Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
Kit
I stare at the computer while trying to remember the Pete Townshend song. When I begin to hum it and recall the lyrics, it makes me smile. It reminds me of what just happened between Cleo and Barret.
That . . . offer he made. It’s almost as if he cracked open some invisible door and handed her a four-leaf clover. Like he’d take every fucking one of her problems and carry them just so she could breathe for a second.
It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t sweet. It was all-in. All want.
I want that.
I want a guy who’ll walk into the shop just to see me.
Not because it’s convenient. Not because it fits between his chiropractor appointment and some ego-fluffing conference call.
Not like perfect Timmy—as Cleo loves to call him—who left a message on my answering machine earlier, reminding me we’re still on for Friday.
The message was so fucking clinical. Transactional. Like I’m a pit stop on his wellness tour. “Tomorrow I will have sex with my girlfriend.” Woohoo. I guess.
I didn’t even realize he was back in town until that call. No warning. No I-missed-you. Just: “Hey, I’ll see you Friday after the chiropractor. Unless you have any other plans.”
Which means I could call and say I’m busy.
. . I could mention I didn’t know he was here.
He’d be fine with it—Timothy is fine with everything.
Predictable. Safe in a beige-on-beige kind of way.
Like a lukewarm mug of over-steeped tea served with orthopedic enthusiasm.
Reliable enough, but where’s the high? Where’s the reckless urgency? The need?
Where’s the fuck-me-in-the-backroom kind of chemistry that leaves your voice wrecked, your legs shaky, and your mind blitzed for hours afterward?
Nowhere. Not with Timmy.
Okay, there’s a guy who makes my entire nervous system respond even when I want to claw his face off—but we are not going there. Roderick and I have been over for years. Years.
I sigh. Fingers hover over the keyboard, about to hit reply, craft some forgettable response—when the bell above the shop door jingles.
Shit.
“I’ll be out in a moment,” I shout, the words echoing off the quiet of the office.
I scramble, exiting out of the screen, and disconnect the internet as if I’ve been caught doing something private. Which I guess I have.
Cleo knows I talk to people online. She teases me about it sometimes—laughs that I’ll send lengthy messages about music and things I’m passionate about to faceless usernames but barely speak at parties. She doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t judge either.
But my conversations with DeadStrings that’s . . . different. He feels different in a way I can’t explain.
Different in a way that feels cellular.
There’s a cadence to how he writes—how he talks about music—that seeps into my bloodstream.
He perceives the world through melodies and minor chords the same way I do.
He feels songs, digs into the lyrics as if they’re memoirs.
He understands how a line from an old song can gut you worse than a breakup.
There’s a pulse between our messages I can’t ignore. Some weird, electric thread that hums when he replies. Sometimes, I check my messages before I brush my teeth. Before coffee. Before anything, in case he sent something after I went to bed.
And that’s what makes me feel like maybe I’m wrong. Wrong in that I’ve never felt this way with someone I’ve actually met kind of way. Okay. There’s Roderick Wilder—but he doesn’t count. He shouldn’t count.
Still, DeadStrings makes me want something I’ve never had—and I know if I get it, it’ll ruin me.
But maybe . . . maybe I want to be ruined.
Is it wrong that maybe I want to be ruined?
Maybe I’m tired of beige-colored glasses and playing it safe.
I’m done being careful. Perhaps I want someone who walks into my world like Barret did—loud, reckless, and impossible to ignore.
Someone who doesn’t check if I’m available first. Someone who just fucking wants me.
I stand, my heart jumping like it’s gotten ahead of me. For one wild second, I hope it’s him.
Not Timothy.
Not a customer.
Someone who doesn’t need an excuse to show up. Someone who’d fuck me against the wall and call it music.
The laugh that bubbles in my head borders on unhinged. It’s somewhere between hysteria and surrender when I see Roderick Wilder flipping through albums. This is a middle finger from the universe to my hopes of finding love anytime soon.
I’m going to turn fifty, still screwing Timothy every Friday out of guilt and inertia.
Ugh, my love life is pathetic.
“Sorry for making you wait,” I say, instead of something like, “Get the fuck out of here,” or . . . “Can we just fuck in my office—you know, for old times’ sake?” I add, “Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”
Roderick glances up, his brow furrowing as if I’ve yanked him out of something private. Then he notices me. His face shifts.
Smiles.
That slow, dangerous curve of his mouth that once made me forget where I was and what my name was.
“I was wondering why Tilly sold this store to that chick I saw the other day.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’ve been here?”
He shrugs. Lazy. Loose. Like he’s still riding a song no one else can hear. “A handful of times, yeah.”
And I hate how good he looks. His shirt is just rumpled enough to make you imagine sliding your hands under it. How calm he seems—serene, even. Like the world rolls off his skin and takes mine with it.
I shouldn’t be looking at his mouth.
Or imagining how it would feel against my neck, my thighs, dragging moans from me like a fucking hymn.
I shouldn’t want to know what he’d do if I shoved him against that bin of old vinyl and told him I wasn’t careful anymore.
But I do.
I imagine his hand curling around my wrist, backing me into the wall with a growl in his throat and tension in his jaw.
I imagine his mouth finding that spot behind my ear—the one he knows makes me forget how to speak.
I imagine the moment before everything snaps, before he wrecks me again, and I let him.
And still—I say nothing.
Because bad boys don’t get to come back and pick up where they left off.
Even if my whole body is begging for one more song.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, nailing the breezy tone like it’s part of my job description. My arms stay at my sides, back straight, as if I’m not seconds away from leaning into him. Like I’m not already wondering what his mouth tastes like now.
Keep it professional, Kit.
Professional.
He shrugs, slow and easy, that fucking half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as if he knows it ruins me. “Started my day earlier than usual. Figured I’d swing by after dropping groceries at my place.”
I blink. “You live around here?”
No.
Absolutely not.
This is bad. This is very bad.
He tilts his head, studying me as if he can see straight through the layers I’ve spent years building. “Well, aren’t we curious today, Dempsey?”
His tone is dry, almost clipped, but there’s something coiled beneath it—like a guitar string pulled too tight, one breath away from snapping, vibrating with everything he’s not saying.
And then he moves.
Not a step exactly, more like a shift. A recalibration.
One second, he’s standing near the bin marked Jazz, 70s, the next he’s suddenly too close.
Close enough that the warm, late-spring air thickens between us.
Close enough that I can smell the woodsy and clean linen fragrance on his shirt, feel the press of heat radiating off him like temptation in human form.
Close enough that my knees remember what it felt like to lock around his hips in the back of a car.
He doesn’t touch me.
But I feel him.
Like static crawling over skin. Like heat rising under denim.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” he murmurs.
My breath hitches. Just enough to give me away.
“That charge,” he adds, voice lower now, rougher. “Still running through you like it used to. Right here.”
He leans in, lips near my ear, and I swear to God my spine melts.
“It’s humming off your skin. You’ve always run hot, but now . . .” His voice dips, and I feel it in my stomach. “Now it’s fucking dangerous.”
My hand curls around the edge of the record shelf behind me, like that’ll keep me upright.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper.
“I know.” He drags his gaze down my throat, slow enough to make me feel every inch of it. “And yet, here we are. Me wondering if you taste the same . . . and you? You’re wondering if I still know how to ruin you.”
Fuck.
He’s close enough now that all I’d have to do is tilt my chin and his mouth would be on mine. The temptation hovers between us, hot and palpable.
“I came here for music,” he says, backing up half a breath, just enough to meet my gaze. “But now I think I might want something a little louder. Something raw.”
His fingers brush the bin beside mine, slow and deliberate as he picks up a record without looking. “Like you.”
I should slap him. Or push him. Or laugh.
Instead, I breathe him in.
Let the want wrap around my rib cage and squeeze.
He’s right. I do feel it.
Still.
Always.
There’s no denying it—not with him standing so close. Not with every nerve ending alert to the possibility of what he might do next.
I want to be reckless. I want to lean in and see if he’ll really kiss me, right here in the middle of the store with Aretha playing in the background and a bin full of Fleetwood Mac digging into my back.
But I don’t move. Not yet.
Because bad boys don’t get to come back.
Unless I let them.