Page 77 of Before You Fell

His eyes drop to my hand, then lift back to my face. “Get your hand off my door.”

“I just need five minutes.”

“You have had years to treat her right.”

For one fucked-up second, I wonder if she told him about what I did. But I know he doesn’t need details. He has hated the man I became for a long time now.

“This is between her and me.”

“No,” he says, his voice hardening. “It became my business the second my daughter came home looking as if someone had taken something from her. I have watched you for years, Phoenix. Watched the ego. The fame. The women. The way you walk into a room and expect it to rearrange itself around you. And I watched Willow stand beside you through all of it, acting strong while you treated her as if she were something you owned.”

He leans closer. “So don’t fucking stand on my porch and tell me this is between you and her. I may not know the details but I know enough to know who hurt my daughter.”

My throat aches. I hate him for saying it. But I hate myself even more because he’s right.

My hands curl at my sides. “I know I fucked up.”

His laugh is short and humorless. “You think this is one fuck-up? This is years of you taking from her because it made you feel better.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Don’t insult me in my own doorway.”

“Please,” I say and the word tastes fucking humiliating. “Just tell her I’m here.”

“No.”

“Graham.”

“I said no.”

“I need to see her.”

“You need to get the hell off my property.”

For a second, we just stare at each other.

I want to push past him.

The thought sits right there, ugly and stupid, because I have always been better at taking than at asking. I could move him and get inside. I could call her name until every wall in this house knows exactly how desperate I am.

Graham sees it on my face.

“Go home,” he says.

The door shuts in my face.

I just stare at the red door, breathing through panic that has nowhere to go.

Willow has always been the steady thing in my life. The one person who could stand in the noise and make it feel less fucking impossible. I never had to think about losing her. That was the problem. She was so woven into me that I stopped seeing the stitches and started acting as if she were lucky I let her stay close.

Now there is a locked door between us. And for the first time, I understand that Willow leaving does not just take her out of my life. It takes the ground out from under it.

She was never just standing beside me. She was the part I leaned on. The quiet beneath the noise. The breath between all the screaming. Never once have I wondered what would happen if the girl holding me together finally let go.

Now she has and I have no fucking idea who I am without her standing beside me.

Chapter Thirteen