Page 22 of Before You Fell

“Yes.”

“You mean men like you?”

I smile. It’s slow and filthy. All teeth and bad intentions, because if she wants to call me the problem, I might as well act the part.

“Baby, there are no men like me.”

The second the words leave my mouth, her eyes sharpen.

Baby. Fuck, I didn’t mean to call her that.

I call other women whose names I can forget before morning baby. Women who crawl into my lap and regard me as if my cock comes with a halo.

Those easy fucks who have no idea of where I came from, what I sound like when I’m not performing, or how many ugly pieces of myself I have hidden inside Willow’s songs.

But I don’t call Willow “baby”.

The room seems to catch it at the same time I do. The laughter thins.

The music keeps thumping from the corner, but everything else goes still around it. Jax stops with a pretzel halfway to his mouth. Cruz’s grin fades just enough to prove he heard it. Jett looks over from the drinks table, quiet as always, eyes too sharp for my comfort. Even the brunette on the couch stops pretending not to watch.

Willow doesn’t move. She just stares at me with those furious eyes, and for once, I have no fucking clue whether she wants to slap me.

“Don’t you fucking call me that,” she says. Her voice is low, but it cuts clean.

Willow knows exactly what that word is. She has been around long enough to hear me throw it at women with lip gloss on their mouths, hands in my hair, and no interest in the parts of me that do not come with a stage light.

Baby is easy and disposable.

I lean closer. “What should I call you then?”

She stares me down.

Fuck, she is beautiful when she hates me.

“Marcus wanted one thing,” I say.

Willow stares at me. “That’s fucking hilarious coming from you.”

“He did.”

“Of course he did. Men always want one thing, don’t they?” says Willow.

“Yes.”

“And you would know.”

“I would,” I tell her.

Her eyes sweep over me and I let her look.

“So you can have women touching you in front of everyone,” she says. “But I can’t talk to Marcus?”

“You can talk to whoever you want.”

“Clearly.”

“You just can’t be stupid about it.”