31. Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-One
Phoenix
Willow writes with one foot tucked under her, my T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, and with her hair falling forward every time she bends over the notebook on the coffee table.
I’m supposed to be playing the guitar.
Well… Technically, I am playing. The guitar rests in my lap, my fingers strumming the same four chords because my hands know what to do even when the rest of me has lost the fucking plot.
It’s late. Late enough that the city outside has gone soft at the edges.
Her tall lamp throws gold over the floor, the curve of her cheek, and the pen in her hand as she crosses out one line, then another, then returns to the first because Willow has always hated surrendering to the thing that was right from the start.
She bites the end of the pen causing me to miss a chord.
Her eyes flick up. “That sounded terrible.”
“Your face is distracting.”
“My face is doing nothing.”
“Exactly. Very selfish of it.”
Her mouth twitches, but she looks back down before she lets me have the full smile.
Willow doesn’t give herself away easily, and that should make me less obsessed, but apparently I have built my entire personality around wanting things that can ruin me.
She writes another line.
I watch her hand move.
That hand has written songs the whole world screamed back at me and held mine when we were kids.
That hand also pushed me away in a hospital room when I deserved it and reached for me weeks later when I did not.
That hand was limp in mine once, cold enough to make every prayer I ever had, never believed in, crawl out of me bleeding.
My fingers stop on the strings.
Willow lifts her head. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Her brows pinch. “Don’t give me “nothing” in that voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one that sounds like you are trying to swallow something.”
I try to smirk but it comes out wrong. “Sexy image.”
“Phoenix.”
There it is. My name in her mouth and too close to every part of me I’ve been pretending isn’t already on its knees in front of her.
I glance back at the guitar. “Read the chorus again.”
She observes me for another moment before doing so.
Her voice is quiet at first, a little rough from the day we have spent pulling the song apart until it bled the right color.
She reads the first line, following with the next, and somewhere between the third and fourth lines, her voice changes.
The song opens in the room as I start playing along with her voice—her words fitting my chords so perfectly it hurts.
This used to be the only thing we ever did together. Before Damon and the label. Before I learned how to turn my face toward every camera and away from the only girl who ever saw me without needing the lights.
She finishes the chorus and looks up, a little out of breath.
“What?” she asks, because I’m staring again.
I set the guitar aside and her gaze drops to it, before flicking back to me.
“Oh God, that is never a good sign.”
“No,” I say. “It really isn’t.”
She sits back slowly. The notebook remains open between us on the coffee table, her pen resting across the page.
“Phoenix.”
I love it when she says my name. I fucking hate it too.
It reminds me of all the times she said it and I answered with less than she deserved. All the years I mistook being wanted by the world for being known by the one person who already had me before I became worth wanting.
“I love you,” I say.
Her eyes soften first. “I love you too,” she says casually.
I see the answer before she says it. The old love. The best-friend love. The I-have-known-you-forever love, the one where our lives have intertwined.
I shake my head. “No.”
Her lips part.
“No, Wills.” My voice cracks around her name and I fucking hate it. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Not now. Not after everything. “No, you don’t understand.”
Something shifts across her face.
I move toward her because sitting still is suddenly unbearable.
“I’m not saying I love you because you’re my best friend,” I say. “I’m not saying it because we grew up together or because you know every ugly part of me. I’m not saying it because I almost lost you and guilt finally learned how to put on a fucking suit and look respectable.”
Her eyes shine.
I move closer.
“I am in love with you.” The words land harder the second time, clearer, impossible to take back. “The ruin-my-life, rewrite-every-song, can’t-breathe-right-when-you’re-not-in-the-room kind of in love with you.”
Her hand lifts to her mouth.
I keep going because if I stop, I might never get the rest out, and she deserves every terrifying piece of it.
“I was in love with the girl under the tree who told me my bridge was shit and fixed it with one line. I was in love with the girl who gave me words when all I had was noise. I was in love with you when you stood behind every song the world screamed back at me. I was too selfish, too blind, too fucking high on being wanted to turn around and see that the only person I actually needed was already there.”
“Phoenix,” she says, her voice cracking.
I swallow, but it does nothing. My throat is raw and my chest is worse.
“I was in love with you in that storage room and I was too much of a coward to face what it meant afterward. So I made it smaller. I made you feel smaller.” My jaw clenches hard enough to hurt.
“I was in love with you when you walked away from the band and I let my pride call it anger because anger was easier than admitting that your leaving felt like someone had cut my fucking heart out of my chest.”
A tear spills over and I hate that I put tears there.
“I was in love with you when I saw that headline,” I say, my voice dropping because that one still has blood on it. “When I sat beside that hospital bed and realized there might be a world without you. Where your voice was gone. Your handwriting. Your smart mouth. Your songs. But mainly you.”
I press a fist against my chest because something inside is trying to break through. “And I knew then. Maybe I had always known and been too much of a coward to name it.”
She gets up onto her knees in front of me and I hold up a hand to keep her from touching me until she hears the rest. If she touches me too soon, I’m done.
I will put my mouth on hers and hide inside her body instead of saying the one thing that should have been said before half our damage had names.
“So don’t give it back to me safe,” I tell her.
“Don’t give me the version where you love me because I’m Phoenix and I’ve always been around, or because we were kids, or because some fucked-up part of us got tangled before we knew how to cut ourselves free.
” My voice drops. “I need you to know what I’m saying. ”
Tears slip down her face without a sound.
“I’m in love with you, Willow Hart. I have been for so long that I think every song I’ve ever sung was just me trying to say your name without getting caught. I really, really fucking love you.”
The room goes silent.
No old ghosts dragging chains through the corners. Just her staring at me as if I have finally stepped out from behind the asshole I have always been and she is not sure whether to touch me or mourn the years it took me to arrive.
Her hand lifts toward my face, fingers brushing my jaw. I nearly close my eyes, but I force myself not to.
“I thought…” She stops, her breath shaking. Her eyes hold mine, steady even though her voice isn’t.
“I have loved you too, in every way a person can love someone,” she says, her voice trembling but clear.
“As my best friend. As the boy with the guitar who thought no one was listening. As the man who broke me. As the man who came back anyway and tried to put his hands where the hurt was, without making it worse.”
My throat locks.
“But you should know, Phoenix.” Her hand doesn’t move from my face. “I have always loved you. And if we’re being honest…” She takes a breath, as if she’s finally letting go of something she’s held for years. “Every fucking day, I have always been in love with you, too.”
The words hit harder than any crowd ever has.
My breath leaves me completely.
I kneel there like a fucking idiot, a twenty-three-year-old rockstar who has had entire stadiums scream his words back at him, only to be destroyed by the only words that fucking matter.
I’m in love with you too.
“Say it again,” I whisper.
Her lips tremble. “I’m in love with you, Phoenix Stone.”
Then her mouth is on mine. Or mine is on hers. I don’t fucking know anymore and fuck if it matters.
My hand goes to the back of her neck, holding her there as I take her mouth harder, deeper, because soft is not going to survive what is happening inside my chest right now. Soft is too small. Too clean. My emotions for this woman have never once been pure.
Willow makes a small sound into my mouth and that is all it takes. The last thread of control snaps cleanly through.
She gasps, and I catch the sound in my mouth, kissing her as if I have been starving in rooms full of women who were never her, because that is exactly what I have been doing for years. And I’m done pretending otherwise.
She pulls back enough to breathe. Her eyes are dark, lips swollen, and cheeks flushed. The sight of her like that makes my cock throb so hard it hurts.
“Phoenix.”
Just my name. But it is enough to undo me.
I grip her hips and lean her back onto the floor. A tiny breath leaves her and I sense it everywhere. I yank her shirt over her head and her hair falls around her shoulders. She looks so fucking beautiful that something in my chest aches alongside everything else.
I lean in and take her nipple into my mouth.
Her fingers tighten in my hair as I suck harder, tongue dragging over the tight peak, teeth grazing just enough to pull a gasp out of her.
I palm her other breast, thumb working until she starts shifting on the floor, hips restless, thighs pressing together because she wants friction and I’m not giving it to her yet.
“Phoenix,” she breathes.
I pull off with a wet sound and glance at her. “You want something, Wills?”