him. Her smile was too bright, too forced. “Can I play?” She winked, head tilting back. “The piano?” Even the joking banter didn’t cover the unknown hurt in her eyes. Would she ever trust him enough to share it?
He cupped her face and closed his mouth over hers in a gentle press of understanding and the hope that they’d get there. This said more than his words ever could. The sweep of her tongue, wet slick of lips and sweet taste of something too beautiful to define.
He lingered over the kiss, the heat simmering in a languid pulse of more.
Her grip on his waist eased right before she tried to pull back. He held one last kiss to her lips before he let her go. Energy spun around them, loaded and dangerous for the power it held. So fast and intense, it had the strength to freak him the fuck out.
But it didn’t.
She blinked, brown eyes hiding along with her bottom lip.
“Please,” he said, retreating under the weight of her uncertainty. “Play.” He stepped back, hand skimming down her cheek before he motioned to the piano.
She spun away, strides sure as she went to the front of the piano. “Do you play it at all?” Her expression was muted when she glanced at him, hand hovering over the fallboard.
Not in ten years.
The answer dug at his throat and he struggled with the need to breathe. Blood roared in his head, getting louder with his tumble into the past.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, swallowed and managed a brief headshake. He’d prepared himself for this moment, to hear the notes played once again. That was part of the original expectation when he’d invited her over to see it. A hurdle he’d thought he could finally handle with her help.
The first ping rang clear and true through the room. It lifted into him, spread then faded. Another followed, a slow scale picked out in a practiced flow set at a turtle’s pace. Did she somehow know how hard this was for him?
He lifted his head to find her watching him, not the keys. Her deep assessment rammed his heart into overdrive and set off a fluttering tic in his jaw. But he didn’t break her gaze. Like with the guitar, she knew he could play the graceful instrument that stood between them, yet she hadn’t dug into why he didn’t. She let him keep his demons.
“It sounds beautiful,” she said, glancing down to pick out another set of higher notes.
His throat was clogged with old fears and lost promises from long ago. So many tears were tied to that piano, and just as many laughs, which was why he couldn’t part with it.
“I have it cared for quarterly.” Far more than was needed. The home humidifier along with the one in-case also helped to keep it in top condition.
He grazed his fingers over the lid. It was his baby, even if a part of him loathed everything it represented. Loss, love, home, death, endings—they were all tied to the inanimate object like weighty anchors.
She lifted a brow, questions heavy in her expression. Or was it his own guilt pressing the questions on himself? Whether it was or not, she wordlessly edged the padded bench out and slid onto it.
His chest eased at that. It was taking everything he had just to hold himself together for what was next. He couldn’t handle answering the many whys too.
He’d thought himself prepared, especially after the scales. How very wrong he’d been. The sweet start of the light, flirty notes sucked the air from his lungs. He clenched his eyes closed and focused on breathing. On the speed and flow of the notes. On anything besides the memories assaulting him.
Emma at that piano, her hair a halo of white gold around her fresh face, stunning blue eyes closed as she focused internally on the notes. Him playing beside his sister. Their grandmother tutoring them. Every note, every song played over years of lessons and countless performances.
It was love. The best he’d known and the thing he’d clung to until his parents had shipped him to prep school. That was when hockey finally overtook the piano. Hockey had filled the loneliness with more noise and a completely different family.
The notes faded, silence falling, but his eyes refused to open. Each beat of his heart drummed against his ribs and pulsed in his head, the heavy thump, thump, thump grounding. The second section of the sonata started,