The music filters into my consciousness, breaking through years of training, a lifetime of deprivation. Enough to know that she changed the composition. The refrain from her father still sits inside it. It plays like a haunting melody. A memory.
The sonata rises and falls, rises and falls. The crowd looks spellbound.
I’m back in the seaside flat, in a place of both peace and yearning. Her music puts me there. It makes me long for something that would only disappoint me in reality. It makes me dream of the impossible. It’s everything she’s ever been to me.
When the last note plays, there’s a beat of heartbreak. It’s over.
Then the room erupts into a standing ovation. It isn’t time for this. Applause, yes. A standing ovation, no. They give her one anyway. I fight every muscle in my body to keep from running onto the stage. She deserves this. No one pulls a gun. No one takes a shot. Not even when she walks back offstage, passing by the soprano who will sing before intermission.
Samantha launches herself into my arms, and I catch her, spinning us both around until we’re half-hidden from even the backstage crew.
“I did it,” she whispers, mindful of the performance.
Her eyes glitter with wonder. It’s too much for a man to resist.
I taste her excitement, her glory in this moment. She kisses me back with a passion much like her sonata, a rise and a fall, a rise and a fall, until I’m spellbound like two thousand other people in the theater. “I love you,” I murmur against her lips. Once I start I can’t stop. “I want you. I need you. Marry me. Whatever you want I’ll give to you.”
Her breath catches, and then she’s kissing me back. The eroticism of her tongue entrances me, making me imagine us alone. I want to keep this dress on her, if only so I can see how adorable she looks when she shows me it has pockets. I hold her body tight against mine, and it’s almost, almost enough. I pull back. “Is that a yes?”
The soprano reaches a pinnacle, and the sweet song moves between us, around us, wrapping us in a cocoon no one else can reach. “Yes,” she whispers.
She plays twice more the second half of the show. Twice more, when I know she’s going to marry me. It’s enough to make a man glad for those nights in the well, if it led to this. Nothing happens. No weapons found on entry. No discrepancies with the tickets. There is no disturbance in the audience, and I think we might escape with the perfect night.
As the headliner she plays the final piece. She plays the Claude Debussy piece that she carries in her dress. It remains folded out of sight, because she knows it by heart. And because it only contains the first refrains anyway. Her notes ring out clear and true.
The applause threatens to bring down the Palais Garnier.
After an encore she skips toward me, and I catch her in a circle. My God. She makes me feel hopeful, when I wouldn’t have thought I knew the meaning. Like a child before ever seeing the bottom of the well. Before the beatings. Before the hunger pains.
She makes me feel like a new person.
“Did anything happen?” she asks.
“You agreed to marry me,” I say, teasing. Liam North. I actually teased the woman I love. That happened. The world is very strange sometimes. She grins up at me. Then Bethany and Romeo are there, and she’s hugging them, exclaiming over their performances.
I turn away to do the security check into my watch. “Report. Webb.”
“Clear.”
“Rogers.”
“Clear.”
“North.”
Silence.
My heartbeat slows. My eyesight sharpens. The body prepares itself for battle even while the mind rebels at the idea. “North.” Nothing. “Joshua,” I say, breaking protocol. No response. Dread forms in my stomach, but I push it aside. This is war.
Samantha stands like a queen, her black dress billowing. The other performers have disappeared into the milling stage performers. With the curtain down, backstage is chaos. A heavy saturation of sound comes from the audience as people leave their seats.
“What’s wrong?”
It doesn’t occur to me to lie. “It’s Josh.”
Her eyes turn round. “He’s hurt?”
Probably. If he’s not answering, he’s probably dead. My mind makes the calculations even though I can’t—No. Not my brother. “Rogers,” I say into my watch. He’s the closest one in position. “Confirm North’s status.”