My smile was slow. “I know. But you have to know sometimes taking the chance is worth any consequence.”
She eased forward and wrapped me in her arms. “I love you.”
I squeezed her tight. “I love you, too.”
She rocked me and laughed, something wistful in her tone. “How about we make a deal? You stop chasing the dangerous things and I’ll stop worrying about you.”
Soggy laughter rolled from me as I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in her neck. “I’m not sure I can make that deal.”
Because sometimes the best advice was the hardest to take.
Chapter Fifteen
Zee
Crossroads.
They were always there. On the horizon. With each second that sped by, they got closer and closer until they were right in front of us.
Obstacles littering the way. Distracting and diverting us from the direction we knew we needed to travel. Slowing us down when there wasn’t anything we should be doing other than barreling forward, full speed ahead.
I knew where I was supposed to be going. The direction I had to go. Yet there I was—distracted.
Guilt scraped at my insides, this feeling that was achy and raw, goading me for being so damned selfish that I couldn’t just cut ties with the girl right from the start.
I knew better. I fucking knew better. But that knowledge sure as hell didn’t seem to stop me every single time I got in her space.
She’d be at my place soon for her next lesson.
The fact that was the only thing I could think about all day should’ve been warning enough.
A heavy sigh pilfered from my lungs, riding out into the silence like a reprimand. Because taking this kind of risk was just about as stupid and selfish as I could get.
That reality was mixed with the fact that not taking the risk for her felt like some kind of mortal sin.
The waning day burned through the windows as the sun crashed toward the horizon.
The world on fire.
I found myself standing in front of my piano. The piano that had been my grandmother’s. The piano where I’d basically spent my life growing up. Countless hours at her keys.
A shiver of unease slithered across the surface of my skin and then prickled with the need.
Alexis had nailed it. I hadn’t played in years.
Not since it had all gone down, and that comfy, cozy rug had been ripped right out from under my feet.
Dreams shattered.
Aspirations lost.
Hearts broken.
In all that time, I’d never itched or yearned or felt that stirring rise from deep within me.
The inspiration had died.
Until she had somehow brought it back to life.
Last Saturday, she’d incited something in me. And it fucking terrified me, the way it had felt to be wrapped around her body when I’d given in. When her song had come pouring out the exact same way as I’d heard it in my head.
A knot grew in my throat, and I shook, compelled by that same kind of need as I sat down at the bench. My eyes dropped closed and my fingers found their mark.
Hesitation trembled in the cage of my chest before I gave, for the moment letting it loose.
Her song.
The chords and the strains and the melody.
Harmony.
I bit back the lyrics that spun on a circuit through my mind, demanding to be released, and instead, I let my fingers sing her words.
Need.
Lust.
Belief.
So many questions and too much confusion.
It poured from my fingers as my body bowed and curved and swayed. The piano like an old lover. My first friend.
And that energy…it lashed and hammered and pounded.
Alive.
Too intense. Too much. So close.
A burst of warmth crashed over my skin. Eliciting chills. Overpowering heat.
Alexis slid onto the bench beside me. So full of that good and grace, and my fingers stilled on the keys. I struggled to draw a breath into my lungs that burned from the exertion of playing her song.
“I’m sorry I startled you.” Her words were quieted, like she didn’t want to break the passion knitted through the room.
“I knocked, but you didn’t answer. I could hear you playing…the door was unlocked, so I let myself in.” She fidgeted in that innocent way. “I hope that’s okay.”
Carefully, I nodded. “Of course it’s okay.”
My gaze traced the exquisite lines of her body. She was wearing these super tight skinny jeans that instantly had my mind running wild, and a delicate blouse that teased my thoughts into wicked things.
Lust.
It tangled in my stomach and pulsed through my veins.
A scatter of glittering golds struck against her porcelain skin like a torch.
But it was the girl who was lighting up the room.
My chest tightened. She was some kind of miracle. I wanted to reach out and take a little magic for myself.
Sheets of white hair framed her sweet face, her cheeks flushed, her lips lush. But it was her eyes that staggered me. They were a storm that had gathered on the Caribbean. The deepest, most destructive kind of blue.
Her voice was a plea. “Sing it to me.”
I sat there dumbfounded, and she continued like a prayer. “It’s so beautiful. The song you were playing. It’s the same you were playing the first day I came here, isn’t it? Sing it to me. I bet you have an incredible voice, don’t you, little drummer boy?”
Her voice was muted, so quiet in the backdrop of the setting sun.
Chest heaving, I struggled against the desire that bounded and churned. My cock was so goddamned hard it neared on painful, begging for her touch. “Those are words I won’t ever get to sing.”
“Why?”
“Because they hurt too much.”
She fluttered her fingertips over the star on the back of my hand. Soft, soft encouragement. “Outside…I stood and listened. The song…it sounded both like sorrow and hope. It’s sounded like you want to believe.”
God.
How did this girl manage to see straight through me?
My tongue felt heavy and thick. “It’s the culmination of every wish and every regret, Alexis. So yeah, there’s hope in it. But I guess the part that makes it sad is that I won’t ever get to have it.”
My hands lingered on the keys, and she reached out and set her hand on top of mine.
Warmth and light.
It invaded my senses. Clouded my judgment.
My hand flipped over, palm up, and she threaded her fingers through mine. Her head angled, so soft, this girl so fucking good.
“What is it you want, Zee? What is it you can’t have?”
You.
You.
You.
Flames leapt into that space between us. Alive and dancing and inciting.
A siren’s call.
My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and I was shaking as I lifted our entwined hands. I brushed my knuckles along the silky flesh of her cheek. I swore I saw the trail of pink it left behind, the simplest touch affecting this girl.
She released a shuddered breath. It mingled with mine.
Our mouths were close—too close—and our noses just touched as we hovered in that space.
“I want things that will only ruin me, Alexis. But you…you make me want to wish for them anyway. Make me believe there’s a chance that maybe they could belong to me.”
Tension tethered us, this rigid band that had me rocking in indecision, every second getting closer and closer as I fought the foolish ideas that tried to take root.
Giving in would only destroy me. But none of that seemed to matter when I leaned in and brushed my lips at the corner of her mouth.
Her fucking delicious mouth.
Because fuck. I just needed a taste. Something to take with me. Something to tuck away, even when doing it felt like some kind of brutal tease.<
br />
Alexis gasped at the contact. I edged back the barest fraction, and she was panting these tiny breaths.
Breaths I was breathing.
Her eyes locked on mine. Hungry and pleading. Brimming with belief and hope.
I ran my thumb over the corner of her mouth where my lips had just been. “You are so beautiful. I’ve never met a girl quite like you.”
Something so genuine took hold of her expression. “I hardly know you…and somehow you make me feel like I am. Like when you look at me…you see the person I always hoped I’d become.”
Everything stilled at her words.
At her confession.
Because that’s what I wanted.
For this amazing girl to know the way I saw her. That in her space, I felt something different from all the bullshit I’d dealt with for all my life.
I felt like someone different. Someone better. Like the person I’d once hoped I’d become.
I clutched her stunning face in my hands, searching for resolve. For that dedication that right then somehow felt out of reach.
“Zee,” she whispered.
That was all it took for that band to snap.
My hands drove into her hair. And my mouth? My mouth was devouring hers.
Frenzied in its demand. Pleading the same way as her eyes had been pleading with me. Saying all the things I couldn’t ever say.
Our tongues tangled, and my spirit coiled. Heat spread in a flashfire of need. Lust rose in the knitted air, like this intangible greed we both were grappling for, searching for the fastest way to get to the peak.
Our hands searched and clawed and explored. We were a mess of limbs as we struggled to get closer to each other where we sat side by side on the bench.
“Zachary…Zachary,” she whimpered, grasping me by the back of the head. She crawled forward so she could straddle me.
Motherfuck.
My hands sank into her hips, and she edged up and pressed those gorgeous tits against the wild beat thundering in my chest. A groan rumbled out from somewhere in my soul.
She felt so perfect. So good.
I wanted to touch her. Explore her. Claim her.
My dick raged against its confines, all that delicious heat at the apex of her thighs grinding against my jean-covered cock.
It’d been too long. Too damned long. I was goin’ out of my mind.
“Fuck…Alexis…Lex. I need you…God, I need you so bad I can’t fucking see.”
“I think I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted. Not in all my life.” It was all a manic whimper between this frantic kiss, her words and her breath rushing over me.
What am I doing?
What am I doing?
My hands slid up her sides before they fisted in her hair. I kissed her deeply—madly—before I forced myself to pull back.
Alexis panted and gasped. Blue eyes wild. Raging with need.
Blinking, I attempted to clear my head of the lust distorting all my loyalties. I cleared my throat, loosened my hold in her hair, and slowly edged back.
“I…” I trailed off.
“Did you feel that?” she murmured into the air, her voice like the remnants of that song that kept trying to take possession of my spirit.
Carefully, I set her aside and climbed to my feet. I had to put some distance between us before I went and did something I couldn’t undo. Before I made any more mistakes than I already had.
It left Alexis sitting there at my piano, watching me cautiously. Reflecting all the confusion I felt. Wondering if she might’ve done something wrong.
Problem was, all the wrong was on me. It always was.
Her hand fluttered my direction. “Zachary…tell me what’s wrong.”
I swiped the back of my hand over my mouth like it might be able to erase the sweet ache she’d left behind.
Impossible.
“I just…I need a minute, okay? Uh…why don’t you practice a little of what you practiced during the week. You watched the videos I told you to, right?”
I was rambling, but I was looking for a different sort of distraction. A detour that wasn’t perilous. A road that wasn’t fraught with hazard signs.
Hurt and disappointment were clear in her expression, but she nodded. “Yeah. I watched the videos and practiced some on my keyboard like you asked me to.”
Damn it. Couldn’t stand that I’d put that look on her face.
I brushed my thumb beneath the hollow of her eye, needing to reassure her. To encourage her she hadn’t done anything wrong. Or maybe I was just the fuckup who was looking for any excuse to touch her again. “Good girl. I’ll be right back, okay?”
She swallowed hard, and I backed away and let the space between us grow.
I needed a moment of clarity outside this attraction that pulled and pulled and pulled.
Before I let this go any further, I needed to remember my resolutions. Remember exactly what it was I was fighting for.
Chains were a bitch.
But sometimes they were the only things tying us to what was most important.
I backed the whole way to the staircase, watching her watching me, before I turned and jogged up to my bedroom.
I went straight for the bathroom separated from my bedroom by a high partition wall. I closed the door behind me, though it did nothing to mute the tentative, tinkling sound of fumbled keys floating up to tickle my ears.
I set my hands on the countertop and stared at my reflection as she pushed all the way through the boundaries.
Touching that cold place in my heart.
Seven years and I’d never been tempted.
Seven years and I’d never questioned.
Seven years and I’d never failed.
And there I was, staring down the bastard in the mirror who was itching to commit the greatest kind of betrayal. But how could I stop myself from wanting her? Not when her simple song lifted and danced and teased.
It was a song I’d learned to play when I was three.
“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
I looked down at my hand fisted on the porcelain sink, at the star that’d burned for a few fleeting moments before it’d disintegrated.
Just dust and ash and decay.
But beneath it, I felt something smolder.
A spark to a dying ember that I’d believed lost its flame.
Harmony.
And I had no idea what the hell it was this girl was doing to me.
Chapter Sixteen
Alexis
The energy shifted the moment he stepped back onto the bottom floor. I could feel it, the way the tension increased and pulsed with every move he made. How it grew and grew the closer he came.
The man had already brought me to my knees with his mind-bending kiss.
By the heat of his touch and by the need in my body.
And then—just as fast as it’d started—he ended it. Ripped himself away. As if touching me was something wicked.
Hurt tried to crawl up and take shelter in my chest, and I struggled around it as I tinkered my way through the song on the piano, pretending as if I didn’t feel more emotionally vulnerable in this moment than I had in all my life.
“I think you’re a natural.” His words were a coarse caress that blasted across my skin.
A tiny sound climbed my thickened throat, landing somewhere between a self-deprecating laugh and a cry. “It’s a child’s song, Zachary.”
I could sense him behind me and off to the side, as if he didn’t want to step too close.
“No song is less important than another.” Voice so low it was dangerous to my sanity.
He inched forward, the air pulsing with each uncertain step. “How many lives do you think that song has impacted? How many souls has it touched? How many mothers have rocked a child to sleep while they hummed this song? It’s a child who believes. Never, ever take that fact for granted.”
His breath barely kissed along the bare skin of my shoulder, and I ached for him t
o again breach the space. I wanted to feel him.
Everywhere.
I’d always chased after experiences. I’d always loved the feel of the sun on my face and believed in the power of a falling star.
This boy felt like both wrapped into one. Life and death. A beginning and an end.
I fumbled across the keys, trying to make it through the song before I finally broke and jerked around to face him. “What is happening between us?” Wildly, I gestured. “Between you and me? Because it feels like something important.”
His voice was rough. “I wish it could be…something important.”
“Why can’t it be?” Desperate confusion flooded from the words.
Something bleak edged his expression. “Because we can’t always have the things we want.”
I blinked up at this complicated, perplexing man. “What is stopping you from taking what you want? Because it’s not me.”
And there I was. Running toward danger. Heart-first, just like Chelsey said.
“That’s the thing, Alexis. I see you looking at me the way you do. Like we could be somethin’. And I want it so fucking bad. To be something to you. To be good for you. But I ruined that possibility a long time ago and I’m not sure there are enough pieces left to give any of them to you. That’s my truth.”
As if he could no longer stand, Zee dropped down to his knees in front of me. Like an offering.
I shifted the rest of the way around on the bench so I could meet him eye to eye.
Reaching out, I ran my thumb across the tense lines on his forehead, my head angled as I studied him, searching for an answer. “Who do those pieces belong to?” My head shook. “Who do you belong to, Zee?”
Low, gutting laughter rolled out from some place hidden within him. “I belong to my mistakes. To the choices I made a long time ago. Now, it’s a matter of remaining loyal to them. Remembering what I owe.”
His gaze shifted to the windows before he looked back to me and edged forward an inch. My knees shook with the urge to drop open, to make room and beckon him to me.
“Doing this…inviting you here…is probably the most reckless thing I’ve done in years.”
My heart sank. Why did him admitting that have to hurt so much?
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