The Christmas Proposal - Miley Maine Page 0,40

He was my brother, and he should want what’s best for me. Whatever his first reaction, I knew it wouldn’t take him long to understand things.

So was Grayson just using him as an excuse, then? A way to break things off without shifting the blame onto himself?

It was a cowardly move, that I could say for sure. I just didn’t understand why he would do something like that.

It took me several more minutes to calm myself down enough to the point where I wasn’t crying anymore. Then I got up and tried to decide what I should do next. Obviously I would eventually need to talk to Grayson about it all, but I didn’t know if I could handle that yet. The emotions were still too fresh for me.

So then the best thing for me in that situation was to work to distract myself.

I didn’t feel much like reading at the moment, which was odd. I almost always felt up to reading, but this time it made me think of the other night when we were reading in bed together. I did, however, feel like it was a good time to play my harp.

Ever since I was young, the harp has always been a good way for me to process my emotions. I got bullied when I was little, and when Sebastian went away for college it got worse. I found a great deal of solace in two things: books and music.

With books, I could escape to another world, but with music, I could create my own.

I could express myself however I wanted to, let my emotions flow freely from my fingertips. I used to spend hours each day after school playing, just closing my eyes and letting my fingers go.

Sometimes I would play a piece that was already written, something one of my instructors was having me practice or maybe something from my sheet music books. And other times I would play whatever came to mind, composing my own short pieces to explain the way that I was feeling.

This was what I let myself do now, allowing the notes to guide my hands instead of the other way around. To me, this felt like the purest form of playing. I was listening to what the instrument wanted, to what the Earth wanted and what my body needed to hear. It allowed for music I would never have been able to imagine if I had stopped to make myself think about it.

I played like this for a while, losing track of time as I lost myself in it, until I was brought out of it by a short knock on my door.

I turned my head to see that Grayson was waiting there, a sheepish smile on his face. “That was beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you.” I considered telling him to leave. I didn’t know if I was in the place to talk to him just yet, but it was clear from the way he was looking at me that he had something he needed to say.

“Can I sit down?” he asked, gesturing to my bed.

I nodded, watching him from where I sat at my harp.

Grayson let out a deep sigh. “Listen, Serenity, I’m sorry. I know timing was not on my side, and there were definitely better ways to say what I said. The point is, I do want to be with you, I really do. You make me feel things that I haven’t felt before, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to make you cry ever again.”

“But before we left, Sebastian warned me that he didn’t want me taking advantage of you and that’s how he’s going to see things. I want some time to figure out how to bring things up with him, because I also don’t want to lose our friendship. Both of you are very important to me, and I want to make sure he properly understands that I didn’t take advantage of you and that I really do care about you.”

He looked at me with such kind eyes that I knew he had to be telling the truth. He wouldn’t lie to me and look at me like that, it wasn’t possible.

“So please, let me do this the right way.”

“What do you mean ‘the right way’?” I asked.

“Let me talk to him about things before he stumbles upon something he’s not going to understand. I want to be with you, but I don’t want to cause any undue rifts.”

I took a deep