“What?” I prodded. He’d been about to say something, and I didn’t want him to retreat into his head. I liked it so much when he shared with me. I loved being given the opportunity to make him smile. I wanted to help carry hismental load. I tugged him to the couch in the studio, quickly moving some paper so we could both sit. He didn’t protest as I guided him to sit down.
“I wasn’t mad.” He swallowed, and again, his throat seemed to snag. “I just felt sad. I guess. And that is somehow worse.” He scrunched his face and looked away.
“Worse?”
“I wanted to be mad. To somehow justify the past few months. But I just thought about how much fun we had. Maybe because I had just been drumming before seeing him. It was like I jumped through time. I wanted to tell him about Cath and you and Green Valley and how weird it was to be here without him and about all the changes too.”
“You miss him,” I whispered.
“Apparently.” He nodded, again looking away to push down whatever was trying to come back.
“Have you thought about talking to him? I mean, really talking. Not the conversations in your head? I bet there are things he’d like to say too. It doesn’t have to be a knock-down, drag-out thing. People can’t read minds. We project whole narratives but don’t know what they’re thinking. Either way, it might be better to have closure. Sometimes you need to have the hard conversation, even if you’ve known them your whole life.”
“Especially then.”
“It might make you feel better.”
“Or a whole lot worse.”
“I don’t think you feel very good now, Leo. Are you happy out here? Out in Green Valley? After reaching the heights you did, it can’t be easy to be back here.”
I was terrified to know his answer. It wasn’t fair to expect that much of this new friendship, but I wanted him to be happy more than anything.
“It wasn’t easy to come home. For a long time, I wondered why I did. Lately, I’m starting to think I might know what brought me back,” he said.
The way his gaze moved over my face caused something in my stomach to flip and fill my chest with hope. My feelings for Leo had continued to plague me these past few weeks, no matter how I tried to rationalize them away.
I broke the eye contact first, glancing around the room. I saw the drum kit and suddenly remembered everything that had happened prior to the arrival of Vander.
“You sounded great too, by the way. I’ve never seen you play in person. It was...” Incredible. Amazing. Sweaty. Sexy. Riled me up faster than a GIF ofPedro Pascal winking at the camera. None of these felt like appropriate things to say. “Really cool.”
“You saw me?” he asked on a swallow.
When he played, he seemed entirely comfortable in his body. He played like he’d been taken over by a higher power. He wasn’t doing anything for anybody else. He just existed, and he deserved to feel that way all the time.
“I may have peeked for a minute or two,” I admitted.
He turned to me so that his knees nudged the leg I had tucked under me. “You liked it?” Something in the way he asked shifted the air in the room.
“Very much.” I flushed and swallowed with effort. Maybe I hadn’t been so subtle in my thoughts. “I wish I heard more.”
“You want to watch me?” he asked, his words innocent enough but his gaze dark with intent.
I whimpered and nodded.
CHAPTER 23
LEO
Vander’s unexpected arrival scrambled my brain but was not something I could process, not when Mari was so close and looking at me like that. She’d been here. She’d protected me.
Before that, I’d been pulsing with adrenaline from playing. To know she’d been watching...and liking it made me feel insane, primal pride.
Mari brought me back to the present. She always did. Because when I was with her, there was no other time or place I wanted to be.
I preened at being able to impress her.
I wanted to make Mari wet for me.
