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“What do you want from me, then?”
Blackmore shrugs. “I want to have fun, mess around, and not worry about anything. Do you know how much easier it is to get lost in someone else’s problems than to deal with your own?”
I scrape the last bit of pudding out of the bowl. No. I don’t know that. And his words make me feel like the most selfish person, but they also provide an interesting perspective on my life. He’s been doing this all evening, telling me things I’d never listen to from anyone else. I’d love to know why he makes me pause and think. Is it his voice? The roguish glint in his eyes? The fact that he doesn’t balk at anything?
Blackmore detaches from the sink and grabs the hem of my short sleeve, tugging me after him from the kitchen. “Let’s play, even if you don’t want to. You know how it is. As soon as you play four measures, you’ll be begging for more.”
His fingertips brush against my arm once, and almost every thought in my mind snuffs out. We’ve touched plenty today, but this is not the same. The second-long contact leaves regrets and heightened awareness as parting gifts. It’s now that I notice that his hands aren’t soft. His fingers are long and thin and covered in tiny old scars, and the guitar calluses on his fingertips are thick, a permanent addition to his body.
He pauses by the door to a room in the back of his house and pushes it open. Mild yellow light flickers to life. It hits my face, and I step back into the shadows.
“Hey. Last chance. Just say it.I don’t want to play with you. It…?”
“It”—I gulp in a breath before rapid-firing the rest of it—“it’s too much pressure, okay? Every time I pick up a guitar, everyone holds their breath.Laurel’s finally going to sing the songs she wrote.” I bite my tongue, realizing I’m spilling too many beans, same as earlier on our dash through the coffee shop. He may be offering to be my venting buddy, but that doesn’t mean I should take him up on that offer.
Silence arrests the space between us. Blackmore doesn’t say anything. Agonizing seconds pass, stretching into an eternity, then he moves toward me at last. His hands encircle my upper arms, gentle but firm. I can’t move, afraid he’d let go.
“Play one song with me, Laurel. One song won’t break you.”
“It might.” Not the music itself, but the more time I spend with him, the more I feel like I’m losing myself.
“If you break,” he whispers, “I have Super Glue.”
Laughter tints his last words, and the spell he’s been casting on me shatters. I shove him away. Blackmore responds with a grin that speaks volumes—he won and he knows it.
“You still have my car keys,” he says before disappearing inside the room, leaving me gaping and rubbing my arms.
This guy is trouble of the worst kind.
The kind I don’t need at all.
Ever.
But as I turn to go, free from Blackmore’s magnetizing gaze, a snippet of an earlier conversation sneaks up on me.
I wouldn’t have run.
Fire blazes inside my chest, hot and decisive. It was my constant companion when I was a teen set on climbing every possible mountain. I press my hand to my sternum, falling into this feeling. How I missed the buzz that spreads over my skin right before a fight. It swirls through my head, tickles my sides, and tells me to turn around, march into that room, and show him up.
I scowl at myself. Yeah, right. That’s what I usually do.
That’s what I used to do.
I could do it again.
Track 11
Her Knife Is in My Back
Jace
One, two, three, four, five…Counting seconds in my head, I pick up a Fender 1975 Telecaster Blonde, plug it into an amp, turn the amp on—
Laurel clears her throat behind me.
I stop myself from swinging around and clapping my hands together and turn to face her slowly like I don’t care at all. Only I do. She stayed. Her eyes are narrowed, disliking, distrusting, maybe even disapproving. She’s not fooling anyone though. If she really wanted to go, she would’ve left already.
“Yes?”
