Page 36 of Before You Fell

Her gaze drops to the drink in my hand. “I’m not in my head.”

“You’ve been living there all fucking week.”

“I’ve been working.”

“So have I.”

“Please, you sang into a microphone and complained about the temperature.”

“I suffered for my art.”

Across the room, Cruz catches my eye and raises a brow, silently asking whether I want something from the buffet laid out on the table.

I should leave it alone. That would be the decent thing, but that has never been a particularly convincing argument with me.

Cruz tosses me the bag of pills anyway. It lands in my lap with a soft thud.

There are a hundred reasons to open it. The week has been shit. My head will not shut the fuck up. The song we recorded still carries Willow’s ache bleeding through every note and I have spent two whole days trying not to think about why singing her words got under my skin more than anything else I have done this week.

Drugs are easier than answers. They always will be.

I tap the bag against her knee.

“Come on,” I say. “You need to get out of your head for one night.”

Her gaze drops to the bag before returning to me. “Is that your professional medical opinion?”

“My professional rockstar opinion. More expensive and considerably less ethical.”

“You don’t have ethics.”

“Exactly. I didn’t waste years studying for them.”

A breath slips from her, almost becoming a laugh. “I don’t know, Phoenix.”

That hesitation should be enough. I hear it, and some dull, inconvenient part of me knows I should toss the bag back to Cruz, take her onto the balcony, and tell her to breathe air that has not already passed through cigarette smoke and bad decisions.

Instead, I lean closer and lower my voice. “It’s not a blood oath, Wills. It’s one night without your brain trying to kill you.”

Her gaze holds mine.

Willow can make silence feel louder than Jax, even with a microphone and an audience. She studies me for a beat too long, searching for the catch, the trap, and the ugly truth hiding beneath my grin.

She should look harder. I have never been good at protecting people from the things that make me feel better.

“You don’t have to,” I tell her. It almost sounds responsible until I ruin it. “But you might finally stop mentally correcting every fucking sentence that comes out of my mouth.”

“Most of them need it.”

“Then consider this a night off.”

Willow studies me and those sharp, beautiful eyes search my face as though I have ever kept anything useful there. Then her gaze drops to my open palm.

“You’re an asshole.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“By me.”