Chapter 11 Phoenix
Phoenix
“You need to leave him.”
“I can’t, Phoenix. If I could, I would’ve done it when you were a boy.”
I’ve imagined killing my father in forty-two different ways.
Yeah. I counted because hatred like mine needs a number.
It keeps me steady. The garden shears were my first fantasy—one clean cut to his hands, the same hands that always turned into fists, then straight through the cold, dead muscle beating in his coward’s chest. Sometimes I imagined smothering him when he passed out drunk, pressing a pillow over his face and waiting for the kicking to stop.
Hell, I almost did it once. I was sixteen.
My mom walked in and ripped me off him before I got the satisfaction I’d been owed since the day I was born.
My favorite would’ve been taking his tongue so he couldn’t call my mom a whore ever again, and then forcing poison down his throat because that’s what he is—poison in a man’s skin.
The only reason that bastard is still breathing is that she begged me not to kill him. She knew it was coming one day, but I loved her too much to make her watch it happen.
No wonder I’m fucked up, since my love for her is the reason she stays with the man who hurts her.
I don’t understand her, and I don’t want to.
She’s made every wrong choice a woman can make, and I paid for it. My whole childhood became collateral damage, and I was the price of her weakness.
I took the hits meant for her, swallowed the words that destroyed my self-worth, and stood between them before I even understood what I was protecting her from. The worst part is I’d suffer it all again if it meant she finally chose herself—not me, not him, but her.
“You can’t love him. Love isn’t abuse.”
“He wasn’t always like this. After he left the military…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop making excuses for him. One day, he’ll kill you. You know that.”
“He wouldn’t—”
“He absolutely would.”
And if that happens, I’ll rip the skin from his bones while he screams, and I’ll make him watch every piece burn.
“Maybe if you came home, you could see that he’s changed.”
“I can see the black eye under your makeup. Don’t insult me with bullshit.”
“I just… I miss you.”
“Then leave him and come to New York with me. I’ll take care of you.”
My mom starts to sob quietly. “I can’t, baby boy. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
“Then you really are lost,” I whisper. “And as much as I love you… I can’t keep watching you do this.”
That was the last time I saw her.
Seventy-three days later, my mom was gone.
She had a heart attack in her sleep, which wasn’t exactly the ending I’d spent years preparing for, but life’s got a fucked-up sense of humor.
The woman survived strangulation, beatings, and broken bones.
She survived being thrown down the stairs, nights that should’ve killed her, and a marriage that was nothing more than a long, slow execution.
My father couldn’t kill her outright—not with his hands or his rage—so he did it the slow way.
He broke the one thing she still had control over: her heart.
He chipped at it year after year, bruised it with invisible marks, and reshaped it until it learned that the only escape she’d ever get was to stop beating entirely.
And it did.
It just gave the fuck up when it realized the only way to stop suffering was to stop living in a world where he existed. There was no big dramatic finale to her life, no last words, just a muscle that decided it was done fighting a war it could never win.
“How is she?” Shannen asks.
How is she?
Fucking dead in the ground, that’s how she is. Buried six feet deep, with nothing to show for her life but a son who got screwed up along the way and a husband who probably celebrated with a bottle of whiskey.
“Dead.”
Shannen gasps, her hand flying to her mouth like she’s trying to shove the sound back in. “Phoenix… I’m really sorry… How long?”
“A year ago. I just got back from Indiana. It was the first anniversary.”
“Jesus…” she whispers. “What about your dad… Is he…?” She trails off because even she knows there’s no good way to finish that sentence.
Is he alive?
Is he rotting in a cell where he belongs?
“He’s still breathing, but one day, I’ll be the one who decides when that stops.”
Shannen gives me that soft, pitying look, not realizing that I fucking mean it. That bastard is going to die because I decide he dies. Shannen can get over it later.
“That’s not a figure of speech,” I add, leaning back in the chair as if we’re not casually talking about murder. “I mean it. That’s why I went back. I thought it’d be a good time to end him, but the fucker’s hiding from me, which just means he knows what’s coming.”
“When did you last see him?”
“My mom’s funeral. I didn’t stay long.”
“So that’s where you’ve been?”
I smirk because she’s practically serving it up, and she doesn’t even realize it.
“Sounds like you missed me, pretty girl.” She ignores it, which just makes me want to push harder. “Don’t worry, next time I’ll take you with me.”
“Phoenix, this has to stop,” she says, and I can hear the frustration beneath it.
But I’m not listening to her anymore. My attention snags on the ugliest, most obnoxiously bright bunch of flowers I’ve ever seen, sitting on the corner of her desk like a fucking joke.
My chest tightens instantly because they’re not from me.
They look like the exact kind of cheap, desperate shit a man sends when he doesn’t know her at all, which is every man except me.
The longer I stare, the worse it gets, and the more it feels like someone just walked into my territory, pissed on the walls, and left their name scrawled on my girl like she was free to take.
I don’t even look at her when I reach for the card beside it, my adrenaline kicking in because I already know who they’re going to be from.
“Phoenix—”
Her voice cracks as she realizes, way too late, that she should’ve fed them through a shredder the second they showed up. She could’ve burned them, buried them, or launched them at the fucking sun for all I care. Literally anything other than leaving them out like this.
She says my name again, but I don’t bother acknowledging it.
I open the card instead and let my eyes drag over the letters, each one somehow more irritating than the last.
Shannen, thank you for lunch. It was lovely to finally meet you, and I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do for me. Looking forward to the gala. James.
My jaw ticks.
Don’t kill him—he’s too high profile.
Lucien’s voice is in my head, warning me not to be an idiot.
“Whatever you’re thinking of doing, stop… I want this contract, which means you don’t get to act out.” I crumple the card in my fist, walk it over to the trash, and drop it in. “I’m serious. If you want to be in my life, then you don’t get to decide who I work with.”
“The hell I don’t, when that asshole’s eye-fucking you through a goddamn thank-you note.”
“So what if he is? I’m going to date. Get used to it,” she fires back.
God, she’s fucking beautiful when she’s pissed—but not even that’s enough to put the leash back on me right now.
I’m around her desk before she can blink, and she stands, her shoulders squared, trying to match my energy.
Cute effort.
Stupid as hell, but cute.
“Say that to me again,” I murmur.
“Why do we keep doing this, Phoenix? I’ve told you where I stand.”
“Tell me again,” I growl. “Once more.”
“Whatever you think is going to happen between us… isn’t.”
“It has happened. It is happening, and you haven’t done anything to stop it aside from a few weak-ass words that don’t mean shit to me. I’m inside you, pretty girl. It’s me. It’s always been me, and yet you still deny me. Why?”
“If this is about sex—”
“Don’t insult what this is by reducing it to that.
If this was about sex, I’d have had you ten times over by now, and you know it.
” I tilt my head, eyes narrowing as I lean in, my lips brushing the air beside her ear.
“You had me beneath you in that hotel room, soaking through your underwear, grinding down on me like your life depended on it, and that had nothing to do with power. That was all me. That was us. And maybe you’d have gone through with it…
Maybe not. But you sure as fuck would’ve let me make you come in that prick’s restaurant, when the only thing going through your pretty little head was how fast I could get my fingers inside you and whether you could keep quiet long enough for me to finish what I started. ”
I slam my hands down on the desk beside her hips, the sound cracking through the room. She doesn’t flinch. Not even a blink, and that trust, the way she knows I’d never hurt her, even when I’m this close to unraveling, sends lightning down my spine.
I cage her in, my chest nearly brushing hers, my breath matching hers, inhale for inhale, as if my lungs forgot how to work unless they follow her pace.
“If this was about sex, I’d fuck my virginity into you right here against that glass so the whole goddamn city could see exactly who I belong to.”
Her eyes drop to my mouth, and I nearly lose it.
I want to kiss her so bad it hurts.
I want to consume her.
Rip her open.
Climb inside her chest and close the door behind me.
I want to live there.
Fuck it, I’ll die there just so I can taste her again.
“This is about everything you’re too scared to admit you feel and the parts of you you’re still trying to pretend don’t react to me.
” I lean in, just enough to feel her breath stutter against my lips.
“It’s about the fact that we belong to each other in a way that doesn’t give a single fuck about timing, logic, or whatever version of reality you’re clinging to. ”
I leave the words hanging between us, and she stares at me with those golden eyes I’ve been obsessed with for as long as I can remember—that impossible molten gold that’s like honey laced with fire, a shade that I’m sure no one else in this world has.