Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
I swallowed hard when he didn’t finish. Me? I wanted to ask. But that question would never come from my mouth. Especially now. Especially after this. I needed to end this session. I needed to get away from Cromwell. When I’d first met him and he was rude, when he was unfriendly in the first days of the semester, it had been easy not to see his good looks. It was easy to ignore the way his muscles flexed in his arms, turning his tattoos into living, breathing pieces of art.
But seeing the real him at the piano that night, his struggle with amending my work, and right now, trying to help me play better…speaking to me so quietly, so vulnerably, his voice deep and husky, like another symphony he’d brought to life. The fingerprint of his perfectly created music still thick in the air around us, it was too easy to see the real him.
To see how handsome he truly was.
“I…” He cleared his throat. It was the push I needed to clear the Cromwell-induced fog that had clouded my mind. I looked at him from under my lashes, hoping they would offer a layer of protection from whatever I was feeling right now. But he paused when he met my eyes. His cheeks were bursting with red.
“You what?” I whispered. It sounded like a scream in the silent room.
“I’ve got more,” he admitted, as if it were the worst kind of confession.
“More?”
He pointed at the sheet at the piano. My stomach rolled in excitement. “The composition?”
Cromwell nodded once, tightly.
“Can I hear it?” Cromwell looked to the side. His wide shoulders were stiff. I held my breath. I didn’t dare breathe as he looked about the room, darting his eyes to everything but me, the piano, and the truth—that he was born to do this.
My eyes watered as I watched him. Because whatever it was that held him back from giving this to himself, from embracing who he was, was all-encompassing. It was smothering him.
It seemed like it was destroying him.
In that moment, I felt a kinship with him. He would never know, but he and I…we weren’t so different.
It wasn’t intentional. My hand lifted and landed on his bare shoulder, a familial crest painted in bright colors on his olive skin. It was instinctive. It was the need to help this closed-off boy and show him without words or explanation that I understood.
Cromwell froze under my touch. I kept my eyes on my hand. Goose bumps spread along his skin like wildfire. A red rose in the eye socket of a skull twitched under my fingers.
Cromwell closed his eyes and took a long inhale. I didn’t move my hand, in case it was the energy he needed to show me this. To give himself this. His hands moved to the keys, fingers in position. He didn’t need to see where he positioned them; he knew exactly where each key was, a comfort you only got from years and years of practice.
Cromwell exhaled and the music began to play.
I was frozen. Trapped on the outside of his world, looking in but not able to penetrate the bubble. My chest rose and fell quickly, but I didn’t make a sound. I wouldn’t pollute the melody, wouldn’t tarnish the beauty that spilled from his soul with the sound of my stuttered breathing.
I wanted to watch him. I wanted to drink in the vision that was Cromwell Dean at a piano. But my eyelids closed, giving me no other choice but to awaken my sense of hearing. And I smiled. I heard everything he was feeling. Sorrow in the slow notes. Flickers of joy in the quickness of the high notes, and the utter devastation in the low.
I remembered the first time I saw Cromwell. This summer, in the club, allowing his beats to wash over me this way. There was no comparison. I felt nothing but disappointment on that sticky, humid dance floor. Now…I was awash with a rainbow of feelings. My erratically beating heart unable to keep any kind of rhythm, struggling to allow all that Cromwell was giving me into its weak walls.
And then something happened. The notes and the creation Cromwell was giving to me turned into something else. The piece changed, an abrupt shift. My eyes rolled open, and I stared at his hands. They were moving so quickly, his body swaying and swept up in the music, that it was like he was on another plane. I kept still, watching as sweat broke out on his forehead. His eyes were pinched, but there was a brief flicker of a smile on his lips.
My heart jumped in my chest at the sight.
But then the smile fell and his lips pursed. I didn’t know what to do, what to think. I was aware I was watching something happen before my very eyes. The music filling the room was like nothing I’d ever heard before.