“Unless you don’t want to.”I toss it out casually, but everything inside me coils, waiting.
“I ...Lola will be at the shop working all day tomorrow.”She shrugs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.“And I don’t have classes.”
“You have classes?”I latch onto that thread like it’s safer than everything else boiling under the surface.“You’re going back to school, like me?”
She laughs softly.“No.I teach piano lessons.”Her gaze drifts toward the back room, like she can already hear the music in her head.“You’re going back to school?”
“I did.Got me a GED and took a few classes.Trying to figure out how to run a business.More like a non-profit, really.”I shrug, feeling stupidly exposed.“I volunteer.Give guitar lessons at a music store.I keep myself busy.”
Her head tilts, her mouth twitching like she’s deciding whether to be amused or impressed.
“I’m trying my best to, you know ...learn to be a person.”
She smirks, and it lands somewhere low in my gut, knocking the air out of me.
“You’re a person, Wild.”She crosses her arms over her chest, her voice low, teasing.“You’re just learning to do mundane stuff.”She pauses.Her gaze flickers across my face.“I’m glad things are better.”
“They’re—” I exhale because they’re a lot better, but ...I let the words fall out like they’ve been there all along.“I just need to get the girl.”
I wink, then turn around with the box, not giving her a chance to respond.If I do, I might say something else.Something fucking dangerous.Something I won’t be able to take back.
But I can feel her watching me walk away.
And maybe, just maybe, she feels it too—the low, building tension between us.The hum of something reckless waiting to snap.
ChapterOne Hundred Five
Kit
October 3rd, 1997
I stare at the door.
“I just need to get the girl,” he said.
But which girl?
Me?
I don’t know if we’ll ever be in that place again.Or if we ever truly were.
He’s probably still chasing the memory of teenage Kit.The version of me who believed in bright beginnings and romantic promises sealed in the back of tour buses.The girl who thought music and sex and love could fix anything.
I’m not her anymore.
I’m the woman who’s carrying a mountain of baggage, a thousand what-ifs, and a heart that sometimes forgets how to beat without caution.I have bruises in places no one can see, and forgiveness doesn’t come easy anymore.Trust?That’s a whole damn battlefield.And sex—it hasn’t been just sex in a long time.Not since him.
Would I want to try again?
Would I even survive it?
I remember him standing in my father’s office just months ago saying he still belonged to me.Like I was his final note, the one that never resolved.
Even if I never wanted him again.
Then there was that kiss.Fuck.
That kiss.
