Page 102 of Before You Fell

“Willow,” I say begging now.

I press my forehead to the back of her hand. For once, I don’t know how to be anything but truthful. I lift my head, wipe my face with the heel of my hand, and lean in close enough that if she were awake, she would tell me I’m crowding her.

My mouth gets close to her ear. The words crawl out, desperate, stupid. The only way I know how to say them now. “Don’t you fucking die on me. I haven’t loved you properly yet.”

Chapter Seventeen

Phoenix

Exhaustion doesn’t hit me all at once. It crawls in slowly, under my skin, behind my eyes, and into the hand I have kept wrapped around Willow’s all night. It slips into the ache in my spine from the plastic hospital chair and into the grit coating my tongue. It finds every part of me I thought was still standing and presses down until even breathing seems heavier than it should.

Morning comes in and the hospital room is too bright, full of machines that beep and hiss, constantly reminding me that her body needs help doing what it should be doing on its own.

I hate every sound in this room. The monitor beside her bed. The faint squeak of shoes in the hallway. The quiet crying from the woman on the other side of Willow.

Elise sits in a chair, a tissue crushed in her hand. She has been trying not to sob for hours. Every now and then, her shoulders will shake and Graham moves closer, resting a hand on her shoulder because that is what good men do. They stay. They comfort and they know how to be useful when the worst thing in the world is watching the person you love lie in a hospital bed.

I keep my eyes on Willow.

Graham doesn’t look at me unless he has to. And when he does, I feel it.

I don’t glance his way because I am not stupid enough to give him another reason to tell me to get the fuck out. Instead, I take in Willow’s pale face and the hair brushed back from her cheeks. The same hair Elise has smoothed almost every hour since I sat down. I guess she feels as useless as I do and this is the only thing her hands know how to fix.

A cannula is taped to Willow’s hand. Another line disappears beneath the sleeve of the hospital gown. Machines surround her as though they own part of her now and every single thing touching her makes something dark and violent twist inside my ribs.

Her hand is limp in mine. It has been limp all night. But I keep holding on anyway because letting go feels too much like agreeing to the worst outcome that could happen.

My phone lights up again on the small table beside me.

I don’t bother to look at it. It has been doing that since yesterday. Calls. Messages. All from Damon. His texts and the major headlines. As if he is trying to pull the leash he thinks he has around my neck.

Damon: Local launch performance canceled.

Damon: Fans furious.

Damon: Media speculation grows after Static Hearts walks out of press conference.

Damon: Label sources concerned about upcoming world tour.

Damon: Phoenix Stone punches manager after overdose question.

I want to throw my phone at the wall the second it buzzes again, but that would mean letting go of Willow’s hand, and I’m not doing that. Not for Damon or for any of the greedy fuckers lining up outside this hospital room, each with a price tag and a headline.

Jett tried to make me eat sometime after midnight. I told him to fuck off. He did. Then he came back ten minutes later and left a bottle of water near my chair. I haven’t opened that either.

Elise wipes under her eye.

I lift my head to look at her.

Her face crumples a little and it almost does me in because the Elise sitting across from me now is not the Elise I remember.

That memory hits hard enough to make my chest tighten. For a second, I see her kitchen instead of this room. Willow sitting across from me at the table. Elise at the stove, asking if I was hungry even after I’d said no.

I was always hungry back then. I hated anyone knowing it.

My house had food, but it was nothing like Willow’s. Mine was cold, full of slamming doors and screaming voices cutting through the walls. My mother crying one minute before smiling the next. My father was the kind of asshole who expected perfection, even though he was not a fucking saint himself. Everything had strings. Everything cost something. Even love came dressed as a fight, a guilt trip, or a debt you could never pay back.

Willow’s house was different. It was warm.