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You took my hurt and healed it
Took what was wrong and made it right
I let you be the one to fill me
Let it be you that made me bright
Never tried to heal my own hurt
Never tried to make my own wrongs right
I’m empty again now that you’re gone
My bright turned dark, right turned wrong
The stitches that sealed my wounds torn open
Seems I was still broken all along.”
Questions hovered on the tip of Zac’s tongue. No wonder Bryan’s betrayal had hit her hard. He’d obviously meant more to her than just a high school-sweetheart-turned-fiancé. But he’d let her down, the way the people who are supposed to love you always seem to do.
Zac knew all too well the damage that could result from that kind of betrayal. How it could claw at you until it stripped away your sense of self-worth. She’d needed Bryan, entrusted herself to him, and been left hanging when it all went to hell.
He swallowed his questions, closed his eyes, and let her softly spoken words play in his head. He could feel the aching sadness woven through them. It echoed something deep inside him he didn’t want to think too much about.
Zac picked up his guitar and let his fingers idly play with the strings as he ran her words through his head again. He didn’t sing, just let his fingers find the melody that unfurled in his mind.
Cassie didn’t talk or interrupt him. He didn’t hear her pen against paper. She just sat there, her soothing presence helping him focus, not distracting him.
When he finally stopped and opened his eyes, her soft smile hit him square in the gut.
It took him a moment to find the words that had fled his mind at the sight. “Can you sing?”
Her brows winged up, and she gave a self-conscious shrug. “I can hold a tune. Why?”
Zac ignored the cautionary voice in his head and crossed the living room. He sat on the couch and angled himself toward her. “Sing the words for me.”
She shook her head. “I—”
“Don’t think about it. Just go with the melody.” He started playing before she protested again. At first, he watched her as he played the same chords a few times until she nodded that she had it. He kept watching her when her lashes fluttered shut, and she started to sing. But when her voice emerged, hesitantly at first, then a little stronger, he breathed in and let his eyelids drift closed.
She could do more than hold a tune. She had a beautiful voice, pure and melodic. Hearing her sing the words she’d spoken before, weaving them through the notes he was playing, sent a different kind of pleasure humming through his veins. When she got to the end, she opened her eyes, but he just nodded at her and kept playing. “Again.”
She started from the beginning. This time their gazes stayed locked the whole time, and the music and words flowed together effortlessly.
Zac’s pulse kicked into high gear. It was fucking intense looking into Cassie’s sapphire blue eyes as she sang about her pain to the music her words had drawn from him. Maybe even more intense than when he’d watched her orgasm with his fingers deep inside her.
She reached the end again and stopped singing. His fingers stilled on the strings, and they stared at each other. A slow flush spread over her cheeks.
Zac’s gaze drifted to her lips. They parted, formed his name, though no sound came out.
Hunger pulsed through him. A hunger to be closer to her. To touch and taste her again.
Fuck the consequences. He wanted her. She wanted him. They both knew this wasn’t real. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t take advantage of the situation. Everyone was passed out in the bunks, and Maggie was driving. He could have her right here. He could get as close to her as was physically possible, and it didn’t have to mean anything more than two consenting adults giving in to their attraction.
He knew he was only trying to justify what he wanted to do, but right that second, he was beyond caring.
Zac put his guitar down on the couch behind him and reached for her. He dragged his thumb along her full bottom lip, then slid his hand into her hair, cupped the back of her head and tugged her toward him. She came with a breathy sigh of surrender, her fingers curling into his shirt.
