Page 34 of Before You Fell

My body starts to soften, not in surrender, but in the awful, boneless way something does when it has been held together too long.

I stare at the ceiling and wonder how much more of myself I can hand over before there is nothing left under my skin but lyrics, caffeine and all the shit I never say out loud.

Another song and page torn out of me. Another piece of my chest dressed up in a melody so the boys can stand beneath hot lights and make strangers scream for pain that was never theirs.

No one sees that part. Me afterward, sitting in the dark with ink on my fingers and a hollow ache behind my ribs, emptying myself for men who get applause for singing the things that nearly killed me to write.

And for the first time, the thought comes to me: What would happen if I stopped?

Chapter Six

Phoenix

The party is already dirty and feral by the time I walk in. The hotel suite is loud enough to drown out a conscience. Exactly how I fucking like it.

Damon booked the suite because he knows how to put a bow on things and call it morale. Top floor. Private elevator. Black marble everywhere. The windows stretch from floor to ceiling, showing off a city that looks better from forty floors above, with glittering streets and distant headlights. Up here, nobody has to see the rubbish in the gutters.

Up here, everything ugly shines.

After seven straight days locked in a recording studio, we have earned a little bad behavior.

Or a lot of it.

The label sent champagne. Damon ordered enough food to feed a small country. Cruz invited women who look as though they were assembled from tits, lip gloss and questionable judgment.

He has turned the marble coffee table into his own private pharmacy. White powder lies in clean lines beside pills in three different colors, surrounded by half-empty glasses and the room service menu Jax used to crush something a few minutes ago.

Music pumps through speakers hidden somewhere in the room—the bass thick enough to sit in my ribs. Champagne sweats in ice buckets. Whiskey burns the air.

Cruz leans over the coffee table, his long dark hair falling across his cheek as his tattooed fingers arrange the drugs with the same concentration he usually reserves for guitar solos and complicated bra straps. A blonde watches from the floor. Another woman presses against his thigh while a red-lipped brunette traces the ink around his wrist as though deciding which part of him she wants first. Cruz grins at all three, because restraint is just another word he has never bothered to learn.

Jax stands across the room, his shirt hanging open, a bottle of tequila raised above his head, as women crowd around him, all tits, hungry smiles, and terrible instincts. He announces that he can drink any asshole in the room under the table, despite nobody challenging him or giving a fuck. Jax has never needed an audience’s permission to become the main event.

Jett stays near the window, a beer in one hand, watching his brother perform for women who keep glancing in Jett’s direction. He might be quieter, but his silent act pulls women in faster than Jax’s open shirt and a bottle of tequila ever could. Jett never chases them. He holds their gaze, offers a half smile, and lets them imagine what else he can do with his mouth.

The rest of us make noise to convince women to fuck us. Jett stands still and lets them come to him.

Jett lifts his beer toward his brother. “Careful. Last time you drank tequila, you spent twenty minutes arguing with your reflection.”

“Fuck you,” Jax replies before taking a sip.

“Stone,” Cruz calls out as I step farther into the room. “You taking the edge off or are you pretending you found Jesus somewhere between your reflection and your ego?”

“I found Jesus,” I say. “Poor bastard asked for a selfie.”

Cruz laughs. “Only you could turn the Second Coming into a fucking meet-and-greet.”

Damon is near the bar, phone in hand, suit jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled. He checks his phone. The album has a deadline. The tour will make millions. We can behave as badly as we want as long as the songs keep selling, and Damon’s silence is the closest thing we have to permission.

My attention moves past him and settles on the couch.

Willow is tucked into the corner where the shadows are softer and the music doesn’t hit quite as hard. She has one boot planted on the floor, the other leg folded beneath her, leaving the black fabric of her dress high enough on her thigh to become a fucking problem.

It’s the kind of dress that doesn’t beg for attention because it already knows it has every fucking eye in the room. Black, with thin straps resting against her bare shoulders and soft fabric clinging to her chest, waist, and the curve of her hips before stopping high on her thighs above her boots.

Willow never dresses for men. She dresses for herself, then walks into a room and becomes every asshole’s dirtiest fantasy without even trying. Mine included.

My body reacts before my brain can remind my cock that it has known her since she wore grass-stained knees instead of black silk. Heat drops low and filthy, thickening me behind my zipper with enough force to make me want to punch some sense into myself.