Page 41 of Before You Fell

A beat passes. Damon’s jaw ticks.

“Willow, they’re paying for the version of you that finishes what they want,” he says. “Not the version that gets precious about a line because it hurts to write.”

I want to tell him to go fuck himself. To fuck this and the goddamn label.

Damon glances at his phone, then lifts his gaze back to mine. “I need a rewrite before lunch. I need you to do your fucking job.”

For one second, the hallway grows too quiet around us.

I lift my chin. “I am doing my job. That is why you’re standing here, asking me to fix the part no one else in this building can touch.”

I walk past him because this conversation is finished.

“Good,” he says behind me, his voice clean and cold. “Touch it. Before lunch.”

I stop outside the kitchenette and turn slowly, just in time to see him moving back toward the control room, phone in hand.

The kitchenette is empty. Thank fuck for that.

I drop my bag on the counter and toss the empty takeout cup into the trash. I reach up to open the cupboard above the sink for a mug, but my hand stalls midway when I see the tiny reflective panel on the door, and in it, my face waits to ambush me.

Pale. Hollow-eyed. Alert in all the wrong ways.

Fantastic. Nothing screams I am fine and thriving like looking like I’m one second from throwing a cup across the room or burying a body under the sound desk. Preferably Damon’s.

I snatch the mug from the cupboard and make the coffee stronger because my hands need something to do. The machine hisses as if it has opinions about my life when the air at my back changes.

It’s not Phoenix. My body clocks it before my brain even gets involved. Phoenix walks into a room and the air grows hotter. My pulse starts acting desperate and stupid. Every nerve in me tightens, ready for a fight or a mistake.

I grab my cup and turn to find Jett.

Jett leans against the doorway with his arms folded and his expression locked down. Intricate tattoos cut down his forearms. His dirty-blond hair is a little messy. His jaw is shadowed and his eyes are too observant for anyone’s comfort. He is beautiful in that rough, dangerous way his twin is, except Jax burns loud and Jett holds still enough to make silence feel armed.

“You look pale,” he says.

I glance at him. “Hello to you, too.”

“I’m checking if you’re all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I snap.

The second it leaves my mouth, guilt bites sharp and quick.

Jett doesn’t deserve it. Not today. In fact, he never has. Of all of them, he is the one who looks after me in small, quiet ways. The way an older brother would if he had been raised on tour buses and in rooms full of men who think volume is a personality.

He is the one who notices when I haven’t eaten and leaves food where I’ll find it. The one who pulls me out of my head before the thoughts turn ugly. He has stood between me and Phoenix more than once with nothing but a stare, silently saying, “back the fuck off, Phoenix, before I stop being polite.”

His eyes flick over my face, too quick to be obvious and too careful to miss anything.

“Have you eaten, Wills?”

My stomach twists enough to answer before I can. “Don’t start.”

“That answers that.”

“If you’re here to fuss over me, I need you to understand how badly that will go for both of us.”

“I don’t fuss.”