Chapter 31
LAUREL
Studio B is dark save for the low lamps along the console when I arrive. Someone has left room-temperature water beside the microphone, but no note, which means I can’t prove Beckett did it and therefore can’t properly thank him the way I’d intended.
I lock the door, put my phone on airplane mode, and warm up exactly as instructed, stopping when I’m supposed to because this is evidently the year I discover medical compliance.
The first song I try is an unfinished one I wrote two years after my injury and never showed Grant, mostly because by then I’d stopped showing him anything unless he specifically asked to hear it.
I sit with that for a second. There are louder memories from the end of our marriage—the hotel rooms, Sloane, the things Grant said when everything finally came apart—but this hurts more.
Maybe collapse is the wrong word for what happened to us. Buildings collapse all at once; ours went bad by degrees. A leak nobody repairs because the bucket still works. A door that sticks, so eventually everyone learns to shove harder. One person stops asking; the other stops noticing.
Grant cheated on a marriage that was still alive. I know that. I also know he didn’t cheat inside some perfect love story preserved exactly as it had been when we were still in our twenties and stupidly certain loving each other hard meant we’d never have to learn how to do it differently.
We had already become lonely in ways neither of us knew how to admit.
I was grieving the career I thought I’d have.
He was becoming more successful than either of us had imagined and hungrier for the version of himself the world kept rewarding.
We mistook functioning for being fine because the bills got paid, the company grew, and we still knew how the other took coffee.
None of it makes what he did smaller.
It only makes me wonder how long I had been unhappy before I finally had something terrible enough to point at.
I settle the guitar against my thigh and play the opening progression of Gloaming, slower than I remember, all minor chords and suspended notes reaching for a resolution that never comes.
Moonlight trembling through the rain comes out rough, too much breath around the last word. I stay with the chords and try the next line. Midnight blue along the pines. Better. Close to the voice I still hear in my head, so I take another breath and keep going.
Every star I ever called mine is burning somewhere I can’t reach.
On reach, the note goes exactly where I mean to put it. It lasts less than half a second; there’s still air in it, but it’s clear. Mine.
My fingers stop against the strings. “Oh my God.”
The room doesn’t change around me. The door stays locked, the lights low. No one comes in to witness it, congratulate me, or tell me what this moment is supposed to mean.
I wipe my face with the heel of my hand and start again.
First line. Second. Third.
The note comes back thinner this time, harder to hold, but it comes. I make it through the verse before the part of my brain Jenna has somehow claimed reminds me that one decent note is not permission to lose my fucking mind and overdo it.
So I stop.
Ten minutes later, I open the studio door with the guitar case in one hand and my head still caught on the last note I managed to sing.
I’m pulling the door closed behind me when my heel snags on something solid where nothing solid should be, and the next second goes violently sideways. The guitar case knocks against the wall, my stomach drops, and a man swears under his breath as two hands shoot out for me.
I don’t hit the floor. I hit Beckett Vale.
More specifically, I land on his lap hard enough to drive the air from both of us, one arm thrown around his shoulders on instinct, my ass planted directly over his dick.
His back is against the opposite wall, laptop abandoned beside him, one long leg bent beside me.
One arm bands around my waist to keep me from tipping backward; the other hand has ended up full of my breast.
For a second, my brain refuses to assemble any of it. His large palm covers my left tit, my nipple already hard because my body is a treacherous fucking bitch with impeccable timing, and underneath me—
Oh my God.
Beckett is hard.
There is no belt buckle or unfortunate angle available to save either of us. He is thick against my ass, unmistakable, and the realization sends heat through me so fast my thighs tighten on reflex. His breath catches against my cheek. Mine disappears.
His fingers loosen over my breast as his brain catches up with where they landed, and fuck, I feel every bit of his palm leaving me.
The loss of it is almost worse than the accident itself; my nipple aches, my skin hot where his hand had been until he sets it on the carpet like he no longer trusts it.
“Laurel.” His voice is rougher than usual. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
His eyes move over my face once, checking, and my heart gives a stupid little kick because even with my ass on his erection and one breast still remembering his hand, that was the first thing he asked.
Neither of us moves.
“You should probably get up,” he says.
“I know.”
Another second passes.
His jaw shifts. “You’re still sitting on me.”
“I know that too.”
Something almost resembling a laugh leaves him, except there’s nothing funny in his face when I turn my head and find him inches away.
Jesus.
I’ve looked at Beckett plenty over the past few weeks.
I’ve noticed his mouth because I possess functional eyesight and there are limits to how much personal growth one woman can reasonably be expected to demonstrate.
I know the faint line beside it when he’s trying not to laugh, the shadow along his jaw late in the day, the way those gray eyes darken when something pisses him off.
None of that prepared me for having him this close, for the warmth of his breath brushing my lips or the very inconvenient realization that one careless shift of my hips could turn an already terrible idea into a fucking emergency.
His gaze meets mine, and whatever apology might’ve been coming disappears.
Want takes its place.
Bare. Immediate. So fucking obvious my stomach clenches.
His attention drops to my mouth. My lips part, and the arm around my waist tightens by the smallest degree.
“Laurel.”
“What?”
His eyes stay on my mouth. “Don’t look at me like that.”
My pulse jumps. “Like what?”
Now he looks at me. His voice drops until I almost feel it more than hear it. “With those fucking eyes.”
There’s nowhere useful for my eyes to go after that, so naturally they betray me and drop straight back to his mouth.
Beckett exhales.
I should get up. The thought is sensible, adult, and completely fucking useless because now I’m aware of exactly what one small shift of my hips would do. He knows it too. His free hand stays flat on the carpet, fingers flexing once as if he has personally ordered it not to touch me again.
My hand is still curled into the shoulder of his jacket.
Beckett starts to lean toward me. I don’t move away.
His eyes search mine, and another inch disappears. The clean, dark scent of his cologne fills my lungs. My fingers tighten against the wool under my palm as his face comes closer, slow enough that I could turn away, push off his shoulder, make some joke and save us both.
I do none of those things.
His nose brushes mine, and my stomach drops all over again.
A rough breath leaves him. His eyes close for half a second, and when they open, they settle on my mouth.
Holy shit.
He’s going to kiss me.
The guitar case slides down the wall and hits the floor with a crack that makes both of us flinch. Beckett’s mouth stops a breath from mine, his eyes close for one frustrated second, and the moment breaks so hard I almost feel it tear. Reality comes rushing back with humiliating precision.
Right, I should probably stop sitting on his dick.
I get off him too fast to make it graceful, nearly catch my heel on his laptop bag and save myself against the studio door.
Beckett’s hand closes around my elbow on instinct, steadying me, and releases the second I find my balance.
My face is burning all the way into my ears.
My shirt is twisted at the waist, my hair has fallen across one eye, and my left nipple is still hard enough to file a formal complaint.
I tug everything back into place while refusing to look anywhere below Beckett’s belt, because boundaries have returned to the building and I would like to welcome them home.
He gets to his feet, and I make the mistake of looking at him anyway.
His jacket is rumpled where I’d been gripping it, his hair has lost whatever disciplined arrangement it started the morning in, and there’s color high across his cheekbones that I’ve never seen before.
Good. At least I’m not the only one walking away from this looking like my nervous system just committed a felony.
I bend for the guitar case. “Why were you out here?”
Something changes in his face before he answers. The heat doesn’t disappear, but control settles back over it. “You said alone.”
I straighten, eyes widening. “Is that why you were sitting outside the door?”
God, I melt into a goddamn puddle.
His mouth almost moves. “Reception called me. Sloane’s car was spotted two streets over.”
Every warm thing inside me goes cold.
“Where?”
“Security stopped her before she reached the property. She never made it onto Vale grounds, and no one here approached her except security. The police already have the plate tied to your incident report.”
The guitar case hangs forgotten from my hand. “How long have you been sitting out here?”
His expression says I have somehow selected the least useful question available. “Long enough.”
“You could’ve come in.”
“No.”
I stare at him. “Why?”
“You said alone,” he repeats, like there was never anything else to consider.