Page 134 of Before You Fell

I move before I can think better of it.

She falls against my chest and I catch her. My arms close around her and my eyes shut the second her arms wrap around my waist and her face presses into my chest.

For one brutal second, I am back in that hospital room, holding her limp hand and telling her not to fucking die because I hadn’t loved her properly yet.

I never thought I would get this.

I thought I had lost the right to hold her at all.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Willow

The car is too quiet for two people who have spent half their lives making noise together.

Phoenix drives with one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the gearshift, his fingers loose, his rings catching the light as we pass beneath the trees.

I keep my hands in my lap—one thumb rubbing the edge of my sleeve—trying not to think too hard about the hug outside the center.

He held me for a long time and didn’t let go. I want to know what it meant. Or whether I’m still that pathetic girl I have always been whenever Phoenix gives me even a little attention.

I promised myself I would never be her again because I deserve so much better than being treated by him the way he has. But when he does shit like that, every wise word I have spent weeks learning packs a bag and fucks off without leaving a forwarding address.

We have not hugged like that since we were eighteen years old at graduation.

I remember that one too clearly. The two of us were standing together after everyone had finished smiling for photos, caught in that strange space between the life we knew and the one waiting for us. Phoenix turned to me, pulled me into his arms, and rested his cheek against my temple, holding me longer than he needed to.

I could lie and say it didn’t mean anything. But the truth is I have thought about that hug more times than I should admit. I have often wondered if he knew what the future had in store for us. If that was the day he said goodbye to me before the world got loud, before fame, women, drugs, and the ego turned him into the asshole he became.

Before he forgot how to hold on to me.

Now, sitting behind the wheel, he keeps glancing at me. Quick little looks from behind his sunglasses. Road to my face and back again. It’s as if the asshole thinks tinted lenses make him subtle.

They don’t.

It annoys me, mostly because some soft, idiotic corner of my chest reacts every time he turns his head.

“What?” I ask.

His mouth tugs at one side. “What?”

“Do I have something on my face?”

His arrogant smirk deepens and I brace myself for one of his usual lines. Something filthy or cocky, meant to make me roll my eyes.

But it never comes. He simply looks back at the road.

I turn toward the window before he sees too much on my face.

After a few minutes, he asks, “How are you feeling?”

I laugh under my breath. “Careful. Ask me that again, and they might hand you a clipboard and make you the group leader.”

His fingers flex around the wheel. “I know. I fucking hated it the second I said it.”

A surprised laugh escapes before I can stop it.

He smiles when he hears it. A real smile. Warm. Almost boyish. One I haven’t seen in years. Instead of comforting me, it unsettles the hell out of me.