Chapter 13 Carissa
Chapter thirteen
Carissa
Holy shit.
Wilder makes deep sleep look like a major understatement.
I’ve been parked outside the studio on the outskirts of Reno for twenty minutes, debating with myself about whether or not I should wake him up.
I’ve kept the car running so we wouldn’t cook, but I’m starting to feel a little bit wasteful when it comes to letting it idle.
I’m also getting major guilt vibes ogling Wilder while he’s sleeping.
It’s not a pretty position. He still has his face pressed up against the window, except now his mouth is open, and his tongue is doing its best eager dog impression. There’s also drool. It shouldn’t be hot. It shouldn’t be. It does look peaceful, and maybe that’s the best part.
I think we’ve already established that I have a serious problem when it comes to him, open mouth sleeping or not.
I finally shut the car off. All this time, I haven’t seen a soul around here.
The studio is in Reno, but when I said outskirts, I meant it.
There’s nothing around but this building and scrub brush land for just about as far as I can see.
The mountains and the city are definitely there in the distance, but distance is the keyword.
I take a chance and open Wilder’s door. He rights himself with a start, and his seatbelt prevents him from toppling out.
He balls his hands against his eyes like he’s a cranky toddler rudely jerked from a nap he was really enjoying, but it’s more because he’s disoriented. He shakes his head, clearing it quickly. Then he looks through the door and up at the building.
“Oh my god. You let me sleep the whole way? I’m sorry, Carissa. I didn’t mean to just clock out on you.”
I want to touch his shoulder, push back the stray, flattened, messy dark locks of hair that are all over the place, get close, and run my tongue over his neck, all the way to his earlobe.
I want to kiss him until I’m drowning in it.
I want to lose myself in him and have him forget everything but us.
I do realize we’re out in the middle of nowhere, utterly exposed.
It raises the hair on the back of my neck.
I settle for grazing the knuckles of his right hand, which he’s flung out against the car door.
“You needed the sleep. I didn’t mind the drive.
It was peaceful. I turned on a podcast about Ancient Rome.
It’s incredible. You should listen to it sometime. ”
He snaps his seatbelt off, shaking himself like a wet dog to dispel the lingering drowsiness.
He unfurls himself from the car, looking so much more delicious than he has any right to be in a sweater vest and pants pulled up to his pecs.
It’s the suspenders. I’m starting to have a wicked weakness for them.
“I didn’t know you were into history.”
“I didn’t know I was either. It just came up as a suggestion on the app I use to stream music.
It looked good, and for once, I didn’t have anything I wanted to listen to, so I thought I’d give it a try.
It’s low budget on the recording side, but the guy is so concise.
They’re half-hour episodes, but he packs a crazy amount of information into them.
He should be a college prof since he’s so good at lecturing. ”
“I’ll definitely give it a go.” He snaps his suspenders over the sweater vest.
My brain decides to feed me an image of Wilder sprawled out on a couch, minus shirt and vest, just those suspenders, and me straddling his waist and snapping them just like that, right over his nipples.
With that playing in my brain on a loop, I can’t help but look down. Those high pants are cupping all the right places in the front, and when he turns, also in the back. They’re giving sexy wedgies, and there’s absolutely nothing old man about them.
“I booked this studio because I know someone who knows someone, and they had a few days where it was going to be empty. I looked it up online. It’s a gorgeous space, and it isn’t too far from Sanoma, while being just far enough.
It’s not what I originally thought of when I wanted to take you away.
I would have loved to go to Colorado or somewhere with mountain man vibes, but instead, you get this.
Me. Exhausted, stressed, sweater vest, in all my glory.
While we’re here, I swear you’ll have my undivided attention.
For your music, or for anything else. It’s your choice.
You sort of kidnapped me, so you’re calling the shots. ”
I elbow him playfully in the side, hoping he can’t see how my heart is banging all over the place and simultaneously melting, while the rest of me follows suit.
“It was more of a role-playing kidnapping. If we call it anything other than that, I feel like I’m going to have to do some good deeds to make up for the bad karma I’m putting into the world. ”
He tips his head back in a wolf howling to the moon pose and lets out the longest, deepest, heartiest laugh. His chest swells, his shoulders rise and fall, and his throat expands and contracts the same way it does when he’s belting out an intense part of a song.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in the past two weeks.
Then again, I’ve spent fourteen days staring at the walls of my house, applying for jobs online, and watching my cats lick their own butts.
But if I’d spent that time journeying to the most incredible spot on earth, it still wouldn’t be half as beautiful as the man before me.
His eyes crinkle at the corners. When he laughs like that, he smiles with his whole face.
“I can’t wait to show you everything. Should we go in?” he asks.
“They just left it unlocked for you?”
“The door has a code. I’ll be able to let us in. Let me get your bag for you.”
I want to protest, but he’s already heading to the trunk.
I pop it with the button on the fob and let him shoulder it.
I make sure I walk in front of him so I don’t pop a hardcore lady boner over those damn pants.
He gives me the code and lets me type it into the keypad.
The door lock whirrs, and the big metal door opens easily when I try the handle.
In my head, I have a pretty good idea what a studio looks like.
I’ve spent some time deep diving the internet.
I even looked up what the equipment does in the control room.
I know the part where the artist performs, with all the instruments, is called the live room, or the actual studio part of the building.
But I didn’t realize there are often individual rooms for things like drums.
Learning the technical terms and studying photos online did nothing to prepare me for the straight-up magic that I walk into.
Granted, the large control room with two long rows of equipment, huge speakers in the corners, a flat screen TV above a massive window that opens into the live room, two giant leather couches, and gorgeous hardwood floors and overhead lighting that bathes the room in gold is breathtaking, but it’s not that much different from what I saw online.
It’s just the fact of being here. Me. In person. With Wilder.
It’s just us, and all the instruments glittering in the sealed-off studio.
The microphones, the incredible grand piano, the array of guitars, the drums in the far corner of the room, and an ornate organ on the opposite side—all of it is expensive and pristine, beautiful beyond anything I’ve ever dared to touch.
It’s a different world. Wilder’s world. He made this happen.
He wanted to open it up to me and give me this gift.
Even if we just sat on that couch all night and stared at the place, it would still be one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I’ve seen a lot of backstage stuff—almost all of it, actually—but this is so different.
“Please tell me you don’t hate this. If you don’t want to record any of the songs, we don’t have to. We don’t even have to turn any of the equipment on. We can just play. Or not. We don’t even have to do that. We can just sit here, look at the walls, and breathe each other in.”
Fuck.
Breathe each other in.
That sounds like the best possible time.
But studio first. I can act like an adult and control my hormones for at least an hour.
It’s a nice fantasy to think about doing things in here, but it’s so pristine that I wouldn’t dare go past being close to Wilder.
But being close to him leads to kissing him, which leads to jumping him.
And doing that led to a mess in my kitchen at home, one uncooked dinner, and my mom walking in on us.
I still wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’d just order a few events differently. Minor changes. Like picking up our clothes and locking the bathroom door.
“Do you want to go in? As I said, this is our time. We can do anything in here that you want.”
I move to the glass window and take in the majesty of all the beautiful instruments. They glisten under the lighting, almost as though they’re just there for display. Some of them appear as though they’ve never been played.
“I… what if… I’ve never played anything so nice. What if I put fingerprints on the piano? Or that guitar? Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine how much one of those would cost.”
Wilder has nice guitars, but they’re the ones he’s had for years. He could afford a new one every day if he wanted one, but he’s attached. Same with Matt. Their guitars tell a story. They don’t want something shiny. They want beat-up, scratched, played hard, and loved even harder guitars.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I asked for specific guitars, and they’re here for us to play because I couldn’t sneak my own out with me. It doesn’t matter if we leave fingerprints. That does tend to happen when instruments have to be touched in order to produce a desired sound.”
He grins, but he’s not making fun of me. It’s more like he’s laughing with me.