Page 26 of Before You Fell

“You with him?” I ask, nodding towards Cruz.

Her gaze flicks over my shoulder before coming back to me. “Not officially.”

“Good.” I catch her chin between my fingers and kiss her before she can decide whether that was a question.

It’s not soft or sweet. It’s a dirty little fuck-you to Cruz and Jax because jealous men don’t kiss someone else to prove they are fine. Desperate ones do.

She makes a soft, hungry sound against my mouth and grabs the open front of my shirt.

I kiss her harder. Filthier. Not because I want her more. But because I need everyone watching to believe I do.

I need the room to see the version of me they understand.

The blonde presses closer, her nails scraping down my chest, and I let her because it is easier than looking across the room to see if Willow is watching.

So I give the room what it expects. I give them the frontman. The cocky fuck with a swollen cheek and a girl already melting under his hands.

The blonde clings to me as if I am a bad idea she has been praying for all night. Red lips swollen from my mouth. Eyes glassy. Fingers twisted in my shirt like she can already feel the story she is going to tell tomorrow.

She wants the version of me on the posters. The one who sings pain and fucks like a sin worth confessing.

Fine. I can be him.

I pull back, smirk down at her, and let every ugly piece of me settle into place.

“Come on,” I tell her.

Her smile turns greedy and her hand slides down my stomach as if she already knows where the night is going.

I catch her wrist before she reaches my jeans, not because I am decent, but because I’m done giving this room a show.

I slide my hand around her wrist and start for the door. Because fuck them all.

Fuck their opinions. Fuck Willow for looking at me like she still knows me. And most of all fuck the part of me that stays behind with her anyway, bleeding in the corner.

Chapter Five

Willow

By the time the tour ends, I have three songs written and a chest full of things I’m too exhausted to name.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway. Songs. Not wounds. Lyrics. Not all the ugly little pieces Phoenix left behind when he walked out of that green room with a blonde on his arm and my hand print still burning across his cheek.

I went back to my hotel room that night, took off my boots, sat at the end of the bed and wrote the first song until the sun came up, because that’s what I do.

Phoenix breaks something. I make it rhyme.

By the time I walk into the studio a week later, I have coffee in one hand and my notebook tucked under my arm. The studio is cold. Black walls, polished concrete, expensive leather couches, and gold records mounted on the walls behind.

Damon is already at the console, crisp shirt, perfect hair, soulless expression. Beside him, the sound engineer sits behind the board, headphones around his neck.

Jax is sprawled across the couch, one arm draped over his face, drumsticks dangling in his other hand. He looks half-dead, which means he is probably only one cup of coffee away from being unbearable.

Jett sits at the other end of the couch, head down, the bass pick moving between his fingers. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Cruz leans against the wall with his guitar, dark hair a mess, shirt half-open, and mouth curved in that lazy, filthy way that makes every woman in a ten-foot radius forget she has standards. He looks up when I come in.

“Morning,” I say.