“You make my heart sing.”
It might’ve been another common enough phrase like you make my head spin, but she knew better and he didn’t need to know. “It’s just three chords.”
“That what it is?”
She would’ve pinched him for the smug tone but he had her back to the bed and was on top of her, elbows braced either side of her ribs before she could get a shriek out.
“I don’t know why you think you can hide your feelings from me, Evelette Violet Tice. I don’t know why you think I’ve forgotten any little thing about what we were together. You probably think I wrote songs about other women. Oh, I took other women to bed. I’ve loved other women in the moment, but all those hit singles, over all those years, if they’re a love song, then they’re about loving you, losing you, never getting over you.”
She went to protest, anything to stop him talking, breaking her with his words, but he put his face close and she stopped breathing as his lips hit her chin. What was she supposed to do when he said things like that? What was she supposed to do if he kissed her lips? She ached for him to do it, to take the decision from her. To make it easy to remember he broke promises and to let him go.
And then he put his hand over her mouth.
“What was the first song I learned to play with three chords?” he said.
Squirming only made him lean harder on her and she couldn’t get her arms free to claw his hand from her face.
“Oh yeah, that’s right, Evie. That would be ‘Wild Thing’ by The Troggs. And what would those three chords be?” Oh, he was a bastard. She tried to bite his fingers making him laugh.
“Why yes, A, D and E. And what was it I used to call you when you did something to take my breath away?”
She said, “Kiss me and get this over with,” but it came out as angry garble and trying to knee him didn’t work either. If he was trying to split her heart open, pull out the stuffing and leave her with only sawdust then he was more than halfway there.
“You were always doing something to make me wonder how I’d survive you. How I’d live without you.”
If he made her cry she’d find a way to make his life miserable. She’d hack his social media and screw him over big time. If she closed her eyes, maybe she wouldn’t hear him say it. Her lashes were down a second and he had his mouth by her ear.
“If I recall, that would be ‘Wild Thing.’” He took her daith piercing in his teeth and tugged. “Lie to yourself all you want, Evie, but don’t lie to me and expect to get away with it, because sure, they’re just any three chords you had tattooed on hand. You are still my wild thing. Always will be.”
He let her go abruptly, siting up, eyes avoiding hers. “Are you hungry? I’m starving. Super thirsty too. How do we order food?”
The shift in temperature made her shiver. She struggled up to find her phone, to click on an app. She was the wild thing, but Jay was hungry, and after all, he’d kept his promise of wrecking her.
TWELVE
They showered. Separately, because all of it; the sex, the honesty, Jay’s frustration, Evie’s resentment was a lot. They ate pizza, two kinds, and Jay drank his own body weight in water. They talked about the industry as if they were colleagues, and then dozed, pretending to be two people sharing a bed because there was no option, lying side by side, not touching.
It would’ve been funny if he didn’t know Evie was struggling, needing to protect herself from him. It had been easy, almost natural for him to put his heart in her hands all over again.
In sleep, Evie turned to him and they became one tidy bundle of tangled limbs, shared breathe and soothed souls. He should’ve been out to it, post-show, post-sex-fest, but he was oddly energized.
Nah, it wasn’t that odd. He had the woman he loved, still loved, never stopped in his arms. She who inspired songs of longing and frustration and joy and he didn’t want to miss a minute of being with her. And every minute was stolen from her decision to keep him at arms-length.
It’d taken a superhuman effort not to take her mouth. Consciously or not, she’d kept turning her face to his, her lips within easy reach. As much as he wanted to sink into her kisses he needed her to want that. Lips were her line, carefully drawn, and he dare not cross it. And much as he wanted to come inside her, he knew if he did, he’d lose all sense of what was allowed and tempt Evie’s decision away from her.
Ironic that was why he’d left his wild thing in the first place. Not wanting to take her decision to shine away from her.
And she did shine. His stalking had led him to discover how. She had her own social media management empire. She had a roster of local bands in her stable, including Lost Property. She employed media handlers, a designer, a video editor, a copywriter, an advertising manager. She ran a virtual office that was open whenever and wherever she was. Her website was a work of art. Her sponsorship deals were legendary. Her recommendations were kick-arse. She was killing it and he admired the hell out of her.
It looked like all she did was work. She had little to no personal social presence that wasn’t linked directly to her business.
No cute couple shots, no envy-making holiday snaps, no amazing food or goofy pets. And she worked all the time. No wonder she’d fallen asleep waiting for him to shower.
He twirled a piece of her hair between his fingers. If she was disappointed to be management instead of an artist in her own right, it didn’t show, but it was still a gap in his understanding. He watched her sleep and wondered if she regretted not making it, not even trying.
It was some time later, sunlight streaking under the door and through the blinds and curtains when he became aware of Evie’s hands and lips on his chest and fractured images from dreams in his head: his home in Seattle, but dark, cold and empty, a recording studio beside a beach, no place he’d ever been, and Evie at a microphone.
It took a few seconds to remember where he was and no time at all to wake to the possibility that he was about to get fucked in the nicest way as the girl from his dreams kissed across his abs and down, down, over his hip bone, along his Adonis line and right to a wake-up call with purpose.