Page 180 of Before You Fell

This used to be the only thing we ever did together. Before Damon and the label. Before I learned how to turn my face toward every camera and away from the only girl who ever saw me without needing the lights.

She finishes the chorus and looks up, a little out of breath.

“What?” she asks, because I’m staring again.

I set the guitar aside and her gaze drops to it, before flicking back to me.

“Oh God, that is never a good sign.”

“No,” I say. “It really isn’t.”

She sits back slowly. The notebook remains open between us on the coffee table, her pen resting across the page.

“Phoenix.”

I love it when she says my name. I fucking hate it too.

It reminds me of all the times she said it and I answered with less than she deserved. All the years I mistook being wanted by the world for being known by the one person who already had me before I became worth wanting.

“I love you,” I say.

Her eyes soften first. “I love you too,” she says casually.

I see the answer before she says it. The old love. The best-friend love. The I-have-known-you-forever love, the one where our lives have intertwined.

I shake my head. “No.”

Her lips part.

“No, Wills.” My voice cracks around her name and I fucking hate it. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Not now. Not after everything. “No, you don’t understand.”

Something shifts across her face.

I move toward her because sitting still is suddenly unbearable.

“I’m not saying I love you because you’re my best friend,” I say. “I’m not saying it because we grew up together or because you know every ugly part of me. I’m not saying it because I almost lost you and guilt finally learned how to put on a fucking suit and look respectable.”

Her eyes shine.

I move closer.

“I am in love with you.” The words land harder the second time, clearer, impossible to take back. “The ruin-my-life, rewrite-every-song, can’t-breathe-right-when-you’re-not-in-the-room kind of in love with you.”

Her hand lifts to her mouth.

I keep going because if I stop, I might never get the rest out, and she deserves every terrifying piece of it.

“I was in love with the girl under the tree who told me my bridge was shit and fixed it with one line. I was in love with the girl who gave me words when all I had was noise. I was in love with you when you stood behind every song the world screamed back at me. I was too selfish, too blind, too fucking high on being wanted to turn around and see that the only person I actually needed was already there.”

“Phoenix,” she says, her voice cracking.

I swallow, but it does nothing. My throat is raw and my chest is worse.

“I was in love with you in that storage room and I was too much of a coward to face what it meant afterward. So I made it smaller. I made you feel smaller.” My jaw clenches hard enough to hurt. “I was in love with you when you walked away from the band and I let my pride call it anger because anger was easier than admitting that your leaving felt like someone had cut my fucking heart out of my chest.”

A tear spills over and I hate that I put tears there.

“I was in love with you when I saw that headline,” I say, my voice dropping because that one still has blood on it. “When I sat beside that hospital bed and realized there might be a world without you. Where your voice was gone. Your handwriting. Your smart mouth. Your songs. But mainly you.”