The Pool Boy (Nashville Neighborhood 2)

When I went back for a refill, the dispenser lighting up my glass, I heard music coming from somewhere else in the house. It was only a few chords before it stopped, and I tilted my head, trying to determine where it had come from.

Like a weird game of Marco Polo, I got snippets from a guitar to help guide me in the right direction. I carried my glass down the hall and toward a set of French doors. Only one side was cracked open, but it didn’t matter. They were made of glass, so I could see inside the music room.

Erika sat on the edge of a leather couch with an acoustic guitar in her lap. She wasn’t wearing anything but her long reddish-brown hair, and the guitar teasingly hid her nakedness. The sight of her like that squeezed my lungs.

She looked down at the strings as she searched for the right chord, ignoring the open journal beside her on the couch, and she was lit by the moonlight pouring in through the arched window.

She was fucking gorgeous.

Shit, she was going to ruin other women for me.

Maybe that was a stupid thought. I was kind of convinced she already had.

Like an idiot, I stood in the shadows of the hall and watched as she plucked her way through another measure and looked satisfied with the results. She picked up her pen, scribbled something in the journal, and then dropped it with a hurried thud like she was eager to get back to the strings.

Whatever she’d been struggling with, apparently it’d been solved, because she didn’t start and stop this time. Erika straightened her shoulders, adjusted her grip on the neck of the guitar, and began to play. Even if I didn’t know a thing about song structure, I would have recognized she was starting at the beginning.

The melody was . . . beautiful.

It took its time and reminded me of someone breathing in deep breaths.

When she began to softly sing, the hairs on the back of my neck stood. Goosebumps lifted on my arms. While the volume of her voice was low, the intensity behind it was so powerful I tightened my hold on my glass of water.

It made me a willing slave, unable to do anything but listen to her music and try not to disrupt her. The moment was magic, even more than the last time I’d heard her sing, and I didn’t want to break the spell.

Her song was about desire. How she was a prisoner beneath it and whoever she was singing about had such power over her. She sang it was scary, but . . . she didn’t want them to release her. She only wanted more.

My pulse sped so fast, I wondered if my heart was going to explode. She couldn’t write for two years, and now it seemed like she couldn’t stop.

Was this the song she was creating . . . for me?

Because I wanted it to be, but—fuck—I really wanted it to be how she felt about me.

Erika strummed her guitar, singing to herself as she stared off into the empty room, concentrating on the lyrics and the notes. When she ran out of song, I was lost. It was fucking heartbreaking there wasn’t more.

“Is that my song?” I asked.

“Jesus Christ!” she cried, jerking backward.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I pushed the door open and stepped into the room while she glared up at me. Her heart was pumping hard with shock, judging by how rapidly her chest was moving, but it would probably match mine. I was still recovering from hearing part of her song.

“Is this like your thing?” she asked. “Sneaking up on me when I’m naked?”

I laughed. “Do you want it to be? It worked out pretty great last time.”

She pointed to the glass of water I was holding, and I handed it to her. She took a long sip, and warmth spread through me at this simple act of sharing. We’d shared way bigger things than this, but I liked it anyway.

I sat down on the couch beside her, resisting the urge to sit too close. I didn’t want her to feel like I was crowding her.

She pretended it wasn’t important to her, when it clearly was. “How much did you hear?”

“All of it, I’m guessing.” I was dying inside but did my best not to show it. “I mean, of what you have so far, I think.”

She clutched the guitar so tightly, her fingers squealed against the veneer. “And?”

“And . . . it’s amazing.” Hopefully, she understood how serious I was.

It seemed like it because air seeped out of her in a relaxed sigh.

“Is it the song for me?” I asked.

Her eyebrows pulled together, creating a crease between them. “I . . . This wasn’t what I was working on this morning.”