Page 14 of Before You Fell

She turns as if she is done with this conversation and something twists behind my ribs. I hate the way she can walk away and take the temperature of the whole fucking room with her. That one step from Willow Hart can feel louder than seventy thousand people screaming my name.

“Willow.” Her name leaves my mouth before I can make it sound casual.

She looks back over her shoulder and fuck me. For half a second, I see her. Not the calm songwriter. But the girl under the tree who handed me her notebook and looked terrified I might laugh.

Then it is gone just as quickly as it appeared. Her face smooths out. Her grip tightens around the notebook.

“You already are aware of what I think.”

This time, the words are not about the songs or the way I performed them and we both know it.

She walks away. I don’t move because chasing Willow Hart through a green room while a stranger’s perfume is still on my skin would look desperate. And I‘m not fucking desperate.

I lean back against the couch instead, letting the brunette’s hand find my cock again and I remember exactly who I am supposed to be.

Not the boy who still looks for Willow during every song. Not the pathetic little thing with old lyrics lodged under his ribs.

This version. The one everyone pays to see.

I pull the brunette closer, my hand sliding to her waist, fingers digging in hard enough to make her gasp. Her mouth curves against mine before I even kiss her. Already pleased to be chosen. Already mistaking my hands for interest.

The room cheers at something. Someone laughs. Someone says my name.

Hearing that sound fixes everything. I kiss a groupie with Willow’s words still on my tongue and the taste of something I refuse to name rotting underneath.

So I take the noise.

I take the version of myself everyone claps for. And I bury the twist of what I really want in my chest so deep even I can pretend it was never there.

Chapter Three

Willow

Phoenix Stone is talking about my lyrics while another woman has her hand on his cock.

He lets her touch him. Of course he does, because Phoenix has never met attention he didn’t want to fuck, snort, drink, or turn into applause.

He sits on the couch across the green room, still wearing the sweat of seventy thousand screaming people, all dark hair, silver rings, and arrogance that should come with a warning label. His jeans sit low on his hips. His legs are spread in that lazy, cocky way men sit when the entire world has spent too long making room for them.

Damon stands in front of him, talking numbers.

He never stops fucking talking that shit, as if that is the only thing in this world that matters. Streams. Spikes. Engagement. Momentum. Money dressed up as art. Pressure dressed up as success.

Phoenix is loud enough to hear from this side of the room when the brunette tilts her pretty head and asks, “What did she mean by ache?”

She. As if the girl who wrote the song is not standing twelve feet away with ink on her fingers and a stupid heart trying to crawl its way out through her ribs.

Phoenix lifts his beer, takes a slow swallow, then grins at her over the rim.

“Ache is the part people pretend they don’t want,” he says, voice rough from the show and lazy with all that effortless charm. “It’s the part that gets under your skin. The part that makes you sing something back even when it hurts.”

The brunette blinks at him as if he just handed her the meaning of life with his cock still hard under her palm.

Phoenix’s gaze flicks across the room to me before drifting back to the brunette as she continues to stroke him through his jeans.

Then he says, “That line tonight. If you leave me bleeding, don’t call it love.” He taps two fingers against his chest, right over his heart, as if the words belong there. “That’s ache. It sounds pretty until it cuts your throat.”

My fingers tighten around my glass.