After fifteen minutes, I was frustrated. I could play the damn scale, but with nowhere near the speed and finesse that Boyd had.
“I’m impressed,” he said, fingers stilled. “Most people give up after a few minutes because it takes a while to get the hang of it and it’s not easy.” He nodded. “You’ll get there.”
He started playing a few chords, all minor, and then I joined in. For the first time in forever, I opened myself up. I didn’t think. I reacted with something pure. Something unrestrained. Something that had no filter.
Magic happened. Sounds so cliché, but I don’t know any other way to explain it. Boyd played a melody, and I ran with it, incorporating my own vision. It had a slow, aching feel to it, the kind where minor chords made a soul weep.
He started singing, his voice low and intimate, and I followed, our voices blending together perfectly. We wrote three songs.
Three amazing songs.
And when I finally set aside my guitar, it was dark outside. We hadn’t moved from the living room in nearly eight hours. My fingers ached. But it was a good ache, and I couldn’t keep the grin off my face.
“That was…” I jumped to my feet. “Boyd, that was incredible. I don’t…I didn’t know I could do that.”
He set his guitar back in its case, but didn’t leave the sofa. His eyes were dark as they followed me around the room. I couldn’t keep still. Every cell in my body hummed with nervous, excited energy, and it was making me crazy.
I rambled on about the scales I’d learned. About the songs we wrote. About the melody and the give and the take, and the way our voices soared. About the harmonies and the lyrics. When I finally stopped to breathe, I turned back to him. The look in his eyes made the other words stuck in my throat dry up.
Suddenly, that energy in my body electrified, and it was a different kind of voltage running through my veins. This was hotter. Stronger. Primal.
“I think you know this was in you.” His voice hit that timbre, the one I felt deep in my bones. “You have a talent, and you’ve been cultivating it. But you’ve been keeping it to yourself.”
I started to shake my head.
“Why are you hiding behind all that gloss and shit that doesn’t matter?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” My voice was raspy, barely above a whisper. Something had changed, and I was scared and exhilarated and filled with such longing that I had to look away. It was a physical ache that nearly brought me to my knees.
He stood, and I felt his hand on my chin, applying just enough pressure to force my head up so that I had nowhere to hide.
“Sure you do.” His voice caressed my skin. “You pretend every single day of your life. You give the world this woman you think they want to see. This perfect illusion that doesn’t exist. It’s plastic and shallow, and just like the rest of America, I believed all that bullshit. But you’re nothing close to that.” His thumb rubbed the line of my jaw, and I fought the urge to rest my cheek against his hand.
“You have them all fooled, don’t you?” His voice lowered even more. It was thick and held notes between the words. “You sure as hell fooled me. Why is that, Echo? What are you afraid of?”
Afraid?
That didn’t come close. Right here, in this moment, I was terrified. I hid because I couldn’t deal. I hid because I was a coward. Because I was afraid to feel. Afraid to hurt. To be human. Because that meant being vulnerable. And being vulnerable with someone like Boyd Appleton wasn’t a smart move. Not for a girl like me. I’d end up back in that dark place I’d been running from for years.
I considered being honest. Letting those words and phrases fall from my lips like rain from the clouds. But I couldn’t open myself up like that to the one person on the planet who would make me feel and hurt. He could break me open like waves against rock. And maybe it would be worth it. Maybe coming out the other side was a price I could live with. Maybe it would free me.
Or maybe I could just keep hiding in the cocoon I’d created for myself. The one that kept me sane and safe.
So I did what I always do when faced with something I wasn’t ready for. I turned the tables. Deflected the emotion and latched on to something a hell of a lot more primitive and powerful. And sexual.
I thumped Boyd in the chest—hard enough to rock him on his heels. And with his balance off, I pushed until he fell back onto the sofa.
“What the hell?” he rumbled, looking up at me.
I didn’t give him another chance to speak. Heart pounding so dam
n loud I was sure he could hear it, I straddled him, gyrating my crotch against his already hardening cock. He began to shake his head, but I grabbed hold of him, my hands sunk deep into the thick hair at his nape.
I leaned forward. I opened my mouth.
And kissed him.
10