Over the years of watching me, he’s gotten to know her too, not through conversation but through proximity.He cares because she’s my best friend, and Phoenix protects what’s mine the same way he protects me.
“You want to leave this with me?”
“Sure, knock yourself out."
Phoenix settles into her chair, already pulling the system back up as Lianna makes her way out of the office. I movecloser, crouching beside him and resting my hand lightly on his thigh.
“When you’re done, let me find you.”
Don’t look for me.
Let me be the one who hunts.
His eyes leave the screen, slowly dragging across my face, and I know he sees exactly what I’m asking for.
I need to understand the jealousy he’s felt over the years.
I want to feel that madness crawl down my spine and see what I become because of it.
“And how do you want to find me, pretty girl?”
“Make me take what belongs to me.”
His brow furrows, his jaw clenches tight, and he subtly shakes his head.
“Not that. Don’t ask me for that.”
“I need to know, Phoenix.” I slide my hand along his arm and trace those tally marks with my nails while he looks back at the screen. “I need to understand what it felt like for you when you were watching me. When you wanted me close while someone else stood where you should’ve been. I need to know what that did to you.”
“I’ve told you what it did to me. You know what it made me.”
“Please, baby.” I cup his face, forcing him to look at me. “Let me understand what you went through.”
“Fine.” He goes deadly still, and something dark flashes in his eyes. “I used to stand in the shadows and watch you choose someone else. Not once. Not twice. Over and over until I lost count, and every single time it felt like a betrayal you didn’t even know you were committing. Every time you looked at them the way you should have been looking at me, it made me feel like I was dying inside. Like someone was slowly ripping my heart outof my chest, and I stood there and took it because the alternative was not having you in my sight at all, and that would’ve actually killed me, so if you really want to feel all that, then go.”
He’s trying to scare me into staying by giving me permission to leave.
So I do exactly what I need to do.
I turn around and head for the door.
Chapter 19
Shannen
This doesn’t feellike such a good idea anymore.
I’m dancing with Lianna, the bass is thudding through my bones, and bodies are packed tight around us, but I’m not here. I’m nowhere near here. I’m somewhere else entirely, drowning in an onslaught of memories.
Phoenix.
From the moment we first met—two kids who didn’t know what the fuck we were doing but knew we needed each other—to the first time he held my hand, to the moment he just… stopped. Now I'm replaying the past few weeks with him back, acting like he never left, and he didn’t spend years haunting my dreams night after night.
He’s absorbed everything I’ve thrown at him. My rage, my pain, and my absolute fury at him for staying away when all he was trying to do was protect me from himself.
He’s never once made me feel like I was too much, even when I was trying to hurt him. He’s stood there, completely immovable,while I’ve hurled every cruel word I could think of, and still, he gives me nothing less than his unwavering devotion.
Even when I’ve been at my absolute worst—vicious and petty in ways that should’ve sent him running—he’s stayed. It’s as if he knew he’d have to survive me to get us here. He knew loving me would mean enduring me at my most toxic and deliberately destructive, and he did it anyway.
