I blinked a couple of times. I'd thought he wanted to fuck—which I was totally on board with, I might add—but he wanted to play me something. Knowing now what I did about his reluctance to play the piano for anyone, it seemed like a deeply intimate gesture. "Sure. Okay, cool. Let's go."
I released him and reached for the two slightly cool coffees I'd left sitting on the counter beside the espresso machine. He took one from me and then joined our free hands as we made our way through the silent house and up to his bedroom.
"Damn, your room really is warmer," I commented as we stepped inside and Steele softly closed the door behind us. He grinned, placing his coffee on the bedside table and climbing back into his rumpled bed. He'd brought his keyboard over and had clearly been working on something while in bed because there were piles of ink-covered music sheets scattered on the cover.
"Come, sit," he indicated to the other side of the bed. "It was too cold to sit at my desk earlier before my heating kicked in, so I moved over here."
"This is next level adorable," I murmured, climbing into his bed and tucking my toes under the covers. His wireless headphones were tossed aside, and he made no movement to put them back on. It was a small thing, but knowing he hadn't played for anyone since his sister died... it touched something inside me. It made the secrets and betrayals just a tiny bit less hurtful because he was showing his feelings in other ways.
With a short glance at me, he got comfortable sitting cross-legged with his keyboard on a lap desk in front of him. Then he began to play.
The familiar tune sparked my memory, and I made a small sound that caused Steele look over and meet my eyes.
"Is this the song you were working on last time you played for me?" I asked in a hushed whisper, not wanting to interrupt the beautiful, haunting melody. He nodded, a small smile pulling at his lips as his fingers moved with fluid grace.
"It's the first thing I've written since Rachel died," he admitted, his voice just as soft. "But that night, while you were lying here in my bed... it just came to me. It's been tugging at my brain for weeks, but I couldn't... I couldn't work on it when you weren't here. It just wouldn't come to me."
I snuggled down into his pillows, getting comfortable as I sipped my coffee. "Are you trying to tell me that I'm your muse, Max Steele?"
He shot me another quick look, his eyes like mercury. "I guess so."
Neither of us spoke again, and the lilting tune from Steele's keyboard filled the room as he played. It was the kind of music that conveyed a myriad of emotions. Deep, raw feelings threaded into every note he played, and the melody somehow managed to rip open something inside me.
When he finished, the last note hung in the air for what seemed like ages, and we just sat in silence for a long, comfortable pause.
"So, what did you think?" he asked me after a while, lifting his keyboard and lap desk off the bed and placing it on the floor. Sheet music in his handwriting was scattered everywhere, but he paid it no mind as he shuffled down onto the pillows to face me.
I licked my lips, tasting the remnants of my coffee, which I'd finished some moments ago. "You wrote that?" I asked him, almost disbelieving. "It was incredible. You're..." I shook my head. "You're crazy talented, Max Steele. But you already know that."
He gave me one of those cocky smirks. "Yeah, but did you like it? I only wrote it for you."
My heart beat a little harder. "What?"
He gave a small, self-conscious shrug. "I don't find any inspiration in writing for myself anymore. Or writing for... any other reason. I think I'm pretty much done with this phase of my life, but then something about you inspired me so... yeah. I wrote that for you. And I'll probably write something else for you too. If you're cool with that?"
I blinked at him, stunned. "Um, yeah, dude. Pretty sure this is the most flattering thing anyone has ever done for me. Ever. I'm not going to lie, I'm all kinds of girly for you right now. Have I turned into one of those heart-eyes emojis? Because that's what I feel like."