Guys are nothing but a distraction, she reminded herself sternly. There will be hot guys at Juilliard who love music.
“Um, this would be the part where you tell me your name,” he prompted, giving Keira an amused grin.
“I’m Keira,” she said, turning back to the music in her hands. No amount of cute was worth blowing her chances at a scholarship and getting stuck in Sherwin forever. “You don’t go to Lawrence High,” she said. “And you sound like you’re from away.”
“Nope, not a native Mainer,” he agreed. She waited for him to say where he’d come from, exactly, but he didn’t elaborate. “I got my GED last fall,” he offered. “I’m—I wasn’t really cut out for school.”
Keira thought of her unfinished history project, all the classes she’d spent tapping her fingers against the edge of her desk, practicing on an invisible piano instead of taking notes. Her own grades hovered barely above the cutoff for the good conservatory college programs. “I’m not exactly going out for the Academic Decathlon,” she admitted.
Working carefully, Walker piled the scores back into the bins. He handled them like they were some sort of rare, valuable books, and Keira’s opinion of him rose a few inches. He glanced around and reached for the Beethoven sonata. Keira’s hand shot out, her fingers curling protectively around the spine. “That one’s mine.”
Walker started to pull his hand away, then hesitated. He gave her an appraising look.
“Can I see?” he asked. The curiosity that flared on his face warmed her. No one ever cared about what she played—well, that, or they only cared about what she played. If she showed Walker her music, it would tell him something about her, and from the look on his face, he knew it would too. She was surprised to realize that part of her wanted to show him what she’d picked. Still, it felt private. Letting him see the music—it was like letting him read her diary.
Not that she kept one.
But still.
Holding on to her thin veneer of aloof-and-sarcastic, she shrugged. “I guess—I mean, it’s not like it belongs to me. Yet.”
He reached again for the score. His hands were broad and sure, with battered leather cuffs circling his wrists. A black mark snaked from underneath one of them like a whip of licorice.
Intrigued, she wondered what the rest of his tattoo looked like. As she stared, the edges of the mark went blurry, fading from sight. Just before it disappeared, it gave a last twitch, like the flick of a serpentine tongue. Then there was nothing left but smooth olive skin. No mark. Not even a shadow.
I—did I really imagine that?
Keira stared at his arm. Walker cleared his throat, jolting her out of her confusion.
“Everything okay?” There was a thread of suspicion in his voice—like he wasn’t sure she was totally with it. Like maybe the piano she played was in a padded room in a locked ward somewhere.
“F-fine,” she stammered. She hated being rattled and it had been a bone-shaking afternoon. “I was—I like your wrist cuffs.”
Something dark and hot shone in his eyes. It made her want, and she immediately regretted the compliment.
“Thanks. Most people don’t even notice them.” He shook his head, flipping through the sonata. “This looks really hard.” His accent pulled and stretched the words like saltwater taffy.
Keira slid back into her familiar defensiveness. “I like hard pieces,” she said confidently. “They’re more interesting.”
Walker looked down at her. He was considerably taller than she was. “More interesting how?”
“It’s complicated.” She fiddled with a collection of Burt Bacharach songs, scraping absentmindedly at the price tag with her short fingernail. “It takes more to play them. More focus. More time. More talent. All of that goes into the music. And when I hear those pieces, I hear all of that stuff too. It makes me want someone else to hear all of those things when I play.” She cleared her throat, shoving the book of pathetic ballads back into the correct spot.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Walker said quietly.
“You play?” she asked.
“No,” he said simply, his gaze skittering over her hair, her eyes, her fingers. “I can’t read music.” Something hard and magnetic crossed his face, sending her pulse scrambling. “I just understand.”
Keira searched his expression. “Really?”
“You’re not the only one who likes a challenge.” An I-dare-you-to-contradict-me smile spread across his face.