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My breath hitched in my throat. Xoan Kennedy wasnervous. With me, offering to sing a song he wrote after I left.
I should tell him I didn’t do encores either, that I was a one and done girl.
My mouth opened. Insanity fell out.
“Uh, sure. Come on up.”
A small smile lit his face as he dropped his hands and found mine, winding our fingers together.
This is a really bad idea.
I closed my eyes, throwing up a mantra I knew wouldn't stick.
You can take this bad boy.
No, I couldn't. He wrecked me emotionally last week to the point I was back at his door begging for his help tonight.
For his kisses and touches and so much more.
And to get away from Lance.
You are...
My shoulders drooped a little, my mantras ebbing. I’d already promised and his touch felt too damn good.
“This way,” I whispered, and unwilling to break contact with him, I took the lead.
***
Iperched on my bedwhile Xoan wandered around my dorm, picking up random items that came with the premade room, studying each like he knew they weren’t mine.
“You didn’t get assigned a roommate?”
“Apparently marr– uh, scholarship kids share together.” I shrugged. That last bit wasn’t a lie as far as I knew from the few living upstairs together. “I was the last odd number.”
“Are you lonely?” He stopped touching things and stood in front of me, slipping his hands into his jeans pockets. “Here on your own?”
No.I tried to lie but that wouldn’t come out around him. “Sometimes,” I whispered, though not in the way he meant. “That’s stupid. I love space to myself. Just...”
He nodded. “Emptiness is infectious.”
I blinked. “Yeah.”
“Can I sit?” He watched me for an answer, and I felt the moment barriers erected between us, barriers I created when I ran.
“Uh, sure.” I scooted back as he grabbed a guitar from its case, my drawing, and worked his black denim clad ass onto the bed beside me.
“I love this.” He placed the paper on my knee, running his fingers over the lines. “I’ve been trying to get someone to understand what I wanted for years. Music I can make. Stick figures, not even. Now I’ve got you.”
Something in my chest glowed at that. “So I have a job?”
“You have a job.” He nodded, flipping the page and setting his phone to record the audio, twanging the strings and tweaking one the slightest amount, adjusting to something only he could hear that was out of tune. Apparently. “And right now, that job is to tell me how shitty this is, alright?”
“Um, okay?”I am so far out of my depth.
Xoan started to play a melody I’d never heard before but that fit the words we’d both written on the front of the page so well I could hear them before his mouth opened. When he sang the first lines softly, my heart lurched at the emotion in his voice.
I glanced down at what he’d scribbled on the back, knowing next to nothing about music apart from that I liked what he created.
