Chapter 7 #3
“Means yes.” She held out her arms. “Carry me. Please.”
He nodded and scooped her up.
Drums pounded through her middle, rolled out her limbs. His rhythm stirred the fog clouding her thoughts. Heaviness pushed her eyelids closed. “Here comes the ocean…”
“Do you think you might have a concussion?” Taran asked. A back corner of her brain told her the beautiful man was trying to keep her awake.
“No, it’s just my head pounding.” Maybe it’s been my head this whole time because how crazy am I if I’m hearing people now too?
“Aye, your head. That’s what I’m worried about,” he said.
Cadenza peeled her eyes open to stare at Taran’s profile. Stupid, beautiful man. She scowled. Why did he have to be beautiful? She couldn’t afford to be distracted from her goal. He wasn’t allowed to be beautiful.
The bridge lay behind them. Taran hurried up the hill into the oaks, but Cadenza felt no jostling in his arms. Just drums.
Drums and bass.
Pounding.
Booming.
Thundering like the ocean on the shore. It filled her, flowed into every part of her till she thought she would burst.
No, she told it groggily. I can’t burst. I have to go to Italy. My mother…
“If it hurts to hold it up, you can lay it on my shoulder,” Taran said. “Just stay awake for me, alright?”
If it hurts to hold up the ocean? She frowned, but the motion pulled on the wound on her forehead. Another wave of rhythm washed over her. No, I can’t hold up the ocean anymore.
Cadenza laid her head on his chest. Under her cheek a new drumming joined the song—Taran’s heartbeat.
It sang out, steady despite his near-jog, solid like a rock in the storm.
She found her own heartbeat, soprano to Taran’s bass.
The thunder and ocean of his drums, his song, swirled between the two heartbeats.
Cadenza raised a hand over the music. “Shhh.”
The ocean calmed. The thunder melted into the rhythm of Taran’s heartbeat. Not gone. The drums still coursed through her but no longer threatened to break her apart.
Taran managed to punch in the door code on the garage keypad without setting her down. His footsteps echoed off the concrete through the empty room.
Empty.
Cadenza raised her head and pointed to the sheet on the floor where the Ferrari should have been.
“Where’s my car?” Her voice slurred through the words.
Taran cocked an eyebrow and chuckled. “Your car?”
“You can’t be driving it right now, you’re right here,” she pointed out.
“Astute observation.” Taran set her down on the landing and nodded at her front door. “Do you have your key?”
A degree of clarity returned when her feet hit the floor. “Crap. I left my keys in the car.”
“Your other car, you mean?” His lips twitched. “Ah well, a door’s nothing that can’t be mended in the morning. By your leave.” He kicked once, just below the doorknob. The wood bent inwards, and the door swung open.
Cadenza blinked. “Well, I guess that beats going all the way back to the fence.”
Taran laughed, hands on his hips. “Come on, I still owe you tea. And let’s take a better look at that head of yours.”
Cadenza snuggled deeper in her fleece blanket and bathed her face in the steam from her tea.
Plates clinked in her kitchen as Taran fixed her something to eat.
She watched him, his frame drum song still dancing over her arms, mischievous and playful, but quieter now.
The ocean had receded as soon as he’d set her down on the landing, and although it thundered back to life when he’d held an icepack to her injury, she’d also heard his heartbeat threaded through the drums.
What had she done when he carried her?
Her head throbbed. She had no idea what she had done. She didn’t even really know what the music she heard was, let alone how it worked. It wasn’t as if she’d had anyone to talk to about it. She snorted.
Hi, I’m Cadenza, I hear things. What’s your name?
Yeah, that’d go over well.
“Did you get their license plate number?” Taran asked.
“No, all I saw on the truck were those idiotic, fake…” She dangled two curved fingers in imitation. “Stupid compensation trucks.”
He paused at the toaster. “Compensation trucks?”
“Yeah.” Cadenza shifted on the couch to see him better.
A low ponytail gathered his hair back, and the kitchen lamp highlighted his jaw.
The frame drum quickened on her skin, the memory of his heartbeat echoing in her chest. She hid behind a sip of tea before continuing.
“We called them that in high school. Because all the guys who thought being a ‘real man’ meant a jacked-up truck and driving like a jerk were really just compensating for their,” she raised an eyebrow, “lack of ‘real manhood’.”
Taran barked a laugh. “Ah, I see. That type. If that’s a real man, then a chihuahua is a real wolf.
” He handed her a plate and sprawled on the other side of the couch.
“Scrambled eggs for protein, toast with jam to put some sugar in your blood, and turtle chocolates for emotional support. And because I heard you like them.”
“I see.” She gave a laugh. “Someone’s been telling my secrets.”
“From what I can tell, my father was right chuffed to have you come stay here. He’s filled me in on quite a lot. Like being here is a bit of a homecoming. How’s that been for you?”
She groaned. “Besides being mostly broke, getting in a car accident, and Canon’s…” She threw her hand up. “Whatever’s going on with Canon?”
“Canon, the salesman, Canon? What’s he been up to?”
“Nothing, really,” she hedged. “It’s just that I’m not sure he believes me when I tell him we aren’t dating.”
“You’re not dating then?” He watched her, no jokes in his eyes.
“No. We’re not.” She shook her head but winced when pain spiked through her forehead.
“Well,” Taran said, the lightness returning to his voice.
“Like I said, my father’s quite happy you’re here, and he’s got quite a few packages of these”—he popped a chocolate in his mouth—“squirreled away in the cottage for you. So whenever Canon proves too bothersome, feel free to pop by and have another.”
She laughed and snatched a chocolate from the plate. “Yes, turtles fix everything. What else did Drostan say about me?”
Taran thought. “He said it always brightened his day when you and your dad came to visit.”
Cadenza’s smile faded. She came on those visits with her father until she was twelve, when he passed away—her stepmother had never allowed her to visit after that, despite still living in Sonora.
But never had Drostan once indicated, on any of those visits, that he had another son.
Figuring from Ruairi and Cyrus’s apparent ages, if Taran truly was his youngest, he should have been in high school when she was twelve.
He should have been here.
She set the warmth of her mug aside and stared at Taran, trying not to let the dum and tek of rhythm on her arms distract her. “Taran, I appreciate your help tonight. I wasn’t in any shape to walk home by myself.”
“Aye, I suppose that was gallant of me, wasn’t it?” he joked, buffing his nails on his shirt. “And even more gallantly, I promise not to tell you all the embarrassing things you said until you feel better.”
“However,” she said, ignoring his playing.
“You should know that I also appreciate everything Drostan’s done for me, and I look on him like an uncle.
In all the time I spent here with my dad, I never saw any photos of you, and Drostan never mentioned you once.
Ruairi and Cyrus, yes. He’d tell my dad all their news.
But you, no.” Taran flinched, but she persisted.
“Which tells me whatever happened between you two must have been painful. So, I have to ask. Are you going to leave him again? Because I’m not going to stand by and watch him get hurt. ”
He stared at the floor. “Painful, aye. You know my mother’s gone, yes?”
She nodded.
“Did you know she was murdered?”
Cadenza’s mouth dropped open. “What? No, he never said. I’m so sorry.”
“Aye, well, after she died, I got into a bad place.” He made a face, remembering. “I tried to hurt the one who I thought hurt her. It didn’t turn out so well.” His jaw worked back and forth. “Led to me being gone for a while.”
“But you would have been just a kid,” she said. “What could you have actually done to hurt anyone? And gone where? With other family?”
“Hmm. I was young. And with family, ah…” He spoke lowly, as if each word was difficult to push out, the corners of his mouth pulling down.
Cadenza laid her hand over his; the drums immediately deepened. “I’m sorry. This isn’t any of my business.”
“Nae, nae.” Taran shook his head. “I appreciate you looking after the old man. As far as that goes, I promise you, Cadenza. I’m not going anywhere.
” He met her eyes, the gold of his irises burning.
The rhythm rushing through her hand surged up her arm, filled her chest. Whatever demons hid in Taran’s past, he was telling the truth now.
“I believe you.”