by Bethany-Kris
Well, then …
“I’m sorry,” Naz muttered. “For screwing up.”
Cross chuckled, and reached up to slap his son’s cheek gently. “You’re not even the hundredth man to fuck up, son. You’re not going to be the last, either. It’s okay to fail sometimes. I told you that once, didn’t I? You don’t have to be perfect, Nazio. Just because you’re a goddamn genius doesn’t mean you have to be the first at everything.”
No, he just had to be him.
That’s what his father always told him.
NINETEEN
“Roz, could you come down here for a minute, please?”
Roz heard her mother’s request, but she didn’t really want to move. Maybe … God, maybe … if she stared at this damn piano long enough, her muse would come back. Her desire to make beautiful music would rush back, and consume her again.
So far, nothing.
“Roz!”
“Yeah,” she called back, “I’m coming.”
Roz checked her phone to find a couple of missed texts from Naz. Short texts that didn’t tell her very much, honestly. He’d been so busy for a couple of weeks that she only got to see him for maybe an hour, and then he was gone again. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
She supposed …
“Last ditch effort,” she heard a familiar voice say. “We’ll see if this can push her that last mile, right?”
Roz’s brow knotted together as she headed toward that voice downstairs. There was no fucking way her mentor—
Sure enough, there Kyle stood in her parents’ kitchen. Seemed he’d discarded his usual three-piece suits for khaki shorts, and a white T-shirt. She didn’t think she had ever seen her mentor dress down before, but here he was doing exactly that.
Roz blinked. “Kyle.”
The man smiled easily. “Roz.”
In that moment, Roz wasn’t sure whether to feel extremely pissed off that her parents had invited her mentor to their home without telling her, or grateful that they had done so. She was kind of pissed more than she was happy.
Hadn’t she made herself clear?
“I’m not ready for the Australia audition,” Roz said quietly. “And you being here isn’t going to change that fact.”
Kyle nodded, and passed her mother and father a look as he leaned against the island counter. “That’s what I was told, yep. And you’ve said it more than enough times for me to hear it, Roz.”
“Then, why are you—”
“Audition is in two weeks, and you’re still on the docket.”
Roz stiffened.
Kyle smiled like he didn’t need her—or hell, maybe he didn’t want her—to say anything in that moment. “You know you have to be the one who calls to request your spot be removed and filled with someone else. I couldn’t do that for you. It had to be you. And here we are, two weeks out from the audition, and despite the fact you’ve said repeatedly that you’re not going to go, you’re still on the docket.”
Fuck him for knowing that.
For having connections to get that information.
“So, I’ll call tonight,” Roz snapped. “What difference does it make?”
“Because you’re not going to call, are you? You left your name on the docket because even though you don’t feel ready, Roz, a part of you still wants to try. So, I’m here to make sure you at least give it your best shot.”
Oh, that was rich.
Really.
“And what,” Roz asked, “I get on that stage, and make a fool of myself because I’m not ready for it. I fail and then I don’t get invited back when the next audition comes up? I lose my chance. I would rather not go at all.”
Kyle tipped his head sideways a bit, and studied her. “You kept something from me, didn’t you?”
Roz’s gaze darted to her parents, and then back to her mentor. “No, I—”
“Mmm, yes. A young man, your parents said. Nazio, I believe his name is.” Kyle cleared his throat, and waved a hand. “Could you two give us a few minutes, so I can speak with Rosalynn in private. I don’t think this needs to be a public conversation.”
Her parents didn’t even need to be asked again. Despite the fact that Kyle had a good decade and a little more on her in years, when it came to her music, her parents always deferred to him to make the right choice. Roz didn’t blame them at all. Since she had started to be mentored under Kyle, nothing about music was the same to her. It wasn’t just about making a beautiful thing, but living within the beautiful thing she created. He made her a better pianist.
The best, maybe.
So why didn’t she feel like it?
“The muse comes and goes, Roz,” Kyle murmured when they were alone, “and sometimes, our muse changes when we don’t expect it to. We look for the old muse expecting it to still be there, but it’s changed. It’s something new. Someone new. It can take us a while to figure it out because we creatives … well, we’re a whole other breed of monsters, Roz. We don’t like change, and when something in our comfortable medium changes, suddenly the whole world is coming to an end.”
Her head snapped up, and she found her mentor was looking at her in that soft way of his. Like she was a little girl just learning how to walk, and he was going to help her every step of the way.
Kyle nodded. “And sometimes, our world coming to an end around us feels like being unable to play, or think. It could be wanting to do anything else but what we love the most. It can be a lot of things, and nothing at all at the same time. I wish you would have told me about the young man. I might have been able to explain this to you sooner, and we could have avoided these last couple of months, hmm?”
“Are you saying—”
“If your muse changed,” Kyle said, “perhaps you just thought you lost it?”
“I’m not ready.”
“You’re ready. You’re just scared.”
She was.
She was terrified.
It was only partly about the fact she felt like she couldn’t play. It was only a little bit about Naz, and how distracted she was lately. It was a lot about the fact she felt like a goddamn fake. It didn’t matter how many beautiful melodies she created, or how many successes she’d already celebrated in her short, but amazing, career … she was always going to feel like she wasn’t good enough.
She was some seventeen-year-old girl from Nowhere, New York. She didn’t have a whole pedigree of musical talent behind her name like some of the people she was expected to go up against, and despite training her whole life, it still didn’t feel like enough.
She didn’t belong.
“That,” Kyle said, pointing at her face like he could read her mind. “That right there, Roz. I see it. We call that imposter syndrome. Creatives all over the world feel like this. People at the height of their success feel like this. And it’s okay because it comes and goes, and it doesn’t last forever. But you’re not an imposter. You’re just a girl sitting in front of a piano with a talent to share, and a stage being offered to allow you the chance to do that.”
“I can’t even focus long enough—”
“Then find what does make you focus,” Kyle countered before she could even finish. “You find what does that, and you run with it, but you don’t give in or give up. Are you going to take that chance, or let it go?”
God.
“I don’t feel ready,” she repeated again.
“That’s an excuse, not a reason,” Kyle countered. He drew out four slips of paper from his khakis pocket, and set them to the counter beside him. “Four plane tickets. Mine is online, and I don’t need you to hold onto mine. I didn’t need to buy them—your parents have more than enough money to do that, but I still did. Do you want to know why?”
Roz shrugged.
What difference did it make?
“Because they love you enough to make you comfortable,” he told her. “If you tell them no, they’re going to listen. They’re going to let you stay home, and wonder what if for the
rest of your life. I wasn’t put in your life to make you comfortable, or to give a single fuck about your reservations. I was put in front of you to make you work, and succeed.”
Jesus.
“I was put here to challenge you because no one else is going to, Roz,” Kyle said. “And if the audition is what breaks you, then I guess you weren’t meant to do this, were you? But I don’t think it will. They want to see you nail that audition. And so do I. So, do it.”
Roz’s brow furrowed.
She and her parents made three.
“Who’s the fourth one for, then?”
Kyle laughed. “Wouldn’t he like to see you play, too? This … Nazio. I hear he’s brilliant. Color me surprised that you went out and found someone like that. Is he brilliant enough to appreciate your brilliance, too? Or doesn’t he know about the audition, Roz?”
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t have to.
Kyle nodded. “Where is your muse, Roz? It’s always your muse that drives you. Follow the muse.”
In her heart.
Her muse was in her heart.
And in his.
TWENTY
“I can’t play.”
Naz blinked at the woman standing just beyond the front door of his apartment. “Roz?”
It wasn’t that he was unhappy to see her there. Quite the fucking opposite, really. He missed her like nothing else. But he’d been so damn busy with handling his business, and the extra work put on his shoulders by his father for his fuckups that other than a call or text, he didn’t get to see her much at all. An hour over the week to sit on her parents’ porch, and watch the fucking sky, but that was nothing.
Nothing that he wanted to do, anyhow.
Roz looked him up and down like she was just seeing him standing there in nothing but boxer-briefs, and not as though she had been standing in his doorway for a whole minute staring at him. “Did you just get out of the shower?”
Naz dragged his fingertips through his wet hair to slick it back out of his eyes. “Yeah—came running when I heard the door. Shit’s crazy, babe, so it could have been anybody with something for me to do.”
Because that was his fucking life now.
Not that he wanted Roz to know it.
He really didn’t want this girl thinking that just because he was too wrapped up in her to take care of other business that it was automatically her fault. It wasn’t. None of it was her problem. This was all on him, and he needed to handle it one way or the other.
Like his father said … find a balance.
“I called you earlier,” Roz added. “You didn’t pick up.”
Naz let out a slow breath. “I just got home, and went straight to the shower. My phone has been going off nonstop, and it might have gotten lost in the other shit. Sorry.”
She frowned. “Oh.”
“Hey, don’t do that.”
“No, you’re … busy. Like you said. I don’t want to bother—”
“Roz.”
Her head snapped up, and those beautiful, big blue eyes of her latched onto his gaze, and held strong. He refused to let her gaze drop, too, as he stepped forward with arms already open. She let him take her into his embrace, and he dropped a quick kiss to her forehead. Nothing felt better to him than having this woman in his arms, and it was strange as hell to him how that worked.
His whole life was one giant ball of stress right now. He couldn’t fucking escape it if he tried. Not even a quarter of a bottle of whiskey before bed would do the trick, because fucking right, he’d even tried that.
But just having Roz there, and his arms around her … shit was good again. His chaotic mind stopped the continuous chatter, and went silent. She was there, and that was all that mattered to him. It was no wonder that he had been so willing to just let shit slide in other points of his life when this wonder was what awaited him.
“You’re not a bother,” he promised. “And I was going to call you once I jumped out of the shower, anyway. I might have had a whole evening to myself if nobody calls, so I thought maybe you’d want me to spend it with you, huh?”
Roz nibbled on her bottom lip, and peered up at him. “Yeah?”
“Yep.”
She smiled. “Okay.”
But his evening wasn’t really a guarantee, either. All it would take was a call from a Capo, or his father, or even Zeke … and shit, there he would be, sent running somewhere again. It never ended, it seemed.
He also didn’t have anyone to blame for that but himself, too. Naz was quite aware of that, so he didn’t bother to complain. It wouldn’t do him any good. He was going to handle his business like he should have done in the first place.
Naz didn’t care about any of that right now though because he was a little concerned with the anxiety he found staring back at him from Roz. He wondered if that anxiousness had anything to do with her greeting—that wasn’t really a greeting—when he’d first answered the door for her.
I can’t play.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She kept quiet, but Naz didn’t need her words to confirm what he felt. In his heart, he just knew something was off.
“Everything,” she finally whispered.
“Not us,” he returned easily.
Roz smiled a bit. “No, and yes.”
Naz didn’t like that at all. “Come in, and give me a sec, yeah? Just gotta make a call.”
She nodded, and he stepped aside to allow her into his apartment. Dropping another quick kiss to her forehead, Naz left Roz to take off her coat and shoes as he headed further into the apartment. He found his phone where he’d left it charging on the bedside table. A quick press of his finger against the screen, and the phone dialed a familiar number.
His father picked up on the second ring.
“Naz, what can I do for you?”
“Give me the night,” Naz replied. “Call off any Capo that might need me, or send me running. I just … need one night.”
“Can’t do that, son. Sorry.”
Naz let out a hard breath. “Listen, I wouldn’t ask, but—”
“No, you know the rules, Nazio. Handle your business.” Cross cursed under his breath, and then muttered, “Give me a minute—Zeke’s calling.”
He tried really fucking hard not to glare at the wall while the phone went silent, but it was difficult. He didn’t ask his father for very much, but especially not when it came to the mafia. He knew he had to do this thing—get his button—on his own because if his father handed it to him, no one was ever going to respect him for that. But this wasn’t the same thing, and he really just needed Cross to shut up and listen to him for once.
Okay, that was a little unfair. His father did listen to him, but Naz was aware Cross also had to act as his boss, and not just his dad, too. That couldn’t be easy.
Naz told himself to remember that fact when his father came back on the line with a heavy sigh that echoed.
“Is Rosalynn with you tonight?” his father asked before he could say anything. “You know that was Zeke, and he was curious if I’d heard from you tonight because Roz took off. Apparently, her mentor came into town.”
Naz blinked. “Doesn’t he live in England where she goes to that school?”
“He does.”
“Why would he come all the way—”
“Is she there?”
“She is. Just showed up. That’s why I called. Something’s … not right,” he added quieter just in case Roz was somewhere near his bedroom and listening to his call. “With her, I mean. She seems off.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s having a moment that’s not my business to explain. Ask, son. And since Zeke thinks a night away might do her some good, but especially some time with you … you get your one night. Expect a call at five in the morning. Understood? Business as usual as of five, Nazio.”
He blinked again.
Like a fucking idiot.
“Ask her. I hear she has a big audition coming up.”
His father hung up the phone without letting Naz ask another question. He was left staring at his phone with more questions than he had answers, but he figured the girl wandering around in his apartment might be able to provide him with the information he needed.
Except … Roz wasn’t wandering his apartment. He found her sitting at the piano that his grandfather had passed onto him. Her fingers slid over the keys as though to ghost overtop them, but never actually pressing down to make music.
She didn’t need him to make a sound to know he was in the room. She started speaking without a word from him.
“I can’t seem to play,” she whispered. “I sit at my piano, and I stare at the ivory. I hear these notes in my head, and I see them flying past like I always do. That’s how I compose, but then I sit down to play … and nothing comes out.”
Naz fought the urge to frown as he came to lean against the piano. “Why?”
“At first, I wanted to blame you. I thought because I was so distracted with you that my desire to make music was just … gone for a bit. But that was an excuse, and not a reason.”
Naz leaned over to let his fingers drift over the keys. He played a simple tune that only took three of his fingers, and a couple of keys. Nothing too serious. He wasn’t very fucking good at this anyway.
“So, what’s the reason, Roz?”
She glanced up at him, wild-eyed and scared. He thought she looked scared. He didn’t like that at all.
“I have a deadline coming up. The piece had to be original. Amazing. It’s a once in a lifetime shot, and the longer I took to feel right about this piece, the worse I felt about it. The more I changed. It wasn’t good enough, and because it came from me—”