Chapter 29 Orion
Orion
March
I stepped into the piano room and shut the door behind me.
Ezra had left the light on at the baby grand and promised no one would bother me at six on a Friday night.
I sat and set the box Harper had given me for Christmas beside me.
I took out the metronome, snapped the pieces together, and placed it on the piano.
Then I unfurled the Nocturne she’d written and set it on the rack.
Music made patterns my brain could follow. More than that, something inside me understood them. I’d always kept my feelings locked away, but music pulled them out, with the familiar fear of going too far, of getting lost.
But Harper unlocked something in me. She broke the wall down.
I closed my eyes and let the sound carry me, and when I finished, I sat in the feeling it left behind—the same one that rose when I thought of her.
Love. I loved to play. Octavian had said I always did.
I’d just been told too often that it was only a hobby, that I was meant for something more important.
The accommodations since December had helped a little.
Callister was off my back, and my testing was more structured.
But the real world wouldn’t be like this.
Wouldn’t feel like this. At my father’s company, I’d be protected.
Beyond that? I pictured myself on a stage, an orchestra at my back and counting on me not to fail.
I didn’t speak the language of music. I only felt it. How would that ever be enough?
I took my hands from the keys and shut off the light.
***
I picked Harper up at her house at seven p.m. She didn’t like me coming to the door anymore. She didn’t want me to see her mother, so I texted from the driveway that I was there. Dash came running out first.
I picked him up and swung him around. “There’s my little man.”
“Can I come too?”
“Not this time, Dash. Next time, for sure.”
“Okay,” he said, disappointed.
I’d taken the three of us to Applebee’s several times, or to parks, and once to a hideous pizza place where scary animatronic animals suddenly came to life and sang songs like possessed stuffed animals. But Dash loved it.
The light is going out in his eyes, Harper had told me, and that fucking killed me.
She came out looking stunning in a black dress. Simple but beautiful.
“All good?” I said.
“Yes. Mom’s okay right now, but I’m not taking any chances.” She ruffled Dash’s hair. “Mrs. Andolina is on her way. Be good for her, okay, buddy?”
“I will,” he said, and threw his arms around Harper’s waist. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I love you, too,” I echoed, and Dash made a face.
“Yuck!”
But he laughed, and that was everything.
I took Harper to dinner at an Italian restaurant and held her hand across the table, the ring I’d given her glinting in the candlelight.
“How long do I have for this date?”
“Depends,” Harper said, arching a brow.
“On?”
“Is Easton home? I prefer privacy if we’re going to pull an all-nighter.”
“What do you take me for, some kind of amateur?” I scoffed. “And all-nighter? Really?”
She laughed. “I like it better when you’re the romantic one.”
“Clearly,” I said. “Good thing I’m a natural in that department or we’d be hopeless.”
After dinner, we drove to the Academy. Harper headed up the walk, toward Atlas Hall, but I tugged her hand toward the school itself.
She frowned. “Because we don’t spend enough time in there?”
“Hopeless, Bennett,” I said, laughing. “Hopeless.”
I led her to the Arts Wing. Her eyes widened as she took in the Nocturne and the metronome sitting on the piano. “Am I getting a private performance?”
“Is that completely cheesy and big-headed of me?”
“Are you kidding?” She swatted me on the arm. “This is all I’ve ever wanted. Why do you think I gave you the Nocturne in the first place?”
I laughed. “All right, all right, don’t make me self-conscious.”
Harper sprinted to Ezra’s chair, sat ramrod straight, arms folded in her lap. “Ready.”
“That’s not where you’re supposed to sit.” I scooted over on the bench. “Come here.”
Her face softened, a side of Harper very few people got to see. Her romantic, soft, sweet side. And so beautiful because it felt like it was just for me.
Slowly she sat down beside me as if awed. I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t wrap my brain around the fuss that people made over my playing, her and Ezra and Octavian. I pushed it all aside. This was just for her.
“When did you set this up?” she asked softly.
“Earlier today. I’ve been practicing.”
“As if you need to practice.”
“Shut it, Bennett. My neck will not hold my head up if it gets any bigger. Now, if you please…”
I cleared my throat and adjusted the sleeves on my suit and set the metronome to 4/4 time. Then I laid my fingers on the keys and played.
I played just as I had earlier that evening, only this time Harper was sitting beside me and it was ten times more powerful because it was for her.
When it was done, the last notes hung in the air, wavering, then faded away. Harper was quiet, and I looked over. Tears stood out in her eyes. She was staring at the keys, then my hands, then me.
“I thought it was beautiful the first time,” she said, shaking her head. “Orion, do you not want to do this forever?”
Instead of answering, I kissed her. I drew that feeling around us, infusing my kiss with it, and sending it to this girl I loved so much.
As if it could speak for me. As if it could sort out the tangle that was the future and make everything work out perfectly without anyone getting hurt or upset or disappointed.
Somehow, we made it back to Atlas Hall where, true to my word, I’d already ensured Easton would be nowhere in sight.
I took Harper into my room and shut the door, kissing her luscious lips, sharing her breath, her heartbeat…
It beat with mine—a cosmic metronome had set them to the same time.
It had put this girl in my path, and my life had never been the same since.
My hands were in her hair and then down her back.
I found the zipper of her dress and slid it down, then pulled it off her shoulders, all the while kissing her.
It slipped off her body to pool at her feet, leaving her in her bra and underwear.
Both black lace. I took a moment to drink her in, the beauty of her pale skin against the black, while she pushed my jacket off my shoulders and undid the buttons of my shirt one at a time.
Her eyes met mine in the dimness, dark and rich, and full of thoughts and questions and hope.
The same fear I had of letting down my family also wondered if I could be enough for her, this extraordinary girl who was so strong and brave.
Who walked a tightrope with no safety net, carrying her mother and brother on her back.
Who deserved everything. But if I stepped off that ledge into the unknown, without the Mercer name and money, I might be nothing but a failed musician she’d have to carry too.
But that was later. We had right now; what I wanted right now was her.
Our kisses became ferocious. Needy. Our clothes stripped away, and then she was in my bed and I was over her. She was soft and curvy to my hard angles. I wanted to be gentle or soft, but there was a power between us that I could not deny. A force that was too strong, and I know she felt it too.
It had never been like this with any other girl. Never been this complete, where lust and love were there in equal parts because there had never been love. Never been this undeniable feeling that I didn’t want there to be any other girl ever again.
When the pleasure burned through her, I reveled in it almost as much as I reveled in my own, which came moments later. Shuddering, I collapsed over her, my face pressed into the crook of her neck.
I started to move off her, but she held me close. “Stay,” she whispered. “Please, stay.”
I kept my face buried in her neck, my eyes shut, because I knew what she was asking the only way she knew how.
And I didn’t have an answer.