“Kid wants to be a musician?”
“Kid wants to be you. Came to Nashville with big dreams, playing open mics, working wherever he can to pay rent.” I pause. “Sound familiar?”
“Is that why you hired him?”
“I hired him because we needed help and he was willing to work for tips plus minimum wage. But yeah, maybe I saw something familiar in him.”
We clear the table together, washing and drying with easy coordination. He rinses, I dry, our hips bumping occasionally as we work. It feels normal in a way that scares me more than passion would—this domestic rhythm that makes me imagine what it would be like if this was every night, not just stolen hours while Lily’s away.
“Dessert?” he asks, reaching for the refrigerator where he’d stored the mousse.
“Later.”
He turns back, leaning against the counter, studying me. “What are you really afraid of?”
“You want the list? You leaving. You staying and resenting it. Lily loving you. Lily losing you. Me falling for someone whose first love will always be the music. Me opening up again just to watch someone take pieces of me when they go.”
“Music isn’t my first love.”
“No?”
“Music is how I breathe. It’s how I process the world. But it’s not love. Love is messier. Love is standing in someone’s kitchen, terrified they’re going to ask you to leave. Love is writing songs you can’t record because they’re too personal, too much about one specific person with trust issues and a daughter who makes killer French toast.”
“Darian—”
“Love is being willing to have the hard conversations instead of just the easy heat.”
I move closer, pulled by something I’m tired of resisting. “Is that what this is? Love?”
“I don’t know. But I’d like to find out. If you’ll let me.”
“Even knowing what I’m afraid of?”
“Especially knowing.” His hand finds my waist, thumb brushing the strip of skin where my shirt has lifted. “I can’t promise I won’t tour. It’s my job. But I can promise to come back. To call Lily from every city. To make this my home base, my real life, not just a stop between shows.”
“How do I trust that?”
“You don’t. Not yet. Trust takes time. But maybe you could try? Maybe we could try?”
Instead of answering with words, I kiss him. Not soft or tentative, but with all the want I’ve been suppressing since that morning I ran from his apartment, since that night at the venue when we both gave in to what’s been building between us. He kisses me back like he understands the war happening inside me, like he’s willing to wait for me to sort it out.
We move through the house without discussing it, muscle memory guiding us through doorways and around furniture. We stop to press against walls when the need to touch becomes too urgent to delay. His mouth finds my neck, that spot below my ear that he discovered weeks ago, the one that makes me gasp and grip his shoulders. My fingers tug at his shirt until he pulls back long enough to yank it over his head.
“Rye.” My name comes out rough, like he’s been thinking it for hours.
“Bedroom. Now.”
We barely make it, clothes disappearing in a trail that I’ll probably be embarrassed about tomorrow. We fall onto my bed in moonlight streaming through curtains I never close properly, enough light to see each other, to watch expressions change, to witness what we’re doing to each other.
He looks at me like I’m something precious, something worth coming back for, and that look alone nearly undoes me.
“You’re sure?” he asks, hand skimming my ribs, tracing patterns that make me shiver.
“I’m sure I want this. I want you. The rest we figure out as we go.”
He takes time anyway, learning my body with renewed attention, finding the places he discovered before and new ones that make me arch off the bed, that make me moan his name, that make me forget every reason this might not work. His mouth follows the path of his hands, tasting, exploring,rediscovering. When I try to reciprocate, to flip us over and take control, he catches my wrists gently.
“Let me,” he says against my stomach. “Just let me.”
