Page 109 of Before You Fell

Nobody answers quickly.

Dad’s eyes flick to Phoenix for one second before they come back to me and the expression on his face makes my stomach fold in on itself.

“You were brought in two nights ago.” Dad swallows, and I hate that my father, the strongest man I know, has to force the words out because of me. “You overdosed.”

The word drops into the room like something dead.

Overdosed. It sounds disgusting out loud. Dirty. Public. The sort of word people lower their voices around before they decide they always saw it coming. Headlines, pity and strangers whispering that I was a mess. As if being broken is entertainment when it happens to someone with a song credit and a famous asshole sitting beside her bed.

Heat crawls up my neck, but it’s not enough to touch the cold sitting in my chest.

“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper.

The words are small and useless and I hate them the second they leave my mouth, because what the hell else am I supposed to say? Sorry I scared you. Sorry I stormed out of your house acting like I knew how to save myself when I had already started slipping under.

Mom touches my hair.

“We know, love,” she says, and her voice shakes so badly it hurts to hear. “Don’t worry about that now. All that matters is that you’re okay.”

But I can see her face. I can see Dad’s. And I understand being okay is not going to be that simple.

Phoenix shifts in the chair. “Wills.”

God, that fucking nickname.

I know myself. I am familiar with the bruised, reckless part that will always crawl toward the faintest warmth from Phoenix Stone and call it the fucking sun, even when he is the one who left me out in the cold.

“No, Phoenix,” I say. “You don’t get to do this.”

His throat works. “Do what?”

“You don’t get to sit beside me and turn what happened to me into proof that you care.”

Mom’s hand closes around my wrist. “Willow, love.”

Phoenix looks down at his hands, then back up. His eyes are red, and there are shadows beneath them.

I fight the urge to ask if he slept because that part of me can fuck right off.

“You treated me like I only mattered when it suited you,” I say.

His jaw shifts, but he doesn’t answer.

Dad’s face hardens.

There are things I want to say to Phoenix that don’t belong in front of my parents. They don’t need to know how he fucked me, then stood there afterward acting as if I was another bad decision he could rinse off in the shower.

But his face tells me he knows every ugly thing I am not saying.

Good. Let him choke on the silence for once.

“I let you take pieces of me for years,” I whisper. “And I called it love because I was too scared to call it pathetic.”

His head jerks slightly, as if I slapped him. “You were never pathetic.”

Of course that is the part he argues with. Not the love I kept handing him while he treated it like loose change in his pocket.

I glare at him, exhausted, furious, and still so in love it makes me want to punch my own heart for being so goddamn spineless.