Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The door knocks the wind out of me as I’m shoved into it.
Or maybe it’s the perfect lips attacking mine.
Callie clutches my hair, dragging me to her with a passion I haven’t experienced before. Her desperation triggers every hot impulse in my body. Her lust is a drug.
“I’ve been wanting to do this all day,” she gasps through a series of kisses. “It was torture watching you.”
A grin leaks onto my lips as she continues to grind me into the door.
Her hips scrape mine, over and over. Seeking. Imploring. Demanding.
I’m on fire.
Still kissing her, I back her toward the guest room bed, and she pulls me down on top of her.
She grips the back of my t-shirt and yanks it over my head.
We separate just enough for her to remove hers.
Skin-on-skin, we fall back into perfect rhythm. Our bodies fit together as harmoniously as our souls .
“Guess this means… you liked watching me in action?” I rasp out in labored breaths.
She moans and tightens her grip on my hair. I kiss down her neck, sampling the most intoxicating blend of citrus and spice. Her heels lock behind my thighs, forcing us together in all the right places.
Fuck, she’s gonna kill me.
“Callie…” I groan in sweet torture.
“What? I told you I had a thing for drummers.”
I wake with a feeling of dread.
Callie is still sleeping soundly beside me, so I know it’s not an external threat causing the disturbance.
I scan the darkness, half-expecting to see a ghost hovering in the corner, but the guest room is empty.
Sinking back to the pillow, I draw in deep breaths to calm my racing pulse. Yesterday was a hard, emotional day. Of course my subconscious is taking it out on me now.
My phone says it’s well after four, which means it’s been a few hours since Callie and I fell asleep in each other’s arms after the most amazing sex.
I close my eyes to return to sleep, but the cold sensation won’t go away. It’s too close to another memory. I can almost smell the pungent burn of decaying earth. Feel the icy drops of rain pelting my skin.
Unable to relax, I carefully climb out of bed, open the door, and slip into the hall.
I’ve just started toward the kitchen to get a drink when I hear noise coming from Luke’s end of the suite. Weird. He must not be able to sleep either.
Changing course, I approach his room and freeze at the sound of a guitar .
His voice drifts softly through the closed door. I cover the distance and lean against it to listen.
I don’t recognize the melody, so this must be a new one. The lyrics are muffled at first, but the pain in the chord progression tells its own story.
When his voice grows more confident, my eyes sink closed as his gut-wrenching words claw through the door.
“Can’t you see I did it for you?
While you cried, I tried to blow up your life
Why? Because you’re mine and when you forget
I have no regrets
Can’t you see I did it for you?
I’m fearless when I wreck with finesse
While I leave you to guess what I’ll break next
I have no regrets
Can’t you see I did it for you?
You belong in the dark, apart from the life you built
Still thinking you can outrun what’s done
I won, so have fun with the latest collage of sabotage.
Maybe now you’ll respect you’re a fucking mess.
I have no regrets”
Luke’s gaze shoots to me when I push into the room.
His eyes glisten in the dim lamp light. When he blinks, a tear slides down his cheek.
We say nothing. He knows I heard him. I know he wishes I hadn’t.
After a long silence, he returns his attention to the guitar and picks at the strings, not unlike I do when there’s nothing else to hold onto in the present.
I enter his room and close the door. He doesn’t look up when I join him on the end of the bed and sit quietly while he plays absent progressions.
Another tear slips down his cheek. And another. But I don’t speak. This moment isn’t about words. He has plenty of those.
I’m not sure how long we sit like that. Him playing, me staring at the dresser in front of us so I don’t have to confront our reflections in the mirror.
“We sing it so we don’t have to carry it,” he says faintly over the endless guitar loop.
My gaze darts to him, and he meets it briefly before focusing back on his strings.
“The pain, the hate, the anger, the grief… We transform it into music to take away its power to harm and turn it into a tool to heal.”
I swallow hard at his quiet explanation. His voice contains none of the hostility I expect, just quiet observation as if he needs me to understand.
“I gave up on music because I didn’t think I deserved to heal,” he continues in a broken voice. “I had to keep the poison locked inside and let it slowly kill me. It was working, and if I played, if I let it out… I couldn’t. I just couldn’t .”
He shakes his head and drops his hand from the strings.
The silence is loud without the drone of the guitar. Maybe that’s his point.
“I couldn’t play, Case,” he whispers. “I didn’t deserve the transformation after what I did.”
I wince, angry and heartbroken at the same time.
“Elena wouldn’t have wanted that,” I reply. My eyes drift to the mirror where I find his locked on me. “Your music was the only thing she still believed in at the end. ”
He flinches, but his gaze stays glued on mine. He doesn’t hide from it anymore.
I swallow a thick lump in my throat. It’s time for another truth.
Maybe if I’d told him in the beginning, we wouldn’t have gotten to this point.
But I couldn’t, and now I see why. I wanted to punish him too.
Deep down, despite what I told my conscience, I blamed him.
Just like everyone else did. And when he left, I turned the blame on myself.
“The day before…” I stumble on the words and force in a deep breath.
Luke’s fingers clench around the neck of his guitar.
Say it. You have to tell him.
“The day before what happened, she texted me. I’d sent her the rough mix of ‘Catastrophe.’”
I sense his strong reaction. His shock. He knows where I’m going with this.
I scrub rogue tears from my eyes.
“I didn’t know at the time,” I continue in a strangled tone. “I didn’t make the connection because I didn’t see it until you told us she wanted to reconcile that night.”
I blink back to him, my heart a tangled mass in my chest. “It was the song, Luke. Your music. That’s what sent her back to you that night. She heard ‘Catastrophe’ and remembered how much she loved you.”
Tears flow down his cheeks as he gazes at me in stunned silence. My own vision blurs, but I can’t move. I don’t know what to do with that truth any more now than I did then. I didn’t even know it was a truth until this moment.
He rubs at his eyes, his chest rising and falling in uneven breaths.
“Casey? Do you…” His words crumble around us.
I blink more tears down my cheeks as I wait.
After a long silence he clears his throat and tries again. “Do you think she hears us?” He turns to me with earnest grief and hope. “Wherever she is, do you think I can still play for her somehow?”
I have no idea. I don’t know how I could. But some questions are more about the answer than the question.
“Yeah, man,” I say in a hoarse tone. “You can definitely play for her.”
I don’t know if my sister will ever hear her song, but we’ll damn well make sure the rest of the world does.
Luke’s relieved smile breaks through the thick shadows around him. For a brief moment, light returns to his eyes. He focuses back on his guitar, and I slowly push up from the bed.
But before I can take a step, his guitar goes silent. I twist back to find his gaze on me again.
“I want to come back, Case,” he whispers. “I want to play for her again. I want to rewrite the ending of this story the way she’d want it.”
More emotion burns behind my eyes. I force a nod.
“I want that too.”
A thought passes over him as he searches my face. “I… Um…” He briefly looks away before finding my eyes again. “I’m glad you and Callie found each other. Truly. But do you think… Can you convince her to stay? I think I need her if I’m going to do this. I need both of you.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and blink back the threatening pressure. My heart is bursting, my brain spinning.
“I get it, man. I do,” I manage in a choked voice. “And yeah, I think we can convince her to stick around.”
Relief floods his eyes. He draws in a heavy inhale. “Thanks,” he breathes out. “Thank you.”
He drops his focus back to the guitar. His fingers return to absent strumming.
Whatever impulse told me to sit with him earlier is now urging me to give him time alone .
With a quick nod, I return to my room, feeling the opposite of how I left it a half hour ago.
Callie stirs when I climb back into the sheets beside her.
“Everything okay?” she mumbles in a sleepy tone.
“Yeah,” I say with a smile. “I’m pretty sure it is.”