like, come to life. There was a fire in us that night as he kept me against that wall and made me come using just his hand while his mouth had devoured mine like he needed more.
Though we hadn’t gone as far as I would have liked before he passed out from who knew how much alcohol he’d consumed, the moments we shared were permanently tattooed on my flawed skin for the world to see. I didn’t hide it.
“As I said,” I replied instead, voice skillfully calm, “I understand just fine, Theo. Please drive safe.”
He stared at me for a moment too long before swiping his large palm through his longer-than-normal tussled brown hair and turned on his heels. No jacket, and not another word.
And I watched him walk away.
Again.
Chapter One
Della
Turning the page of sheet music, I settled back onto the bench and straightened my spine before placing my fingers onto the ivory just as Aunt Sophie showed me.
“I’m not sure I’m getting this,” I admitted, trying to remember which keys were which.
The pristine middle-aged woman sitting in an elegant red armchair beside the window scoffed. “You just need to keep practicing as we discussed. Your mother should have taught you how to play years ago.”
Fighting the frown that always came with the conversation, I rolled my shoulders and pressed down on the keys until an ungodly noise came from the pianoforte. There was no doubt in my mind I’d gotten it wrong, mixed up the keys for the umpteenth time no matter Sophie’s insistence that I’d get it. My mother hadn’t taught me how to play because I never showed interest, and she never liked forcing me into things that wouldn’t make me happy. That was why Sophie disliked her.
“She needs to be pushed, Elizabeth. What better way to discipline her?” Not long after that exchange, I’d started ballet. Sure, my mother had suggested it, but it wasn’t like she’d twisted my arm to get me to go. I liked the pretty leotards and all the pink we’d worn—the bows, the tutus, the uncomfortable pointe shoes I learned to love with time. Ballet became a way my mother and I grew close, and it appeased Sophie in some ways because she saw how I excelled at it.
“You have the fingers for it,” she kept going, waving her hand at me absentmindedly as she flipped through some feminine magazine. It was the same one I’d seen my mother look at and begged to read to me.
“You’re too young to learn what’s in these, my sweet Adele. When you’re older,” my mother would promise.
But the day never came because breast cancer took her from us mere months after she was diagnosed. It was fast, aggressive, and ugly. My father had never been quite right after her passing, but he tried for me. For our family. Considering I was only twelve at the time, he did what he could with what knowledge he had having two little sisters—Sophie and Lydia. Plus, they’d both offered to help whenever he needed it. As always, my father had been too proud. It was a trait I got from him.
“My fingers seem to disagree,” I murmured, dropping my hands into my lap and sighing to myself. “Perhaps another instrument?” Please say no. When I gave up dance after circumstances became too much, Sophie insisted I needed something in my life. Even though I’d long since found joy in painting, Sophie told me the hobby I invested in had to be something “appropriate” for young women because getting paint under my nails wasn’t that. It still made me want to roll my eyes, but I relented and tried what she wanted me to. I owed her that much. She did a lot for me after my mother died, starting Sunday brunches so I’d have an excuse to leave the house for a while, and giving me old albums of photos from my father’s childhood, including some of his teenage years that had my mother in them.
“Piano is classy, Adele.” I’d gotten her full attention now, the magazine forgotten on her skirt-covered lap. She wore her usual attire—a tight pencil skirt with a button-up tucked into the waist that showed off her sleek curves. She garnered every straight male’s attention with the swivel of her hips no matter where we were. But she never flaunted, flirted, or gave any of them a hint of hope. “How are you going to get a man otherwise? Most men of prestige