AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The last time I’d been here had been with her, and I couldn’t sit at that piano and not remember that. In fact, everywhere I looked I thought I saw her. The bright light of her eyes, the curve of her shoulder in a whisper thin shirt. Her hair, blue-black in the light.
But it was a trick. She would never come here. Never again, I’d made sure of that.
And ninety-nine percent of the time there wasn’t a question in my mind that I’d done the right thing. That walking away from Juliette had been the best thing for her, as painful as it had been at the time.
But tonight, I wished things were different. That I’d had a choice ten years ago that could have included her.
My shirt, soaked from neck to waist, stuck to me. I took it off, flinging the linen over my shoulder, and untucked my undershirt from the damp waistband of my old blue jeans. I’d forgotten what a workout Dixieland Jazz was.
The pier where Remy kept a few flat bottom fishing boats dipped under my weight, the water lapping quietly against aluminum and wood and whatever reptile was waiting for me to misstep and be dinner.
My lower back and wrists screamed from the abuse they were taking. Tomorrow I’d pay a fortune in aspirin for this good time, but I was just too damn content to care right now.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this good. Maybe when I first got to Vegas. When I first found Dad and started winning some money. But then those good days just started to blend and the good became okay. And then they became bad.
And then it was just my life.
But this—friends, music, this wired and thrilling sense of joy—this wasn’t anything I was used to. It was like remembering who I was—or who I had been.
Behind me, a shoe scuffed the worn wood and the pier dropped slightly under my feet.
A chill ran over my skin, a prickly awareness that told me I wasn’t alone. But then the scent of lemons cut through the mud-scented swamp air and I knew who was out here with me.
My eyes closed on a sigh.
“Go away,” I said. I couldn’t handle this. I was too raw tonight, too much myself to keep up all the bullshit, the lies I needed to tell her to keep the peace. “Please, just go.”
JULIETTE
I can’t. God, I wish I could, but I am stuck here. With you.
“I’ll go,” I said. “But I need a few answers.”
“What have answers ever gotten you, Juliette?” he asked, his back still to me. His white undershirt stuck to him, hugging the muscles that my fingers and hands and lips remembered all too well.
“Is what they’re saying in there true?”
“Well,” Tyler laughed and finally faced me. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead, but those blue eyes pulsed and glowed in the dark. Tyler took a swig from the beer bottle in his hand. “If they’re saying I’m the best piano player this side of Mississippi, then yes, I would have to admit—”
“Cut the bullshit, Tyler!” I cried, surprised and infuriated at the gaping cracks in my composure. “For once. Please. For me. Cut the crap.”
He blinked and after a moment shrugged. “What do you want to know?” He asked before taking another drink, his eyes never leaving mine. I felt raw, naked under his gaze.
“Did you donate money to Remy after the last storm?”
Tyler licked his lips and nodded.
“And again, recently?”
“After I won the World Series thing,” he said. “I know a lot of the folks around here, especially the musicians, don’t have any savings.”
“And you just happened to have a ton of cash.”
“As a matter of fact—” His grin split the darkness like a knife and my breath hitched.
Unbelievably, tears scorched my eyes.
“Hey, hey,” Tyler said, stepping up the pier toward me. “Don’t get all worked up here. I’m still an asshole at heart.”
His expression was that potent mix of boy and man and my composure cracked further. I winced under the power of my old love. My old longings.
It wasn’t enough that he’d left me, but he’d taken a huge part of me with him. My heart. The future I’d planned. My…body. Or my connection to it. For any man but this one—this blue-eyed devil in worn jeans and cowboy boots—I was stone-cold.
“I met your father tonight,” I said, my voice a knife I jabbed at his chest. He winced and I didn’t want to like that so much. “I went to your house to talk to you about Miguel, and you can imagine my surprise when your father answers the door.”
“He’s harmless.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie?”
“Because he’s my dad!” he cried, as if it were that simple. And maybe for Tyler it was, and that was the problem. Tyler’s loyalties were those of a ten-year-old boy. “Look, full disclosure. His roommates in Los Angeles were arrested for credit-card fraud—”
