Chapter 22 Daniel
DANIEL
All the tension in my bones releases, since I get to talk about something wonderful. Something I don’t normally discuss with anyone.
“Barber’s Adagio for Strings,” I say, knowing the answer instantly.
She knits her brow, like she’s reaching into her mind to see if she knows the tune.
I hum a few notes to cue her. Her face lights up. She snaps her fingers, grinning. “Yes, I can hear it now.”
I hum a few more notes of one of the saddest, most plaintive pieces of music ever.
“It’s so solemn. It seems to speak only of somber moments, of the passing of life, but in the intensity, there’s such beauty,” I say, and I can hear the music in my head.
I can remember the last time I played it, when I was only seventeen.
The memory fills me, flooding my veins, flowing into my cells.
“I played it in Vienna. With the philharmonic. It was magic.”
“That sounds magical. What else? What were other pieces that were magic to you?” she asks, bouncing on her toes, eagerness etched in her features.
“I could go on,” I say, since talking about music is almost like remembering old friends who passed away too soon, making sure their deaths weren’t in vain.
“Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2. It’s spiritually powerful, and sublime.
But it’s also dramatic, intense, and incredibly difficult to master,” I say, my pitch rising, excitement building in me as I hear the complicated notes in my mind. “It took me years.”
“When were you first able to play it the way you wanted to play it?”
“I was ten.” I bring my hands to my forehead and rub my temples, calling up the memory. “I played it for my parents. I said I was going to do a concert for them after dinner.” I laugh as something like happiness surges over me at the images of my home flickering before my eyes.
“Were they thrilled to hear it?”
“Yes, but they wanted me to eat first. Patience, I suppose. That’s what they were teaching me.”
“Did it work?”
With a grin that can’t be contained, I shake my head.
“I could barely last through dinner. I gobbled down the chicken, left the rest of my plate on the table, and ran to the living room, tugging them along. Made them sit down. Then I raised my violin, and I played it,” I say, my voice distant as I linger in that faraway memory.
When I meet Scarlett’s gaze, her green eyes are simply enrapt. Like I’m a storyteller, and I’m enchanting her with a tale.
Well, hell, bloody fucking hell, I’m enchanting myself with these memories that I haven’t let see the light of day in my own mind.
“They must have been so delighted. They must have been beside themselves with pride,” she says, like there’s a lump in her throat.
I don’t mind the emotion in her tone. It’s not pity. It’s not judgment. It’s appreciation.
Somehow that’s the permission I need to keep going. “I also loved Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9,” I say, then I hum a few notes of that. “Another complicated one. I played that in London when I was seventeen.”
“Amazing,” she says, then makes a rolling gesture with her hands. “More, more. Tell me more.”
The ball is rolling, the avalanche building.
Notes and chords swell in my mind, racing to reach the front of it, to earn her attention.
“Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 3. So melancholy, but full of sweetness too.
God, so much sweetness,” I say, and this time I raise my hands as I hum, picking up an imaginary instrument, slowly, languidly stroking an unseen bow across the strings.
My eyes fall shut as I imagine playing that sonata for this woman.
Maybe I’m the one enrapt.
No. There is no maybe about it. I am enrapt. I’m back in time, but I’m also here in this moment, telling her this story while reliving it too.
“That’s beautiful,” she says in a reverent whisper.
“I’ll play it for you.”
She blinks, her expression shifting to shock.
Quickly, I dispel the idea that I might play it. I don’t play for anyone. “I meant on your phone. We’ll find a recording. It’s an incredible piece,” I say, then I hum a few more notes.
“I hardly know any classical music, but now I want to,” she says.
“Then you should start with the Brahms. It reminds me of you,” I say.
She tilts her chin in curiosity. “Why’s that?”
Stepping closer, I run my knuckles over her cheek. “Because even when it’s sad, it’s sweet.”
“Is that me?”
I dust a kiss to her forehead. “Yes. You’re as sweet as Brahms, and as complicated.”
She sighs wistfully, but contentedly. When I pull back, she tosses another question at me. “What was it like? To possess that talent? How did it make you feel? I can’t even imagine having an ability like that.”
Her questions don’t pierce me like I’d expect.
Instead, it’s as if she has a key, turns it easily in a lock, and swings a door inside me wide open.
The chance to talk about music is blissful relief.
I feel unlocked. Freed. “It was like life; it was like love. It was . . .” I reach for another word, but there aren’t words to do it justice.
I set my hands on her shoulders, curling them tightly around her. “It was like a possession.”
“The music possessed you,” she says, her voice full of wonder. “And a part of your soul.”
I nod, feeling understood. “I was compelled,” I say, then I laugh. “Can you picture me? Six years old, obsessed with the violin?”
“I can’t see you as six, Daniel.” She laughs.
“Ten?”
She shakes her head again. “It’s hard for me to see you as anyone but who you are now.”
“How about fifteen? Can you see me as a fifteen-year-old, driven to play the violin at all hours? Standing in my room in my pajamas, staring out the window at the stars, playing Bach?”
“Now I can see it, because you’re painting the picture vividly. How old were you when you played in St. Petersburg?”
“Sixteen. I played with the symphony orchestra. I was the guest solo violinist,” I say, thrilled to share these stories at last, grateful she’s indulging me.
“Were you ever scared? Playing in front of crowds like that?”
That night in St. Petersburg flashes in my mind, clear and bright.
The looming concert hall, the bright lights, the stage.
“My parents were there,” I say, the memory rising up in full force like Poseidon plunging out of the sea.
“They sat in the front row. I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t. I did it without fear.”
“Maybe that’s another reason why you were so good at it. You were fearless. You played fearlessly,” she says, her tone intense and full of understanding. Like she’s absorbing all my stories, seeing them, holding them in her hands, feeling the weight.
“Yes. I think I was. That’s one of the things I had going for me. I played fearlessly. And when I went onstage, I had no notion of stage fright. It felt like where I was supposed to be. Maybe because it was my whole life.”
“You still are fearless, Daniel. Even if you don’t play like you used to.” She reaches for my arm, slides her hand down it, and squeezes my forearm. “You go after deals fearlessly. You go after business that way. You approach life that way.”
I huff. “But do I? I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure that’s true, Scarlett,” I say, like I’m baring part of my soul.
I don’t know that I would have said this to her a few days ago.
I don’t know that I would have let down my guard to this degree.
Because I don’t know if I’m truly living a fearless life like I did when I was younger, when everything was possible, when everything was love.
“You were fearless for your friend,” she says, gripping my arm harder, like she’s giving me some of her own courage.
“Don’t you remember? You were fearless for Cole.
You knew Sage would be right for him. So you engineered it.
You brought them together. You made their romance happen.
You were determined because you knew it would be good for him. ”
I raise a hand, brush it along her hair, grateful that she’s not wearing a wig today.
She’s simply Scarlett here with me, her chestnut-brown hair glinting gold in the sun, her clothes the simple but sexy ones she wears, the shoes on her feet silver flats.
“You helped,” I say. “Don’t go all revisionist and claim you aren’t a matchmaker too. ”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I was involved. Yes, I gave my seal of approval. Yes, I had a feeling it was what Cole needed. But you came to me with it. You had the idea. I was simply your biggest cheerleader. Because I loved what you wanted to do for your friend.” She taps my chest. “But you made it happen.”
I grab her hand, bring her fingers to my lips, and kiss them. When I let go, I ask a question that tugs at my mind now and then. “Does it bother you that I was part of that? Part of a threesome with them?”
She tosses her head back and laughs. “No. Not in the least. I don’t care. I understand exactly why you did it then, and why you and Cole engaged in them. Why would I be bothered?”
I give a shrug, a little unsure. “Maybe it makes me seem like a hedonist. Maybe you don’t like that.”
She laughs, a confident sound. “You are a bit of a hedonist. But there’s nothing wrong with that. It was something you and Cole did, and now he’s with her.” She pauses, then narrows her brow. “Wait. This isn’t where you change your mind and tell me you want to have a threesome with me after all?”
I laugh, deep in my body, far into my heart.
“I still don’t want to share you with anyone.
Not a man. Not a woman. I want all of you for all of me.
And I can’t stand the thought of another person touching you,” I say, jealousy flaring in my chest in a nanosecond.
“So riddle me that. I’ve certainly never felt that way about anyone else. ”
Her smile lights her face. Seems to light the whole damn city. Pretty sure I just told her that I’m falling for her.
But I also know that falling is dangerous.
I’ve got to reel it in. To be careful.
I’d do well to remember that I destroy the things I love.
That’s why I can’t let myself love her. I can’t let myself fall harder.
Enough talk for today. I drape an arm around her, drop a kiss onto her cheek, then squeeze her shoulder. “Come now, Mrs. Brahms. Let’s go take some pictures by the sea.”
We walk toward the water. I take out my phone and snap endless shots of the two of us. Pictures of us, the Mediterranean behind us, Marseille in front of us, and the world at our feet. Someday I’ll look at these and remember the day when I was the happiest.
I make myself a promise not to destroy this moment.