Page 84 of Before You Fell

Chapter Fourteen

Phoenix

The machine keeps moving without her and I fucking hate it.

It’s been two months without Willow and nothing has had the decency to break. The label still wants its shiny little victory lap because the album is finished. The tour waits with its mouth open, ready to drag us across the world so strangers can scream my name as if I were still the same man I was before all this shit happened.

Tomorrow is the local launch performance. The kick off of the world tour. One expensive, polished show in this city before the machine takes us everywhere except the one place I want to go.

Back to her. To Willow.

Back before she looked at me and saw the truth I had spent years dressing up in leather, fame, and a dirty smile. A man with enough ego to destroy the best thing in his life before he had the balls to admit that’s what she was.

I sometimes hear the guys talking about her when they think I’m not listening. How they miss her and how different everything is now without her. How the new songs don’t land the same now that Willow isn’t there to make sure they have a pulse.

I never say a damn thing because I can’t. Every time her name hits the room it hurts way too fucking much and I have no right to act wounded over my best friend, who walked away because I gave her every reason to.

At first, I thought she would calm down. I know that makes me sound like an asshole, but Willow and I have fought before. Years of her telling me I was full of shit while I pretended not to love that she was the only person brave enough to say it.

But this was not one of our little fights or her getting pissed at me for changing a lyric. Nor is it me pushing too hard or both of us pretending the thing between us had no teeth.

This time, we fucked. I touched her like she was mine, then treated her like shit afterward.

What Willow and the guys are unaware of is that I had no fucking idea how to handle my feelings after we fucked.

Where was I supposed to go from there?

Back to being best friends, as if I had not touched her body and pressed my mouth against her skin. As if I could stand beside her in the studio and pretend I didn’t know how fucking hot she sounded when she came.

Was I supposed to hold her hand? Kiss her in front of the guys? Act casual even though every part of me knew there was nothing casual about what happened between us?

I didn’t know how to be that man, so I became the one I already knew how to be. The asshole.

But God, I fucking miss her. It’s as if she left and took the only part of me that knew how to breathe.

Today is sound check for tomorrow’s concert. Taped Xs mark spots under my boots, showing me where to stand when the lights hit. The mic stand is set at center stage. Jax’s kit sits on the stage riser behind me. Cruz and Jett’s amps are live, and the monitors at my feet keep spitting my voice back at me as the front-of-house engineer asks for another line.

Water bottles line the side of the stage. Cables cut across the floor. Crew members move through the shadows with headsets and clipboards, checking levels, lighting cues, and the blackout between songs six and seven.

Everything has a place. Every sound has a level. Every second has been measured, yet no one can fill the empty space where Willow used to be.

After Willow left, Damon brought in writers to help complete the final tracks.

I wouldn’t call them fucking writers. The first batch was soulless.

I read the lyrics and felt nothing. No pull in my chest. No itch in my throat.

I wanted to set the pages on fire and tell Damon that replacing Willow with hollow words was just another way to prove that she had been the heart of this goddamn band all along.

Cruz skimmed some of the verses and tossed them onto the console.

“I’ve had more emotional connection fucking a woman who kept checking her phone the whole time,” he said.

Jett picked up a page, read half of it, and looked at Damon. “You’re seriously asking us to play this shit?”

Most of what we said was rejected. That is the part that still pisses me off. Deadlines do not care what we think. The album release date was locked in. The world tour was already waiting, so those weaker songs completed the album.

The ones we all fucking hated and now have to play.