Chapter 15
Phoenix
“You mean how it feels to fuck me.”
I’ve been waiting my entire life for her to feel that violent urge to claim me as hers, and the second she unintentionally handed me everything I’ve ever wanted, I was ruined.
I wanted to stop the bike and haul her ass off it just so I could fuck her anywhere and prove that yes, fuck yes, it’s only ever, and could only ever, be her.
Every thought I’ve ever had about sex, intimacy, and connection has had her face, her body, and her voice, and when I finally use my cock, it won’t be just for pleasure. It’ll be for possession.
I’ve been ready for the past twenty minutes, but I wait.
I’m watching her through the camera feed, and I swear she must forget sometimes that I check in on her, because the way she’s nervously pacing her apartment, wrapped up in her coat with her hands fidgeting at her sides, is so fucking adorable it makes my chest ache.
She agreed to a date. She said yes, not to the boy who fucked it all up back then, but to the man I am now.
I already know how tonight ends. There’s no version of this where we don’t end up skin-to-skin and closer than we’ve ever been, where I’m reshaped and remade into something even more devoted to her than I already am.
I’m not crossing my virginity off a list, getting it over with, or whatever bullshit people say when they talk about their first time.
It’s about being as close as two people can possibly get.
It’s about feeling what she’s been hiding from herself—love.
Dark, messy, all-consuming, soul-binding love that terrifies her because she knows that once we cross this line, there’s no going back.
Tonight, I’m going to tear it out of her, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, thrust by fucking thrust, until she stops fighting what she feels.
I knock on her door for what is only the second time in my life, but it feels like the first time everything might finally fall into place.
Nothing prepares me for seeing her standing in the doorway, backlit by the soft glow of her apartment, looking at me like I’m pure trouble but she wants me around anyway—the way she used to look at me.
It’s the same look she’d give me when I used to sneak out and show up at her trailer late at night, my boots crunching gravel too loud, my heart pounding because we both knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing just by being there.
I’d tap on her window, and she’d open it every single time, knowing I was coming for her.
I wasn’t saving her back then. I knew that. We both did. I was just stealing her for a few hours so we could pretend we were more than two broken kids with nowhere to go.
I didn’t know how to keep her back then, and it killed me.
But I do now.
She looks down, and the second she realizes what’s in my hand, her entire face lights up.
“I should’ve given it back sooner, back in Indiana. That’s on me.”
I hold the black book out, and she takes it carefully, her fingertips brushing mine so lightly it should feel like nothing, but I feel everything.
I always do when she touches me.
“Thank you,” she whispers before laying it carefully on the side table beside the door.
“Don’t… I stole it and kept it. You don’t thank me for shit like that.” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “But what I do need is for you to come with me.”
I hold my hand out, and she takes it willingly. Her fingers slide between mine, and Jesus Christ, I wasn’t prepared for how it feels.
Everything I’ve waited for, every line I’ve crossed, and every boundary I’ve obliterated has led to this.
“Where are we going?” she asks as I pull her toward the emergency exit, the metal door rattling as I shove it open.
“The roof,” I tell her, without looking back. “Just trust me.”
She huffs a laugh as we hit the stairwell, but there’s a nervousness beneath it, and I don’t miss it.
“You’re going to push me, aren’t you? That’s how this ends. You hurt everyone else, lull me into a false sense of security, and then boom. Biggest drop possible.” She laughs again, but that tiny hitch in it makes something inside me go cold.
I stop so abruptly that she almost slams into me. I turn fast, catching her before she can stumble, my hands coming up to frame her face.
“Look at me, baby.” My thumbs brush her cheeks, desperate for her to hear me. “If there’s any part of you that believes I could ever hurt a single hair on that gorgeous fucking head, then I’ll take you back to your apartment right now, and I’ll walk away.”
It would hollow me out until there’s nothing left but the man I could’ve been if she’d just let me love her, but for her, I’d do it.
“I swear to you, Shannen, if you ever feared me… that’s what would end this. Not you hating me. Not someone else touching you. That.”
Her fingers grip the hem of my shirt, her nails dancing lightly over my abs through the fabric, trying to ground me before I spiral completely.
“I know I’ve done fucked-up things. I know what I am, but don’t ever confuse what I’d do for you with what I’d do to you.”
“I know,” she says, nodding, and god, I’m so close to kissing her it’s almost painful.
But I don’t.
I force myself to hold back because I want to do this right. For once in my life, I want to do right by her, and from what I can gather, the kiss comes at the end of the date.
You don’t rush it.
You earn it.
“You’re not a bad person, Phoenix. You’ve got… many red flags, and fuck me, you’ve done some straight-up life-in-prison type of shit. But I know you. I know where it comes from.”
I brush my lips across her forehead, then quietly lead her up to the roof, never once letting go of her hand. I step out ahead of her, still holding her tight, and she follows.
Slowly, she straightens, her eyes sweeping across the rooftop.
Heaters glow warm against the cold night.
Pillows and blankets are arranged carefully after I googled “How to make a rooftop look romantic and not desperate.” Wine, takeout containers—all that cliché book-boyfriend shit I spent hours setting up.
And in the background, all her favorite songs play quietly—songs I pulled from her recent social media posts and the ones she repeats on a loop when she’s home alone.
She doesn’t say anything. She just stands there, spinning in slow circles, taking it all in.
In my head, I’m losing it, screaming, Please like it, please let this be enough that you don’t run from me again.
“Phoenix—” she breathes out, still looking around with wide eyes. “I… this is—”
“It’s okay?”
“It’s perfect,” she whispers, her gold eyes shining as they finally meet mine. “This is… beautiful.”
I step toward her and wrap my arms around her, pulling her close because the tip of her nose is already turning pink from the cold. The last thing I need is to give her pneumonia on our first real date.
“I know we can’t lie back and watch the stars here the way we used to when we were kids.” I glance up at the polluted, starless sky. “So if I can’t give you the stars above us, then the least I can do is bring you high enough to see the ones below.”
The city stretches out before us like another universe. Skyscrapers glow like constellations, and headlights move like shooting stars, while windows flicker like distant galaxies mid-explosion.
We used to count stars.
Now we count lights.
Different sky, same feeling.
Same girl.
“There… that’s our starlight now.”
“Ours,” she whispers.
One four-letter word, and I’m ready to drag her into the nearest chapel and put a ring on her finger before she can blink. My mind is already rewriting the next fifty years as if it’s a done deal—rings, vows, my name replacing hers, her in my bed every night for the rest of our lives.
I force myself to breathe and to look like a man with patience, not one who’s two seconds away from dropping to his knees and begging her to let me chain her to my side for the rest of her life.
Obviously, I ordered Shannen’s favorite Chinese.
She doesn’t say anything at first; she just raises an eyebrow when she sees the spread. The noodles, the rice, the dumplings, all of it. Everything but the mushroom chop suey, because even I have my limits.
“Let me guess.” She smirks, popping the lid off a container. “You still think I’m a savage for eating mushrooms.”
“Think?” I laugh, leaning back and tearing open a spring roll wrapper. “No, baby. I know you are.”
She rolls her eyes with a small laugh. “It’s a vegetable.”
“No, it’s a fungus.”
By the time the food is spread out around us in plastic containers, the bottle of wine on her side of the blanket is already a glass down.
Hers, not mine—because I’ll never go near it. Not after the shitshow of a childhood where the only thing more predictable than her parents’ next high was the bruise it’d leave behind on her precious skin.
We eat and talk, falling into this way with each other that feels as if we never lost all that time. We laugh the way we used to, and maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s just one dinner on a rooftop, but I can feel it. She’s right here with me, not just physically, but in every way that matters.
She’s giving this a chance and letting herself have tonight. One night to feel out the version of me she used to know—the one she trusted without question—and maybe she’s hoping to find that Phoenix again.
“Tell me about college… You didn’t play for long, did you?” I shake my head, still propped up on one elbow, my legs stretched out in front of me while she sits cross-legged, turned toward me like we’re fifteen again and the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
“I’ll be honest, baby. I couldn’t get my mind off you, so no, I didn’t. I didn’t give a shit about the game or school because nothing in my life mattered after I lost you.”
“You didn’t even try?” she asks, genuinely surprised. “I know you, Phoenix. You would’ve pushed yourself to fit wherever you thought you needed to.”
“That was me once. Before I fucked everything up. After that, I never tried to fit in again.”