Page 17 of Velvet Thorns
“Fuck, I should’ve just brought my wife with me,” Brandon gripes, rolling his eyes so hard I half expect them to launch out of his face and smack the nearest wall.
Of course, the self-obsessed cuntweasel actually found someone stupid enough to marry him.
“You’re married?” Phoenix asks, and the question catches me off guard—not because I didn’t expect it, but because it means they haven’t kept in touch, not even a little.
“Yeah, Kylie. I met her in college. What about you? Did you ever get married?”
My breathing stops.
My heart stops.
The whole fucking world stops.
“Fuck no. I’d never tie myself down like that.”
Of course he’s still this version of himself.
I don’t know what I expected… maybe a sign that the boy I once knew was still buried somewhere beneath all that arrogance. A spark of something human that said he’d grown, and maybe he wasn’t still clinging to being a complete piece of shit.
Something that said I hadn’t imagined it all.
But no, that Phoenix is gone, and what’s left is the man who shattered my heart and threw our history in the dirt like it was never worth a thing.
Desperate for anything to distract me from the wreckage Phoenix is sure to leave behind tonight, I lean across the bar and curl a finger to beckon the bartender closer. He bends toward me, bringing those dark, kohl-lined eyes level with mine.
“What time do you get off tonight?”
He flashes ten fingers, then two, that wicked smile spreading across his face.
Okay, so I’ve got until midnight to be done with Phoenix because there’s no way I’m leaving this place without knowing what it’s like to have that man’s mouth on me.
“Dude, have you seen Ava? She’s here as some kind of queen, rolling around on a throne with wheels,” Brandon says, grinning like he just cracked the joke of the year. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, she still looks good. But come on, man. I bet she’s real humble now. She might even say yes to me.”
Phoenix lets out a low chuckle. “You really think the chair is enough to knock the attitude out of her?”
“Probably not.” Brandon shrugs, lifting his drink. “But I’m happy to knock it out of her whichever way feels best.”
“Why don’t you go find out if she’s as humble as you think she is?” He tilts his head toward the far side of the bar. “Tell her Phoenix sent you. See how far that gets you.” That’s all it takes. Brandon, too full of his own ego, saunters off and disappears without another word.
Phoenix slides onto the barstool next to mine. He doesn’t touch me, but the heat coming off him wraps around my skin anyway. My mind is racing—a million fucked-up possibilities flashing through it, and each one is darker than the last.
Do I just go for it, throw myself at him, and see if he bites? Or do I let him believe he’s the one seducing me, let him play his game while I play my own?
“Sorry about him. He was a dick in high school—which you probably remember, since he made a point of being a dick to everyone,” Phoenix says, almost like he’s trying to soften the sting.
“It’s fine…” I lie, my fingers tightening around my glass. “I barely remember him.”
Phoenix flags the bartender and orders a water—a fuckingwater—at a party where half the room is drunk, in costume, screaming over terrible remixes, and doing shots off plastic tombstones.
I turn to look at him, and that’s when I notice it—no mask, no costume, not even the barest attempt to blend in. Just head-to-toe black and that face… that fucking face I’ve spent years trying to forget.
That face used to mean everything good in my world. Safety, warmth, laughter… maybe even love—the kind you believe will last forever when you’re too young and too naïve to know better.
Now, that face just means ruin.
Sitting beside him like this—close enough to smell the clean spice of his cologne, knowing all I’d have to do is reach out and graze the skin I used to dream about—makes my whole body coil tight. If I were still that weak girl, I might cry. Let the tears fall and beg him to explain why he left me alone in the world. But that girl’s dead and buried. Now vengeance sits where hope once lived, burning hotter than whatever he once meant to me.
“What?” he asks, not bothering to look at me, though I know he feels my eyes lingering.
