From the time I step through the door, I can’t make myself leave the entrance and so I pace.
Baylor is singing about love and hope killing him and whatever the fuck has gone on for him during the past thirteen years? He’s the one who didn’t want to stay with me, right? I put my head in my hands. Or did we both walk away in different directions?
I had to leave for LA when I did. The time was right, and I had to be something before I could be worthy of Baylor Mann.
And he built this house that has no one in it. There’s no one in those pictures each year. No extra toothbrush in his bathroom.
I let Baylor get in the house, but that’s all before I close the door by placing his back against it and boxing him in so he has no place to go.
I’ve been walking the floor of his foyer for over an hour.
Memories of his eyes turning just this dark assault me as I watch it play out in real time, duetting with the memories playing picture-in-picture in my head with reality. I know that look, all the way from the turn of his head to the way his lips part.
“Did you need to talk about something, Cas?” His voice is rough on the edges, all smooth bourbon with a bite. His guitar case is still hanging from a hand.
“I don’t need to talk. We have thirteen ears of nothing but words between us and there are still miles of distance.” I get closer, letting my words drift over his lips. “I want it gone, Bee.”
I just go for it, pressing my body against his and taking his mouth with mine. Exactly like I did the first time we kissed.
One thing I do know from my life as a rockstar is how to infuse meaning into things. The way I walk on stage. The pictures I put out for the public to see. The way I sing a line of a song. The clothes I wear. My hands across an instrument.
And this kiss.
The taste of him assaults me before I can even catalogue anything about the kiss itself. His hands pull me close, guitar case abandoned on the floor, allowing his palms and fingers to settle on my skin like they never left.
As if over a decade can be erased by my tongue sweeping into his mouth.
Warm and wet and home, I kiss him for all the times I haven’t. For all the times I had to use memory to conjure his taste in the darkness. For all the years apart. For my broken heart I never told him about. For the chance I’ll never quit believing we still may have.
The second chance I want so badly.
I growl a bit, a needy, rough sound, when he pulls his face back from mine. Our chests rise against one another, as the sexy, hooded-eyed lust-filled expression I barely caught on his face is carefully pulled back to one of serious consideration.
“What about Gray?”
“Gray? Who the fuck is Gray?” My eyebrows shoot up, but I don’t move. If anything, my hands clutch his shirt tighter. “Is that the guy? The one you fell for?”
“The...wha...who?” Baylor’s eyes are back to their blue now, colored with confusion in the low light of his foyer as we finally hash this out in the semi-dark.
I keep him pinned to the door with my body. He could move me if he really wanted to, but I’m really hoping he doesn’t want to.
“This house, Baylor. This life. The words of your goddamned songs. This is a home for more than one person.” I’m rambling like a lunatic. “Did you build it for him? A place for something you wanted to keep? That song you sang tonight?” I jab a finger in his chest, as my mouth jumbles up all the things I want to say. “You wrote that because youfelt it. Hell, all of the songs are that way, and I know it. Who was the guy, Bee? Who made you feel those things?”
A look of some kind of fear crosses his face as the color drains away.
“You were there? At Black Diamond?” He sort of whispers the words. “Tonight?”
“And I heard you sing about fuckinglovingsomeone. ‘The hope that fucking kills you.’ That’s a goddamned hit. Who was it? Why. . .?” I want to demand information I may not have a right to.
I take a deep breath. “When I walked in this house for the first time, I thought to myself, what kind of person would ever leave Baylor Mann? Because I know you wouldn’t be the one letting go of someone you loved. Not unless that was what they wanted. And who would be stupid enough to want that?”
Something about what I say seems to light something inside him, and he pushes right back into my space, his handsome face dark and serious.
“I didn’t let go, Cas. Right or wrong, I never did. I’ve carried you around with me like a fucking ghost or a missing limb.”
I drop back a step, searching his face for any indication he’s not being honest. My heart is racing all over my chest, messing up my ability to breathe.
“Me?”
