I’m a little rusty but when I do a three turn, Maddox whistles and I skate back over to him. The rink will close soon and there aren’t any more people out here.
“What can’t you do?” he asks after I help him up.
“Teach you to skate, apparently,” I answer with a chuckle.
“It was a valiant attempt,” he offers as we move off the ice. Once we’ve returned our skates and we’re back in our shoes, we’re walking toward the park’s exit and Maddox is quiet. I try not to think about it too much.
We’re outside the park when Maddox stops me, pulling me back by my hand into his arms.
“Remember telling me what you liked about me?” There are so many layers between us, but I can still feel his warmth. It’s one of those things I don’t want to get used to. I pray I never do.
“And?” I ask him, placing my hands on his shoulders.
“I never got to tell you what I like about you.”
Tell me because there are days that I can’t understand it and I need this. On those days, I need to think back on these moments to soothe the burn of inadequacy. Tell me what you love so I can be sure to continue to be those things. My eyes beg him to continue.
“I think I like the things we have in common most,” he whispers into my ear. This surprises me because the list I come up with is short:
We are both human beings.
We are producers…well, him more than me.
We are employed at Kingsley Records.
That’s all I’ve got but I’m eager to hear his list so I remain silent. His thumb rubs against my spine and I try not to react; to not move into his touch the way a cat would.
“And the ways we complement one another.”
My silly, silly heart speaks to me.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ask him, ask him.
“Tell me,” I say as he leans back to look at me. My rebellion against my heart makes it more order than question.
“Well, to start, I hear you.” I gulp and he smiles. “Your breathing and the way your footsteps sound as you approach. Your steps sound like power and they speak for you, long before you’ve opened your mouth. So does your body.” His thumb is still rubbing and I’m leaning into him more than necessary. “You’re wondering what it says.”
I stare at him because I don’t know that he can continue without my knees giving. It’s silly and ridiculous, and I’m taken back to the classic movies where women fainted in the arms of men. Is that where the idea of being swept off of one’s feet originated? I was being so utterly romanced that my heart couldn’t take it. Evidently, neither could my legs.
“Your body, sweet Emerson,” he starts, his lips pressing against my diamond earring, “sings. It sings a song of heartbreak and fear. But I can hear the hope beneath it, laced in the rapid staccato of your heels and the lilting sound of your breaths.”
Oh, to have fallen so madly for this man in a matter of hours, days, months. I fell in love with a man from afar. I loved his beauty and his smile and the way he didn’t know me. But he knows me now and though he’s only just knowing me, I’m falling as recklessly as he did on the ice. Right into his hands.
“As for what we have in common? We both listen. Only you listen to the world and I listen to you.”
He plants one kiss on my lips and then we walk. I don’t worry about his silence anymore.
We’re walking along the rail, and I can’t help but lean back against it and look up at the sky. My cheeks are numb from the cold and Maddox laughs at my light steps. I am becoming increasingly smitten with possibilities. They make me open up and want to free fall. He grabs my waist and brings me to stand straight before putting his arms around me.
“Isn’t it amazing? You had no idea what you started, getting in that cab,” I whisper and he rubs my cheek with his thumb. “The most important moments seem to be the everyday ones. But even those mean something. Everything you’ve done has led you to me. Doesn’t that make you think?”
I’m pulling at my lip with my teeth and his eyes are so intense on me, but I hold his stare because it makes me feel like I’m important. It takes away the words he once said. That I was no one. His eyes tell a different story.
“What is it?” I ask, fidgeting but I can’t look away, still.
“You’re young. And you’re still falling in love with yourself. Falling in love with the world. But I’d love it if you’d let me fall in love with you.”
Before I met Maddox, I thought of my heart as just an organ. One with just one owner: the person carrying it. But the more I became involved with him, the more I realized how simpleminded I was. My heart is not beating to keep me alive. With every jolt outwards, it’s looking for its counterpart; its true master. Which is why when he’s around, it beats so quickly. There’s a magic to it, knowing that you found the person who owns your heart. And maybe you don’t know it, but when you listen closely, that vital organ will tell you. It’ll hammer against you, waking you up as it tries to find its way out and into their hands.
Maddox Mason Bailey doesn’t know it, but he’s got my blood on his skin and my heart surrounded by his fingers.
“You know what to say to me.” I’m still fidgeting. When faced with something big like that, it’s all I can do, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Spend enough years getting it wrong, you’re bound to get it right at some point. I’m lucky to have gotten it right when it counts.”
“I like that,” I say as I step away from him. “I like that a lot.”
Chapter 18
The next morning, I’m meeting Maddox at the park. I want to treat it like it’s any old Saturday before I met him, but I know my choice in clothing has everything to do with the fact that I’m seeing him. It’s strange to get dressed for someone else when you’ve gotten dressed for yourself for so long.
I walk to the park. Sure, it’s cold but I need to stretch and I need to think. Last night was beautiful. Magical, even. We’re moving forward at such a fast pace, but I can’t bear to think of us slowing down because I’m loving every moment. When I make it to the park, I see him waiting for me with two cups in his hands and it does something to me. This place, no matter what, will be ours. I hope he thinks that too. I hope that I’m strong enough to erase what he had here before and turn it into something that we now share.
I sit beside him and he smiles and hands me one of the cups.
“Two hot cocoas,” he announces before sitting back and drinking some of his. We’re quiet for a bit, his other hand in mine on my lap. I’m looking around, but there isn’t a story I’m yearning to know because I love the story I’m currently in.
“What are you thinking?” Maddox asks, and it’s the strangest thing, knowing that he knows my weird quirk and isn’t running for the hills.
“Are you asking me if I’m doing it?” I sip my hot chocolate and glance at him from the corner of my eye.
“Are you?” He looks at the people walking around and I smile.
“Pick someone,” I tell him. “I usually lean more toward people who are actively engaged in a conversation. It’s easier to come up with some kind of story for them.”
He takes a few moments before he nudges me and gestures toward a man on his phone walking toward us. He seems agitated and I wonder how the top of his head isn’t frozen because it’s lacking hair, though some still grows around the bottom of his scalp.
“I bet he’s talking to his wife.” Maddox sounds so sure but I don’t see a ring on his finger. That’s nothing because many men in New York forget their rings, but I just don’t get the feeling he’s talking to his wife.
“I don’t think so,” I say, and Maddox raises an eyebrow.
“Wanna bet?”
“Sure.” I shrug. Maddox has been doing this for a few minutes. I’ve got this.
“When I win, I get to kiss you in front of everyone at the office.”
I drum my fingers against my cup with a grin.
He’s not speaking to his wife. But
if he is, I’m screwed. But he’s not.
Still, as he nears, I’m leaning forward, trying to catch all of his words.
“I said no, David. She wanted the potatoes au gratin.” He listens to what David is saying before going off again. “Listen to me. I haven’t had sex in almost a year. If you screw this up, I’ll let every food critic know that the sous chef at Giorgio’s is passing off salmonella as his main course. I know people, buddy.”
Maddox sits back with a whistle as the man continues to storm away from us.
“So what do I win?”
He tugs at the ends of my hair.
“In all of the times you saw me here, did you ever want to kiss me from where you sat?”
I run my teeth over my bottom lip because if this is going where I think it is, I may spontaneously combust.
“Of course,” I tell him. When he kissed another woman, I envisioned it was me but more than that, I wanted him sitting beside me, the way we are now. With him looking at me the way he is now. And my heart thumping the way it is now. It’s beating against my ribcage because it wants to be free. Maybe it wants to belong to Maddox forever and that scares me. That my brute of a heart already knows he’s it for us.
He tucks my hair behind my ear, and I’m trying to turn my brain off so I can truly experience him.
“Come here,” he tells me, and I uncross my legs before sliding over a little. He places his palm on my neck and I know he can feel my pulse. My blood pumping through my veins. The only thing reminding me that I am at the mercy of my heart and if it belongs to him, then so do I.
He moves his hand to my shoulder and kisses where my pulse thrums against my skin.
“You’re so natural,” he says, and I want to laugh.
“Huh?”
He leans back.
“I’ve met so many women who pretend to be many things. Unaffected, in control, crazy, kind, beautiful even. But you just are who you are. You haven’t felt the need to hide who you are from me.”
I can feel my eyebrows pinch together.
“Why spend so much time with people who aren’t honest?”
“Maybe I wasn’t ready to be honest, yet.”
“I want you to be. With me.”
He leans in and kisses me, and it’s so sweet that I can only hope he’ll handle my heart as gently.
“I want to be with you,” he tells me when he pulls away, and the cold tip of his nose rubs against mine.
“I guess we can do that.” I kiss the corner of his lips and sit back, and as I look around to make sure no one’s staring at us, I’m reminded of that fact that I know nothing about Maddox.
“What’s your story?” I ask him.
He grins.
“Well, I’m from Petersburg, Virginia. My mother was a homemaker and my father was a plumber. I moved to New York when I was seventeen. As soon as they handed me my diploma, I was gone. Small town living wasn’t for me and no one back home really understood.”
He’s so open with his life and it intimidates me.
“Music sort of…came to me. I’d sing in the choir at church. I was in my high school’s band. Hell, I was in a band.”
I envision young Maddox as the front man with teenagers throwing their panties at him.
“Lead singer?”
“How’d you know?” he asks with a laugh. “I could play every instrument, but the other guys couldn’t sing so I was the front man.”
“You’re the type. And I’m sure the girls loved it.” I bring my cup to my lips, but it isn’t until I lower it again that he reacts.
He leans forward and turns his head to look at me.
“No sense in envying ghosts, Em. They’ll only haunt you.”
I think back to when I’d see him here with a woman on his arms. Are those ghosts, the more recent ones, still lingering? Seems like it sometimes, in those moments of personal uncertainty.
“Someday you’ll come with me to Petersburg. Meet my parents.”
I look out toward the world and I wish we were alone. With each word, Maddox is removing each brick of uncertainty. He’s crumbling its foundation and replacing it with something sturdier. I fear the possibilities the way he embraces them only because I know how it feels to be emotionally without.
Right now, today, I am not without, and I should focus on the way it feels to be sitting beside the man of my dreams.
Kingsley is hosting a party for Jay’s album release, and I have to be there not only as a member of the Kingsley team but for Maddox as well, unbeknownst to everyone else attending. I gather my things and head to the ladies’ room to get dressed. I knew today was going to be a long one, so I brought my dress and makeup with me, content to wear my hair down. When I’m finishing up, my phone chimes.
Maddox: Almost done up there? Don’t make me come and get you.
I blush and rush to my office to throw my things in there and lock it. My phone chimes again.
Maddox: I mean that in every way.
I’m pushing the elevator button to the ground floor with my lips spread in a huge smile. We haven’t touched each other in that way since the day he ambushed me in my office in anger. While it’d be nice to continue to do things like that, we both have been busy and I don’t know that I’m ready to do it all just yet. Not yet, I think as the elevator doors slide open and I walk out. My heels click on the marble floor in the empty hallway. I’m following the sounds of the bass, toward someone who is apparently looking for me.
As usual, when I enter, I’m hit with the image of people dancing. I head toward the VIP section immediately, nodding politely to a few people who wave at me. People part and there he is, standing beside Jay with a glass of champagne in his hand. He’s talking but, much like it happens to me, he looks my way like he knows I’m right here. He smiles a smile that the rest of the world doesn’t get. I duck my head and tuck my hair behind my ear. I have to turn away because if people look, they’ll know something is going on.
I see my father and spend time talking to him and the board members he’s standing with. They’re a stiff bunch but I laugh at their attempts at jokes and make small talk, asking about their families.
I can’t help but feel like I’m failing miserably in this relationship because I know he’s basking in his glory and every time he looks at me, it’s with a look in his eyes that tells me he wishes I was beside him. I don’t want to hold onto that look because I feel like I’m holding onto scraps, but I can’t help it. As I walk around and work the room, shaking hands with people who talk about me when I’m not around, I’m keeping my eyes on him.
I don’t notice Hollis until I’ve bumped into him.
“Woah there, Emmy.” He’s carrying two flutes of champagne, and I grab the one he hands me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
He smiles and leans down to kiss my cheek. I smile in return and when I’m sipping my champagne, I feel a hand on the small of my back.
“Good to see you, Emerson,” Maddox says in greeting before leaning in and kissing me on the cheek Hollis didn’t kiss. “Hollis.”
Holly lifts his flute to him and downs his champagne.
“Congratulations,” he tells Maddox, and then it’s awkward and I know there’s something bothering Maddox. I step away and his hand falls to his side.
“Maddox!” I hear my father yell from behind me, and I nod before stepping away. Hollis follows me.
“I wonder what’s up with him,” he whispers and I look back at Maddox, offering a small smile when I see he’s looking at me.
“What makes you say that?” I ask, trying to feign ignorance. I sip my champagne and glance around the room.
“He seemed funnier—friendlier—when he first got here.” Holly drops his empty flute on a tray before grabbing another.
Is Maddox jealous of Hollis? I shake my head. That can’t be it. He knows we’re best friends. I catch Holly staring after one of the male servers and I chuckle.
“Prob
ably just stress,” I say. “I’m sure Kingsley is just a little more fast-paced than he’s used to.” But even as I’m saying it, I’m calling BS.
I tell Hollis I’m heading to the ladies’ room, and I’m almost there when I’m yanked to the side and then Maddox is kissing me hard, pushing me back into the stairwell. We’re alone and it’s a little cold, but his lips are lighting me ablaze. When we pull away, we’re both out of breath. Only to pull at each other again like we can’t get close enough to one another.
“I want to touch you the way I want in front of the world,” he tells me, and when he kisses my neck and squeezes my breasts, I know this is more about frustration than it is about sexual eagerness.
“I want you to touch me,” I lick my lips, “whatever way you want to.”
It scares me to be so vocal, but the glint in Maddox’s eyes tell me it’s exactly what he needed to hear. I’m trembling in my heels and he leans down to kiss me sweetly.
“Take me home?” he asks, and I know better than to deny him of the things he needs from me to make our relationship feel as important as it truly is. I can’t deny myself what I want either, despite telling myself I’m not ready. I feel like tonight could be the night, and it only takes being kissed by this beautiful man to make me rethink my earlier trepidation.
I run my teeth over my lips and nod.
“You know what that means, right?” His hands can’t stop touching me, running over my hair, down my arms, looking for the answer to his question.
“I do,” I whisper.
“I’ll have to stop and get some condoms,” he says, and I duck my head a little before picking it up with determination. I couldn’t stop my next statement if I tried.
“I’m on birth control,” I tell him because I know Maddox doesn’t have many firsts left in the world and I want to own whatever I can. My naiveté is showing because I’m the one being reckless now, offering myself to a man who’s had his fair share of sexual partners.
“You can’t say that to me and expect me to let you go.”
“I think I’m hoping that you won’t.” My voice dips under the emotion in my chest.
The Sound of Serendipity Page 16