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He snorted. “No.” Yes. This conversation was making him more anxious than the actual love declaration, which was so natural he hadn’t considered it awkward until Mena had gotten tense and frosty. You couldn’t fall in love with someone so quickly with nothing but sweat and semen to stick you together.
Could you?
Nah. That was lust. And there was no lack of that between them. Except that’s how it was for Evie and Jay. Stuck on each other from the moment they met and wild with it. Absolute knuckleheads not to respect it, wasted years being apart. And Teela and Haydn. One dirty weekend was all it took for them to know they’d found a mate for life, and they’d had mad realistic barriers to making it together.
Lightning striking twice.
Three times a charm?
Not bloody likely. “This thing with us.” He brought her hand to his chest, held it over his heart, unsure how to go on.
“Let’s not name it.”
“Yeah, fair call.” Made life easier. Made him feel twitchy, so what was that about? What if Mena was the one for him and he didn’t pay enough attention, let her slip away before he knew what kind of music they could make together. He’d done that once before. Swore he’d never do it again, but he’d never been tested since.
Motherfuck.
This was a test.
And he needed to ace it. Meanwhile, he needed to square something with her. “What I said before about giving up the piano. That’s only half of it.”
The water was level with her nipples, her breasts so buoyant he almost forgot what he intended to say next. “The real reason I gave up playing is that I kept freezing on stage.”
She put her hand to his face and he leaned a little into it. He never talked about this. He’d let it beat him and there was a part of him that was ashamed about that.
“I could play anything in the practice room but once I was out there in a monkey suit with an orchestra and an audience, I was a big meatbag of terror. It was like everything I knew, all the muscle memory was wiped out.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“I’d shake so bad, my hands didn’t function properly.”
She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her forehead to his.
“Jay used to get sick, technicolor yawn before every show. Sometimes after as well. This was different. I could barely talk, barely walk. I made mistake after mistake until the only thing I could do to make it better was stop. Afterwards I wanted to rip holes in the world I was so angry with myself.”
“That must’ve been frightening.” She kissed his cheek, gentle, forgiving.
“That first time, I thought, we all thought, I could overcome it. I tried, I really tried and so did my teachers. We changed up what we could, ditched the formal suit, let me be more me, programmed shorter, easier pieces. But it happened over and over again. I saw a therapist for a while, but even when I could get through a piece it was like I was playing with my toes.”
“Oh sweetheart, was it really that bad?”
“While they were still in my kicks.”
Mena rubbed the back of her knuckles against his cheek and he took a full breath. This was no picnic. He was skin on skin in a spa with a woman whose body he craved, and he was ripping his psyche apart for her instead of ploughing into her to their mutual satisfaction.
“I’m surprised you even own a piano now.”
“Took me time to work out I didn’t hate the instrument or playing it. I hated the performance. I didn’t want to be a soloist, the star, up front. I didn’t belong there.”
“But you’re a hell of a performer.”
“My drum kit is up the back and I get to run the show, the whole band from there. I don’t need to be in the spotlight. I don’t need people to remember my name.”
Mena rubbed her finger along the column of his neck. “You have lots of personal fans.”
“Yeah, but a way smaller number and they don’t make my life weird. Not like Jay. Abel had a stalker last year, it wasn’t good.”
“I remember the head nod at the beach.”
