coffee table, and the proof that people missed me while I was away.
It was good to see them. The kind of good that settles in your chest and hurts a little because you didn’t realize how much you needed it until it was already happening.
Jax hugged me too hard, the way he always does, as if he could hold whatever’s broken together for a while if he squeezed tight enough.
Jett kept a keen eye on me. Quiet and steady, saying nothing, which, with Jett, means everything.
Cruz had kissed the top of my head and called me Songbird with too much feeling behind it, which, from Cruz, who puts emotion into nothing, meant more than I knew what to do with.
I didn’t cry. I wanted to. But I didn’t.
I lie in bed with the sheets pulled up to my chest, staring at the ceiling and listening to the apartment settle around me.
My bedroom seems like it belongs to another person. That’s the thing nobody warns you about when you come back. That your own space can appear like a stranger’s.
I should be grateful to be home. But stepping back into this apartment is like stepping into the skin of a woman I don’t fully recognize.
The one who left here wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping, and wasn’t writing or feeling much of anything. She was surviving on noise, pills, and whatever was within arm’s reach at two in the morning, running on the very dumb theory that if she kept moving fast enough, the grief couldn’t catch her.
But it caught me anyway.
And now I’m back in my bed, staring at my own ceiling, with the sensation of being a guest in my own life.
I roll onto my side and stare at the door.
Phoenix is on the other side of it, sleeping on the couch.
He was quiet this afternoon. Too quiet for Phoenix. Usually, he is the center of every room without even trying to be. Everything bends toward him because he has spent years ensuring that it does.
But today, he sat back and watched me. Every time I looked his way, his eyes were already there. On my face. On my hands. On the plate in my lap. In the moments I laughed. In the ones I went quiet. Taking everything in.
He seems different from the man I used to know. There is something quieter about him now that doesn’t need the whole room watching.
I still have no idea what happened in the kitchen with Cruz. Usually, when Cruz asks for help, it is code for we need to talk. But there was no raised voice or the sound of them threatening to put the other through a wall.
Maybe they said nothing to each other. With those guys, who the fuck knows?
Eventually, I give up trying to sleep entirely.
I slide out of my bed, bare feet hitting the floor and my T-shirt falling to mid-thigh. Static Hearts across the chest in cracked white letters.
The irony is not lost on me.
Nothing is lost on me anymore. That’s the thing about rehab nobody warns you about. You get sober and suddenly your brain is running at full capacity with nowhere useful to go and absolutely no mercy for what it decides to think about at two in the morning.
I move slowly down the hallway. Careful. Quiet. Which is ridiculous because this is my apartment, my hallway, and my floorboards.
And yet I move as if I’m the one who doesn’t belong here. As if the darkness has rules and I’m not sure I know them anymore. As if one wrong step might wake Phoenix and I’m not ready for whatever that conversation would look like at this ungodly hour.
I reach the living room and stop.
Phoenix is stretched out on the couch—one arm bent behind his head and the blanket I gave him already on the floor. His shirt has ridden up, revealing a strip of hard stomach and the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath the waistband of his sweats.
In sleep, his mouth loses some of its arrogance. His lashes rest against his cheeks and his jaw is rough with stubble. He looks exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with partying and everything to do with a man who hasn’t been sleeping.
He is beautiful.
He always has been. I remember noticing it when we were teenagers, how it happened gradually and then all at once, the way boys do when they stop being boys. I remember thinking it was inconvenient back then.
It’s more inconvenient now because he is more beautiful than I remember.
But as I observe him, I also see the man who made me seem disposable after giving me the one night I had wanted for years. The man who broke something in me so cleanly that I didn’t even feel it go until I was already on the floor.
And I see the man who stayed outside my hospital room. Who drove me to rehab without making a big deal of it. Who sat on my couch today and watched me with those eyes and didn’t perform once.
All those men wear the same beautiful face. And that is the fucking problem.
Goldie would tell me that beauty is just good lighting over bad habits and that I should stop confusing the man I remember with the one standing in front of me now.
I force myself toward the kitchen.
I take a glass down from the cabinet and turn on the faucet. The water runs loudly in the quiet. Loud enough to wake someone if they were listening. I turn it off fast and lift the glass to my mouth.
The kitchen light flicks on and I flinch so hard that water spills over my fingers.
Phoenix stands in the doorway, hair a mess, black T-shirt wrinkled, sweatpants hanging low on his hips. Barefoot. Sleep rough around his eyes. Too fucking beautiful for a man who has been unconscious on a couch.
He looks at me. Then at the glass. His eyes catch on my shirt and a smirk tugs at his mouth when he reads the faded Static Hearts across my chest. His gaze travels down my bare legs, slow enough to register, before dragging back up.
I see the way his jaw tightens afterward. The way he forces himself to stop.
“Are you okay?” His voice is gravely from sleep.
I observe him over the rim of my glass. “You scared the shit out of me.”
His mouth does that thing that’s not quite a smile. “You didn’t answer the question, Wills.”
“I’m getting some water.” I lift the glass and take a sip.
“I can see that.”
“Then why ask?” I set the glass down harder than I intend to. “You know what, don’t. I don’t need you standing in my kitchen at two in the morning, checking on me like I’m on suicide watch.”
Phoenix doesn’t flinch. He just looks at me.
“I asked you to stay because I didn’t want to be alone. That doesn’t mean I need you to monitor my water intake. If I wanted a babysitter, I would have called my mom.”
Phoenix steps further into the kitchen. Not too close, but close enough that the air shifts. “Good thing I’m not your mother, then.”
I lift the glass again and take another drink. He observes me. His eyes perceive everything I endeavor to keep hidden.
“I’m fine, Phoenix.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You implied it.” My voice rises before I can stop it.
“I’m so tired of everyone asking me if I’m fucking okay.
Mom asks every time I speak to her. Jax hugged me today like I might disappear through the floorboards.
Jett watched my face every time someone spoke too loudly.
Cruz pretended not to notice, which was somehow worse than if he did.
” I stop and breathe. “And now you’re sleeping on my couch because I asked you to, which I already hate myself for, because I hate everyone seeing me like this.
As if I’m something that needs monitoring. "
Phoenix stands still.
I shift my gaze away because if I keep looking at him, I’m going to cry. And I have not come this far to cry in my kitchen in front of Phoenix Stone at three in the morning.
“Wills.” He steps closer when I don’t look at him. “I’m not here because I think you’re weak.”
My throat hurts as the emotion in me builds.
“I’m here because you asked me to stay.” His voice is quiet.
There’s no performance in it. Simply Phoenix being straight with me, which is rare enough that I don’t quite know how to handle it.
“And I’m trying real fucking hard not to screw up the first decent thing you’ve trusted me with in a long time. ”
I swallow. I think about being eleven, with a broken leg, and how Phoenix sat on the floor outside my bedroom door for three hours because I wouldn’t let anyone in, even though I didn’t want to be alone.
He never pushed to come in. He just sat there on the other side of the door, talking shit about nothing, until I stopped crying.
“You make it very hard for me to stay mad at you when you say things like that,” I say.
His mouth curves. “Don’t worry. I’ll probably piss you off again within the hour.”
“Comforting.”
“I have to keep your expectations realistic.”
His eyes drop to my mouth.
The air changes. Not as fast as the storage room, where everything between us turned hot and reckless and stupid before either of us had the sense to step back. This is slower. Quieter. But the heat moves through me anyway, completely uninterested in my better judgment.
I know I should move, say good night, and go back to bed. Rehab taught me that wanting something doesn’t mean I get to have it because it’s standing in my kitchen, looking at me like that.
Instead, I stand here like an idiot. Like the girl I have always been around him.
My gaze drops to his mouth.
When I flick my eyes back up, he’s already seen it and moves closer.
My heart slams against my ribs. My breathing changes before I can stop it, giving me away completely, which is humiliating and the least of my problems right now.
His hand rises slowly. Giving me time. Handing me a way out.
I don’t take it.
His fingers brush the side of my face. Callused from years of guitar strings, rough yet light, a barely there touch that somehow gets everywhere.
I close my eyes.
I want him so much it scares me. With everything I have, with everything I’ve tried to talk myself out of for years, and with every stupid song I’ve ever written about him without ever putting his name on it.