I never ever had these problems when I sang with my brothers.
Obviously.
“I’m all good,” I say, like I’m one cool cat. I roll my shoulders as if all I need is to slough off the day’s worries.
“You’ve been tense all morning.”
Singing with her is the cruelest torture, and it’s killing me not to grab her and yank her against me during every verse.
“Sorry. Didn’t sleep well last night,” I lie. I slept like a baby. I had a jerk followed by eight full hours, just like the doctor ordered.
She tugs my hand, pulls me through the booth and out into the hall. Weirdly, it’s more private here.
“Miller, you know what made us click the other day?”
I shrug, shoving a hand through my hair in frustration.
“You said it yourself. It was chemistry.”
“Right. Sure. We sounded good together.”
“And we looked good together,” she says. “Don’t forget that. We had that je ne sais quoi.”
“Fine. We had some je ne sais quoi. Where did it go?” I pretend to look around. “Is it down there?” I point to the end of the hall. “Is it hiding under the carpet?”
She sets her hand on my heart, and my breath hitches. “It’s here. It’s us. It’s our friendship.”
“It is?”
She nods, certainty in her eyes. “Yes. It gives us a freedom to be physical with each other. A hand on an arm, a naughty look.”
That’s from friendship? I thought it was from this bizarre new desire to fuck her, which I NEED TO IGNORE TILL THE END OF TIME.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Because we know each other. Because we trust each other. We’re like . . .” She stares at the ceiling as if hunting for the right analogy. “Like dance partners. Don’t be afraid to dip me, or spin me, or bend me.”
I let out a tight breath, and the tension starts to fade. She’s telling me to be physical. She’s telling me to give in. For the sake of the music. “You’re saying we should be a little flirty?”
“Yes. I won’t bite.” She shimmies her hips like she’s loosening up for an exercise class. “Let’s have fun. Let’s play with the words, let’s get in character.”
“You want me to pretend I want to get it on with my singing partner?”
She lifts an eyebrow playfully. “Kind of? We had a sort of sexy energy the other day. Let’s try to recreate it.”
She jerks her chin toward the studio door, the twinkle in her blue eyes saying, C’mon, partner.
“Let’s do it,” I say confidently.
She pushes on the door and heads back inside, her tight ass looking edible in those painted-on jeans. And hey, she’s giving me permission to think of her this way. I return to the studio, letting my dirty thoughts come out to play.
* * *
She’s inches away and her voice is thrumming through me, her energy filling my motherfucking head with thoughts, with wishes. I pour them right back into the lyrics, letting my newfound desire fuel my performance.
“Maybe, if you come back to me . . . Maybe if there was a way,” I sing to her.
“Maybe if there was a way . . . you’d be mine,” she belts out in that throaty, sexy new voice of hers.
“Tell me again,” I croon.
“You’d be mine,” she sings right back to me, flashing the sexiest smile I’ve ever seen. It turns me on wildly.
I let it turn me on.
She gives a little nibble on the corner of her lips, a shake of her hips.
I’m dead.
Just fucking dead with desire for her, and when the next line comes around about how I’d run to her, I go all in. I grab her waist, threading one hand around her hip, and pull her close, singing about looking into her eyes.
In hers, I see the same fire and heat that burns through me.
And just like that, I know we’re in this together. We’re performing. We finish the song, barely any space between us, and it’s hot as hell.
She thrusts her arms into the air. “That was amazing. See? You let go and got into it. That’s how I do my audiobooks. I tell myself I’m Princess Malindia, and I’m vanquishing all my enemies.”
God, I want to vanquish her.
I want to conquer her in my bed, and on my kitchen counter, and in the shower . . .
We rehearse a few more songs, and when afternoon rolls around, Jackson arrives. He shoots some footage of us prepping, then we decide to tackle our original song one more time.
He joins us in the studio, but I pretend he doesn’t exist. I sing to Ally, only she’s not Ally. She’s Honey, this brand-new woman, and I don’t take my eyes off her.
She doesn’t look away either. Those sapphire eyes pin me the whole time, and when we hit the chorus, I’m on fire.
Flames lick my neck, and my blood heats, roaring to temperatures I’ve never experienced before. Call the fire department. When I sing the words about making her mine, I go bigger, yank her close, and I swear no one else is here. When we near the end, I let instinct take over. I thread my hand around her neck, and her breath catches as I sing the last words. I run my hand up into her fake blonde hair. She gasps, and I growl.
Everything goes quiet as the notes fade out.
Jackson clears his throat. “Want me to get a fire extinguisher?”
* * *
An hour later, Jackson waves like a madman from the booth, calling Ally and me over. He points wildly to his phone. “Dude. You have to see this. This is on fleek.”
“Courtesy to speak English.”
“It means on fire,” Ally says.
Jackson stabs the screen. “I posted it to YouTube. It has sixteen hundred views in thirty minutes. Look at the comments.”
Must leave work now to go jump my BF.
I just combusted.
OVARIES!!!!!!
That song is hot, but the way they look at each other is hotter.
Ally turns to me, wide-eyed. “Virtue Moir,” she whispers, wonder in her voice.
“What’s that?”
She fans her face with her hand then grabs my shoulder. “They think we’re Virtue Moir.”
“Courtesy to speak English.”
Ally’s words tumble out in a rush. “They’re a Canadian ice-dancing couple from the recent Olympics. Audiences obsessed over them. They’re crazy talented, and they’re also beautiful and sexy, and he skated with her like he was in love with her.”
I wrench back when she says those words.
She rolls her eyes and laughs, slugging my arm. “Don’t worry. I know you’re not in love with me. But he skated with her like that. It was gorgeous, and you couldn’t look away.” She raises her hand to her neck and drags her fingers along her skin. “He’d kiss her neck and run his hands down her arms,” she says, and I can’t look away from her hand. I want to travel where those fingers are visiting. I want my lips to map that path. “He’d lift her high above his head, and when he lowered her, he’d stare at her like he wanted to rip her clothes off.”
I understand this man completely.
I want to know what Ally looks like under those jeans. What color panties she’s wearing. If they’re tiny and pink and covered with hearts. If they’re wet. How she looks when I tug them off her.
“And that worked for them?” I rasp.
“Audiences went wild. They were the talk of the games.”
She grabs her phone and does a quick search right here in the booth, showing me video after video, gif after gif of the skating duo. Holy fuck. She’s right. They’re so hot, they’re turning me on, and I’m not into ice dancing.
But it’s true—you can’t take your eyes off them because he skates with her like it’s foreplay. Like he wants to take her home and strip her. Hell, he skates like he wants to take her right there on the ice.
She’s the same with him. She cups his cheek in a desperate sort of way, threads her hand in his hair, and her lips seem to beg his for a kiss.
“Um, two t
housand views. And more comments,” Jackson announces, thrusting his phone at us, scrolling over the comments on our video.
Aretheyoraren’tthey?
OMG, they’re so pretty . . .
He is going to have her for dinner tonight.
I turn to Ally, blinking in surprise, wondering how they read my mind.
Use it.
I take her hand, lead her back to the studio, and launch right into “Need You Now” with her once more, since she secured the rights for us to sing this tune.
I play for the camera the whole time, singing to her, touching her shoulder, her hair, her hip. I go for broke at the end. After I finish my last line and the music carries us, I brush my lips to her neck. She shivers in my arms, a tremble that I swear moves through her whole body. I drag my lips lower down her neck till she lets out a soft gasp. It turns me on ferociously.
The tiniest gasp escapes her lips, a sound so soft, a noise so sensual, it sends a fresh wave of heat through my body.
I should stop, but I don’t. I kiss the hollow of her throat. She trembles against my lips, and even though we’re not alone, it feels entirely private—this kiss, her reaction, my desire. It feels like ours alone, whether the camera is rolling or not.
It makes me want to kiss her senseless.
But you always leave the audience wanting more. Slowly, I pull away, my lips already missing her skin.
Her eyes float closed for a moment as she sings the last words. When she opens them, I wonder if she’s acting too.
Or if everything just got real.
Chapter 16
Ally
That two thousand views in an hour multiplied.
Exponentially.
What started as a let’s-post-this-online experiment has steamrolled. I know the drill, since I’ve been here with Kirby. But it wasn’t our first YouTube video that took off like proverbial wildfire. It was our seventeenth.
This time, the first one with Miller is a hot, sexy charm. And so’s the second, when Jackson posts the next day with another song Miller wrote and tweaked for us.
Now, three days later, those two thousand views have avalanched into half a million views. The second video? It’s riding the coattails at a hefty 350,000 views already.
The comments are endless, a river of Whoa, is it hot in here, Mr. Hot Stuff and the sexy blonde, and Hashtag ZimmerHart.
I can’t complain, and neither will my bank account. The money is a trickle now, but as the views grow, so will the ad dollars, and every little bit helps when you have someone besides yourself to look out for. I shoot Miller a quick note while walking home on Saturday evening after picking up Vietnamese sandwiches for dinner with Chloe.
Ally: This is amazing! We need to keep this up!
Miller: I’m on the piano as we speak.
Miller: Well, I’m not literally *on* the piano. If I were a cat, I’d be *on* the piano. I'm not a cat.
Ally: Thank you for the clarification. I did wonder.
Miller: Technically, I was typing on the phone. But my ass is on the piano bench, and my fingers are on the keys. And I'm purring . . .
Ally: Meow. Keep going, pussycat! We have fans already! Eeek, fans!
After dinner, Chloe heads to the shower, and I read the comments on our videos once more, shaking my head in amazement. It really does seem the internet likes what Miller and I have going on—our music, our songs, but especially our chemistry.
So does Macy.
As I make a pot of tea, my phone pings with a text from her.
Macy: Damn, woman. Have you seen these videos? I think I’m pregnant from just watching you and Miller.
Ally: When you have your second baby, please name it Immaculate.
Macy: Oh, sorry. What did you say? I just jumped your brother. We’re having twins.
Ally: La la la la. I CAN’T HEAR YOU.
Macy: Seriously, this is so hella hot I don’t even know if there’s a temperature that can record how incendiary it is. I can’t stop watching you two. And I’m not alone. Your videos are burning up the charts.
Ally: It’s crazy, isn’t it? It was never like this with Kirby.
Macy: Well, let’s hope not! But I need you to tell me the truth. Are you dying for Miller? When I watch those videos, all I can think is that you must have climbed him like a redwood tree when the cameras stopped rolling.
Ally: No trees were scaled, I assure you. We simply have stage chemistry.
Macy: I can literally hear you lying through the transom of text.
Ally: I swear, Macy! There’s nothing happening.
Macy: Not a thing? Not even a little bitty flicker of a thing?
Ally: When we sing, we’re performing. We both just go into character. That’s all.
Macy: Bummer. I was hoping for one final salacious tale before I leave for Boston.
Ally: Fine. I’ll give you one little nugget. I *might* have felt a flicker of a spark when I went ice skating with him last week, but I think it’s normal to be attracted to someone you perform with. That’s what happens when we’re in the studio. But what’s important is what to do with the attraction.
Macy: Act on it?
Ally: No. Channel it into the music. Acting on it would ruin our band and ruin our friendship.
Macy: All I’m saying is Kirby and I were friends, and now look at us. It can work. :)
Ally: Yes, but you and Kirby were on the same page. Miller’s not, and I respect his wishes. It’s best if we let our unusual chemistry fuel the music. Only the music.
Macy: I bet it winds up fueling your pants.
Macy is determined to make her point. She fires off a string of text-message gifs—Blanche from The Golden Girls spritzing water on her flushed skin, James McAvoy fanning himself with a sheet of paper . . .
Laughing at my friend’s antics, I set the phone on the counter as an image of a cat basking in much-needed air-conditioning pops up on my screen.
While Chloe’s hair dryer whirs from the bathroom, I squeeze honey into a mug, and consider Macy’s efforts to break me down. She’s not wrong. I would absolutely like to climb Miller. In fact, I’d like to ride him like a rodeo bull. Yeehaw. I’d saddle him up and reverse cowgirl him till the cows came home.
Have him tie me down with rope . . .
Wait, do I have a Western fetish?
No, that’s not the case, because my brain serves up an image of Miller pinning my wrists in an elevator, then on a bed, then in a town car.
Well, that’s clear now. I don’t have a Western thing. I have a Miller thing. As my belly swoops in a dirty roller-coaster ride, it’s a thing my body wants me to act on.
But there are choices, and then there are foolish choices. They have the most foolish of consequences.
When Chloe clicks off the hair dryer, she pads into her room and calls out to me, “Can you braid my hair, Aunt Ally?”
“Of course.” I shove away the dirty thoughts to focus on my girl.
I find her on her bed, brushing her hair, wearing her doughnut pajamas. I take a drink of my hot tea, place the mug on her nightstand, and hop onto the bed beside her. She hands me a hair tie and I move behind her, sitting cross-legged as I gather chunks of her red hair. “What was your high and low today?”
She hums then answers, “High was when Hailey and I decided we should go bowling together over break, and maybe binge-watch a new show we like. I love bowling.”
“Bowling rocks. I like this plan. And your low?”
Her shoulders sag a bit. “Low was talking to Uncle Kirby. He called me when you were picking up dinner.”
“Why would that be a low, Monkey?”
She sighs. “Because I’m going to miss him and Aunt Macy when they move.”
“Me too,” I say wistfully, weaving another strand of her hair. “It’ll be strange not to have them nearby.”
“I know. But I’m glad you’re not the one moving away.”
Startled, I drop her hair and scoot forward so I can look her in t
he eyes. “Sweetie, I’d never move away from you.”
Her lips are a tight line before she seems to force out a shaky question. “You wouldn’t?”
My throat catches. “Monkey, you’re stuck with me.”
A little smile seems to sneak out. “Okay. Good.”
I squeeze her shoulder, wanting her to feel reassured completely. “You’re stuck with me for good.”
She shrugs. “Well, Uncle Kirby is leaving.” Her eleven-year-old logic must seem ironclad to her. Poor kid.
“Chloe,” I say, fighting back the hitch in my voice. I need her to feel my strength. I need her to know deep in her gut I’ll be here. Always. “It’s not the same. I’m your guardian. I made a legal promise to the state, and I made a promise to my sister. It’s an unbreakable vow. You know that, right?”
“I think so.”
“Know so,” I tell her firmly, as I look her in the eyes. “You’re mine. That’s an unbreakable promise too. It’s my promise to you.”
A little tear forms in the corner of her eye as she sniffles. “I don’t want you to go.”
I wrap my arms around her, trying to pour all my love for her into her little body. “I’m not going anywhere. And if I ever go somewhere, you’re coming with me. You and me—we go together.”
She pulls back and holds up her pinky. “Package deal?”
Laughing, I wrap my pinky around hers. “I swear.”
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