Page 4 of Before You Fell

This one feels as if it still has my pulse trapped inside it.

“It’s not finished,” I add.

Phoenix looks at me, the notebook still resting in his hands. “You always show me your songs before they’re finished. So why not this one?”

Because it is too soft and honest. Because I wrote it with him sitting somewhere under my ribs, and I have no idea what that means yet.

I don’t say any of that.

“Okay,” I say, my voice quieter than I want it to be. “You can see it.”

He looks at me a moment longer, as if he is trying to work out why my hands are so tight and why my face feels too hot. Then he turns his attention back to the notebook.

I hold my breath as he flicks through the pages. Until he reaches the last page.

My stomach drops.

There they are.

Those two dangerous stupid lines, that make me want to punch myself in the chest and tell my heart to grow some common sense.

If the world gets loud, I’ll be the quiet.

If your hands shake, I’ll hold the song.

I watch him read them and the whole world becomes too loud.

A car passes out front. A dog barks somewhere down the street. Normal life carrying on as if Phoenix Stone is not sitting beside me with my heart open in his hands.

He says nothing.

Not one smart-arse comment or a filthy little joke. Not one smug Phoenix line designed to make me glare at him instead of feel too much.

He just stares at the page and somehow, his silence is worse.

I want to snatch the notebook back. Tell him it was a joke and that the page means nothing. That I was bored, that my pen got dramatic and my brain had no part in it. I want to rip it out, screw it into a ball, set it on fire, and move to another country where no one has ever heard of me or my stupid bleeding heart.

But then he reaches for his guitar. He sits it across his lap and bends over it, brows pulling together, mouth pressed into a line. His fingers find the strings, all confidence until the first sound comes out.

Awful.

Truly awful.

I wince.

Phoenix stops and glares at me. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The face that says I sound shit.”

“You sounded a tiny bit shit.”

His eyes narrow. “Creative process, Wills.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?”

“Yes.” He shifts his fingers on the neck of the guitar. “Now shut up and witness greatness.”