by J C Hartung
“Possibilities,” he echoed.
“I would love to live here with you, but you have taught me to push for what I want, and that what I want is more than possible.”
He saw where she was leading him, and every small cell in his body was ready to give it to her. He was suddenly enjoying himself and the way she was leading him. He wondered how long she’d been there, and how he’d missed it. He dragged her closer and sampled a taste of everything his future now looked to be holding. Their lips parted, and he whispered against the sweetness of her.
“What more could you possibly want, Raina?”
“Marry me, Linc. I want every possibility you can dream up, and I don’t want to take my time getting them.”
Their mouths laughed against each other. “I didn’t think you were there yet,” he said. “I thought I had a bit more convincing to do.”
She drew away just far enough for him to see her eyes were clear, and they were his, only his.
“I’ve been there for a while, Linc.”
“When did you know?” It was selfish, but he had to know, he wanted to see it through her eyes, he wanted to know the moment when she believed they could have a future. “How did I convince you?”
“Hmm,” she hummed, not needing to think about the exact moment she was sure, but wanting to match the easy, simmering, way he had of leading the conversation. “It was the pancakes.”
He laughed now too, remembering how she’d stunned him that morning.
“Of course, it was the pancakes!” He swept her off her feet and they spun in their empty house together. “You’re the one, Raina!”
She smiled up at him, and a new and exciting expression flushed her face.
She knew it was true. He’d helped to restore her, and once again, she believed that anything was possible, and the way those possibilities were spread before them lifted her up.
She pointed her finger gently into his chest and reminded him of one final thing.
“Linc, I just want you to remember, I picked you!”
Acknowledgement
Hey friends, thanks for spending your time getting to know Linc and Raina, and for giving I Picked You a chance to steal a small piece of your hearts.
I wrote this about eight years ago during a time of intense transition and uncertainty, so she is by no means a recent endeavour, though the themes throughout the story are timeless.
Thanks first to my family for your endless encouragement. It's a strange thing to spend so much time with my imaginary friends creating a world far from my own, all while having my closest people support and understand when my eyes take on a distant, dreamy look, that I will come back to the present time and place eventually. You, my three special guys, are my world. And for so many reasons, I couldn't hope for a better or more supportive gang.
Thanks to my gals, new and old, who have read and encouraged me and my work; the way you embrace me is humbling. You are the spur in the saddle, the baseline that keeps the song moving, and the 'why not' in the push to be brave enough to put this work out there, because brave is definitely what I needed.
My writing comes straight from my imagination's heart, and all the best credit there goes to my Creator, God. He is the song of my heart and I only hope that this work honors Him.
I Picked You will be my first published work!
I hope to share a lot more with you in the near future.
Next up is a story I've called GOLDEN. She is the first in a three part series that I hope will hold your attention and keep you reading until the end.
Until then, THANK YOU! Truly.
Here's a sneak peek of GOLDEN:
Golden
Prologue
A
s far as weeks went, she would never have believed that this one could get any longer. She also would never admit, not to herself, let alone anyone else, that she had somehow stumbled onto a bumpy road; trapped somewhere between Unlucky-In-Love-Boulevard and Personally-Things-Couldn’t-Get-Worse-Drive.
How did this happen? She asked herself over and over again. How did she find herself in this impossible situation, with her life turned upside down, when everything had finally seemed to be perfect? She knew the answer of course; nothing is perfect. The better question perhaps was how did she miss something this big, and for so long? She knew the answer to that too; she hadn’t been looking, or more accurately, she’d closed her mind to it. She also told herself that she had been too focused on work, and self-preservation, with a substantial dose of probably too-afraid-to-see-what-was-right-in-front-of-her.
She wasn’t exactly sure where to go from here, but she knew somehow, she would pick up the pieces and reshape her world, she had to believe it. She sunk to the floor in a moment of weakness, searching for an anchor amidst her small room where boxes were stacked along one wall knowing the rest, stacked like a pyramid of cardboard, were downstairs in the garage.
No, she wouldn’t believe the worst of her thoughts, and no it wasn’t all bad. She was Ariane Tate, born and bred a true optimist, and somehow, she could turn it all around. She would make muffins out of rotting bananas, turn disposed eggshells into seedling containers, and transform a torn sweater into the most beautiful scarf. She would take hold of the messed-up pieces and create something new; she would change the rules, take what she saw as unfortunate circumstance and transform her own destiny. And if it turned out destiny wasn’t in her favor: she’d force it.
Yes, she would force it, she’d done it before. It’s how she ended up where she stood, with everything she’d accomplished, in the moment that was now.
When she got knocked down, she got back up; she was good at that. And it hadn’t turned out too badly for her either; until recently. She just needed to alter her expectations, take a break for a few days, stand back and reevaluate a better way to make it work while she gained perspective and figured out how to go about it this time.
She taped the last box shut and stacked it near the door, where a pyramid of others already sat neatly labeled and waiting to be carried, loaded, transported, unloaded and restacked in another new room, in another new home; her home.
She couldn’t stop her brain; it was making her crazy, she thought, and then she’d start over analyzing everything from the beginning.
The past year had been one unbelievable gift after the other, and when she looked at the big picture, life was rolling along quite fabulously. It hadn’t been that long ago that she believed she was sitting on top of the world, or in the least, climbing the staircase quickly.
She had been systematically striking goals off her list and she was feeling confident in the direction she was heading, secure even; if there is such a thing in this ever-changing business.
Her first album had been released worldwide, she’d been on tour nonstop for almost a year, and she had played so many cool venues, nothing seemed impossible anymore. It had happened, everything she’d sweat, bled and worked for. She still found herself lost in moments of disbelief, even if she had always believed she was good enough and would get there some day. It had never been, nor was it even now about the money, but a healthy diet that delved outside of the realms of chicken, beef, or shrimp, packaged noodles, would never be looked upon in a rueful manner.
To keep busy and feel productive, she carried a few boxes to her new bedroom. When her room was semi-organized she thought she’d spend some time organizing the kitchen; it wouldn’t take too much time, she didn’t have that much and though her new place was beautiful it wasn’t abundant in space.
As she crossed the floor to the living room where the setting sun streaked the walls, she wished fleetingly that she could rewind and go back a year to undo so many of the moments she wished she could alter, though which moments to change was still something she was unsure of.
Hindsight was often a gift, she knew, but the last while it had been a tool that was used to keep her up at night, and send her pointlessly into an imagination that played out so many different scenarios
she couldn’t sort out her true feelings any more.
One of the ironies of her situation was that because of the disaster she’d made of her personal life over the past few weeks, she’d finished writing her new album and had spent the last week in the studio recording. She loved the studio, she loved the guys, and she loved the way the new record had turned out. As a whole it was more a collaborative effort, whereas the first album she’d done completely on her own. It was sadly funny when she drew the comparison because the first time around when she was surrounded by people she loved, she’d done the music on her own, and now it was the opposite. Though she did love and respect the guys in her band very much, she felt so terribly alone it was eating away at her and she couldn’t wait to get back out on the road.
The album had been rushed, not carelessly, but rushed nonetheless. It wasn’t the norm to put the second album out within one year, but timing wasn’t always something to be controlled, so when her team had heard the new songs, they knew they were hearing something they couldn’t keep a lid on.
She’d recorded on and off since Christmas. The first single would be released in a few days, and in a couple weeks she’d take the stage and strike another goal from her list.
She was looking forward to that. Not necessarily because of the stage, or the song, but because when she got off the airplane, Kat would be there waiting to spend a few days with her.
She needed Kat right now, more than they’d both known at the time they made these plans.
She gave up the unpacking, which told her she was more exhausted than she’d originally thought, crawled into her bed and looked at the dress that was hanging on the front of her closet door. She’d chosen it on a whim; a giant frivolous whim that picked her spirits up momentarily at the time. The fabric was so pretty, so ethereal and she knew it would make her appear slightly edgy, feminine and slickly sexy when the stage lights shone on her.
She didn’t get nervous at all anymore. The stage had never really frightened her, and in the high stress moments she was more fueled and energized than anything else; something inside of her changed when she stepped on the stage and she wasn’t really herself anymore. Besides, she thought, she was only performing one song; the first single from the new album. It would take under five minutes, but she knew as well as anyone else that five minutes could seem like a long time, or it could be over in the blink of an eye.
It was an honor to be performing on this stage, and the song was special for so many reasons, but in light of recent events, she found herself frozen at the thought of singing this song at this time. In the back of her mind she knew that it was just as easy to screw up one minute as it was to trip up with three or cause an embarrassing disaster with five.
The other irony was that Jake had chosen this song. Jake had championed her meteoric rise in the industry, and because of the gamble Jake took on her, everything in her life had changed.
She knew she had done more than her own share of work to get herself there, but Jake had been her guide and as uncertain and angry as she felt towards him at the moment, it wouldn’t feel right to do it without him. Performing for a crowd of fans was one thing, performing for a room of her peers; people she’d admired all her life was another completely. She knew she didn’t need him there; she had done a lot without him by her side the past year. She was ready, he’d been saying it for months, nearly twelve if she had to be specific, ever since the first night he approached her.
Chapter One
She had just finished a twenty-minute set at a club and she was backstage packing up her guitar. The night started like so many others. She knew her role. She’d arrive, take the stage, finish her set, and hope someone important had bothered to show up to hear her play, though the club made no promises of that.
When the smoky, filtered lights came up and made her the focus of the stage, she spotted him. Over at the side of the room where the low lights tried to set a mood of sultry appeal but failed to hit that mark at a staggeringly ghastly proportion, she’d seen him leaning on the bar.
If appearances sold the package, she judged he belonged in that tired, yet still attempting to be slick bar a whole lot less than she did. But appearances had never held power over her; she knew what only the eye could see masked itself very easily with deception. She knew better than to write something off without exhausting all its possible potential. She also had learned the hard way, more than once, that her own formula of perception frequently had wiring that was on the fritz. And that very large lesson learned had taught her to be cautious, on guard, and less eager than she knew she looked.
Her body moved automatically without effort to the rhythm she strummed with her fingers. It took her over, and she allowed it to become a being all its own. It was her form of therapy; it always made her feel better, maybe because in a way she was baring her soul. Singing leeched the ugliness from her every time, and she needed it at the moment. A long night serving drinks followed by an early morning and an eight-hour shift as a seamstress had left her feeling vulnerable, disposable, and gazing down a long hallway of bleakness.
She wove the crowd into the story she created with her lyrics, she invited them closer when she offered herself with a smile. She drew them deeper still when her voice journeyed soulfully towards them and possessed a piece of their hearts. They were rendered helpless, and she had them eating out of her hand as she seduced them with her eyes and an infinitely vague promise that she could be everything they ever wanted, if they would only give her a chance.
She knew he watched her; they all did. It didn’t bother her anymore; she had long ago left behind the days of quivering voice and trembling, nervous fingers, especially here, on a Tuesday night, where a sea of faces had become all too familiar.
She chanced a second glance when she tuned her strings before her final song. He was unmoved, sitting casually at the bar with one foot resting on the rung of the chair next to him, his hand still wrapped affectionately around a short glass that had been refilled. He was definitely not a part of the usual Tuesday night crowd.
Her final note sung to perfection, a quick thank you along with a confirmation that she would be back next week, followed by a quick promo of her CD (available at the bar), a casual offering of smiles to keep everyone satisfied, and she was backstage. She had decided at the start of the night that she would get out of there as quickly as she could, and as she laid her guitar down in its black, fluffy lined case, her mind was still focused on that goal. She could all but feel the hot bath she’d been dreaming about for hours.
She was just snapping the latches when she saw a soft leather shoe nudge one end of the case. Tan shoes, soft looking worn leather. Nice shoes, she’d give him that. Then her eyes rose slowly up what she could only assume were long, lean legs wrapped in tailored pants, a loosened tie, and a dress shirt that had been unbuttoned at the neck and flaunted tanned arms where his sleeves were rolled up to announce the end of a long and not so forgiving day. She could relate to that sentiment. He looked younger and less jaded in the harsher, unfiltered fluorescent lights of what she always thought was a joke when she read the label ‘dressing room’ on the door.
She was too tired to think about what he could possibly want from her, but she set her guitar case on its side and rose from her kneeling position to get it over with.
She was taller than he thought she’d be, and even in the awful, stark, dingy, and poorly lit back room, she was oozing cute. He guessed she couldn’t have been too much older than twenty; there was something so fresh, almost innocent about her. And if he hadn’t witnessed the coolness that dwelled in her performance, he would have been surprised to find she’d been chasing the dream as long as she had been. He couldn’t help but smile and hope that she would be the turning point of a really long and awful day.
“You were good,” he said through the smile.
Slick was her first thought. Maybe a little rumpled at the end of the day, but no less slick.
Her head tilte
d and she allowed her eyes to roam his face. It was a good one. Strong jaw, straight nose, wide-full lips spread in an inviting smile that only briefly betrayed the fact that he had an agenda. Blond hair surrounded that face and there were eyes. Eyes so icy blue they sparkled like the sun shining on the sea. A Viking’s sea, she thought, and shook the image from her mind. It was just that sort of romantic thinking that drew her into trouble, and she already sensed trouble as those eyes were the perfect lure that usually caught her and could keep her tangled.
Not now, she thought. She was tired and she knew she wasn’t fully able to appreciate what she was seeing. Absolutely too tired to be as guarded as that slickness would surely require.
“Thanks,” she offered shortly, as she bent to thread her hand through the handle of her case before quickly making a move for the door.
Startled by her indifferent response, he felt himself grow even more curious. He usually had a more instant effect on women, and if someone was walking away, it was usually him. He was so startled by her dismissal that she was already down the hall and back out in the haze of the bar before he could get his reaction in check and convince his body that he had to go after her.
He watched her lean into the bar, exchange very brief words with the same bartender who had encouraged him to stick around for her, and then she kept on moving, his own stride caught hers just before the heavy wood door. He opened it and watched her eye him skeptically before she breezed through, leaving him to follow her yet again.
He liked it. He liked that she hadn’t immediately fallen all over him, it was expected, it was predictable, and bottom line; it was boring. He was not bored at the moment, and nothing about the vibe she was sending him or the way she looked or carried herself said boring.