Chapter 15 #2
Before he can continue, I reach for the bottle left on our table and top up both glasses.
Rowan looks up at me, momentarily pulled from the memory. He just sits there, eyes distant, still somewhere in that funeral procession. Then his thumb drags against the side of the glass. "I knew that was what I wanted to play."
I study him, my hand still resting loosely around his wrist while I trace the edge of the medical band with my fingertips.
At some point during the conversation, Rowan stopped trying to pull his hand away from me.
Now he just lets me touch him while he talks, pulse fluttering lightly beneath my hand every time my fingers brush the sensitive skin of his wrist.
"And your parents just let you obsess over music after that?"
A smile flickers across his mouth, his shoulders loosening as warmth slips into his expression for the first time since he sat down across from me.
"My ma did. She found this damaged second-hand cello when I was little.
It was missing strings and the bridge was cracked, but I still thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. "
I let my hand slide from his wrist to his fingertips, tracing across his skin before dragging back up the inside of his forearm. Rowan goes still the second I touch him like that.
"You practiced that much?"
"All the time." His cheeks color. "There wasn't much else to do."
I slide my hand fully over his then, giving him plenty of time to stop me. He doesn't.
His thumb drags against the side of the glass while he stares down at his drink and breathes out quietly through his nose.
"I used to fall asleep listening to recordings.
Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking about passages I couldn't get right. I dreamed about music constantly."
I can't stop picturing it. Little Rowan trapped behind those walls with a broken cello and impossible dreams, falling asleep to recordings and dreaming about music, somehow ending up here anyway. And fuck if that doesn't make me want him even more.
Rowan finally takes another drink. His fingers shake around the glass before he sets it back down too carefully against the table, and the second he notices me watching, he pulls his hand back into his lap like that'll somehow stop me from noticing how fucking cute he is.
Fucking cute. Or fucking dangerous.
Dad thinks he might be the latter. My dick most certainly thinks he's the first. And my brain, which occasionally short-circuits, hasn't made up its mind yet.
The booth falls quiet while the noise from downstairs pulses faintly through the walls between us.
Then Rowan glances down at the amber liquid in his glass before finally asking, "Why did you invite me to that party?"
I settle back against the booth, studying him. "That's what you've been thinking about all night?"
Rowan shifts in the booth and reaches for his glass again. "I'm serious."
"I know." My gaze drags to his mouth before lifting again. "You looked terrified of me the first day at Caervast."
His chin comes up. "I wasn't terrified."
I grin. "You were. You kept looking at me like I was about to eat you alive. And when I joined you in the pool…"
"That's because you kept staring at me."
"Mm." I drag my thumb slowly along the rim of my glass. "Maybe I liked the way you looked staring back. I most certainly liked the way you kissed me back…"
Rowan's cheeks darken in a way that should be illegal. "That's because you didn't give me a choice."
He reaches for his drink again just to have something to hold, and beneath the table, I slip off one of my shoes before letting my socked foot slide slowly between his legs.
"That's right, little mouse."
I drag my foot slowly along the inside of his thigh beneath the table, enjoying the way his breath catches and his fingers tighten around the glass.
"Ciaran…"
"Keep talking."
He stares at his drink instead of me. Fuck me, he's pretty when he's flustered.
"You said you invited me because I looked scared of you. That's a terrible reason to invite someone anywhere."
I grin. "And yet you still came. You even came apart in my hands at the pool like a dirty boy."
Rowan huffs out a breath and shifts in his seat, the movement pressing him more firmly against my socked foot beneath the table.
I watch him swallow before I murmur, "Ask your questions, baby. I'm listening. I know you want to know more."
"Okay, um—"
Noise from downstairs bleeds through the walls around us. Somewhere near the bar, somebody laughs too loudly. Glass breaks. The Black Chapel keeps moving around us while Rowan sits across from me looking like he accidentally wandered into the wrong life.
Lie.
I mean, he did, but Dad ordering me to keep an eye on Rowan was the true reason I invited him. Or perhaps I would have invited him anyway. I fucking love the Noctis.
My foot rubs against the hardening outline between Rowan's legs beneath the table, feeling the way he tenses around the pressure.
"Your family owns this place, doesn't it?"
I lean back against the booth, keeping my foot where it is. "Is that what your research told you? Yeah, we own most of the clubs on Sero."
"It must be nice to be so famous." Rowan presses his lips together and adjusts his grip on the glass. The movement nudges him harder against my foot beneath the table.
I raise a brow. "Famous?"
"You know what I mean. Having people talk about you all the time."
"Do they now?"
Rowan glances into his drink. "You know they do."
Somewhere below us, a fresh round of laughter rolls through the Black Chapel.
"You know, my mother played the Noctis at Caervast before I was born," I tell him. "She was famous on Sero for a while."
That catches his attention, his gaze snapping back to me. "What happened?"
I look down at my drink before answering. "She got hurt." My voice comes out flatter than I expect. "There was an attack when I was a kid. My dad got me out. She was still in the car when he did. Lost her sight because of it."
"I'm so sorry," he breathes. Beneath the table, I feel him tense again around the slow pressure of my foot.
Rowan's fingers go still against the glass. "What kind of attack?"
I should shut this down. I don't talk about it. Not to anyone, and definitely not to a scholarship kid I've known two weeks. But those green eyes are fixed on me as if the answer matters, and something in my chest does a thing I don't have a name for.
"The kind you don't see coming." I turn my glass a slow half-circle on the table.
"I mostly remember the noise. And her hand, reaching for me through the smoke while my dad hauled me the other way.
I screamed the whole time. It didn't matter.
Some things you don't get to save, no matter how much you'd burn for it. "
Rowan doesn't tell me he's sorry again. He just looks at me, and for once there's nothing careful in it.
"That's why you fight," he says. Not a question. "You like being the one who's dangerous now."
It lands closer than I want it to. I've had people call me a monster to my face and never felt it.
This shy little musician reads me in one sentence, and it sits under my ribs like a splinter.
I almost tell him the rest. That I don't fight because I like it, that I fight because it's the one thing in my world nobody's allowed to take from me.
I don't. Some things you don't hand a stranger, no matter how green his eyes are.
So I let the grin slide back into place. "Careful, little mouse. Keep looking at me like that and I'll start thinking you actually like me."
"I don't," he says.
But he holds my gaze this time, and doesn't look away.
"She still plays sometimes," I add. "She'll play tomorrow, during the legacy event."
"Um, yes," Rowan mutters.
I hold his gaze. Out of everyone in the Caervast conservatory, Halvern picked Rowan to perform. Coincidence, according to him. I don't believe in those. And tomorrow Dad will want every detail from this conversation. Every question. Every reaction.
But sitting here now, watching Rowan trying to stay composed while my foot keeps circling slowly against him beneath the table, I realize I don't want to hand him over. Not yet. I want him to myself a little longer first.
The waitress returns with another round, and Rowan reaches for his glass too quickly this time, clearly trying to recover some composure.
I lean back deeper into the booth while my foot stays between his legs beneath the table, resting just enough pressure there to keep him aware of it.
Every time he shifts, his breath catches, and I notice every single one.
"You're staring again," Rowan mutters, cheeks flushed from the alcohol now.
"Can you blame me?"
Rowan drops his gaze to his drink, making the booth feel too small.
Somewhere behind him, I catch sight of Lucan still draped all over Damaris near the bar while Rafe argues loudly with somebody over cards. Marius has somehow collected half the room around him already, grinning while two girls fight for his attention.
But Rowan keeps looking back at me.
Always back at me.
I let my foot drag higher between his legs, enough to make his breath hitch before he forces himself to hold my gaze. He's so beautifully responsive, every reaction reminding me just how little experience he has.
"You're doing that on purpose," he whispers.
"Doing what?"