on the pages of that notebook. Too much to keep hidden away. I already knew he was a talented singer and pretty damn good at playing guitar. What else could he achieve if he let himself make the attempt?
“They’re too personal to share with anyone.”
I pressed my cheek against his back. “Even me?”
He laid one of his hands over mine on his stomach. “Most of them are about you.”
My heart jumped as I remembered the lines I’d read. I think she was the one. Maybe she could have saved me if I’d let her.
I’d assumed he was referring to some woman from his past. Not me. It had never even entered my head that those words had been about me.
I tightened my arms around him, squeezing hard enough to make him cough before I dragged him around to face me. His eyes tried to avoid mine, but I took his face in my hands and made him look me in the eye. “You’ve been writing songs about me?”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Maybe.” He was so bashful about it I couldn’t stand it.
“Wyatt…” This fresh glimpse inside his head made my breath catch. I didn’t have words adequate to the emotions tumbling around inside me, so I kissed him instead, pouring my whole heart into it and hoping he’d be able to feel what I meant.
He relaxed into me, the tension gradually bleeding out of him as I pressed kisses along his jaw and down his throat. His arms tightened around me, and he dropped his forehead heavily against mine.
I felt the weight of his vulnerability in the way he leaned into me and the fierceness of his grip. His desperate, aching need to be accepted and loved despite a lifetime of pretending the opposite. My lungs constricted with the responsibility of it. The need to protect him and support him. To give him what he’d been afraid to ask for.
“Will you play them for me?” I felt him stiffen again, but I held him tight so he’d know I wasn’t going anywhere. Telling him without words that he could trust me with this.
He heaved a breath and nodded. “Sure. Sometime.”
“I’d love that.” I kissed his temple, then his cheek, then his lips. “Whenever you’re ready.”
His fingers tightened in my hair as his mouth covered mine in a tender, grateful kiss. Just as I started to give myself up to it, he pulled back and let go of me. “I’ve gotta flip the sausage.”
Right. There was food cooking on the stove. I couldn’t just jump his bones this second. Damn. While Wyatt tended the sausage patties, I went to give the grits a stir.
“The next time I go back to my place…” He paused to toss a glance at me, and the corner of his mouth tilted upward. “Maybe I’ll get my guitar and bring it over here.”
My heart somersaulted in my chest like I’d just won the lottery. “Yeah?”
He shrugged like it was no big deal, even though we both knew it was the exact opposite. “Maybe.”
17
Wyatt
I didn’t end up making it back over to my place until Monday morning after Andie left for work.
The two of us spent most of the day Sunday prepping the exterior siding for painting. Andie did the power washing while I finished scraping and sanding the last of the peeling paint away. We made a good team, and with her help the work went quickly. By the time evening came around, we’d finished all the spackling and final sanding, and had everything ready for me to start applying the primer today.
I’d spent the night with Andie again last night, which meant I’d been wearing the same work clothes for two days now. Fortunately, neither of us had been doing a whole lot of clothes wearing when we weren’t outside working. Still, by Monday morning, I was in desperate need of clean clothes, so I stopped off at my apartment on the way back from picking up the paint for the siding. While I was there, I threw some toiletries and a few extra changes of clothes into a bag.
If things kept going as well as they had been, I figured I might be spending a lot more nights at Andie’s. At least I sure hoped so.
On my way out the door, I grabbed my guitar as promised.
In all the time I’d been trying to work up the courage to play my music for someone else, I’d never imagined the first time would