The inside of Lana’s head felt hollow, as if everything she’d ever known had been lifted right out, leaving her with only a few words.
Those words filled her mouth, sitting like rocks on her tongue. “I was raped.”
Taft squeezed her fingers. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. You didn’t deserve it.”
“I really thought I …”
“Deserved it. You didn’t.”
Something light filled the top of her head, something light and warm. It flowed through her, honey sweet and thick. “Oh, God.”
“Take your time with it.”
Lana touched her lips. “This shouldn’t make me happy. Why is this making me happy?”
“Maybe because you finally have the right name for it. When you call it an assault that could have been avoided, you blame yourself. When you call it rape, it makes it more black and white. You know he was to blame. Not you. Never you.” Taft held her hand loosely but his skin was so warm. “Maybe that’s why you wrote the song.”
“Because I already knew it?”
Taft shrugged. “Don’t know about you, but half the time I write a song, it’s because I don’t understand what I’m talking about until I do.”
“Taft.”
“I’m right here.”
He was. He really, really was. Lana had never felt so seen. It wasn’t because she was still stripped down to her underwear. It was because he’d named the demon she’d been carting around with her for so long.
She had a name for it.
By naming it, maybe she’d finally get to the point of letting it go. Someday.
“Taft,” she said again. Would that be weird? If she just kept saying his name from now until forever? No other words seemed necessary.
He just smiled at her. Softly.
Okay, she could think of a few more words. “Kiss me.”
The muscle at the side of his jaw jumped. “Are you sure?”
“Kiss me.”
“This is pretty heavy. I want to make certain –”
Lana slid forward on the blanket and crawled into his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. “I’m not sure about anything right now except that I would really, really love for you to kiss me. I’m not drunk. I’m not high. I’m perfectly sober, and I’m pretty freaked out. I want you to –”
Taft waited. She could feel his muscles straining. He wanted her, too, but he was restraining himself, pulling himself back like he was reining in a horse that just wanted to gallop.
She found the words, the right ones. She didn’t want him to fuck her. She didn’t want to have sex with him, or to sleep with him. She wanted something else, she wanted different words, more words she’d never said out loud. “I want you to make love to me.”
Taft dropped the invisible reins.
His mouth was on hers, his arms all the way around her, pulling her hard against him. Lana braided her fingers into his hair. He growled – a low, sexy sound that made her need him even more – and lay back, taking her with him so she was on top. God, he was hard. For some terrible reason, he was still in his jeans.
Lana wriggled and pulled at his fly. “Off. Off, please take these off.”
Taft smoothly deposited her to the side. He shucked his jeans and pointed at her bra. “What about this?”
“Gone,” she pronounced. She sent it winging across the room, slingshot-style. It landed on her own toolbox. She raised both arms. “Three points!”
Taft laughed, and the sound went to her head, making her dizzy. She shimmied out of her panties, kicking them to the side. She slipped her fingers into the top of his boxers, and he grinned at her as she drew them down.
“Fun,” she said in honest surprise. “This is fun.”
“It’s supposed to be, Birdie.”
“What if – what if I get scared again?”
“Then we slow down. Or we stop entirely. You make the call, at any point.” He rolled her with him so she was underneath his body. “You understand me? There’s no too-late-to-stop. At any point.”
“Please,” she said. “Don’t stop.”
Then somehow he had a condom in his hands, and she helped him roll it onto his shaft. He laughed as it made a funny snap, and she laughed, too.
It didn’t make the moment less hot.
In fact, the laughter made it better.
His mouth moved from her mouth to her neck. He kissed his way up to her ear. He held himself over her, and she could feel his back muscles tremble.
“I need you,” said Taft. His eyes were so dark they looked black. “That doesn’t mean you have to keep saying yes.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” For the first time in her entire goddamn adult life, Lana felt perfectly safe. She tilted her hips. His cock pressed against her. With one long thrust of his hips, he was all the way inside her.
“You,” Taft said.
“You,” she agreed.
Then they didn’t talk. He moved in her, with her. When his eyes weren’t locked on hers, it was because he was using his mouth to kiss her neck, to bite her shoulder. She cupped her hands around his buttocks to draw him deeper inside. He hit the very back of her, so deep inside her it almost hurt, but it was a good pain, an ache that only more of him would soothe.
Lana matched his rhythm, moving her hands to his waist. Sweat slicked their bodies together. He kissed her again, and she tasted salt and need and something deeper, something she hadn’t even dared hope for.
How had she lived without this for so long?
As if he’d heard her – had she spoken out loud? – he whispered into her ear, “How did I live without you?”
I don’t know. I don’t know.
Their pace increased, their breathing quickened. Lana lost track of where her body ended and his began – all she knew was that this was perfect, this was what she’d been waiting for, possibly for her whole life. She curled her tailbone, grinding herself against him, her clit perfectly aligned with his pelvis. Short strokes now, so fast and so hard, and then she was coming so powerfully she saw bright white against the dark of her closed lids. He shouted in her ear, just a noise that had no words, no beginning and no ending, they were just together in their fall, and it took forever and it was over in a second and she didn’t want to do anything else, ever.
Holy. Hell.
They panted.
Taft shifted so his full weight wasn’t on her – a tragedy, really – and put his bicep under her neck.
He was the perfect pillow.
They panted some more.
He smiled at her. Lana grinned back. She laughed, but she didn’t know why. It didn’t matter. Time was gone, nonexistent. They could stay like this always, and they should.
For a very long time, for what felt like years, Lana considered her sex life up to this moment.
It had been fine, she thought. She was always in charge, and she’d liked it that way.
She hadn’t been in charge of a single damn thing for those last few minutes, and she didn’t think he had been, either.
“We flew together,” Taft said against her brow.
“That’s it. Exactly.”
“Lana.”
She wriggled to her side so she was pressed face to face, chest to chest, against his body.
“Are you cold?”
“No,” she said. She could never be cold again.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m perfect.”
“True,” he said.
They slept a little, or at least Lana did. She drifted in and out, startled each time she awoke to find the warmth next to her was him. Each time she was relieved to find the same.
Thrilled, in fact.
She touched his stubbled jaw just because she could. “We should write a song.”
Taft yawned. “I was thinking about sleeping some more.”
“On the floor? Here?”
He tightened his arms around her. “Anywhere. Anywhere with yo
u.”
“I’m serious. I have a tune in my head.” It had come to her as they’d drifted back down to earth.
“Hum it to me.”
She did, her lips against his ear, her voice as soft as she could make it.
He kissed her and then hummed it back.
“Yes!” Delight felt bright yellow, like morning sunshine, even as the moon shone in through the old, warped glass. “That’s it!”
“What’s it about?” He kissed the tip of her nose.
Love, she wanted to say but couldn’t.
He nodded. “Love. Of course it’s about love.”
Was he scared of anything at all?
She pulled in a breath. “Yeah. Maybe it could be a love song.”
Chapter Thirty
When her mouth shaped the word love, Taft fell all the way into the well of it.
He hadn’t expected it to be a well. If anything, he would have thought that love was an ocean, or a lake, something a lot damn wider than a well. But he was at the bottom of it and he realized he didn’t want to be anywhere else, which was lucky because there seemed to be no way out.
He sang, “I’m at the bottom of the well, waiting for you to fall with me.”
“That doesn’t seem very romantic.”
“What if the lover in our story has always wanted to be in one?”
Lana ran her fingers over his chest, lightly, raising goosebumps. How did he get so lucky to be the man with her at this moment? Speaking of not deserving things.
“No. If she falls in, too, then they both die.”
He kissed her shoulder. “What a way to go.”
“What about a tree?”
“Do you feel like you’re in a tree right now?”
“You’re the branches and the trunk.” Lana laughed.
It felt like winning the lottery. “Exactly.”
She stretched and yawned. Then she curled herself back against him. She couldn’t be comfortable – God knew he wasn’t. The floor was hard beneath the scratchy blanket.
He didn’t give one good goddamn. He could live here even longer than he could in a well.
“Okay,” he said. “Song. We’re writing. Post-coitally, might I point out.”
She gave a small purr. “The best way to write.”
He felt a thud of something leaden land in his stomach. “You’ve written this way before?”
“Never.”
Brightness replaced the lead. “Okay. Let’s pick our metaphor for our love song.” Our love song. It was theirs.
“No birds. It’s always birds in my family.”
“No birds for Birdie. But honestly, didn’t that feel like flying?”
Lana smiled at him, a bright, beaming grin. He could touch the moon if the glass in the window wasn’t in the way.
“A plane,” she said.
“A paper airplane.” That was it. “A two-seater.”
“Who’s the pilot?” She propped her head on her fist.
“Copilots.”
“That’s dumb.”
“Me, then.”
“You fly the plane till you get tired.”
“Then you take over.”
Lana gave a soft sigh and rested her chin on the inner curve of his elbow. “That sounds nice. Planes are made for flying. People aren’t, though.”
Taft sang to the tune she’d given him, “I was made for falling.”
She responded, “Made to fall for you.”
They looked at each other. Taft’s heart was stuck somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. Had he ever wanted to simultaneously kiss, cuddle and make love to a woman at the same time that he wanted to just look at her and hear all her secrets? He felt like he was running out of time, and maybe he was. Maybe she’d stand up and the spell would be broken. He had to cement this moment. Nail it down so there was proof.
“We have to write it down. Before we forget.”
She pointed. “My notebook’s over there.”
“Not good enough. Something more permanent.” Loath as he was to move, this was important. He rolled away and reached for his jeans. He held up his silver pencil. “This was my father’s.”
Lana touched it gently. “It’s beautiful.”
“Wahl Eversharp. Nineteen twenty-four. My dad wrote all his songs with it.”
“And now you write yours with the same pencil?”
“I guess. When I write, which isn’t often.”
“That’s a nice legacy for him to leave you.”
“You have no idea.”
He meant it as a throwaway comment, but she asked, “What do you mean?”
He wouldn’t mind her knowing, he supposed.
No, he wanted her to know. “This was all he left me.”
Lana was silent for a moment. She carefully took the pencil from his hands and advanced the lead. “Just this? Out of everything he had?”
“He asked me one day how he should split up his estate. I know my mother. She would need every dime he had – she always did. And me, I had the writing chops, inherited from him. I was already making more money than I could hope to spend, I knew I wouldn’t need any of his. I told him I didn’t want anything. He held up this pencil, said it should go to the Smithsonian, all the songs he’d written with it. But he wanted to give it to me.”
I don’t need your damn pencil. I do just fine writing with a pen. Or on my phone.
Palmer had said, The right tool is important, son.
Taft had knocked the side of his head with his finger. Got the right tool, up here.
Did I ever tell you you’re the best thing that ever happened to me? Palmer had always said it.
Taft had loved hearing it, every time. “So that’s what he left me.”
Lana stared. “Just a pencil. Your mother must have been horrified.”
“Oh, God, no. She was thrilled.” Taft stood and gently took the pencil out of Lana’s fingers.
“We’re painting this room on Monday, right?” It was well after midnight. “Got a couple of days, then, right?” He tapped the drywall. “I’m thinking right here.”
He wrote in large dark letters.
* * *
I was made for falling,
Made to fall for you,
* * *
She laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, my God.”
He grinned at her. “Right?”
“Perfect.”
Under the paint, the penciled words would always be there, for as long as the wall stood. Now that the roof was sound, the insulation new and the drywall fresh, it would stand a long, long time.
A lifetime.
“Let’s finish this song,” he said.
Lana covered her mouth. Her eyes danced. “But the guys. And Socal.”
“They won’t see it. We’ll write it, we’ll take a picture, and then we’ll put on the first coat later this weekend. Just as long as we cover it by Monday.”
She grinned. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
It took an hour to get the verses right. Another forty-five minutes to write the song in its entirety on the wall.
Lana stepped forward to take pictures of the words with her cell phone, still gloriously naked and seemingly not shy about it. She wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed him. When she pulled away, she said, “I have no idea what we’re doing.”
Taft knew she wasn’t talking about the song or the wall. Truth was, he didn’t know what they were doing, either.
All he knew was that she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever laid eyes on and that she was who he wanted to be with for the rest of his life.
Damn it, he wasn’t worthy of her.
Not the way he was now, a successful country singer standing on a bedrock made of lies.
But he’d get worthy.
Chapter Thirty-One
Lana woke up in her own bed in room one, alone. By the morning light coming through the curtains, it was after seven and before nine.
Next to her, something wiggled.
&nbs
p; The dog. With a jolt, it all came back to her – not in flashes, but all of a long piece, like a movie trailer set to fast forward. Finding Emily Dickinson, going to his place, the sandwich, how she’d fled, how he’d followed her, making love with him, writing a song.
Her realization about what had happened back then.
Emily Dickinson burrowed her cold nose into Lana’s neck. “Hey, now.”
Taft was gone. Where, she had no idea. Honestly, she couldn’t tell if she was pleased or disappointed. She was both, in equal measure, perhaps. No wonder it felt so confusing.
I am the type of woman who makes actual love with a man.
She rubbed her eyes. They couldn’t have slept more than a few hours, four at most.
Lana felt amazing. She felt free.
He’d listened to her talk about the worst thing she’d ever done, and he’d named it.
It wasn’t her fault.
The idea was so huge that it was terrifying.
Almost as terrifying as the way she was feeling about the man himself. Were the two things linked? That she’d confided in him, that she’d trusted him?
There was a knock at the door, and Emily Dickinson barked so sharply Lana’s ears rang.
“It’s me,” called Taft.
Confused as to what to reach for first – her robe or her bra – Lana turned in a small circle. The barking Emily Dickinson did the same.
“Coming!” Okay, bra and robe.
A few scrambled seconds later, she pulled open the door. “Hey.” She felt her cheeks color and stepped backward to let him in.
“Breakfast!”
“Mmmm.”
“Most important of all, coffee.” He handed her a cup, and found when she tasted it that he’d made it just right – light cream with a little sugar.
Suspicious.
She poked at the Golden Café takeaway plastic bag. “What’s in there?”
He smiled. “Full eggs Benedict with scrambled eggs instead of poached. Side of home fries.” He obviously hadn’t been to his house yet – he was wearing the same clothes as last night, and his stubble was thick. He smelled like coffee and toothpaste.
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