My blood is running sprints through my veins. I can’t breathe. I’d already been breathless with my pulse racing only an hour alone, with Jude, being daring and exquisite. Now this . . .
I don’t want the elevator doors to open. I actually look up at the ceiling ventilation cover and imagine the dozens of films where people escape through air ducts. They’re usually on a secret mission or on the run from bad guys. What if Brandon learns my real name, my history, and tells people? My dad never forgave me for testifying against him. I’ll find you if you do. I’ve felt safe and protected in Louisiana, swathed in my new name and my new life. I don’t feel safe anymore, and bad guys most certainly exist.
Would Dad send someone to get me? Could he hold a grudge that long?
Yes.
I’m dressed as Catwoman, but I’m not a girl in a movie. I’m terrified. And elevator rides don’t last forever.
The doors part to reveal the third floor. I stand there with my feet frozen. Janey will be distressed to see me like this. We’re friends. I have friends. It’s a beautiful thing, but I don’t know how to lean on them when the hard stuff comes along. Will it inconvenience them? But I’d be upset to learn Janey felt this way and didn’t turn to me for help, or at least to be a shoulder to smudge with mascara and tears.
I lean against the elevator door to keep it from closing.
If she’s home from the haunted house already, Janey will listen to me all night. But I’d have to explain why I’m so upset. I’ve been able to keep most of this haunted bullshit in a deep, deep pit for years. Now it’s a guillotine over my head. People could find out.
Jude could find out.
Tonight was just breathtaking. We were everything a couple should be, from funny to sexy to heartfelt. I ran through a thousand emotions in just a few hours, but looking back, each of those hours meant holding myself slightly apart from Jude. It felt like we were intimate—as close as two people could hope to be—but he didn’t know who he was dancing with. How would I feel if he kept something this huge from me?
How would I feel if I heard it secondhand?
But there’s no guarantee Brandon will do anything. He’s a stupid coward, like he was with Opal and me. He was just poking a raw place so he can feel important, using what he knows to make me freak out. Yeah, I’m scared as all hell about what he’ll do and how far he’ll go, but I can’t think about it. I can’t think about much of anything.
I want to play. I want to compose. I want to use black and white keys when my brain is too overloaded to speak.
Dixon is closed, though. Too late tonight.
But what Adelaide said . . . Jude, with a piano in the ballroom of the Villars mansion . . .
No way.
I step back into the elevator, my heart pounding even harder. I’ve been to Jude’s house by invitation, many times now. To show up in the middle of the night, though . . . ? Will he be as welcoming as I know Janey would be?
Trust.
Back down in the lobby, my knees a wobbling mess, I force myself to strut. I play “Poker Face” in my head and grapple for some Gaga attitude, despite what must be the world’s worst raccoon eyes. Brandon stares. He looks like a moron, dressed as a dead undertaker condemned for all eternity to swallow bitterness and salty noodles. In that garb, the ramen looks like he’s shoveling in a mouthful of worms.
“Running crying to your sugar daddy?”
“Fuck off, Brandon,” I say sweetly, then stride outdoors.
One Google search for cab service and a phone call later, I’m in a taxi on the way to Jude’s place. Funny thing. I don’t know his address. I could’ve done another search, but I take a chance and simply tell the driver, “The Villars mansion, please.”
It’s starting to rain. Wonderful. The cab navigates up the quarter-mile road to the mansion, which I can’t see until we’re almost there. I never noticed the gate outside. “You’ll have to buzz in,” the driver says.
I hop out of the busted up old Taurus and push the intercom button. Does he have a camera as part of his security? Can he watch me standing there in the streaming water, looking for him, dying to find him? Does he see me?
Of course not. I haven’t told him who I am yet.
Moment of truth. Moment of sheer, sluicing panic.
“Adelaide, if you’ve forgotten your damn keys again,” comes his voice past the slight crackle of static.
“Jude? Can you let me in, please?”
“Keeley? Jesus.”
The gate clicks open right away. Maybe his invitation, that his doors are always open, is true. And he’s not hiding some secret double life. Why am I so convinced he’s got one? My parents, maybe? I’ve answered to four names in my life. There’s a lingering feeling of Doesn’t everybody?
I go back to pay the driver. My heart sinks when I realize I have my phone but not my purse. What the hell?
I buzz the intercom again. “Jude, I don’t have money for the cab. I . . .” I start crying. “I don’t know where my purse is.”
“It’s here in the house. You left it in the car. I’ll be right there.”
It turns out that five minutes in the rain with a head full of buzzing anger and fear and foreboding is a really long time. Jude emerges from the streaking sheets of rain. He wraps me in a blanket and unfolds an umbrella over my head before paying the cabbie. He’s wearing an overcoat, but the shirt beneath is soaked. So’s his hair. Droplets of rain cling to his lashes when he comes back, hands on my shoulders, his expression concerned.
“You’re still in costume? What happened? Keeley, you’re scaring me.”
“Inside? Please?”
“Yeah, inside.”
I let him shuffle me into the mansion, mostly because my strength is gone. He towels me off. Without more than one or two stray touches, he unzips me from the catsuit for the second time that night. This is one hundred and eighty degrees around from stealing a quickie in his car. He bundles me in a robe and makes me a decaf. Sugar and cream. I don’t even have to tell him anymore. I’ve been spending as many waking hours and as many hot nights with a man so damn wonderful that I’ll cry again if I think about it too hard.
I’ve been with a wonderful man. He’s been living with my lies.
It’s gone. It’s so far gone. I’ve been Keeley Chambers for more than six years. That doesn’t mean I’m any less shaky.
Jude sits beside me on the sectional, where we snuggle under a fresh blanket. “I’m getting your new shirt wet with my hair.”
“You think that’s top of my list? It’s two in the morning and you show up on my doorstep. Start talking.”
“Oh, shit! You have that meeting this morning! I shouldn’t be here. You didn’t invite me and—”
I try to push away, nearly spilling my coffee. My whole body is trembling. I’m a robot on self-destruct.
He calmly takes the cup of coffee and sets it aside, then drags me back onto his lap. “I can sleepwalk through the meeting. You’re always welcome. Don’t you know that by now?”
“I know now.” I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. Then I blurt out what I want but won’t be able to explain. “Can I play your piano?”
His unapologetically aristocratic features warp into a frown I wish I could erase. “Of course.” He pauses. God, I knew he would. “But you gotta tell me what’s going on.”
I stroke the bare, slightly damp hair on his forearms and clasp his fingers with mine. “You remember what I said about you and Adelaide? How sometimes you have to trust that everything’s okay and just hold on?”
“Keeley, sugar, you’re going to ask that of me? About you?”
We’re wrapped up together. I’m naked under his borrowed robe. He’s wearing nothing but a T-shirt and boxer briefs. I feel his every reaction, including his flinch. I’m hurting him. I’m testing him. I’m keeping things
from him. But that’s an old life. It’s not my life. How would he look at me if he knew? It’s already taken me this long to have faith when he gazes at me as if I’m something truly, amazingly special. I believe him now when he says I’m fascinating and beautiful.
Don’t I deserve time to enjoy that a little longer?
I can’t bear thinking about the alternative.
“That’s what I’m asking.” I shake my head, not knowing what else to say but “Please.”
He takes a deep breath. There’s so much vitality in the chest that supports my trembling body. I want to dive into his strength and live there forever. Protected and . . . hiding.
Jesus.
I call myself all manner of coward, but I still wait. I want too much: his permission, no questions asked.
I see the war on his face. His brows are furrowed first. That was a given when he frowned. Then twin muscles bunch on either side of his jaw. His nostrils flare. He squeezes my hand, nearly to the point of pain. I can feel him trying to accept what he can’t change. How often has he had to fight like this? That he’s doing it for me is terrible on my conscience, but I need it so badly. I need him.
And I need that damn piano.
With one last shuddering exhale, he nods. “C’mon.”
We stand, and he cinches up my borrowed robe. He grabs a pair of jeans on the way past his bedroom. His bedroom . . . I want to be in there almost as much as I want to bang away on a keyboard, but it isn’t the time. I don’t have the energy to be intimate in that way. It’s only been a handful of weeks since Jude and I first slept together, but in the time since, I know that fears and anxiety would steal the pleasure of indulging and being indulged.
We climb one more flight of steps and enter the ballroom. He flicks on a light that illuminates nothing but the piano. The concert grand sits dead center, as if onstage. The way the light strikes its gleaming black surface and blocks out the ballroom’s other features adds to that impression. I only know the place is huge because my footsteps echo as I walk forward, and because of the slight draft from what must be the storm lashing against windows.
I approach in a trance and sit on the bench of matching black lacquer. There’s no audience here, other than Jude. After I touch Middle C—no matter how much I need him—even he disappears.
Minor chords are a given. There’s no need for perky major chords, with their fresh vibrancy. I start off more tentatively than I would’ve expected, but the acoustics and the rain get under my skin. My pulse picks up the pace, as does the swift dance of my fingers and the thump of my feet on the pedals. I don’t think I’m crying, not with my body anyway. This is the release I needed—even more than sex. This is confession and salvation in one, even if I can’t admit to one and accept the other.
For once, while composing, I’m not insensate and possessed. I’m telling tales about being scared and in pain. About being lonely. About rain drenched nights and being welcomed into a shelter from the storm. I’m crying with parts of my soul, and screaming, and shaking from fears that I’ll never be able to say with words. Who needs words when eighty-eight keys are more eloquent and far more beautiful?
When I finish, I’m surprised to hear that the sweet gum trees are still creaking beneath the strength of relentless winds.
“That sounds . . . familiar,” Jude says after otherwise silent minutes. Even the little hitches in my breathing have eased.
“Did I copy something? I didn’t mean to.”
“No, not like plagiarism.” He pushes away from the wall, out of the darkness, and sits beside me on the bench. I close the exquisite wood over the keyboard, where he promptly rests his elbows and tunnels agitated hands through his hair. It’s still a little wet from the rain. “I’ve felt that music before.” A warped smile doesn’t do anything to ease his tension. “I guess Addie’s tricks about making people react a certain way are paying off.”
I’m still pulled into myself physically, but I dare to rub his back. “I wasn’t using any tricks. I just needed to do that.”
“I don’t know where you pulled it out of, but maybe that’s why you didn’t want me to ask.” He exhales and straightens. “I get it. I do. Because there are some things about my life I’d stonewall too. You make it hard not to, though.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I keep quiet. Maybe he’ll tell me. Maybe he won’t. I hadn’t realized my music could be that powerful.
“You reminded me of people,” he says roughly. “Good people. And people who chose to save themselves first. The breadth of humanity, really. It’s a rough thing to take in all at once.” He looks toward where light reflects off a bank of windows. “This thunderstorm isn’t helping either.”
I go still. “Katrina?”
He nods, and takes a long time to compose himself.
“I was eighteen. Adelaide’s age. I thought I was pretty hot shit. Top of my class. Full ride to Tulane. Maybe that’s why I’m so hard on her, because she thinks the same thing now. But then . . .” He chuffs a dazed sound. “Then there was no Tulane. The storm swallowed the city I loved. Some folks climbed on top of one another for canned goods and blankets, while others took the shirts off their backs so babies would have cloth for diapers. My parents opened this whole place to refugees. I think at our max, we had about seventy-five people sleeping on the floors. We did what we could, but stories coming out of the Astrodome—God, none of it felt like enough.”
His breathing is rougher than mine, mostly because I’m holding all the air in my lungs. “I wound up taking classes at Louisiana State while my family and FEMA and all the other government misfires tried to dry out the Big Easy and put her back on her feet.”
He closes his eyes, shakes his head. I take his shudder into my body.
“I can feel it,” I say very quietly. “That’s not the end of your story.”
“I lost two of my best friends in the storm. They were on scholarship to my boarding school, but they lived down in the lowlands. Their houses, just . . . gone. Them too. I was humbled and scared. Everybody kept asking me why. Why haven’t people come to help? Why haven’t we been rescued? Or even, Why is Jude Villars down here? At least I could answer that one.” He kisses my forehead. “Because I didn’t know who I was anymore. Rebuilding a house was easier than dealing with how much had changed. Some rich kid with a future laid out like a red carpet—that’d been me. Not after the storm . . . and not after the crash.”
I swallow hard, but there’s no getting air past the lump in my throat.
“I’d finished my last exam at Vanderbilt an hour before the call came in. I was celebrating in a campus bar with my friends. We’d done it. Top honors MBA, here I come. Mom and Dad were supposed to come back the following week for the graduation ceremony. They’d finally decided to take time off and were flying to Banff for some Canadian sightseeing thing. Addie and I laughed at the idea of them both hiking, but they were excited, beaming like little kids. That’s how I remember them last.” He exhales heavily. “I guess that’s a good thing.”
“I think so,” I whisper, still stroking his back.
“I didn’t change my name because, hell, I couldn’t. I was trapped. I was too young. I’d fuck everything up. What had my parents been thinking, leaving me in charge of Adelaide and the business? I knew pieces of what Dad did, his responsibilities, but not enough to run the whole show. So I got thrown a new batch of questions. Why is Jude Villars here? Who does he think he is? One or two had the balls to ask me to my face. But . . . it got easier. I got stronger. Some would say I got pigheaded and arrogant. At least I stopped thinking I was trapped. Instead, I made it my own. Mostly because I didn’t have a choice. Move forward. Build again.”
“Take charge of a multinational corporation and pound a few dozen pianos into dust. That’s us?”
“Yeah, something like that.” He turns me to face him. I wipe a lone tear off his ch
eek, my heart breaking for him, my own fears subsumed by his confessions. My heart’s too big, too full of the bad and the good. “Do you see me?” he asks. “The real me?”
There’s no hiding from those eyes. No one would suspect by looking at us from the outside, and I didn’t understand it either, but we share a bond of loss and resurrection. The clubs and dances and sex, even the teasing laughter and life-changing dares, don’t connect this deeply. We’re being tied together by stronger forces—forces he doesn’t even realize—while the storm keeps raging outside. Here, we can take shelter in each other’s arms.
“Yes, Jude, I see you.”
He kisses me softly at first, then hauls me across his lap on the piano bench. His mouth finds everywhere he can reach. I inhale his rain-drenched scent and can’t stop touching him. Roughly, against my neck, he whispers, “In that, you’re my first.”
It’s then, kissing him, hearing those hoarse words, that my heart makes the big leap. I’m completely, terribly, beautifully in love with Jude Villars.
Thirty-Five
“It’s smaller than my dorm!”
Jude laughs and nuzzles my neck. “I’m glad that’s the only time you’ve mentioned small in relation to me.”
We push through the small door of the “roomette,” as Amtrak calls their sleeping cars. Early afternoon sunshine streams in through the large pane window. Two berths are folded into regular chairs, and a table between them is tucked flush against the outside wall. There’s enough room to wiggle in together, then stow our luggage. Just three nights’ clothing. It’s an adventure.
At least, that’s how Jude proposed it to me. “It’ll be an adventure. My treat. My surprise.”
But we’ve been together now for almost two months. He’s a smart guy and knows me as well as almost anyone ever has. So he’d nodded. “Never mind. No surprises when it comes to travel. I’m taking you to Chicago.”
My heart had stuttered. “Chicago?”
“Because of that poster on your wall. Janey told me what you said, about how you’ve always wanted to go. And for a right Southern boy like me,” he said, laying his accent on thick, “here’s our chance.”
Blue Notes Page 24