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I breathed harshly as Nino’s despair became music, as my fear let the melody burst through me with hard, short notes. Emotion was everywhere and I could not stop and felt like this was the only way I could get through this.
Heavy steps sounded and my fingers slid off the keys as Remo stalked into the room and toward me, still only in his briefs and a look of murder on his face. I stiffened but didn’t follow my impulse to run. Instead, I lowered my shaking hands to my lap and returned Remo’s gaze. He stopped halfway into the room as if he was torn between anger and despair, but then he bridged the remaining distance between us, dwarfing me with his height and sheer, brutal presence.
He leaned down, and I drew back but didn’t look away. “What the fuck did you do?” he rasped.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. What could I have possibly done to unhinge Nino like that? I was only a woman. I didn’t have any power over him.
“Bullshit.”
“Remo, leave her alone.” It was Nino’s voice, strangled, raw, and yet cool and controlled. I sagged with relief. Remo stepped back from me and turned to his brother, opening my view to Nino as well.
Like Remo, Nino was only in briefs, and yet there were layers over layers of barriers I could never bridge. His expression was the blank canvas I’d grown used to, but there was something haunted, something hunted in his gray eyes as he stared at Remo; a look passed between the brothers that spoke of horrors I could not grasp, a look that made me realize that one brother could never be without the other.
Whatever had shaped them into ice and fire, it had also forged them together in a way that couldn’t be broken. Maybe Nino had become the cold flood against Remo’s raging inferno. Perhaps Remo was the outlet for emotions Nino had locked behind impenetrable walls. I couldn’t and would never be able to understand these two men.
Nino tore his eyes away from his brother and looked at me. My chest tightened with relief and warmth, and I wanted to go to him and hug him, wanted to soothe him with words, give him comfort with my touch, but Nino wasn’t like that. He didn’t need comfort, or tenderness, or love…
“Play that song again,” he said quietly.
I touched my fingertips to the keys and began the song, a song that wasn’t just a string of notes but a gaping hole in my heart. Nino approached me slowly, and as he did, Remo backed away a few steps but kept watching us.
Nino lowered himself beside me on the bench, but I didn’t stop playing. I closed my eyes and let the music flow, wishing he could understand that this song encompassed everything I felt for him, everything I’d ever felt for him. Then new notes rang out, and my eyes jerked open, my fingers faltering as Nino began to play the song as well. What?
He added his own notes, and I realized it was on purpose. I joined in and played my melody, the two melodies seeming to flow around each other. It was more beautiful than anything I’d ever heard. Nino’s eyes were on my face as he played the song from memory without faltering, but I had to return my gaze to the keys because I couldn’t understand the look in his eyes.
Remo met my gaze briefly over the piano, and his expression was just as unreadable. Then he turned around and left. I didn’t understand any of this, but hearing Nino’s melody merge with mine, creating something inexplicably beautiful … it felt like a gift.
Nino and I played until the sun rose over the mansion and filled the room with light. Our melody had evolved, a string of beautiful notes, and my heart seemed to burst with emotions when our fingers finally lifted off the keys. Nino looked exhausted, and my own body yearned for sleep too, but at the same time, I felt like screaming my feelings from the rooftops.
I stood and took Nino’s hand. His cool gaze flitted up to me. “Let’s go to bed,” I whispered.
Something shifted in his eyes as if for once there was something that scared him, as if he didn’t trust himself while asleep.
“We don’t have to sleep, but you need to rest for a bit,” I told him, and finally he got up from the piano bench and followed me upstairs.
Nino lay down, and I stretched out beside him, close but not touching. I wanted to press up against him, give him closeness. In the past he’d held me to comfort me, not because he required that kind of attention.
My gaze flickered across his face. His eyes were distant, and there was tightness to his mouth that suggested he was still fighting something within him.
