Willow #3
Surprise first. Then irritation. Then a danger flaring under that because he’s very clearly not used to hearing that word, much less in public, much less with an audience.
“Willow.”
I sling my bag over my shoulder. “Enjoy your evening.”
I turn and walk out.
My heart’s pounding before I even make it through the door.
Not because I’m wrong, because I’m embarrassed.
Because part of me had started to relax. To think maybe there was more to him than the money and the arrogance and the intensity. Maybe there still is, but I’m not sitting there while women with old poster trauma swarm the table and remind me exactly how this kind of story usually ends.
I push through the door and the cold breeze hits me hard enough to feel like a slap.
Good.
My boots smack the pavement hard enough to make my ankles ache. I don’t look back. I don’t stop. I pass the windows of The Lamb without glancing inside because I refuse to give myself the chance.
By the time I get home, I’m breathless.
Daisy hears me before I’m even all the way through the door and comes skidding across the floor like I’ve been gone for three years instead of one infuriating dinner.
“There you are,” I mutter, dropping my bag and crouching down so she can launch herself into me. “Congratulations. You remain the most stable thing in my life.”
She licks my chin with distressing enthusiasm.
“I know,” I say. “I also think he’s annoying.”
I kick off my boots, peel the hoodie off, and collapse onto the couch with my puppy, Daisy, sprawled across my lap like a scruffy weighted blanket.
“Well,” I tell her, “that was a disaster.”
She blinks at me.
“He takes me to a restaurant where the butter definitely went to private school, orders enough food to feed a small board meeting, looks at me like I’m some kind of puzzle, and then, surprise… he’s also pretty famous.”
Tail thump.
“Yes, exactly.”
I lean back and stare at the ceiling. Because now I have to know.
I reach for my laptop from the coffee table and Daisy shifts with a wounded sigh but allows it.
“This is your fault, too,” I tell her. “You should’ve looked more judgmental when I left.”
I type in Xander Harlow and hit search.
Then I stare.
“Well,” I say. “That’s irritating.”
Articles. Interviews. Images. Videos. Entire pages of results. The Lonely Ones. There’s Xander on old magazine covers, onstage with a guitar, hair longer, tattoos more obvious, mouth at a microphone, looking like trouble in an entirely different genre than the one currently sitting in my head.
Wow, I really am out of the loop. Then again, I grew up three thousand miles away. I guess this band didn’t make it to our shores.
I click on a video. Music floods the room.
Daisy lifts her head.
“Okay,” I admit after a minute. “That’s actually good.”
I click another. Then another.
He’s really good.
The music is rough with grit. Weight. The kind of sound that feels like it belongs to people who’ve broken things on purpose and written songs with the pieces afterward.
I click a live performance and there are the other two from the diner.
Julian with the dark hair and leather jacket.
Gabe behind the drums looking focused and stupidly composed.
There’s someone on the keyboard too, but I can’t really see him.
Together they have the kind of chemistry you can feel through a screen, which is just offensive.
I close the laptop halfway, then open it again, because apparently, I’m committed to my own suffering tonight.
Another song starts.
Damn it.
Damn him.
There’s one clip where the camera catches him turning toward the crowd, sweat-dark hair pushed back, voice rough with whatever song he’s halfway through, and I genuinely have to pause it because the man has no right to be this good looking and talented at the same time.
“No,” I tell the screen.
Daisy sneezes.
“No,” I repeat. “I’m not doing this.”
Because now I know exactly what this is.
I’m the novelty.
The waitress who didn’t care who he was. The woman in a diner T-shirt who spilled eggs on him and didn’t dissolve when he stared. The challenge. Different from the women who walk over smiling because they already know his face.
That may be interesting for a while. A little while. Long enough for him to enjoy the friction of it.
But I know how men like Xander Harlow work. Maybe not him specifically, but the type. Beautiful, successful, used to attention, used to getting what they want. They like a woman who pushes back right up until the moment she asks to be treated like she matters.
I scratch Daisy behind the ears and stare at the dark screen of my laptop.
“He’s very good looking,” I say reluctantly.
Her tail thumps.
“And his music is annoyingly hot.”
Another thump.
“And I would rather eat glass than become another notch on his bedpost.”
Daisy rolls onto her back like she’s overcome by the burden of my brilliance.
“Exactly,” I tell her.
Xander Harlow can keep the money, the fame, the impossible stare, and every woman in a twenty-mile radius who wants to build a shrine out of old concert posters.
He’s a problem. A gorgeous, talented, arrogant problem.
And I’m smart enough to know better.
At least, I really need to be.