widely.
“Erika,” I said by way of greeting.
I hadn’t spoken to her in a month. And though there was a good reason for that—namely, that I hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to get back to the US to see her, and was a coward who hadn’t wanted to call her until I had an update—I had to admit that I’d been thinking about her almost constantly.
Thinking about her, and dreaming about her. Long, intense dreams that had me waking up hot and sweaty and still feeling the touch of her fingertips on my skin. Dreams that were more like memories of the night we’d spent together. Dreams that made me ache with the need to hold her again.
So seeing her name on my screen was like a balm to my soul. Not enough, surely. But something.
Her calling right now, when I was dealing with such an important question in my life, also felt a whole lot like fate. Hadn’t I just been thinking that if I was going to have a woman in my life, she was going to be one of my own choosing? And Erika was… everything I could imagine wanting. Gorgeous, to start with. Incredibly smart. Driven.
As sarcastic as they came.
Granted, she was halfway across the world and currently completely inaccessible to me. But she was…
Hell, the girl was everything.
“Francisco,” she said, her voice sounding… weak, somehow. Fragile.
“What’s wrong?” The question was immediate, instinctive. Because I could hear in her voice that something definitely was wrong, and it made me feel suddenly so possessive, so protective of her, that I could barely stand it. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I…” She paused, and I could imagine her biting her lip in that way she did when she was trying to say something she didn’t have the words for. She’d have that line between her eyebrows, that crease in her brow, that slight narrowing of her big brown eyes.
God, I wanted to reach right through the phone and take her in my arms. Use my fingers to smooth out her brow. And I didn’t even know what was wrong yet.
“Erika?” I asked softly. “Are you okay?” The jokes we’d shared before were on the tip of my tongue, but something told me that this wasn’t the time for that.
“I just called to see how you were,” she said, her voice stronger now, as if she was making a superhuman effort to keep it steady. “It had been so long since we talked, and I wasn’t sure whether anything had changed. I mean, if you’re coming back to Chicago, I have to work time off into my schedule. I’m a busy girl, you know.”
I let myself smile a bit in response to her attempt at a joke. “I have absolutely no doubt. Are you playing shows yet?”
It turned out that she was—twice a week—and further, that she’d been thinking about dropping down to part-time at the bar so she could play more.
My heart thrilled at the thought, because that was exactly what she’d talked about doing during that weekend we’d spent together. She wanted to be a musician. She’d spent her young life training for it, and then it hadn’t happened. The thought of her actually getting back on track with it echoed deep in my bones with its rightness.
“You should,” I told her firmly. “But you should also tell me what’s wrong. Because I’m fairly sure that you getting to play music more often doesn’t have you sounding like someone just spit on your birthday cake.”
Instead of answering, she went on to talk about something else. And after that, something else—and then something else again. I heard about recent festivals in Chicago and her best friend, Beth, and then the happenings in the bar, and even how the owner was celebrating his birthday.
I didn’t hear anything about her thoughts or her feelings or what might be bothering her.
And by the time she said she needed to go and would talk to me again soon, I was no closer to understanding what might possibly be wrong with her. Or why she’d decided to call me.
I did know one thing for certain, though: This girl was more important to me than almost anyone else in my life. I didn’t know when it had happened, or even how, but my soul was itching with the need to know what was wrong with her… and what I could do to fix it.
I had to know if she was okay. Everything in my