Page 147 of Before You Fell

Chapter Twenty-Five

Willow

The guys left hours ago, taking the noise with them and leaving behind half-empty beer bottles, crumbs on the coffee table, and the proof that people missed me while I was away.

It was good to see them. The kind of good that settles in your chest and hurts a little because you didn’t realize how much you needed it until it was already happening.

Jax hugged me too hard, the way he always does, as if he could hold whatever’s broken together for a while if he squeezed tight enough.

Jett kept a keen eye on me. Quiet and steady, saying nothing, which, with Jett, means everything.

Cruz had kissed the top of my head and called me Songbird with too much feeling behind it, which, from Cruz, who puts emotion into nothing, meant more than I knew what to do with.

I didn’t cry. I wanted to. But I didn’t.

I lie in bed with the sheets pulled up to my chest, staring at the ceiling and listening to the apartment settle around me.

My bedroom seems like it belongs to another person. That’s the thing nobody warns you about when you come back. That your own space can appear like a stranger’s.

I should be grateful to be home. But stepping back into this apartment is like stepping into the skin of a woman I don’t fully recognize.

The one who left here wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping, and wasn’t writing or feeling much of anything. She was surviving on noise, pills, and whatever was within arm’s reach at two in the morning, running on the very dumb theory that if she kept moving fast enough, the grief couldn’t catch her.

But it caught me anyway.

And now I’m back in my bed, staring at my own ceiling, with the sensation of being a guest in my own life.

I roll onto my side and stare at the door.

Phoenix is on the other side of it, sleeping on the couch.

He was quiet this afternoon. Too quiet for Phoenix. Usually, he is the center of every room without even trying to be. Everything bends toward him because he has spent years ensuring that it does.

But today, he sat back and watched me. Every time I looked his way, his eyes were already there. On my face. On my hands. On the plate in my lap. In the moments I laughed. In the ones I went quiet. Taking everything in.

He seems different from the man I used to know. There is something quieter about him now that doesn’t need the whole room watching.

I still have no idea what happened in the kitchen with Cruz. Usually, when Cruz asks for help, it is code for we need to talk. But there was no raised voice or the sound of them threatening to put the other through a wall.

Maybe they said nothing to each other. With those guys, who the fuck knows?

Eventually, I give up trying to sleep entirely.

I slide out of my bed, bare feet hitting the floor and my T-shirt falling to mid-thigh. Static Hearts across the chest in cracked white letters.

The irony is not lost on me.

Nothing is lost on me anymore. That’s the thing about rehab nobody warns you about. You get sober and suddenly your brain is running at full capacity with nowhere useful to go and absolutely no mercy for what it decides to think about at two in the morning.

I move slowly down the hallway. Careful. Quiet. Which is ridiculous because this is my apartment, my hallway, and my floorboards.

And yet I move as if I’m the one who doesn’t belong here. As if the darkness has rules and I’m not sure I know them anymore. As if one wrong step might wake Phoenix and I’m not ready for whatever that conversation would look like at this ungodly hour.

I reach the living room and stop.

Phoenix is stretched out on the couch—one arm bent behind his head and the blanket I gave him already on the floor. His shirt has ridden up, revealing a strip of hard stomach and the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath the waistband of his sweats.

In sleep, his mouth loses some of its arrogance. His lashes rest against his cheeks and his jaw is rough with stubble. He looks exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with partying and everything to do with a man who hasn’t been sleeping.