Sean
Some people play and they make beautiful music. I play to let shit out, and you probably wouldn’t even call it playing. I’m sure as hell not very good and I don’t play any songs you’d recognize. I just use the chords that feel right and I thrash the living hell out of them.
The first amplified notes crashed across the rooftop and out across the city. It was probably pretty loud, if you were above the tenth floor. But it wasn’t like anyone would dare knock on my door to complain. Being the scariest fucker on the block has some advantages.
I was up on the raised part of the roof, in among all the air conditioning ducts.
Playing, when I do it right, feels almost as good as swinging my hammer.
Everything else stops mattering. There’s no now, no future.
..and especially, no past. I even stop being me for a while and that’s the biggest relief of all.
Tonight, though, it wasn’t working.
Tonight, the more I escaped into the sound, the more it carried me towards copper-colored hair and pale skin, green eyes I couldn’t look away from and that sweet, spicy scent.
I cursed under my breath.
Louise. I’d seen her around enough times over the years that I knew her first name.
But it had taken on a whole new meaning since the elevator.
There was something very clean and honest about it.
A good name. The name of some pioneer’s wife, tilling the fields, and baking bread.
Not the sort of girl I was into, with their hair extensions and their giggles and their long, false nails as they wrapped their hands around my cock.
The women who spent half the evening sipping multi-colored cocktails in a trashy bar, tapping their iPhones to tell their friends how fucking daring they were, before coming back to my place (never theirs: they wouldn’t want me to know where they lived) and almost dragging me to the bed.
They wanted a taste. A little adventure.
I gave it to them. Spread under me or on their knees before me, fully clothed and skirt flipped up or stripped naked, wrists tied to the bedposts.
I gave it to them as hard and as long and as fast as they could handle.
..and then, as they started to come down again, I did it all over again.
They used me and I used them. Fucking, it turned out, was as good at making me forget as playing or smashing shit up.
Louise wasn’t like that. Hell, she wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. How the hell had she even wound up in this crappy apartment block?
I closed my eyes and tore a few more notes from the guitar: a rising wave of sound that suddenly crashed down as I slid my hand back along the fret.
I was pacing and turning, unable to stay still.
The music was doing its job and taking me away from the past, but it couldn’t take me away from her.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could feel the warmth of her bare arm in my hand and smell the scent of her skin… .
I froze and opened my eyes. The scent of her on the air was too real, too close.
I whirled around and she was there, maybe six feet away from me, watching.
Shit.
She looked amazing. With that red hair in the moonlight, she could have been some sorceress about to cast some spell on me. All she needed was a black cloak wrapped around her...and nothing on underneath. Oh, bloody hell….
I’d never fantasized about a girl the way I did about Louise.
Every time I saw her, it sparked something new and all of those daydreams ended with those long, pale legs wrapped around me as I plunged deep inside her.
Normally, if I want someone, I just make my move.
I’ve never been into all that love-struck, watching-from-afar shit. But with her….
“What do you want?” I practically grunted it.
I didn’t mean to sound like such a dick, but I just had no idea what to say to her.
I wasn’t used to talking to women except to talk them into bed.
And even though I wanted Louise in my bed more than any girl I’d ever known, I wanted to protect her from me even more.
“Nothing.” She was already turning away. “I just wondered who was playing.” She climbed down the ladder, heading towards the door that led inside. Another few seconds and she’d be gone.
“Thank you,” I called out. The two words hung in the air between us. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d said it, but then I couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something for me, either.
She stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“I used those pots of yours. It’s only been a day but...the plants don’t look so sick.”
She nodded. “Okay.” As she said it, she glanced over her shoulder at me and—
Wait, were her eyes wet?
I put down my guitar, vaulted the railing and jumped down to where she was standing, landing right in front of her. She spun around in alarm and... yeah, her eyes were wet. Wet and red. Someone had made her cry.
Out of nowhere, I felt my chest tighten. Rage sparked and then flared inside me, growing and spreading. Its heat was familiar, but its shape wasn’t.
I knew all about anger. I just wasn’t used to feeling it on behalf of someone else. My hand itched for my hammer. I was going to find the guy responsible and break his skull, not stopping until I’d ground him into powder—
And then I remembered I was no white knight. I was the guy white knights are meant to save you from.
She looked deep into my eyes. Damn, when she did that, it became more than just raw lust. It became something else altogether.
I met her gaze, asking the question with a tilt of my head. But after a second, she shook her head and turned away. She didn’t want to talk about it. At least, not to me. But she didn’t head for the door to the stairs. She went over to the edge of the roof and looked out across the city.
She didn’t want to be alone, either.
I followed her, suddenly aware that she’d been listening to me strangle a guitar. She must think I’m a freak.
Wait. Since when did I care what anyone else thought of me?
My steps got slower and slower as I approached her.
What the hell was the matter with me? If this had been some woman in a bar, I’d have just gone straight over there: hell, I’d barely have acknowledged her, just got myself a beer, and let her throw herself at me.
But with Louise, I felt like a kid on his first date.
And the closer I got, the more I felt it—a deep, inexorable pull towards her, dragging me in. And I finally realized what it was.
I wasn’t going to be able to control myself with this girl. I was like a boat next to a whirlpool, just barely holding its position. If I got any closer, I was going to spin inwards to my doom. To both of our dooms.
But what else could I do? Leave her like that?
“You alright?” I asked tightly.
She swallowed, and I thought she was going to start crying. That pressure in my chest again, like it was me who was in pain. Then she said, “You ever feel like the future’s just...bearing down on you and there’s nothing you can do to change it?”
I thought about it. It was rare enough that I spoke to anyone, let alone have someone ask me something deep. Eventually, I said, “No.”
It can’t have been the answer she was expecting, because she snapped her head around to look at me. Ah, fuck. In the moonlight, her skin was so pale it almost glowed and with those lush green eyes looking up at me...she was just the prettiest fucking thing I’d ever seen.
I turned and nodded towards where my hammer was leaning against a wall. “Most of the stuff I have to deal with gets out of the way,” I told her. “Or I smash it out of the way.” I paused. “I get the feeling your shit’s more complicated.”
She swallowed again and nodded a couple of times, then turned to the city and sniffed back a tear.
She took a deep breath and what I normally would have been doing was watching that fantastic chest rise and swell under her t-shirt.
Instead, all I could think was, she’s about to tell me.
She’s about to tell me what’s going on with her.
We were connecting. I reached out to put a hand on her back to comfort her—slowly, so as not to spook her—
“I wish I was more like you,” she said.
And reality slammed up to meet me. My hand froze an inch from her back.
The last thing she needed was to be around someone like me. Everything I touched turned to shit. I knew that. Why had I forgotten it?
“You don’t want to be like me,” I told her. And I turned and marched away. I didn’t even stop to retrieve my guitar or amp before I hit the stairs. All I grabbed was my hammer. That was all I needed in my life.
Just before the stairwell door closed behind me, I heard her intake of breath—she’d turned around and realized I’d gone. She was probably amazed at what an asshole I was. She didn’t realize she’d just had a lucky escape.
Whatever problems she had, they were nothing compared to the shit she’d get into if she came near my world. For her sake, I had to stay as far away from her as possible.
I had no idea that our lives were already on a collision course.