It’s Gavin.
And he’s singing our song.
CHAPTER 33
Gavin
I don’t know the words. I only remember the feeling.
I’ve never done anything like this. Not since I was a kid and I used to make stuff up on the spot to amuse my cousins. Back then, it was a matter of trying to spit out lyrics a heartbeat ahead of the accompaniment, and most of what came out was immature and crude because we were boys with nothing better to do. But this is different, and these lyrics — just as impromptu — have to work. They must mean something.
I stare into the place I haven’t wanted to look. From the stage, I open my inner eyes and look to Grace. I ask her for permission. And it’s Grace, not me, who tells me what to say.
I haven’t played this hook since Abigail put words to it. That part of the song, I remember, along with most of her chorus. I use what I have, keep my fingers moving — right on the frets, left strumming the strings — and listen closely to keep up.
I think I’ll falter, but the story comes.
I see Abigail in the crowd, near the bar. After the first few notes, she looks up, and her expression almost breaks me. It’s so fragile, so wounded. I was cruel to leave her today, but I just couldn’t follow. I knew what I needed to say but couldn’t move my feet. After all this time, I only had that last bit of reticence. By the time it washed away and I found my tongue, she’d gone.
The first verse tells the story of a boy and a girl who fall in love. Who meet tragedy. And how much it hurts.
I play the chorus. I play the hook. Abigail watches me. She looks like she can’t believe her ears. Like she can’t believe I’m singing, let alone singing this. The crowd seems much the same; the Overlook has never heard me sing when the doors have officially been open. I have no idea if I’m doing well or horribly. I have no idea if Chloe, backstage, is watching this and regretting giving me her slot. I might be tripping all over myself. Even if I rhyme, I might be a big, fat cliché. This might all sound pathetic, a joke, like the music I’ve repeatedly trashed on countless mornings after waking alone.
The second verse tells how the boy’s world ends along with the girl’s. How he tries to face the world and can’t. How it’s all pointless. How every day is another floor on an endless downward spiral.
I don’t know the words, so I watch Abigail, who wrote their earlier version. The words that cut too deeply, and made me want to bury them. Words that were, I’ve realized, a bit too true. Words I didn’t want to believe, and that I didn’t want to admit had been written long before Abigail sang them. Words that I’d written the first go-round, baking them into the melody itself.
How did I miss it? From the first notes, this song was always sad. A rebirth song. About moving on. Of course I wrote it first, and Abigail merely plucked meaning from what I played. But in the end, she wrote it, too. Because it’s no coincidence that the first notes came only after we met.
Inside my mind, Grace whispers the words. I don’t want to sing them, but the melody is a train, and I can’t stop it now that it’s going. I can’t abandon the boy in his desperation. I can’t surrender now, even if I want to. I’ve gone too far. I’m at the bottom of the loop, and now there’s nowhere to go but back up. To the start.
The third verse is about a new girl. A new love. And about moving on, sweet on the tongue to soften the bitter.
Chorus.
Coda.
And ending.
I want to slink away when it’s over. I’ve done something horrible, something I shouldn’t have done. I’m supposed to play the rest of a set, but I can’t. I’m spent. I have nothing left, all my energy wasted on embarrassing myself. I can’t raise my head, even though I should, because the crowd is clapping, standing, giving me the first standing ovation I think I’ve ever seen here.
But still, despite the crowd’s patronizing, I don’t want to look up. Because I can’t. I’m falling apart in front of an audience. Grace is here, too, mic in hand. Charlie’s on bass. Everyone is staring, watching this pathetic display, seeing only me and having no idea what’s just happened, what this has cost me.
I finally look up, and even through the crowd, I see the place where Abigail was standing. And she’s gone. Run off. Because I’m a fool, now at least half a dozen times over.
Chloe is beside me; her hand is tender on my back. Softly she says, “It will get easier from here.”
I stand from my stool. Slowly. Pathetically. I had no idea how weak I was, but now I see. I can barely walk. But this frailty isn’t new. I’ve been this weak all along, and all I’ve lost is farce.
Now these people, in the crowd, see me for who Gavin Adams truly is. The man I’ve been for years.
Freddy takes me over, like a ward, as Chloe reshuffles onstage. As if she knew she’d need to take over from the start. As if it was always obvious, when I asked for her slot, that I’d fail her, fail Danny, fail everyone. The way I always have, always do, and always will.
Freddy guides me into a corner, where I won’t bother anyone with my breakdown.
But the corner isn’t empty. Abigail is there, and her face is somewhere between happy and sad.
She wraps her arms around me and says something curious, whispering into my ear. Something I understand, even though it makes no sense in the context of what’s happened, what’s happening, and what’s already been said and left unspoken.
“I’m sorry, too,” she tells me.
She kisses me.
The crowd, behind us, applauds as Chloe takes the stage.
But they’re not applauding for Chloe.
As we pull apart, the sweetest, most adorable, most wrenchingly bashful smile breaks onto Abigail’s lips. It’s a hidden smile that won’t stay a secret. A private moment of glee that refuses to stay below the surface. It’s something so pure and honest, it strikes like the break of dawn after winter’s longest night.
They’re applauding for us.
For me. And for Abigail.
And, after our song, for the promise of new beginnings.
CHAPTER 34
Abigail
At first, I think I’ll need to lead him. Like he’s a virgin. Like he’s never done this before. And that same part of me wonders, for scant seconds, if this is right. Because something in Gavin has changed. When I met him at the Nosh Pit, he was one man. When I saw him later at the Overlook, he was another. This is a third, and in a way, I’ve never met him before.
But then I see something in his eyes, and I realize who he is.
The Nosh Pit Gavin — friendly, joking, happy, and lightheartedly flirtatious — was half of him. the Overlook Gavin — arrogant, confident, cocky, and dismissive — is the other.
This is who he really is. This man here is who he must have been all those years ago, before the accident ripped him down the middle.
We’re in my apartment. Lisa isn’t here. She stays out late on Fridays and Saturdays, rarely coming home before morning. It’s not a far walk, but it’s farther than Gavin’s place, which is only a block away. But by unspoken agreement, we didn’t go there, even though something is clearly pulling us somewhere to be alone, to heal whatever’s gone wrong. Because that’s predictable. Because that’s what Gavin would normally do when leaving the club with a woman.
There’s a period of time where I think we’ll keep on walking forever. We’d never go to any apartment, any enclosed place. Because it would be wrong. But it’s not wrong, and every little sign is telling me so. Chloe and Freddy told Gavin to get some air. Danny even came up to me and told I’m fired for the night, with pay. Dimebag was beside me, and I got the feeling they’d been in the midst of an argument or at least a disagreement, and the overweight former child star had simply followed Danny when he’d come to us. Danny smiled. Dimebag said, “Yeah, get out of here,” and Danny stared at him as if to say they weren’t finished with whatever they were in the middle of.
I don’t guide us to my front door. We simply arrive. I i
nvite him inside, and he agrees too readily.
I wonder if this is right. If he’s in a good place, and if I’d be taking advantage, the way he so often does. But just when I’m thinking I should call things off because he seems too fragile, Gavin reaches out and undoes a button on my blouse.
“We don’t have to do this.” It’s hard to force the words out, because my body is screaming for him. The song’s first notes were a splash of cold water. There was no delay; my anger and guilt and hurt vanished in an instant. The fire was burning. I felt like a death row convict granted a pardon at the final second. I heard Brandon’s voice, and my old infrastructure re-solidified. I felt strong. I felt right. I felt the burn. Watching him, it was like the clock was reset with no interlude between.
Gavin doesn’t respond. He leans forward and kisses my neck, his breath hot on my skin.
My head tips back. My eyes close without permission.
“If you’re not ready … ” I say in an exhale.
He puts his hands on my hips. Pushes me gently back until I’m against the wall. My shirt is fully unbuttoned, my bra exposed, and the fan above drags a breeze across my stippled flesh. He kisses farther down, to the place where my shoulder blades meet in the middle, then to the hollow of my throat.
“Gavin … ” I start to say again, but my well-meaning protests are losing their steam. It was meant to be another chance to stop this, a chance to slow down and take whatever this is more slowly. But my word leaves in a breathless gasp, and I find my hands straying to his belt, to the jeans below, to what awaits me.
But I can’t be like this. I can’t be the user his dark half has been all this time. So I grab his head between my palms and, with tremendous effort, drag his blue eyes up to meet mine.
“We can wait, Gavin,” I tell him, my heartbeat making my words come out uneven. “We can take our time.”
“I’ve waited long enough.”
“If this is hard for you … ”
A sad little smile crosses his beautiful lips.
“Abigail,” he says, and the purr of my name, from Gavin, melts my insides. “In three years, this is the first thing that seems easy.”
He moves to kiss down my chest again. But with more effort than I’ve ever mustered in my life, I pull him back up as the pressure between my legs begins to pound.
“I won’t be a one-night stand. I won’t have sex with you if I’ll wake up tomorrow as another notch on your bedpost.”
Some of the lust leaves his face. A hand comes up and caresses my cheek. The other hand stays where it is, on my lower stomach, and it’s all I can do to not scream at him to push it lower, beneath the fabric and over my tender skin.
“I don’t just want to ‘have sex with you,’” he says. “I have a lot of ‘sex.’”
The way he says the word, like he’s couching it, leaves me curious. I should be offended, hearing him talk about others right now. But I’m not. I want that hand to move from where it is to somewhere better. Because I’ve waited long enough, too.
“What I want,” he says, “is to wake up with you, and for you to stay with me after it’s over.”
Weakly, knowing how I must sound, I say, “When what’s over?”
His hand moves an inch downward, the tips of his fingers below the fabric of my jeans, beneath the hem of my panties.
“What I want,” he says, the hand moving slowly downward, “is to make love to you.”
It should sound corny. It should make me laugh. Instead, it makes me grab his shirt with both hands. Instead, it makes me kiss him.
“You don’t love me,” I say, making my voice strong but feeling none of it.
“All I know,” he says, “is that you’ve made me believe again.”
I think of the song. Of how he looked singing it. Of the words he sang. Of the story he told about himself and Grace, himself and someone else — himself and me, if I allow myself to believe as he’s believing. His song about moving on. And I recall his eyes, on me, as he sang words I sort of wrote, that we both sort of remembered from nothing, as if from outside. As if the song was pre-written. As if this was meant to be.
My hands slide up his chest, below his untucked shirt. His chest is strong, smooth, harder than I’d have expected. He has a lean feel, and all I want is for him to press himself against me. Press into me. To make me his. To make both of us whole.
“Tell me you love me,” I say.
He stops again, and this time I want to scream at him to keep going. To unbutton my pants. To paw my breasts. To touch me where I’m yearning. Now I’m two people, and they’re warring as this unfolds. If he tells me no, I’ll still want him. If he says the wrong thing, I won’t want him to stop.
“Oh, Abigail,” he says, his eyes boring into mine. “You’ve woken me up. You’ve made me want to write. To play. To sing. And to live.”
“Kiss me,” I sigh. “Please. Please just kiss me.”
“Of course I love you.”
“Then show me.”
I shrug my shirt to the floor. I reach back and unbutton my bra. Then toss it aside. Despite his obvious lust, Gavin seems hesitant, like he might offend me, now, by being eager. Men. Always believing that the act of love is somehow separate from the emotion itself.
I begin to unzip him, and he finds his fervor. He kisses me hard enough to knock my head against the wall then explores me with his lips, his tongue, his warm breath. He turns me around and pushes me toward the bed, and when the backs of my legs strike it we fall in a heap. I’m laughing until he silences me with a hand, and then his mouth on my right breast. My laughs die to nervous giggles, and he looks up at me with a devilish grin.
He slides down the bed, taking my jeans and panties off as he goes. I’m fully bare, my wetness licked by the fan. He kisses my sex on his way back up, and I lose a nervous little laugh again as he comes up, his lips on mine.
It’s been so long. So long since I’ve been touched that way.
“This isn’t fair.”
He pulls back to look quizzically at me.
“You’re fully dressed, and here I am naked.”
Gavin laughs. His hand slides down my belly, and one finger parts my sex, sliding over my clit. I suppress a shiver, but inside it’s a bomb waiting to explode, and it’s all I can do to hold it back.
“Maybe I want to do what I want. While you lay here helpless.”
I roll, and now I’m on top. His hands move to my ass, grabbing it, as I slither down his body, repeating what he just did to me. His cock is hard as steel as it comes free, and I grip it as I return to his mouth, allowing its hardness to glide between us, pressed against my breasts, my stomach, its heat settling nearly between my wanting legs. Then I pull his shirt away, and he nips up at me, pecking at my neck, my ear, my lips.
“Now we’re even.”
He rolls us again. His hand slides over my clit, one finger parting me to slide inside. I gasp against Gavin’s neck, the scent of him filling my senses, his flesh against my opening mouth. He touches me for a while, increasing tempo, and I think I might come. But then he stops, and I feel the tip of him touch me, waiting, denying.
I grip his back. I grip his ass, pulling him into me. He enters me smoothly, as if we were meant to be like this from the start. As he fills me, my head tips back on the soft sheets. His whole body is on me from top to bottom, his chest moving against my erect nipples, eliciting wave after wave of electric pleasure.
He holds me as we make love. As his hardness fills me. We’re one long unit, tightly bound from top to bottom, our movements small and deep. I feel all of him. His hips press against my clit as he thrusts; his mouth is still on my lips and neck, giving me suffocating kisses. I climax once then again. When I do, I scream against his neck, my eyes watering. I grip him harder, my nails on his back. Then he heaves and thrusts and I feel him coming down, our union moving from frenzy to tiny, jerking spasms.
Finally, he rolls away, but our arms won’t fully part and we lie there in afterglow,
our breath slowly returning to normal, face to face, Gavin actually smiling.
Contented, blissful sleep follows.
In the morning, we wake with the sun and do it again.
CHAPTER 35
Gavin
I’m sitting in the club outside of Chicago — Devil’s Lounge, I think the name is, though they all run together after a few weeks on the road and I’d have to peek outside to be sure — when Freddy comes up and hands me a package. It’s wrapped in gold foil but has no bow, so it’s unclear at first if he’s giving me a present or a heat-and-serve dinner.
“What is this?” I ask.
Freddy looks at Abigail, so I look at Abigail, too.
“What is it?” I repeat, this time to her.
“You could open it and see,” she says.
I heft the thing in my hands. It feels heavy, with sharp corners under the paper. Something made of wood? Metal? Something tells me it’s not plastic. It’s not a box; whatever this is, the only thing between me and it is the foil. I can feel beveled edges. It’s rectangular, a bit bigger than a computer tablet and several times heavier.
I shake it.
“Just open it already,” Freddy says. His eyes dart to Abigail again, and I can tell they’re both nervous.
I reach to tear off the paper, but I’m interrupted when Alicia comes to the table. I can tell she won’t join us. She has a cigarette in her hand, so she must be on her way outside to light it. The club doesn’t allow smoking, and Alicia finds this offensive. She has an abrasive edge and all those tattoos and purple hair make her look scary, but I still like her a lot. She’s a perfect drummer: loud, brash, and great at breaking things. So far, she fits this ensemble well.
“Any of you have a lighter?” she asks.
“Sorry,” Freddy says. “I considered smoking once but decided I’d rather live.”
Alicia’s eyes go to Abigail and to me. We both raise our hands.
The Forbidden Muse (Inferno Falls #2) Page 21