Walker crossed the kitchen in two enormous strides and wrapped his arms around her.
“It’s not easy. I know,” he whispered against the crown of her head. She could feel the worlds sliding beneath them like the shifting of dry sand. Walker’s breath puffed out, stirring her hair. He was the one keeping them from crossing over and she knew it. Keira tried to focus, to help him, but it was too hard. As comforting as it was to feel his chest beneath her cheek, the effort of staying out of Darkside made her head feel like a pincushion. She pulled away.
His smile was bittersweet. “Come on,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I know exactly what will make you feel better.” He tugged her toward the living room.
Keira stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at her piano. The wood gleamed in the evening light. It looked for all the world like it was beaming at her—like it was as excited to see her as she was to pull out the bench, flip on the lamp, and play.
More than her room, this was what she thought of when she pictured home. Leaving her belongings behind was hard; leaving her piano behind was impossible.
“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. “I don’t want the last time I play it to be . . . like this.”
Walker put his hands on her shoulders. He stepped in close behind her, his body pressing against hers, warm and solid.
The touch made her shiver in spite of his heat.
“If you pass up your last chance to play your own piano just because you don’t want to say good-bye, you’ll wish a thousand times that you had this moment back.” He leaned his head against hers. “Come on—I’ll be right there with you.”
Keira let him guide her across the room. She couldn’t bear to play, but he was right. Not playing would hurt more. The pain was worth it if she could have one more memory of her piano.
Chapter Forty-Four
KEIRA TRAILED HER FINGERS silently over the flat whole notes and the intimate ridges of the black half-step keys that interrupted them. She was vaguely aware of Walker, leaning against the windows, over her shoulder, just out of sight. Taking a breath, Keira rocked forward and ran a set of scales at lightning speed. The stiffness vanished from her fingers and her shoulders relaxed. Darkside didn’t seem quite so close with her focus fixed on the piano, and as it receded, so did her headache.
The Beethoven sonata was open on the music stand and Keira launched into it, feeling herself strengthen with each note. The arpeggios wrapped around her, weaving her frayed edges back together. Her skin hummed with the music, alight with the feeling of coming back to herself.
This was where she belonged.
This was who she was.
She didn’t care about Darkside. She didn’t care about Susan. She didn’t care about her parents. She didn’t even care about Juilliard. All that mattered was playing herself back into one piece. A tiny thread of her awareness stretched behind her to where Walker stood.
With a start, she realized that she still cared about him, even as the notes swept away everything else. Instead of weakening her connection to the music she played, he made it stronger. She was playing for both of them. She needed him to hear the music as much as she needed to create it.
She reached the end of the second movement, but as she turned the page to begin the Allegretto, Walker quietly cleared his throat. Keira glanced at him, the question in her eyes but not on her lips.
“Play something of yours?” he asked. “Please?”
The heat in his eyes was like nothing Keira had ever seen before. It made the glow that came with his wanting little jokes look dim. This was a bonfire. A solar flare. A supernova.
She nodded and turned back to the piano. When her fingers dropped onto the keys, she felt exposed, vulnerable, more than if she’d been standing in front of him naked. Her body was just her body. Her music was part of her soul.
The scariest part was how badly she wanted to give him her music—to give him all of her.
She closed her eyes and began to play. Her fingers automatically found the melody from the day he’d taken her to the shore. It spilled out of the piano, crashing through the room the way the waves had battered the rocky point. Keira couldn’t hear Walker’s steps over the music, but she could feel him drawing closer. She perched on the edge of the piano bench and reached for the soaring, twisting notes that brought back the memory of the two of them alone in the fog. The music stretched up toward its peak as Walker slid onto the bench behind her. His legs rested on either side of hers and his arms wrapped around her middle, loose enough to leave her room to play but tight enough that they supported her too.