Chapter 7
PHOENIX
She’s standing too close to that clown behind the bar, and the way he’s looking at her like she isn’t my fucking endgame is really starting to test my patience.
I get it. Women eat that shit up. But does she really have to be that cliché? Jesus.
But there she is, smiling and laughing like she doesn’t have a care in the world, fingers drumming against the polished bar as if she’s not the most lethal thing in this entire room.
She’s also forgotten to put her mask back on, which means she’s standing there as Shannen Clarke—exposed, vulnerable, and recognizable to anyone who might remember the broken little girl she used to be—something I’ll remedy for her soon enough.
I’ll take care of her. I always do.
But not before I let this little game play out, because the more she pretends she’s free, the sweeter it’ll be when I remind her she’s not.
Right now, she’s performing for me. She’s trying to test how far she can drag me toward the cliff before I jump.
Cute.
But she still doesn’t get it, does she?
Just because I recognize her game doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate it.
Does she really think I’ll just sit here like a good boy and watch her flirt and smile as if she’s not lighting me on fire, one fucking spark at a time?
Her arm slides across the bar, fingers brushing over the bartender’s wrist, pausing on that cheap ink like it’s nothing when it means everything.
I could storm across the room, wrap my hand around her throat—not to hurt, just to own—drag her out of here with her heels scraping across the floor, and press her against the nearest wall. I could make her feel the way I’ve waited, the way I’ve wanted, and how she’s just crossed a line.
No.
No, Phoenix.
You’ve waited ten years. You can survive another ten minutes.
The way she leans back on the barstool, legs crossed, and that slit in her dress riding up just enough to expose more of her thigh than I ever want anyone else to see—it’s deliberate.
She’s taunting me. She’s pretending she doesn’t feel my gaze burning into her, but I know she does.
She can feel every ounce of attention I’m giving her.
The masked idiot she’s been toying with finally tears himself away to serve Ashley Walter. Perfect grades, perfect teeth, captain of whatever-the-fuck. He never laid a finger on Shannen, but he stood back and laughed along with the rest of them.
Bad form, sure. But I’m not about to sit here and pretend I was any better.
I was worse. So much worse.
Shannen’s mask is still tucked in my back pocket, warm from her skin and saturated in the faintest hint of her perfume.
I pressed it against my face as I followed her down here, breathing her in like a fucking addict, dragging every last bit of her scent into my lungs until it coated me from the inside out.
I couldn’t help myself. I wanted her everywhere.
She left it on the hotel room floor in a blind rage, too caught up in how pissed at me she was to notice.
I should’ve crushed it under my boot and let her stay here barefaced and vulnerable.
Instead, I walk up behind her and fit it back over her face.
My fingers thread through her hair, curling into those blood-red strands I’ve memorized down to the root.
It’s not the fire-engine color. No, hers is dark and rich, like something that stains.
I lower my mouth to her ear, close enough to feel the edge of her breath catch in her throat when my lips graze her skin. “Touch him again, and I’ll paint this fucking floor with his blood.”
She whirls on me, her amber eyes lit up.
She looks like she wants to claw me apart with her bare hands, and fuck, I want nothing more than for her to try.
I want her nails buried in my skin, her breath in my mouth, and her rage on my tongue.
I want to drag every last ounce of fury out of her, rip it from her lungs, and fuck it out of her until she forgets what it even felt like to hate me.
“Don’t push me,” I grind out, stepping in close so she has to tilt her chin to keep holding my eyes. “And you’re welcome, by the way. You left that upstairs after your little tantrum. Figured you’d want it back.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Phoenix? Seriously, have you tried therapy?”
“You’re my therapy, Shannen. You keep me from snapping. And honestly, I’d rather not spend tonight in a cell, so don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”
“Don’t threaten me,” she hisses. “I’ll do what I damn well please. And right now, I want to finish my night bouncing on the bartender. So why don’t you do what you’re best at and fuck off?”
That kind of shit was my reality when I was hiding in the shadows like some ghost in her past. But not anymore. I’m not a ghost tonight. I’m flesh and blood, and I’m right fucking here.
But if that’s how she wants to play it? Fine. Game the fuck on.
Before she can get another word out, I grab her and haul her straight out of the chair. She shrieks my name, her fists hammering into my back, making me flinch where I’m already sore, while her heels slam into my thighs like she’s trying to leave bruises as I throw her over my shoulder.
God, I’ve been waiting for her body to be pressed against mine again like this, even if she’s scratching and swearing she hates me.
She’s fighting me hard, but I don’t care how crazy it looks.
I hope it looks unhinged, and every person in this room sees me for what I am when it comes to Shannen—obsessed, irrational, and so completely gone for her I’d tear heaven to shreds just to keep her hell wrapped around me.
By the time we reach the elevator, a group of women near a different bar are staring, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, like they’re watching a live abduction, and to be fair, they’re not wrong.
I quickly flash them a grin that makes girls forget what their mothers taught them about danger.
“She’s fine. Her kink is roleplay.” I say it loud enough for every nosy bitch at the bar to hear, grinning like I’m playing out their dirtiest fantasy.
“Shut up, asshole, and put me the fuck down!” Shannen’s fists are like hammers on my back, but her anger only makes me harder.
“You know that’s not our safe word.” My hand glides up her bare thigh, stopping just shy of where she’s already burning for me. She’s pissed at me, humiliated, and ready to rip me apart, but her body hasn’t caught up with her mouth because I know damn well she’s soaked.
The women are still watching, whispering behind their hands and giggling like they’ve just witnessed the world’s hottest kidnapping. And the fucked-up part? They’re into it.
They like it.
The danger.
The aggression.
The illusion of control being ripped away.
Fucking idiots.
If I had a knife in my back pocket, duct tape in the trunk, and plans to dump my girl in a river, they’d still be whispering to their friends about how hot it is to be manhandled by someone who looks like me.
Give the devil a pretty face, and they’ll hand you the knife and ask to be sliced open.
I keep Shannen clutched to me the whole ride up, my arms holding her so tight she’d have to break bones to get free. She fights me every second—thrashing, twisting, spitting pure hell—but I don’t loosen my grip.
I don’t give her an inch when the elevator finally dings for her floor. I’m not an idiot. All it would take is one crack in my focus, and she’d bolt. She’d slam the door in my face, lock me out, and try to vanish.
So I take a hard left, straight through the nearest stairwell door.
I ram it open with my shoulder, not even breaking stride, and only when the door slams shut behind us do I finally set her down.
She stumbles slightly, her heels clicking against the concrete as she barely catches herself before straightening.
I back her into the wall before she even breathes a word, but I don’t touch her yet. She needs space, or at least the illusion of it.
“Let me go. ”
“No.”
“You can’t just say no, you dick.” I almost laugh at how she talks to me as if no time has passed.
“When you say you’re gonna end the night on someone else’s cock, you better believe I’m gonna react.” I drag my gaze over her face, letting my stare burn. “Especially when it’s some lame asshole in face paint.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I’m not a virgin, Phoenix. I’ve ended the night on a lot of cocks.” She says it like she’s proud of it, and it lands exactly where she wants it to—right in the center of my chest, detonating like a fucking bomb. She’s aiming to wound, and god, does she hit her mark.
Shannen’s furious with me, and I get it. I do. She’s still trying to wrap her head around everything I dropped on her tonight. But understanding her feelings doesn’t dull the images ripping through my brain.
Her on her back with her gorgeous legs open, begging for someone who wasn’t me. Some prick’s hands on her thighs, some other asshole’s mouth on her neck, stealing sounds that should’ve only ever been mine to hear.
I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches, a dull, pulsing throb that matches the tension in my fists. They’re clenched at my sides, tight enough my knuckles crack, because all I want to do is grab her and slam her back against the wall, make her take it back, and feel what her words just did to me.
But I won’t react, not like that. She doesn’t deserve that kind of monster.
“What do you want from me, Phoenix?”
“I just want you,” I whisper, but she laughs, tossing her hands up like this is all some big, cruel joke.
“So what? You think you can show up after all these years, and I’m just supposed to forget? Ask you how many kids you want like nothing ever happened?”
“Two,” I say without a moment’s hesitation. “So they’ll never be alone the way we were, and it’s not too many that I lose even a second of you when I need you most.”
She just shakes her head at me, eyes bulging like I’m out of my fucking mind.
But I don’t think it’s crazy to plan your future with the girl you’re obsessed with.
We’re going to want kids. I already know that.
Not now, obviously, but one day, when she’s done pretending she doesn’t want to wake up next to me for the rest of her life.
“Whatever fantasy you’ve built up in your head ends now because this isn’t happening.”
I step closer, my hair falling across my face as I lean down until we’re sharing the same breath. “I can’t let you go. Not now.”
“Even if I didn’t think you were completely deranged, I still wouldn’t open myself up to you. Not after what you put me through.”
“I had nothing to do with what happened that day.” I shake my head, desperate for her to believe me. “I swear to you, baby, I’d rather carve out my own fucking heart than be the one who hurt you.”
“God, it’s not just that…” Her hands tremble as she pushes her hair back. “That’s not even why I can’t do this with you.”
“Then tell me what it is. Let me fix it, Shannen. I’ve been living just to fix it.”
“You were the one who hurt me. You abandoned me.” The words come out broken, like they’re tearing her throat raw.
“You disappeared when I needed you most. You left me to suffer alone, as if I meant nothing. And you just watched. You stood there and let it happen like some coward I didn’t recognize.
Like the weak, spineless boy I never thought you were. ”
“You really think I haven’t been paying for that?
You think I haven’t hated myself every single day since?
I’ve spent years replaying every moment in my head a thousand different ways, trying to rewrite it, where I’m the boy who didn’t fail you.
Because, Jesus, Shannen, I did fail you.
I know that, and maybe that means I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I swear to god, I’ll never stop trying to earn it.
I’m not walking away from you again; you’ll have to bury me first.”
Her entire body tightens like she’s trying to keep herself together, clinging to the anger because it’s safer than breaking. But I see the slight tremble in her chin, and the way her throat works around tears she’ll never let fall.
“You can’t hate me more than I already hate myself,” I say. “But don’t lie and pretend you’ve forgotten me.”
“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” she whispers, but there’s no fight left in it. Just exhaustion and the crushing weight of ten years pressing down on both of us.
“Give me one night, Shannen. Just one.” The desperation in my voice should embarrass me, but I’m too far gone to care.
“And then what?” I watch her pulse flutter at the base of her throat, feeling it echo in my chest like her heart is wired to mine.
“Then you can walk away, and I won’t stop you.”
It’s the most beautiful lie I’ve ever told, and the way she's looking at me tells me she sees right through it.
Good, my girl is learning.
“You have one night to talk. That’s all.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not having sex with you.”
“I know,” I say, biting back a grin. Her tone, that fire—god, it does something to me.
“Try anything, and I’ll knee you so hard you’ll piss sideways for the rest of your life. ”
“Fuck, I’ve missed you, baby.”
She could spit in my face and break every bone in my body, and I’d still want to pull her into my arms and tell her she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Instead, I take a small step back, raising my hands like I’m harmless and not the kind of man who’d wipe the whole fucking planet off the map just to make her look at me the way she used to.