Willow
THIRTY-FIVE
Ican’t sleep, which feels unfair considering I’m emotionally exhausted enough to qualify for medical research. But every time I close my eyes, my brain starts playing the worst highlight reel in human history.
Comments, headlines, the security alarm, the look on Julian’s face when the compound locked down.
By one in the morning, I give up pretending sleep is happening and slip out of bed.
Daisy lifts her head from the rug as I move around the room.
“You stay,” I whisper.
She blinks at me, clearly unconvinced by my leadership abilities, but settles back down anyway.
The compound is almost eerily quiet at night.
The long hallways shine softly under dim wall lights, shadows stretching across polished floors while music hums faintly somewhere deeper in the house.
I pad barefoot downstairs wearing leggings and another stolen oversized shirt, rubbing the back of my neck as I wander toward the sound.
Studio A’s door is cracked open. I pause outside before gently pushing it wider.
Xander’s sitting alone in the dark.
Well, mostly dark.
The recording booth gleams faint blue behind him while the massive mixing console lights the room in soft scattered colors. He’s leaned forward in the chair, forearms resting against his knees, fingers tapping once against each other before stilling.
A notebook sits open beside him filled with messy handwritten lyrics.
He looks up the second I step inside.
His gaze drags over me, taking me in. Bare legs, messy hair, his shirt. “You should be asleep.”
“So should you.”
A corner of his mouth almost moves. “Can’t argue with that.”
I step further into the studio. “You writing?”
His eyes shift toward the notebook. “Trying to.”
“Anything good?”
“Not yet.”
I glance at the pages carefully. Lyrics scratched out hard enough to nearly tear through paper, pieces of sentences, fragments, grief bleeding through all of it.
Xander nods. “Go ahead.”
I hesitate. Then I pick up the notebook.
The lyrics hit me.
Loss, guilt, someone disappearing before he was ready to let them go.
It aches.
I swallow hard and look back at him. “This is beautiful.”
His expression tightens. He doesn’t know what to do with praise anymore. “It’s unfinished.”
“Still beautiful.” I sit down beside him on the couch near the soundboard, tucking one leg beneath myself. “Julian told me you stopped writing after your band ended.”
His jaw flexes. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
He leans back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “My best friend died.”
I nod. “Josiah?”
Xander looks over. “You know his name?”
“Julian didn’t tell me much. Just the main bits.”
“He was…” Xander exhales. “A great guy. He was the kind of person who made rooms feel bigger when he walked into them. Loud. Reckless. Annoying as hell.” A pause. “Best musician I’ve ever known.”
He stares down at his hands. “We were coming back from a festival in Chicago. Snowstorm hit halfway through the drive.” His jaw tightens hard. “Truck lost control.”
Silence crashes into the room. I can practically feel the memory pressing down on him.
“He died instantly,” Xander says. “I didn’t.”
The rawness in his voice nearly undoes me.
Because I understand him differently. Not just the intensity, the control, the grief.
The kind that never really leaves.
I move closer before I fully think about it. My hand settles gently over his, and he goes completely still beneath my touch.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Everybody says that.”
I nod. “I mean it.”
“I know.”
He turns his hand beneath mine until our fingers slide together naturally.
“I couldn’t go back after that,” he says.
“Couldn’t stand the cameras. The interviews.
People asking how I was healing like my grief was some kind of fucking press release.
” Anger flashes briefly across his face now.
“I started pulling away from everything.” His thumb brushes once absently against my knuckles.
“The band. Fame. My fiancée. And then Dylan happened.”
Every muscle in his body tightens.
“Xander—”
“She slept with him, and I found out three weeks after Josiah died.”
My chest physically hurts for him.
“She said I was disappearing,” he says flatly. “And maybe she was right. Maybe I already left before she did.”
“You were grieving.”
“I was drowning.”
The honesty in that sentence guts me.
Xander leans forward again, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together. “And now, this,” he mutters bitterly. “Dylan stirring shit up online. Dragging you into it.”
I hesitate carefully. “Do you really think he leaked it?”
“He wanted attention. He got it.”
“And if he didn’t?”
Xander looks at me, then. Those ice blue eyes are exhausted and full of things he clearly never says out loud. “It’s easier to hate him than admit I miss him.”
The confession lands heavily between us.
I don’t know what to say to make any of this better.
I don’t think there is anything.
Instead, I do the only thing that feels honest.
I move closer.
My hand slides up into his hair, fingers brushing softly through the longer strands on top.
Xander’s gaze drags over my face before dropping to my mouth. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
His hand slides along my thigh.
Xander makes a rough sound in his throat before pulling me into his lap.
I gasp softly as his mouth crashes against mine. Needy in a way Xander almost never lets himself be.
His hands grip my waist hard enough to make my pulse jump while I kiss him back, fingers tangling into his hair.
Everything about him feels intense.
My hips rock against him, greedy, already lost to the friction building through the fabric.
He’s so hard beneath me I can feel it even with both of us fully dressed, his arousal blatant and insistent.
Xander kisses as he lives: unapologetically, with every edge and every hungry tenderness mapped directly onto my body. I barely remember to breathe.
His tongue is in my mouth, and his hands are on my ass, and I want to wrap myself around him like a vine.
“Xander,” I gasp, trying to catch up with what’s happening, but he’s already palming my breast, thumb flicking roughly over my nipple through the shirt until it beads tight and aching.
I moan, arching into him, my body embarrassingly eager, all boundaries eaten away by the raw heat in his hands. He’s muttering against my lips, words I can’t make out but from the way he grips my hips, the way he holds me, it’s like he can’t get close enough.
I clench my thighs tighter around him, desperate, dizzy with the intensity.
He tugs my shirt up, raking blunt nails over my ribs. He yanks the hem over my head without ceremony, and goosebumps sweep down my arms.
I’m not wearing a bra, never do for bed, and the way his eyes go dark at the sight of me makes my toes curl.
He runs his thumb over my nipple again, then he bites, just to see me jerk and hiss. I clutch his head to my chest, shoving his mouth harder against my skin.
Some animal part of me wanting to mark him, wanting to be marked.
“Fuck, Willow,” he rasps, the words cracking at the edges. He nips my shoulder, my collarbone, the hollow where my pulse hammers. “You’re so fucking soft.”
His hands slide down, callused palms spanning my hips, my thighs, dragging me down against him.
Words dissolve. The music from somewhere else in the house goes warped and underwater, replaced by the gasping gulp of my own breathing and the frantic, wet sound of his mouth exploring my skin.
He lifts me up and turns, planting me brutally on the mixing desk, the cool metal and plastic biting into my bare ass as he steps in, pressing his hips hard between my open thighs.
We knock a row of faders out of place, the noise briefly obscene.
The lights on the board spike red as he presses me back, body lining up with mine so perfectly I almost shiver.
His hand is already between us, working my leggings down until the cold hits the sensitive skin at the top of my thighs, and I gasp again, trembling.
He slips a hand between my legs, rough and impatient, fingers pressing straight into the wet heat he finds there. I moan, louder than I mean to, the sound echoing off the acoustic panels, and bite my lip to muffle myself.
He circles my clit with the heel of his palm, finding the exact spot that makes my vision snap white for one long, blinding second.
“Yes, fuck, more,” I beg, and he gives it to me, two fingers crooking while his other hand holds my hip like he’s afraid I’ll shatter.
He yanks my leggings down the rest of the way in one rough jerk, the fabric twisting, and I kick them off, feet dangling over the edge of the desk. My entire body is vibrating, every nerve awake and screaming.
He undoes his jeans, and I watch his cock spring free, thick and flushed, and it’s indecent how relieved I feel.
He strokes himself once, twice. Just showing off, maybe, or maybe making sure I’m watching. I can’t look away; I’m hypnotized by the way his fist curls around the base, the way the head glosses with pre-come at the tip, the way the veins stand out in uneven ropes along the shaft.
He’s beautiful, dark and sleek and hungry, and I want all of it.
“Beg for it,” Xander says, the command barely more than a growl.
He’s not teasing me… well, not only teasing me. He wants to hear it, needs to hear that I’m as desperate for him as he is for me.
“Damn, I want you,” I say, fingers already scrabbling at his hips, trying to drag him closer. “Fuck me, Xander. Please. Now.”
He doesn’t even hesitate. The head of his cock catches at my entrance, and I can feel how wet I am for him already. He pushes in, just the tip, making me whine, making me claw at his back. And then, with one brutal thrust, he seats himself to the hilt.
I cry out, loud and reckless as his hands bite bruises into my hips, his pace brutal, the desk rattling beneath me, the mixer lights pulsing like a city blackout.
He’s so deep I can barely process it. So deep he’s everywhere, under my ribs, echoing hard through my bones, every thrust a full-body shudder. I can feel the pitch warbling inside me, the vibration of his name in my throat.