With Tate, I was just Amber. He hadn’t run away when the paparazzi had chased us out of the salon and into the bookstore. He hadn’t run when we’d been surrounded at the orchard.
I wanted to believe he wasn’t going to run—period.
But we were in a bubble here in Haven. Would he still want me when I was gone for weeks on end? My fingers shook as I picked up the wrappers from our leftover Halloween candy. I curled them into my palms and fell onto my knees.
And because the only place I really processed my feelings was music, I dumped the mess in the waste bin then sat at my piano. I let my fingers pick out notes at random until the melody locked in my chest flowed out of my fingers. It was always the music first for me. The words grew out of the notes and chords whether it was my guitar or my piano.
He was lightning
I was the bottle
I sealed him tight inside, afraid he would fade
Instead, the flickers became a glow
And the glow became a warmth
That flowed into my hand
Liquid gold, honeyed and thick
He reminded me that he would stick
The proof of it grew from the unfathomable lightning
In a bottle
that had been hiding high on my shelf
tucked away
where I never thought he’d find me
“Girl, if you don’t record that I’m tossing you into the Hudson on my way back to Winchester Falls.”
I jumped and turned to find James in the doorway. Her inky flame hair was a mess around her shoulders. She wore an oversized black and red plaid shirt with running shorts in a ridiculous ultraviolet purple that made me laugh. “Sneaking around?”
She waggled the big glass of water in her hand. “I need to flush out the tequila. That was potent stuff. I’ll have to thank Nash for his donation.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Pretty sure I’m going to sweat it out all day myself. You’re a bad influence.”
“If that came out of you, seems like I’m a good one.” She sat near me on a club chair and picked up her blue Breedlove acoustic. Her long fingers picked out the notes that wrapped around mine in a layer that lifted the lyrics into a whispery lilt.
I opened my notes app and hit record as I sang it again, the emotion gathering and knotting in my throat with tears that wouldn’t be denied.
We changed the arrangement a little, and my voice went from clear as a bell to ethereal and full of longing.
Both of us sitting in silence for a moment at the end of the song.
I reached out to hit stop, then closed the cover over my keys.
“I think I love him, James.”
“You don’t say.”
I laughed at her wry voice.“He’s almost too good to be true.”
“You’ve had more than enough dipshits.”
