Chapter Nineteen
TWO DAYS LATER, I burst into the studio, mouth still full of cereal, chest heaving.
While eating a late breakfast, I’d been listening to Oliver play the piano—variations on a theme we’d been working on for the last few days, over and over again, as he messed with modulations and style.
He left the door to the studio open. I took it as an invitation.
Not that I needed it, because it all came to me in such a burst of inspiration that I would have kicked down that door if I had to. All because of my dad’s voicemail that I finally listened to. His well-timed reminder of who I am, what I do.
Oliver whirls around on the piano bench at my sudden appearance, eyebrows raised over his glasses. He looks especially J.Crew today in a cozy cable-knit sweater in a creamy-white color with a pair of khakis, while I’m in an oversize Yankees sweatshirt and leggings.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “You’re not choking or something?”
I swallow my cereal and wave my hands. “No, no, no. I just had an idea. Where are the drumsticks?”
I scan the floor for where I left them last. Oliver does the same thing. I’ve been messing with them off and on since we found our groove, mostly tapping out rhythms on my leg, but I have yet to use them on the full kit in the room.
I find one under the piano and Oliver finds the other under his bench. He hands it to me with a curious smile on his face. My heart is racing as I practically skip over to the shiny black drum set in the corner.
“I’m going to play a steady four-four,” I say to him over the tops of the tom drums. “You come in with what you were just playing whenever you’re ready.”
He nods. I adjust my stool so my legs can reach the pedals and feel the sturdy weight of the sticks in my hands. I twirl my wrists once, twice, then a third time to warm up a little, and then I’m pounding away. Coming in hot, as they say.
It’s an easy tempo—steady, simple, but effective, a cornerstone of contemporary percussion that all drummers learn when they’re starting out. Oliver watches me closely as he listens. I feel the full weight of his focus for several bars even when my own eyes start to follow the hits of my sticks.
And then he starts to play.
It’s the ostinato we wrote together—the theme we’ve been working on for days.
Set against the rhythm of my drumming, it’s completely transformed.
It’s no longer just a darkly beautiful, almost sad melody; it’s something else entirely, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.
The emotion that Oliver pours into his playing is transcendent.
Fuck, he is so gifted. My stomach bottoms out, as if I’m flying and caught a headwind that I can’t control.
My instrument was the missing piece.
Oliver improvises a breathtaking bridge against the beats I’m laying for him.
When the piece comes to a natural close, it’s a little sloppy, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with time and practice.
Silence swirls around us as I pull my drumsticks to my chest. My heartbeat is a wild, untamed thing while I watch Oliver take deep, steadying breaths before turning to look at me.
“Holy shit.” The look on his face is hard to describe; it’s heated, untamed but tense, almost frightening in the way it makes me feel, to see him all lit up like that. “That’s it. That’s the theme.”
“I feel like I’m flying,” I say, but it comes out like a laugh.
The tension in his face breaks when he smiles wide. “I’ve never heard anything like that before. Chris is going to lose his mind.”
“Can we send him a live recording of it? Do we have what we need to do that here?” I ask as I gesture vaguely to the rest of the studio with my drumsticks. “I don’t think the computer version of it will cut it.”
He’s nodding before I even finish speaking. “Yes, I agree. We can write it out with the software, but it should be a live track. This studio has everything. We can do it here.”
“Good. I can edit it. I’m good at that.” Finally, my time composing and editing jingles comes in handy.
“Perfect.” He turns slightly at the piano bench, hands poised and ready to play, but he keeps his eyes on me. “Can we run through it again? I want to work out the middle section.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Let’s fucking go.”
He grins at me, and I take my cue to start.
It takes us the entire day to lay out the track. Nine hours of work to edit one minute and forty-two seconds of music. We barely even pause to eat, opting instead to shove fistfuls of more dry cereal into our mouths at the computer.
Just as I hit send on the email to Chris with the file attached, Oliver sets a glass of wine on the desk next to the computer. I smile up at him to find he’s got a glass of his own. I hadn’t even realized he’d left me in here.
“A toast,” he says. “To you and your talent.”
I stand and raise my glass. “To us and our talent.”
He rolls his eyes but smiles—a new one for him. At least he didn’t try to fight me on the compliment this time. Not really.
We clink our glasses together. I close my eyes as I sip my wine. It’s a beautiful, rich cabernet that he picked out during out last trip to the store.
“Delicious,” I say.
The warm touch of a hand tucking my hair behind my ear causes my eyes to fly open.
Oliver has moved closer, our bodies just inches apart.
That heated expression is back on his face, but this time there’s no tension to be found.
The way he’s looking at me now—it’s all desire, from the blown pupils to the color spreading across his cheeks and the way he licks his lips.
“I know we agreed that work comes first,” he says, his voice husky and low, “but it has, and now I want to focus on something else.”
Heat floods my body as I run my hand up his chest. “If work comes first, then what comes second?”
“You do, Celia.”
I gasp. My mouth drops open. Oliver may not be a man of many words, but damn does he choose some good ones.
He can tell that I like what I just heard because he smirks as he takes my wineglass and sets both of them on the desk.
He grabs my waist just as I reach for his neck, and then he’s bending for me as I push myself against him, our bodies and lips colliding in the same moment.
There is no hesitation this time—it’s just the two of us eager for each other, days after our first kiss.
And oh, I can tell he’s been waiting for this moment.
Oliver kisses me like a man starved, like his intention is to devour me, body and soul, like the world is going to end as soon as we break away.
He tastes like the wine, but also just like him, that essence of who he is that I got to sample before, sweet but not without bite.
It’s dizzying, the way his lips meld into mine, his tongue sweeping across my own as we learn the rhythm of each other’s breathing.
My fingers twist in his hair while his hands explore the curves of my body, daring to go further than before.
He grazes my breast and I feel it everywhere, so much so that a moan escapes me, thrumming right through the both of us.
Oliver takes this encouragement in stride and palms me with such enthusiasm that I’m turned and backed against the desk.
The hard wood juts into my lower back but I don’t care, I don’t care about anything at all other than the way his skin feels when I run my hands down his body and back up to get underneath his clothes, splaying my hands wide over the hard surface of his abs while he gasps into my mouth.
I feel the tug of my sweatshirt and lift my arms without hesitation.
There’s a small part of my brain that acknowledges Oliver is about to see me in nothing more than the little cotton bra I wear around the house, but it quiets the moment his mouth finds mine again, then dips lower as he kisses my jaw, lower as he kisses my neck, lower as he kisses my clavicle, lower as he kisses the soft swell of my chest.
With my hands twisted in his hair, I look down at him, on his knees, worshiping my skin with his lips and tongue as his hands cup my breasts. My pulse pounds everywhere, but especially between my legs, that ache building at alarming speed.
Oliver Barlowe on his knees in front of me. Again.
“Hey,” I whisper as I bend to tug at his sweater. “Your turn.”
He murmurs something inaudible as he licks between my breasts.
His mouth moves over to the left, his breath hot against my bra and my skin, and then he runs his tongue along the cotton fabric, and I have no choice but to rub my legs together and whimper.
He must love that sound, because he does it again, this time with a little bit of teeth. My legs nearly buckle.
So, this is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that intense, singular focus of his.
I give myself over to it, to the way he nibbles and breathes and licks his way to the other breast while his fingers shove up under the cup on the other side.
I moan and writhe as he makes contact with my hard nipple.
I don’t realize how much I’m leaning into him until I feel my hair cascade over both of us like a curtain.
He looks up at me and the sight of him with swollen lips and eyes drunk with desire almost takes the wind out of me.
It’s such a beautiful, devastating thing to see, this man letting go, showing me this side of him I never knew existed, worshipping my body after we made such beautiful music together.
His arms wrap around my back and pull me down toward him.
I let him, my legs spreading as I straddle him, my chest spilling out of my bra, my arms draping over his shoulders as we find ourselves eye level with each other.
Never in my life have I been looked at this way, this closely, like he sees all of me and wants it more than anything else.
It’s overwhelming to look at him and realize that I feel the same way.