I couldn’t stop my grin. “Told you it was a hard life.”
Alexis laughed, this tiny, lilting sound that trickled around me like a melody. Could almost see the notes of an emerging song dancing through the spikes of sunlight that slanted all around her.
This girl was like music.
Harmony.
Settling into silence, she nibbled at a fry. I could see her contemplating. When she finally spoke, her tone was laced with caution, like she might be ashamed she knew something so personal about me when I hadn’t given her the key to that lock. “I’m so sorry…I heard you lost your older brother…I heard that’s why you’re in the band? You took his spot when he passed away?”
Old grief slammed me, regret and pain and every mistake I’d ever made. “Yeah.”
“You always knew how to play the drums?” The creases in her brow cinched tighter.
A humorless sound rumbled in my chest. “Yeah…I always knew how to play the drums.”
Memories flashed. The aspirations that’d been the single focus of my life. I just didn’t know which of my mistakes had been the one that had stolen them. The catalyst that had set me on a path I’d never expected to go. Guess it was the sum of them. A string of hurt and betrayal and regret that had destroyed both my and Mark’s lives.
Something soft eased into her expression, and she sat back in her chair with her head angled, exposing the delicate, milky flesh at the side of her neck.
A shock of lust belted me in the gut. I wanted her.
Maybe it’d just been too goddamned long. Maybe I was just a man. But this girl had me spun up in a way I’d never been before.
“My little drummer boy.” She murmured it like a tease.
Didn’t matter. Because something about it went sailing through me like a thunderbolt. Like I could feel those small hands on me. Touching and healing and inciting.
Unable to stop myself, I angled forward, suddenly needing to get a little deeper. A little closer. “Tell me your truth, Alexis. If you could do absolutely anything, what would it be? And I don’t mean something for someone else, because I know what you’re getting ready to say. I mean for you and only you.”
She choked out a laugh. “Well, that’s out of left field, isn’t it? How is it you always manage to catch me off guard?”
I forced a smile. “I like to keep people on their toes.”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“I thought that title belonged to you?” I tossed it back, loving the way her skin lit up with a flush.
She looked down as she shook her head. Self-conscious and good.
I edged in even closer. “Tell me. I want to know.”
Because I was the fool who suddenly wanted to know every single detail about her. I wanted to explore and discover. Slip right inside her beautiful mind and sift through her thoughts.
Vanish in her body.
For a flash, she looked away, out the window to the people milling on the sidewalk outside. Then she turned those blue eyes back on me, a collision of sky and sea.
She hesitated, seeming to need to work up the courage to give me her answer. “If I could do one thing for myself, I’d learn to play piano. I’ve wanted to since I was a little girl. I would beg my mom for lessons, but we never had the money. Then I was putting myself through college and then pouring myself into work. It just never happened.”
I just stared.
Redness flushed that stunning face, and she started fiddling with the spoon at the side of her plate. Like this brave girl was suddenly shy. Like there was any kind of possibility she could say the wrong thing.
“It’s kind of silly, I know.” It was a whisper beneath her breath.
“No. Not silly. Not at all.” My voice was gruff. “There’s no song like a song played on a piano.”
Ideas were thrumming through my mind. Dangerous, dangerous ideas.
I needed to put a lock on them and fast.
She must’ve caught onto the undercurrent of my last words, because she sat back in her chair. A spark of excitement flashed in her expression. “Tell me you don’t play piano, too.”
I shrugged. I wondered if she noticed the hesitation behind it. Because I was traversing rocky ground. Getting closer and closer to those boundaries I couldn’t cross. Letting her into a place that’d been barren for a long, long time.
As much as I knew I shouldn’t, I couldn’t stop the admission from sliding from my mouth. “I play about everything.”
Speculation lifted her brow. “What do you mean, everything?”
I shrugged again, this time self-consciously as I slanted a nervous hand through my hair and glanced out the window. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just if there’s an instrument lying around, I can usually pick it up and play it.”
Disbelief filled her soft words. “It’s not a big deal? Zee, that has to be the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.”
Words like prodigy and genius spun through my mind, words that had been tossed around me when I was just a little kid, having not a clue what they meant. Not until it’d meant everything.
It was just another door that had been slammed in my face seven years ago.
“I got lucky, I guess.”
She stared across at me. The expression on her face spoke of hurt and understanding. Like she got something about me maybe I couldn’t even see.
That air shivered around us when she leaned over the table, getting as close as she could. Found myself edging closer, too, erasing that space that churned and begged.
“If you could do one thing for yourself,” she said, “what would it be?”
Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised the girl would turn the question on me.
I’d set myself free.
The confession scraped from my throat, hard and pained. “I’d go back and change everything. Both for him and for me.”
So slowly, she inched back, stopping just far enough away so she could fully meet my gaze. My chest tightened, this needy clench while we sat there staring, breathing each other’s breaths.
“Your brother?” she whispered.
“Yes. I’d go back to the day when I made the worst mistake I ever could’ve made.” My voice was nothing more than shards and dust as I let her in a little further. Further than I’d ever allowed anyone before.
Blue eyes searched my face, a storm that built at the edge of a blazing sky.
I got the distinct feeling this girl would give up anything to hold a little of my pain. That she was sitting there wishing she could sink into me, discover all my secrets the same way I felt desperate to discover hers.
“What were you really doing down there that night? People are only on that side of town after dark for two things.” Her chin trembled, the words cracking somewhere in her throat. “Drugs or sex. Usually both.”
Grief bottled at the base of my throat. “Wasn’t down there for either, Alexis. I promise you. A friend needed me.”