I am not going to flirt with him. I haven’t gone this long without a boyfriend just to blow it when I’m so close to getting out of here for good. Juilliard slid through her mind—the pictures she’d seen online of the practice rooms looked like her own personal heaven. She wasn’t going to miss out on that for some guy she wouldn’t even remember in five years.
“Good to know.” Keira glanced at the price tag on the Beethoven score that was still in his hands. The music was nearly fifteen dollars—almost all the cash she had, and there wouldn’t be any more paychecks coming. The music sang to her, sweet and low. Begging her to give in.
She could scrape by. “How about you face the challenge of ringing this up for me?” She hadn’t meant to be quite so snarky, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Walker looked pleased.
“Sure.”
He strolled around the counter to the old-fashioned register. “Right. Um, it’s sixteen fifty-seven, including tax.” He slid the thin book into a brown paper bag and Keira dug her crumpled twenty out of her backpack.
“Thanks,” she said.
He handed her the bag and her change. “So, do you think you’ll see me again?” he said casually.
“Um, you mean, like in the store?” she drawled.
“That’s one possibility,” he said finally, like he’d thought the words would mean something different to her. He rested his arms on the counter between them.
The sight of his leather wrist cuffs reminded her of the inky tentacle she’d seen disappear from Walker’s arm. Maybe he’d been right to sound suspicious. Maybe she was losing it. “Yeah, well, I’m sure I’ll need more music sometime,” she said. “But thanks. It’s been . . . interesting.” More shaken and uncertain than she was after the incident with Jeremy and the cigarette, Keira headed for her car.
It doesn’t matter what he thinks, she reminded herself. He’s only a guy. She was the one who’d made the no-dating rule, getting rid of all the distractions. She had to focus on what was really important—her piano. Which she was going home to play before the memory of Walker’s tempting smile really did make her lose her mind.
Chapter Three
WHEN KEIRA GOT HOME, her house was empty and dark. The smell of chicken simmering in cream-of-mushroom soup drifted out of the Crock-Pot on the kitchen counter. A note was propped against it:
Have a late meeting. Please turn this down to warm when you get home. Help yourself whenever you’re hungry. Salad in the fridge.
Love,
Mom
Keira flipped the switch on the slow-cooker and tossed the note in the trash. Having dinner waiting wasn’t the same thing as having her parents home to eat with her. The answering machine flashed at her. As her dad’s voice, tinny and distorted, slipped out of the speaker, she wished—again—that he would call her cell like a normal person. It was one of the few luxuries her parents paid for. It would be nice if they’d use it.
“Hey.” Her dad cleared his throat, sending a static-y burst through the kitchen. “Um, something came up and I’m going to be kind of late tonight. You two go ahead and eat without me.”
Keira hit the delete button with more force than was necessary. If her parents would admit they didn’t want to see each other, then they wouldn’t both avoid the house and at least one of them could be home once in a while. Both of them assuming the other would be around just left Keira alone.
Again.
She walked into the dark living room, where her piano crouched like a tiger in a too-small cage. The baby grand had been the other big gift from her uncle Pike. Pike hadn’t been her mom’s actual brother, but they’d been close enough that Keira still thought of him as part of the family.
Some of Keira’s earliest memories were of Pike. Like him pushing her on the swings at the playground. She could see the shoes on her feet. They were purple, with sparkles on the sides. Had he bought them for her? She couldn’t remember.
What she remembered was the way he’d pushed her. Pike was the only one she wanted to do it. Her father never came to the park, and her mother would only give her tentative nudges, not even enough to make the chains creak in her hands.
But when Pike pushed her, she sailed so high that the rest of the world fell away, until all she could hear was Pike’s delighted laughter. Then her mother’s worrying voice would interrupt, begging them to be careful, and the swing would slow so abruptly that it brought her stomach crashing down with it.
Not long after that, Pike had died and left them her college fund and the piano. The piano had arrived in a flurry of sweating, cursing men. She’d slept under it that night, rolling her purple sleeping bag out beneath the gleaming mahogany, staring at her five-year-old reflection in the polished brass that tipped the legs. The next day, she’d begged her mother to let her take piano lessons, but it was her father who finally relented.
“If it’s going to take up half our living room, at least one of us should know what to do with it,” he pointed out.
“Fine,” her mother snapped. “But if you start complaining every time you see me writing a check for those lessons, then so help me God—” And off they’d gone.