Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,57

being more—but he would never be like that. He didn’t have anything to really offer Nik besides calloused hands and a battered heart. So maybe it was better Nik had set that rule, because at least then Adam didn’t have the chance to shatter that fantasy.

“Anyway, we didn’t come here to listen to fuddy-duddy classical composers, did we?” Nik asked, his lips curving into a smile.

Adam laughed and shook his head. “No, I guess not. I brought Breakfast Club, Labyrinth, and The Big Chill.”

Nik lifted a brow as he turned to find the popcorn again. “Only one of those is John Hughes.”

“Well, I thought I’d mix it up. I wasn’t sure what flavor of morbid your mood was going to end up.”

Nik turned his head to Adam, a slow, surprised grin stretching across his lips. “Labyrinth.”

Adam laughed. “David Bowie and the Great Bulge?”

“I’ve heard about it,” Nik said as he settled onto the bed. “It really is too bad I’ll never get to find out for myself.”

Adam’s cheeks heated a little further, and he fought back the urge to offer himself up in Bowie’s place. Instead, he settled his laptop at the edge of the bed and fired up the movie. The screen was small, but the speakers were loud, and he found himself more than comfortable as his body rested against Nik’s against the headboard.

“I can’t remember the last time I did this,” Adam confessed as Sarah appeared on screen in her flowing white dress.

“Had a movie night?”

Adam shrugged. “We used to do it back in college. We’d all get stoned and watch crappy nineties high school party movies. We’d eat too much and fall asleep halfway through, and it felt like nothing was ever going to change.”

Nik let out a small breath, then found Adam’s hand, pressing his thumb into the center of his palm. “I think we all fall into that trap. It was like that for me before I got out—but that was the bad kind. Then when I was living in Manhattan, I thought that was it. That I’d be at the school, and playing shows, and booking gigs for the rest of my life.”

Adam couldn’t stop his shudder, his stomach rolling with envy. He had never felt that way, had never tasted anything like that until Nik sat him in that dressing room and kissed him. Even standing on a dive-bar, makeshift stage with his guitar in his hands and angry words ripping at his throat to let loose all his frustration and anger at the world—he didn’t feel like that.

Everything had an expiration date. And he wanted it that way.

Until he met Nik.

“I was in the bad place again,” Nik confessed, his voice sounding sleepy now. Adam turned his head to find Nik’s face had relaxed, his eyelids cracked open just a little, though his lashes still fanned downward. “Then you showed up.”

Adam’s heart twisted in his chest. He wanted to rage, and he wanted to beg Nik to see reason, to see hope in what they could have. But he was afraid. No, he was terrified. He was terrified if he pushed anymore, Nik would put a stop to all of it. So, he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper, and he held onto Nik’s hand tighter—tighter—until he felt Nik relax into sleep.

The movie kept playing, and Nik’s breathing went deep and even, and Adam knew he wouldn’t trade this for the world.

Adam startled when something shoved his feet off the coffee table, and he sat forward with a soft oomph as he stared up into his sister’s face. He scowled as she flopped next to him, then put her feet up in his lap.

“Are you reading?” she demanded.

He snarled at her as he tried to hide the book cover, but she was too quick and snatched it out of his hands. “I read.”

“Modern day classical composers?” she asked, then looked at him with bright eyes. “You really are into him, aren’t you?”

He flipped her off, then grabbed the book back and slammed it shut. He made an attempt to rise, but her calves pinned him to the cushion and held him there. “I was just curious. Nik showed me this composer the other day and…I don’t know. It was like listening to the old school stuff, but different.”

She wiggled her fingers at him, and after a second, he opened the book again to the page with the scowling Nicolas Michaud and passed it over. Humming, she ran