Page 149 of Before You Fell

I swallow. I think about being eleven, with a broken leg, and how Phoenix sat on the floor outside my bedroom door for three hours because I wouldn’t let anyone in, even though I didn’t want to be alone. He never pushed to come in. He just sat there on the other side of the door, talking shit about nothing, until I stopped crying.

“You make it very hard for me to stay mad at you when you say things like that,” I say.

His mouth curves. “Don’t worry. I’ll probably piss you off again within the hour.”

“Comforting.”

“I have to keep your expectations realistic.”

His eyes drop to my mouth.

The air changes. Not as fast as the storage room, where everything between us turned hot and reckless and stupid before either of us had the sense to step back. This is slower. Quieter. But the heat moves through me anyway, completely uninterested in my better judgment.

I know I should move, say good night, and go back to bed. Rehab taught me that wanting something doesn’t mean I get to have it because it’s standing in my kitchen, looking at me like that.

Instead, I stand here like an idiot. Like the girl I have always been around him.

My gaze drops to his mouth.

When I flick my eyes back up, he’s already seen it and moves closer.

My heart slams against my ribs. My breathing changes before I can stop it, giving me away completely, which is humiliating and the least of my problems right now.

His hand rises slowly. Giving me time. Handing me a way out.

I don’t take it.

His fingers brush the side of my face. Callused from years of guitar strings, rough yet light, a barely there touch that somehow gets everywhere.

I close my eyes.

I want him so much it scares me. With everything I have, with everything I’ve tried to talk myself out of for years, and with every stupid song I’ve ever written about him without ever putting his name on it.

“You should go back to bed,” he says.

I almost laugh and open my eyes. “You came in here to tell me that?”

“I came in here because I heard you.”

“And now?”

His eyes move down to my mouth and then back up to my eyes. “Now I’m trying to be smart.”

“You hate being smart.”

“I fucking despise it.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re standing there in my shirt, bare-legged, with a mouth I’ve spent all day trying not to stare at.”

Heat rushes through me so fast that my fingers go loose around the glass. I set it down before I drop it.

“It’s not your shirt.”

“It has my band on it.”

“A band that plays my songs.”