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It took all his strength but he moved slow, giving her all the opportunities to back away, to push him off. But she only sat there, quivering.
He kissed her. Soft lips, slightly chapped. She gasped and he could taste the inside of her mouth. His tongue swept in and he tilted her head and she wrapped her fingers in his shirt and they went up in flames. Hot and hard. Nothing and then inferno.
She made this sound in her throat. A moany, needy sound, and he was ready to pull her into his lap and give her everything he had, just to hear that sound again.
All at once, she leaned back, breaking the kiss and he let her go. They were breathing hard and he wiped a hand over his mouth, wet from her mouth.
“I…ah…um.”
“I’m not fucking joking, Helen,” he said.
She was silent for a long time and when he looked over at her she was staring right at him. “Why?”
He reached out, ran a hand all along her neck and felt the goose bumps and the breaking of her breath, the pounding of her heart. And then he grabbed her hand and put it on his chest, where his own heart pounded. This was the moment for him to tell the truth. Because she’d made an impact on him when they were young. Because she was imprinted somewhere on his soul.
But he went with a more basic truth.
“Because I feel it, too.”
After a moment she pulled against his hand and he let her go. “We should…”
“Sure,” he said.
She started up the truck and pulled back onto the empty highway. The silence wasn’t awkward, it was only loaded. Heavy. Each of them caught up in their own thoughts about the other.
The navigation told her to take the next exit and they were only a few minutes from their destination.
“Hey, what are we doing here?” she asked. “At your bass player’s house? Are we picking him up and taking him with us?”
She looked over at him and then back at the road and then back at him when he stayed silent.
“Micah?”
Shit. He’d forgotten to tell her.
“We’re firing him.”
Chapter Fourteen
Helen
You have arrived at your destination, the voice on her phone chirped.
“Is this…are you sure?” she asked. Because from what she could tell, the destination was a dirt road leading nowhere.
“Yeah. His cabin is just on the other side of the hill. That’s the driveway.”
She did not turn down that driveway.
“Helen.”
“Why are you firing him?”
“Because the band voted,” he said.
“Why do they want him out?”
“Because he’s…he’s not a stage performer. He’s amazing in the studio and a brilliant song writer, but he’s not the guy you need in front of thousands of people.”
“Can he learn to be?”
“Probably. But we need someone who can pull their weight right now. The band is not wrong. The band is not ever wrong, really.”
“Still, you don’t want to do this, do you?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.” He gave her his little lopsided grin that made him look like a kid who’d tracked in the mud, and he was real sorry about that. Over the course of this drive she’d been creating a catalog of Micah Sullivan facial expressions.
There was the I’m charming and I know it.
There was the Please don’t recognize me. They got that one when they stopped for gas and more coffee.
There was the I’m listening to everything you say and memorizing it for some purpose you will never know about. He’d looked at her like that the whole time she’d been talking about Evan. God. Evan. It was so strange talking about him…to Micah Sullivan, of all people.
And her current favourite—I am going to fuck you until you see stars.
Yeah. That was a real good one.
It had been difficult to believe it, honestly. But the kiss helped. Hoo-boy, that kiss… She hadn’t been kissed like that, maybe ever. No offense to Evan, but he didn’t kiss her like he was going to die without her. Like he needed her. It was the kind of kiss that changed what you thought was possible. Her body was still lit up from it and would be for days. Weeks, probably.
Years.
She turned down the driveway, bumping over the ruts. The meadows on either side of the truck were full of grass and mustard plants and lilacs in bloom. Spring in New York State was a really pretty thing. At the top of the hill, a small cabin and a body of water that wasn’t quite a lake but was bigger than a pond were visible.
It was beautiful. Removed and rustic. Totally still. The sun was setting behind them and turning the pond gold.
“The bass player for your band lives here?”
“No. A bass player I have to fire lives here.”
A door opened and a man stepped out onto the covered porch. He wore a blue sweater and had long dark hair. He lifted his hand and smiled as she pulled to a stop in the gravel driveway.
