“Did you feel that?” she murmured into the air, her voice like the remnants of that song that kept trying to take possession of my spirit.
Carefully, I set her aside and climbed to my feet. I had to put some distance between us before I went and did something I couldn’t undo. Before I made any more mistakes than I already had.
It left Alexis sitting there at my piano, watching me cautiously. Reflecting all the confusion I felt. Wondering if she might’ve done something wrong.
Problem was, all the wrong was on me. It always was.
Her hand fluttered my direction. “Zachary…tell me what’s wrong.”
I swiped the back of my hand over my mouth like it might be able to erase the sweet ache she’d left behind.
Impossible.
“I just…I need a minute, okay? Uh…why don’t you practice a little of what you practiced during the week. You watched the videos I told you to, right?”
I was rambling, but I was looking for a different sort of distraction. A detour that wasn’t perilous. A road that wasn’t fraught with hazard signs.
Hurt and disappointment were clear in her expression, but she nodded. “Yeah. I watched the videos and practiced some on my keyboard like you asked me to.”
Damn it. Couldn’t stand that I’d put that look on her face.
I brushed my thumb beneath the hollow of her eye, needing to reassure her. To encourage her she hadn’t done anything wrong. Or maybe I was just the fuckup who was looking for any excuse to touch her again. “Good girl. I’ll be right back, okay?”
She swallowed hard, and I backed away and let the space between us grow.
I needed a moment of clarity outside this attraction that pulled and pulled and pulled.
Before I let this go any further, I needed to remember my resolutions. Remember exactly what it was I was fighting for.
Chains were a bitch.
But sometimes they were the only things tying us to what was most important.
I backed the whole way to the staircase, watching her watching me, before I turned and jogged up to my bedroom.
I went straight for the bathroom separated from my bedroom by a high partition wall. I closed the door behind me, though it did nothing to mute the tentative, tinkling sound of fumbled keys floating up to tickle my ears.
I set my hands on the countertop and stared at my reflection as she pushed all the way through the boundaries.
Touching that cold place in my heart.
Seven years and I’d never been tempted.
Seven years and I’d never questioned.
Seven years and I’d never failed.
And there I was, staring down the bastard in the mirror who was itching to commit the greatest kind of betrayal. But how could I stop myself from wanting her? Not when her simple song lifted and danced and teased.
It was a song I’d learned to play when I was three.
“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
I looked down at my hand fisted on the porcelain sink, at the star that’d burned for a few fleeting moments before it’d disintegrated.
Just dust and ash and decay.
But beneath it, I felt something smolder.
A spark to a dying ember that I’d believed lost its flame.
Harmony.
And I had no idea what the hell it was this girl was doing to me.
Chapter Sixteen
Alexis
The energy shifted the moment he stepped back onto the bottom floor. I could feel it, the way the tension increased and pulsed with every move he made. How it grew and grew the closer he came.
The man had already brought me to my knees with his mind-bending kiss.
By the heat of his touch and by the need in my body.
And then—just as fast as it’d started—he ended it. Ripped himself away. As if touching me was something wicked.
Hurt tried to crawl up and take shelter in my chest, and I struggled around it as I tinkered my way through the song on the piano, pretending as if I didn’t feel more emotionally vulnerable in this moment than I had in all my life.
“I think you’re a natural.” His words were a coarse caress that blasted across my skin.
A tiny sound climbed my thickened throat, landing somewhere between a self-deprecating laugh and a cry. “It’s a child’s song, Zachary.”
I could sense him behind me and off to the side, as if he didn’t want to step too close.
“No song is less important than another.” Voice so low it was dangerous to my sanity.
He inched forward, the air pulsing with each uncertain step. “How many lives do you think that song has impacted? How many souls has it touched? How many mothers have rocked a child to sleep while they hummed this song? It’s a child who believes. Never, ever take that fact for granted.”
His breath barely kissed along the bare skin of my shoulder, and I ached for him to again breach the space. I wanted to feel him.
Everywhere.
I’d always chased after experiences. I’d always loved the feel of the sun on my face and believed in the power of a falling star.
This boy felt like both wrapped into one. Life and death. A beginning and an end.
I fumbled across the keys, trying to make it through the song before I finally broke and jerked around to face him. “What is happening between us?” Wildly, I gestured. “Between you and me? Because it feels like something important.”
His voice was rough. “I wish it could be…something important.”
“Why can’t it be?” Desperate confusion flooded from the words.
Something bleak edged his expression. “Because we can’t always have the things we want.”
I blinked up at this complicated, perplexing man. “What is stopping you from taking what you want? Because it’s not me.”
And there I was. Running toward danger. Heart-first, just like Chelsey said.
“That’s the thing, Alexis. I see you looking at me the way you do. Like we could be somethin’. And I want it so fucking bad. To be something to you. To be good for you. But I ruined that possibility a long time ago and I’m not sure there are enough pieces left to give any of them to you. That’s my truth.”
As if he could no longer stand, Zee dropped down to his knees in front of me. Like an offering.
I shifted the rest of the way around on the bench so I could meet him eye to eye.
Reaching out, I ran my thumb across the tense lines on his forehead, my head angled as I studied him, searching for an answer. “Who do those pieces belong to?” My head shook. “Who do you belong to, Zee?”
Low, gutting laughter rolled out from some place hidden within him. “I belong to my mistakes. To the choices I made a long time ago. Now, it’s a matter of remaining loyal to them. Remembering what I owe.”
His gaze shifted to the windows before he looked back to me and edged forward an inch. My knees shook with the urge to drop open, to make room and beckon him to me.
“Doing this…inviting you here…is probably the most reckless thing I’ve done in years.”
My heart sank. Why did him admitting that have to hurt so much?
Both for him and me. Because I could see it, written all over his gorgeous face. His expression was riddled with pain and regret.