“Hmm?” Callie asked.
“The song you’re humming. What is it?”
“Oh,” Callie dropped her eyes to her hands in her lap, stretching her fingers wide before balling them up as if she wanted to hide them. “It’s nothing. Just something that’s been stuck in my head.”
“Who wrote it?” He was confident he already knew the answer. He recognized that melancholic chord progression. He’d been the one to teach her how to add variation to it one summer a million years ago.
“No one. It’s just something I’ve been playing with.”
She got out of the car, and he followed her down the drive towards the entrance. Jamie’s restaurant wasn’t just on the waterfront; it was constructed on a wharf so that the building appeared to be floating on the water. The gravel drive was lined with glowing lanterns, giving the entire structure an ethereal quality. The raised garden beds on either side of the main entrance were overflowing with herbs, making the humid summer air thick with the scent of dill and thyme. He caught her hand as they approached the large glass doors, interlacing their fingers.
“Soyouwrote it,” he said.
“I guess. But it only exists in my head. I haven’t written it down.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just a tune I hear in my head,” she huffed, obviously annoyed with his persistent questioning. “It’s nothing special.”
He stopped walking, pulling her up short next to him and turned to face her. “What are you talking about? Of course—”
“I’m not twelve anymore, Noah. You don’t have to humor me.”
“I’m not. I never humored you.” Noah cupped her jaw with his free hand and tilted her face back up to meet his eyes, squeezing her hand still interlaced with his. “You know that, right?”
She looked away, avoiding his eyes, but that wouldn’t do. For some reason he couldn’t name, it was vitally important she understood how much he enjoyed her song, even if he was being a grumpy asshole. His thumb swept back and forth over her cheekbone, the tender touch prompting her to meet his gaze.
“It’s a beautiful song, Callie. You’ve always written beautiful songs.”
“I don’t write anymore. My hands…” She flexed and bunched the hand at her side, a motion she repeated often.
He pressed his thumb into the center of her palm, massaging the tendons and muscles of her hand, their fingers still laced together. “What about your hands?” He had his own suspicions, but he wanted to know for sure, to understand exactly what had taken the music from her.
“They hurt all the time. If they’re not swollen, they’re stiff. They’re slow and clumsy and—” She exhaled a frustrated breath through her nose, the force of it sending a tendril of her hair up into the air. “What’s the point of writing songs? I can’t play them anymore.”
The resigned sadness in her eyes pulled at his chest, as though someone had tied a noose around his heart and was slowly tightening the rope.
“But you still hear them,” he said, his voice low.
She nodded.
“You can’t play at all?”
“A few notes here and there.” She gave a wry smile, the expression all wrong on her soft features. He wanted to wipe it away, along with the crease between her brows. “Guess it’s a good thing I had that double major to fall back on. I never finished my composition degree anyway. Looks like only one of us is going to be a famous composer after all,” she said with a strangled chuckle.
“You’re still composing,” he said, his hand sliding around to the back of her neck through the silken waves of her hair.
She rolled her eyes. “I was humming, Noah. I’m not exactly Clara Schumann.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “No. That song was much more reminiscent of Morricone.”
A throat cleared ahead of them, and Noah dropped his hand from Callie’s neck, turning to find Liam watching them, his hands shoved in his pockets and his brows furrowed. “Livi’s waiting for you,” he said. “They’re ready to start dinner.”
The dining room was sparsely decorated in creams and sage green, three walls of floor to ceiling windows proudly displaying the view of the ocean. Jamie, in his chef’s coat, stood to one side of the room, laughing with Pattie and Maggie. At the other end of the long natural wood table, Noah’s and Callie’s mothers sat, deep in conversation with Liv and Daemon.
“There they are! The love birds have arrived!” Mrs. Van Aller chirruped over the cacophony of conversation and laughter.
“I thoughtwewere the love birds,” Liv joked, pressing her palm to Daemon’s chest.
