Page 85 of Before You Fell

“Again, from the pre-chorus,” Damon yells.

I want to tell him to go fuck himself because we have been here for hours, running the same transitions and cues.

Jax leans back behind the kit, sticks loose in his hands. “For fuck’s sake, it should be done by now.”

Damon shoots him a look. “Start with track ten.”

Track ten. One of the shittiest songs on the new album.

I stand where the tape tells me and sing when the cue demands it.

Cruz comes in on the wrong beat, his guitar lagging half a second behind Jax’s drums before he kills the chord with a sharp twist of his hand.

Damon throws both arms out. “Stop. Again, from the same place.”

“It will still be shit the second time around,” Cruz mutters under his breath, too low for the crew to hear, but close enough for us to catch.

By the time sound check ends, I’m ready to get fucking wasted and stop thinking about my hands around Damon’s throat.

Not because I want to kill him. I just want to apply enough pressure to see whether those bulging eyes he has been fixing on me all day are finally willing to commit to the performance and pop right out of his skull.

Damon stops me by the door. “Press tomorrow morning. Make sure you don’t go in there with that smart-ass attitude.”

I glance back at him. “Relax, Damon. I’ll bring the pretty face, the dead eyes, and just enough charm to make everyone forget you’ve been swinging your dick all day because someone handed you a headset.”

I leave before he can utter another word.

Outside, fans wait behind the barricade by the side entrance, and the second they see me, they scream my name.

That sound used to go straight into my blood. It used to make me feel ten feet tall and bulletproof. Now it hits the hollow place Willow left behind and echoes back as proof that a thousand people can want me, yet none of them are the one I need.

I sign two things. Smile for a photo. Let a woman tell me she loves me with tears in her eyes, as if love is still something I deserve after everything I have done.

I get into the car waiting for me and check my phone, bringing up Willow’s name before I can stop myself.

Maybe I could try again. It’s a stupid, pathetic, desperate little thought.

A few days after I went to her parents’ house, I tried calling her again. Then texting. Too many fucking times. I sat there, staring at all those messages that never went through.

I have gone to her apartment more times than I care to count.

Sometimes I stand across the street, hands in my pockets, watching her windows for proof she is home. A light. A shadow. One glimpse of her moving past the glass, so I can confirm she still exists outside my head.

I have thought about going back to her parents’ house, but Graham would never let me near her now.

That man used to let me sit at his kitchen table, eat his food, and call me kid in that rough voice of his, as if I belonged there more than I ever did in my own house. Now he would probably break my jaw before I made it past the front door.

Willow shutting me out hurts like fucking hell. It’s not something I can drink through, fuck through, sing through, or turn into a joke before it gets its hands around my throat.

This is quieter. It sits beneath my ribs and bleeds without permission.

I have cut back on partying since she left because the noise no longer does its job. The drugs still blurred the edges, the booze still puts me on my ass, and the clubs still served up enough willing bodies to fuck, reminding me that I could get whatever I wanted whenever my ego needed feeding. But the problem is that Willow stayed sharp through all of it.

Sometimes I still chase it anyway. A hand, a mouth, a pussy. All warm, willing, and wrong. It should work. It always fucking worked before. Sex was easy then. A hit of ego. A distraction with skin dressed up as pleasure. Proof I could still make someone beg without giving them one single piece of me.

Now my cock gets the job done, but all it proves is that my body can still do what it has always done, even while the rest of me is somewhere else entirely.

None of them are Willow, nor do they come close to touching the silence she left behind. Nothing ever fucking does.