Chapter 15- PHOENIX
The scotch burns going down, but not enough to drown out the silence.
I'm sitting on the balcony at three in the morning, staring at the ocean that used to bring me peace.
The waves crash against the shore in their endless rhythm, indifferent to the fact that my world has stopped turning.
A joint smolders between my fingers, the smoke curling up into the salt air, mixing with the fog that's rolling in from the water.
Five days. She's been gone for five days, and each one has felt like a year.
I take another drag and hold the smoke in my lungs until they burn, then release it slowly into the darkness. The high takes the edge off, softens the sharp corners of my thoughts, but it can't fill the hollow space that's opened up inside my chest. Nothing can fill that space except her.
My phone sits on the table beside me, screen dark. I've texted her twelve times today. Twelve times, and each response has been shorter than the last.
How are you?
Fine.
Did you sleep okay?
Yes.
I miss you.
I know.
I know. Not I miss you too. Not I'll be home soon. Just I know, like my feelings are an inconvenience she's acknowledging but not reciprocating.
The anger flares hot and sudden in my chest. I could fix this. I could be on a plane in two hours, at her mother's door by morning. I could drag her out of that house, throw her over my shoulder, bring her back where she belongs.
With me.
The thought shouldn't be as appealing as it is. But I've never been a patient man, and waiting while she decides whether I'm worth keeping is slowly driving me insane.
The bottle is half empty now. I pour another glass and watch the amber liquid catch the moonlight. I should stop. Should eat something. Should sleep. Should do any of the things that normal people do to function.
But I'm not normal. I never have been. And the darkness inside me, the part I've spent years learning to control, is clawing at the walls of its cage.
The days have blurred together into a haze of work and alcohol and obsessive checking of my phone.
I go to the office because I don't trust myself to stay in this empty house.
In meetings, I'm sharp, brutal even. I've made three junior executives cry this week.
I don't care. The rage has to go somewhere, and it's either them or the walls.
My head of security, Torres, called this morning with an update. I didn't ask him to watch her. I told myself I wouldn't do that. But when he offered, I didn't say no.
She's staying at her mother's house. She went to a coffee shop yesterday, sat alone for two hours. She's been crying. Torres could tell from the way she looked when she left.
The thought of her crying makes me want to put my fist through the glass door. The thought that I'm the reason she's crying makes me want to do something far worse.
Everything in this house reminds me of Jade.
The kitchen where she made coffee in the morning, hair still messy from sleep, wearing one of my t-shirts that hung to her thighs.
The shower where I held her against the tiles and watched the water stream down her body.
The bed where I learned every curve and hollow of her, where I whispered things I've never said to anyone, where I fell asleep with my face buried in her hair.
I still sleep in the bedroom. The sheets still smell like her, and I refuse to wash them.
It's torture, breathing her in every night while she's three thousand miles away.
But I'm a man who's always believed in earning what I want through pain.
This is my penance. My punishment for letting her walk out that door.
For not locking it behind her.
I'm not a man who begs. I'm not a man who waits. I'm a man who takes what he wants and deals with the consequences later.
But she asked me to give her space.
And for reasons I don't fully understand, her asking means something.
Her words have power over me that no one else's ever have.
When she said she couldn't breathe, something cracked open inside me.
Not guilt, exactly. Something deeper. The realization that I would rather let her go than watch her suffocate.
Even if letting her go might kill me.
I pick up my phone and stare at her name in my contacts. My thumb hovers over the call button, desperate to hear her voice.
I could call her. Wake her up. Remind her who she belongs to.
Because she does belong to me. That hasn't changed just because she ran. If anything, the distance has made it clearer. She's mine. She's been mine since the moment I first saw her, and she'll be mine until the day I die.
The question is whether she knows it yet.
I set the phone down and light another joint with steady hands.
I understand why she left. I was suffocating her, treating her like a possession to be guarded rather than a woman to be trusted. My father does the same thing to my mother, and I swore I'd never repeat his mistakes.
But here's the difference between my father and me: I'm aware of what I am. I know my instincts are fucked up, that my first response to loving someone is to lock them away where no one can touch them. Knowing doesn't make it easier to change. It just means I have to fight harder.
And I've never backed down from a fight.
Around four in the morning, I pull up flight options to Boston. I could be there by noon. I could walk into her mother's house, look that woman in the eye, and tell her exactly what I think of her.
Sydney Catalano thinks she can take Jade from me. She thinks a few days in Boston and some guilt trips about the past will undo everything we've built. She doesn't know who she's dealing with.
I'm not James, whatever pathetic excuse for a man he turned out to be. I don't cheat. I don't abandon. When I commit to something, I commit completely, and I committed to Jade the moment I sent that check.
My finger hovers over the purchase button for a first-class ticket.
Then I hear her voice in my head.
I need space. If you love me, you'll let me go.
I close the browser. Not because I'm accepting defeat. Because I'm playing a longer game.
Jade thinks she needs to choose between me and her mother. She thinks this is about two different versions of her life, two different futures. She's wrong. There is no future without me. She just hasn't accepted that yet.
Waiting isn't surrender. It's strategy. I'm giving her room to breathe, room to miss me, room to realize that whatever her mother says about the Crawfords, I'm not my father and she's not Olive.
When she comes back, and she will come back, she'll come because she chose me. Not because I dragged her home. Not because I gave her no other option. Because she looked at her life without me and decided it wasn't worth living.
That's what I want. Her complete, willing surrender.
The sun starts to rise around six, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. I should shower and shave. Put on a suit and remind the world that Phoenix Crawford doesn't break.
I think about what my father said when he came to check on me. Crawfords don't fall apart. We don't let our emotions control us.
He's half right. I'm not falling apart. I'm being rebuilt. Every day without her strips away another layer of the man I thought I was, revealing something harder underneath. Something that knows exactly what it wants and has already proven there is no line it won't cross to have it.
My phone buzzes and I pick it up.
It's a text from Jade.
We need to talk.
A slow smile spreads across my face. The first real smile in days.
She wants to talk. That means she's not done. That means there's still something to fight for.
I type my response carefully, measuring each word.
Anytime.
Then I set the phone down and pour myself another drink. Not to drown my sorrows this time. To celebrate.
She thinks she wants to talk. To negotiate. To set boundaries and establish rules for how this relationship will work going forward.
She has no idea.
I've spent five days in hell, and I've emerged with perfect clarity about exactly what I need. What we both need.
Jade Catalano is mine. She's always been mine. And when she walks through that door, I'm going to make sure she never forgets it again.
Whatever it takes.