Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
I press my lips together.
Travis starts singing the song in a husky, deep voice. Everything inside me turns to mush. I know how much I am in love with Travis Phoenix, I have always known it, but when he sings, my entire world stops.
I thought I’d forgotten this part of him, the way Travis could overtake a room with nothing but a challenge and a grin, how he could drag me right out of myself and into whatever madness he decided was next. I’d spent years pretending I was immune to it. I’d spent years lying.
The air in the bar has changed, electric and predatory, everyone watching for a trainwreck or a miracle, or like this is some sort of romantic movie they’re about to see the ending to. Travis leans in, his voice scraping velvet, “You’re not getting out of this, Mischief. Sing with me, or I kiss you again.” He says it just loud enough for the nearest table to make a swooning sound.
I roll my eyes and snatch the microphone from his hand. “You’re such a child, Phoenix.”
His lips curl. “Takes one to know one.”
God, this song. I know why he picked it. The lyrics are burned into my bones; it was always our favorite, and we have sung it a thousand times, the two of us howling into hairbrushes. I shake off the memory that feels like a lifetime ago and start singing.
If it wasn’t for the wine, I absolutely would not be doing this.
I expect humiliation, maybe even heckling. But the bar slips away when I see the look on Travis’s face, somewhere between awe and nostalgia and a hunger that nearly detonates me from the inside out. He finds the harmony right on cue, and for the first time since everything went to hell, it’s easy, effortless, like we’ve never spent a day apart. The way our voices mesh, clash, blend—nothing has ever come close.
The crowd is into it, roaring, clapping, and howling, but the only thing I can focus on is the arc of his cheek as he grins at me. My hands tremble even as I try to command the room, and a part of me hates him for how badly I still want this. Want him.
We go into the next song, “Ex’s and Oh’s,” because why not lean right into the ironies, and I nearly blow out the microphone on the first line. Travis throws his head back, howls with laughter, and dives in. Each chorus is louder, messier, angrier, and the old wounds come bleeding up with every note. By the bridge, my voice cracks and I feel myself unravelling.
I can’t take it.
It’s like suddenly, I can’t breathe.
I clamp my mouth shut, hand the mic to a stunned waitress, and shove through the crowd. The air outside is thick with rain that was not here before. My hair clings to my cheeks in seconds, and I don’t even care. I breathe. I try not to sob. I fail. It’s easier to be furious than to fall to pieces, so I choose that.
Heavy boots thud behind me and seconds later Travis is there, staring at me, his face expressionless. “Why’d you run?”
I bite my lip, to stop the tears.
“Answer me, Violet.”
His voice is firm, steady.
“Because being in there with you, feeling that way, it’s killing me. You being back is killing me. Everything hurts, Travis. Because I don’t understand. I still don’t get why you left and refused to speak to me. Do you have any idea what you did to me?”
He goes silent. “No, I don’t.” Water streams off his hair and down the collar of his shirt. He stares at the street instead of me. “I could tell you why, or I could tell you what you want to hear. But neither of them will be enough. Sometimes a man just needs to disappear, Vi.”
That’s it. “That’s your answer?”
He nods, slow. “Yeah. I wish it were better, but it’s not.” He rubs a fist over his jaw. “I thought your life would be easier, lighter, without me. I was in a bad place. I don’t know what to tell you. I was drowning and nothing made sense except to run, so that’s what I did.
“Maybe it would have been better if you stayed gone.” A sob punches out before I can stop it. “You broke the only thing I had left.”
He steps close but not enough to touch. “I can’t fix it.” His hand comes up, trembling a little, then lands at the base of my neck, heat burning through my skin as he pulls me forward just enough to be sure I’m listening. “If I could, I would. I’d tear the whole world down if it meant you’d look at me like you used to. But I can’t.”
We stand like that, chests heaving in the rain, both of us shuddering on the edge of whatever comes next.