A Love Song for Always - Piper Lawson Page 0,11

before I knew what love meant.

We went to bed together last night, and the next time I woke, it was still dark and her side was empty. Thankfully, this morning, light is streaming around the edge of the curtains, and I know without looking that I’m not alone.

Annie’s on her side, facing me. Her face is relaxed in sleep, her lips parted, her red hair a silky mess strewn across the white pillow. Lashes a few shades darker than her hair kiss her cheeks, the faintest dots of a few freckles from the scant sun in New York across her tiny nose. Her shoulder, bare above the blankets except for a skinny purple strap, rises and falls with her slow breath.

I want this wedding. I want my fiancée in a dress designed to rob me of my soul. Want her swearing herself to me.

But the world has grown bigger since we were teenagers. We’ve both changed too.

I went from not wanting children to wanting them with her. And it’s important for me to provide for them, to be more than my parents were. Pulling in crowds is fleeting, and it’s not the life I want to live forever even if I could.

Still, those concerns feel miles away as I skim the back of my hand over that pale shoulder. The callouses on my fingers mean I don’t feel her the same, but they’re part of me. Part of us.

My palm slips beneath the sheets to find her waist between her panties and tank top, skimming up her ribcage. “Morning, Six.”

The words are a whisper across her skin. My hand finds her hip as I brush my lips over her cheek.

She shivers. After a moment’s hesitation, she moves closer, not away. My arousal presses against her, and she rubs softly on my shaft.

I brush the hair from her face, dropping kisses along her jaw and her throat while she sighs.

The clock on the nightstand says it’s after eight. Normally, she’d have been up long since given she’s on New York time.

And that reminds me Jax and Haley will be here soon.

Ignoring that reality, I move over her and slide a finger between her thighs, beneath the panel of her thong that’s already damp.

Annie blinks up at me, sleepy. Her breathing goes shallow, as if even half-awake, she knows my touch and what I’m going to do to her, and she spreads her thighs. It’s humbling, the way she wants me.

“Don’t move,” I murmur. “Don’t change a damn thing.”

I memorize the look of half-woken desire in her eyes before I drag the fabric to the side and sink into her. She’s tight and slick. Just like the rest of her, her body is the perfect combination to bring me to my knees.

Her back arches, her nails digging into my forearms. I thrust into her again and again, building a rhythm she chases with her hips in slow, languid moves.

Annie’s close—I know from the little sounds I’ve heard her make in every corner of our New York apartment, once or twice backstage at her show, and everywhere in between.

She comes first. I make sure of it.

I brush my lips across her temple. “Go back to sleep.”

I pad to the shower.

We have a big day ahead of us.

I clean up, dress, and head to the gourmet kitchen. While coffee brews, I check in on work things for the tour. There’s a gig beneath the gig that no one talks about, and that’s what takes the sweat and blood and tears. It’s not the thousands of hours slaving for your craft, it’s the next thousands traveling, working with studios and venues and marketing, connecting with fans.

I look through some of the merch they studio sent—T-shirts, a tour poster with a rose superimposed on part of the image.

Fans love my tattoos, but they don’t know what they’re all for. The compass, the ship, the rose. Maybe they can guess. But when anyone asks in interviews, I need to have some privacy.

The vine roses curling down my left hand, for instance. The hand that got fucked up when we were mugged one night in New York. I’ve made my peace with it. I used to think it was my tour that did that, and in part, it was.

But the tour was only the backdrop for me learning to live with it. She helped me—her presence, her absence. It always comes back to her.

Annie’s the rose overtop, bridging the scars.

The one that holds me together.

The doorbell has me