Chapter 4 #2
“Why don’t you go find out if she’s as humble as you think she is?” He tilts his head toward the far side of the bar. “Tell her Phoenix sent you. See how far that gets you.” That’s all it takes. Brandon, too full of his own ego, saunters off and disappears without another word.
Phoenix slides onto the barstool next to mine. He doesn’t touch me, but the heat coming off him wraps around my skin anyway. My mind is racing—a million fucked-up possibilities flashing through it, and each one is darker than the last.
Do I just go for it, throw myself at him, and see if he bites? Or do I let him believe he’s the one seducing me, let him play his game while I play my own?
“Sorry about him. He was a dick in high school—which you probably remember, since he made a point of being a dick to everyone,” Phoenix says, almost like he’s trying to soften the sting.
“It’s fine…” I lie, my fingers tightening around my glass. “I barely remember him.”
Phoenix flags the bartender and orders a water—a fucking water—at a party where half the room is drunk, in costume, screaming over terrible remixes, and doing shots off plastic tombstones.
I turn to look at him, and that’s when I notice it—no mask, no costume, not even the barest attempt to blend in. Just head-to-toe black and that face… that fucking face I’ve spent years trying to forget.
That face used to mean everything good in my world. Safety, warmth, laughter… maybe even love—the kind you believe will last forever when you’re too young and too na?ve to know better.
Now, that face just means ruin.
Sitting beside him like this—close enough to smell the clean spice of his cologne, knowing all I’d have to do is reach out and graze the skin I used to dream about—makes my whole body coil tight.
If I were still that weak girl, I might cry.
Let the tears fall and beg him to explain why he left me alone in the world.
But that girl’s dead and buried. Now vengeance sits where hope once lived, burning hotter than whatever he once meant to me.
“What?” he asks, not bothering to look at me, though I know he feels my eyes lingering.
“You forgot your costume,” I say, gesturing toward his all-black getup and complete lack of effort.
He finally turns his head, just enough for our eyes to meet. "Not really my thing."
“You’re not a drinker either?”
He shakes his head, the corners of his mouth pulling tight. “No, it makes people reckless and do dumb shit they'll regret.”
“All the more reason to drink,” I shoot back, noticing the way his eyes narrow like he’s trying to read something behind my mask, something he should recognize but doesn’t.
“You look familiar, but I can’t…” His brow furrows with the ef fort of trying to place me. “I can’t figure out where I know you from.”
“Like I said—different circles.”
He studies me, head tilting in that way that used to make my heart skip. “Is your circle here tonight?”
“I haven’t been here long, so I haven’t looked yet.” If by circle he means ghosts, sure. Because I didn’t have a single friend in that hellhole after him. “What about you? I bet you’re the type who kept all his high school buddies. Group chats, beer nights, and all that nostalgic bullshit.”
“Nah,” he mutters. “Didn’t have anyone worth keeping. No one I wanted to take with me.”
Motherfucker.
“High school friendships are fake as shit. It’s all just convenience.”
I keep my expression neutral, but inside, something violent tears through my chest because Phoenix was never just convenient.
I was the one who knew all his fucking secrets. I was the girl he spent every free moment with.
Fake as shit… how dare he? What an absolute pissgremlin.
“Although, I had a friend once. She… Well, she left before school ended. I doubt she’d show up to something like this, considering she didn’t exactly have friends here.”
And that’s the final nail. Because that invisible nobody he never fought for is sitting two inches away from him, and he doesn’t even know it.
“Probably for the best, considering most of the school was an asshole in one way or another,” I say, and he laughs like it’s all just some harmless story, but all I want to do is reach over and claw his fucking eyes out.
Not because he’s wrong—he’s not. But because he’s laughing about it, and he doesn’t carry even a fraction of the weight I’ve hauled around for years. “What did Brandon mean about Ava?”
“What about her?”
“The throne and wheels thing.”
“Oh,” he says, shrugging like it’s nothing. “She’s in a wheelchair.”
“She’s in a wheelchair?” I echo, widening my eyes because I didn’t know. I turn my face away for a second to make sure my mask is still sitting right and that my contacts haven’t shifted.
“Yeah, she had some sort of freak accident in college. I don’t know what exactly happened.”
How tragic.
Not.
How fucking deserved.
I know how that sounds, and I don’t care. Ava fed on my pain like a parasite and did it with a smile on her face.
“Shame,” I murmur loud enough for him to hear. “She was so nice.”
“I take it you weren’t a cheerleader then?” he asks, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Absolutely not.”
He turns to face me, his body angled just enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “I’m Phoenix, by the way.”
“I know who you are. Everyone did.”
“And you are?”
“Annie.”
“Annie…” He turns the name over like he’s trying to fit it into a puzzle that’s missing half the pieces. Then he lets out a soft, almost apologetic laugh. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.”
I force down the bitterness rising in my throat. “It’s fine. I expect I’ll hear that more than once tonight.”
He shakes his head, disbelief written all over that annoyingly perfect face. “I doubt that.”
Ugh. Fuck off.
God, the fact that he’s being nice makes me want to scream. It actually makes me hate him more, if that’s even possible.
How can he speak to a stranger with more kindness than he showed me in our final months? How can he offer “Annie” a softness he never gave me? It’s almost worse than if he’d been cruel. At least cruelty would make sense.
I should never have come back here, not when it’s so fucking obvious I’m nowhere near over any of it. I’m not healed, not put together, not even close.
It's pathetic really.
He orders another drink—still just water, the control freak—and then pushes away from the bar like he’s done with this conversation.
“Nice meeting you, Annie.”
And just like that, he turns his back on me and walks away.
But that’s fine, because by the time I’m done, Phoenix Cassidy is going to wish he had never spoken to me tonight. He’s going to wish I stayed dead and buried in his past, right where he left me.