Page 66 of Before You Fell

By the time I arrive at the studio, my spine is straight.

That is the part I can control. I walk into the studio with my bag on my shoulder and my face arranged so it doesn’t bleed. The guys are already there, scattered around the room with instruments, coffee cups, and cables.

Jax’s gaze flicks up the moment I step inside. “Morning, Wills.”

“Morning.”

My voice sounds fine.

For half a second, it feels important. It is almost believable. Then Phoenix lifts his head from where he is standing near the mic and looks at me.

No. I correct myself before hope can make a fool of me again. He averts his eyes from me. His eyes skim past my face, land near the back wall, then drop to the lyric sheet in his hand, as if my face has become a dangerous place to fix his gaze. As if I’m something inconvenient. Something he touched by accident and now has to pretend doesn’t bear his fingerprints.

“Damon’s late,” Cruz says, still adjusting his guitar strap. “Which means he’s either somewhere ruining another poor asshole’s day or making someone cry before breakfast.”

The guys laugh, but Phoenix doesn’t. He taps the lyric sheet with two fingers and keeps his gaze fixed on the page.

“Second verse drags,” he says.

My eyes go to him. “It doesn’t drag.”

“It does.”

His tone is cold enough to cut through the room. Flat and professional. Detached in a manner that seems practiced. He speaks to me as though we are in a meeting, as though we are discussing tempo and structure rather than the fact that he shoved his hands under my dress over forty-eight hours ago. As though his mouth had not been on my neck. As though his cock had not been inside me while he said things that still have the nerve to live under my skin.

Cruz’s eyes shift from Phoenix to me.

I walk over and snatch the lyric sheet from Phoenix’s hand because I need something to do with my fingers before they start shaking. “The verse holds back so the chorus hits harder.”

Phoenix’s jaw flexes.

For a second, he just looks at my hand on the paper, then he snatches it back with a sharpness that makes the air between us flinch. His eyes finally meet mine.

And there it is. For one second, the cold slips. Something raw flashes through him, quick, furious, and frightened enough to almost knock the breath out of me. Want. Regret. Panic. Some ugly, tangled thing he would rather choke on than name.

Then he buries it beneath that beautiful, arrogant face of his, and I hate him for being so good at disappearing even while standing right in front of me.

“Fine,” he says.

Damon enters the room swiftly, phone in one hand and an expression on his face that suggests someone has already pissed him off.

Jax looks up from behind the drums. “You’re late. If that were us, you’d be riding our asses so hard we’d have to buy you dinner afterward.”

Damon barely glances at him. “If I were riding your ass, Jax, you’d make too much noise, finish too fast, and still swear you nailed it.”

Jax’s mouth drops open. “That was fucking rude.”

Jett glances over from his bass, calm as ever. “He’s still right. You are late.”

Damon points at him. “Do not defend him, Jett. Being the better twin doesn’t mean you have to babysit the defective one.”

“Fuck off, asshole,” Jett says. “I’m the only one who gets to talk to him like that.”

Cruz coughs into his fist, badly hiding a laugh.

Damon gives them all a flat, deadly stare, then turns toward the control room. “Okay. From the top.”

He goes back out to the soundboard, and the glass door shuts behind him.