Page 49 of Before You Fell

And fuck me, haven’t I been generous with the scandals?

A woman in a silver dress looks up first. Then another.

This is the part I like. Not because I need it. Fuck that. Need is for people who wait by the phone and call it hope.

I like the way a room gives itself away before anyone opens their mouth. Conversation thins. Stares sharpen. Smiles come next, greedy and dressed up as polite, because people are at their most pathetic when they pretend they don’t want anything.

Women straighten.

Men notice them straightening and pretend they don’t, which is almost funny. Power always looks cleaner on those who think they still have it.

Executives lift their glasses with that smug little sense of ownership in their eyes. As if a logo on the back of our records gives them rights to the voice tearing out of my throat.

Cute.

They own the paperwork, the signatures, and the clauses Damon pretends I give a fuck about.

But I own the air.

Before Damon even finishes muttering, “Remember, charming,” a photographer near the bar raises his camera.

I give the room a smirk. The sexy one women pretend they are too smart for, right before their common sense hits the floor along with their panties.

“Phoenix,” someone calls.

A woman touches my arm before I take five steps. Blonde, silver dress, big tits spilling out, red mouth, with a laugh already waiting for whatever ugly thing I decide to make sound pretty. Another woman appears on my other side, her hand sliding onto my shoulder as she offers a compliment about the last tour.

I fucking let them tell me whatever they want.

Being wanted is easy. Honest, in its own dirty little way. A hand on my arm. A number slipped into my pocket. A woman leaning close enough that her breath warms my neck as she tells me she followed the band since the early days. Which means she learnt my name after we got famous and thinks nostalgia will look good with her mouth around my cock.

I let them look. Let them touch. Let them think they are getting something real, because I am bored enough to make the lie feel expensive.

Charming. Yeah, I fucking nailed it.

Damon moves through the room with his polished manager’s smile, shaking hands and pretending none of us are human enough to embarrass him. Jax and Jett are already near a cluster of women and two men wearing label lanyards.

Cruz slips into a group of models before the first glass of champagne reaches his hand. Cruz treats beautiful women like hotel minibars. Expensive, badly behaved, and there for his entertainment if he gets bored enough to open one.

I move through all of it because this is what I’m built for.

Smile. Touch. Laugh. Accept the worship. Let them believe they have seen something real because I looked at them three seconds longer than necessary.

A label executive with a tan too expensive to be natural traps me near the champagne tower and tells me the new single is tracking beautifully.

“What the fuck would you know about beauty?” I ask. “You hear me rip my throat open over a song about bleeding for someone who doesn’t love you back and all you fuckers care about is whether the pain sells.”

He laughs too hard because men with money laugh harder when they worry you might not need them.

“Well, I’m just saying the album has heat,” he says.

I stare at him and let the silence hang long enough to make him sweat.

“Yeah?” I say. “And I’m just saying you wouldn’t know heat if it crawled down your throat and fucked your vocal cords raw.”

His smile slips.

Good.