“Just one?”
“Hard no,” I say.
“But you haven’t written the music. I don’t know how they’re supposed to sound.”
“They’re yours. If you want them, you decide.”
“I’ll give you writing credit at least.”
Despite myself, my heart rate picks up. It’s already hammering, but it goes into heart rate overdrive. I should use a more technical medical term, but right now, my head is scrambled.
Tachycardia.
Thanks, brain.
Just the thought of Wilder taking something I’ve written in my darkest moments, in full joy, with all my heart and no small amount of myself, with endless longing, sometimes no longing at all because I found satisfaction in myself, with angst, desire, grief, sorrow, and laughter… it ties me up inside. And not just one knot but hundreds. Thousands.
Half the world would kill to hand this man a single note, let alone a whole journal full of songs, and to have him look them over and tell them that what they wrote is worthy of being sung.
“No,” I rasp. I force my voice to come out as more than a squeak. “Thanks, but no. I’m a nurse. Not a musician.”
“I see.” His jaw clenches, and a muscle jumps in his temple.
“Do you?” I’m somehow brave enough to ask. I don’t want him to see. If I play for him, he’llhearme. He’llknow. Music to this man is the communication from one heart to another. I don’tneed to crack myself open and let him peer into the uncharted depths of my deepest secrets.
Even if I know secrets are stored in the brain.
He’ll still freakingknow.
My breath unspools out of me like a ball of yarn dropping to the floor and rolling away haphazardly.
“It’s not that I don’t like people,” I try to explain. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. Wilder adores people. There’s one single word that perfectly describes why Wilder does this.Humanity. “I just like my privacy. I like being able to dictate my life. I don’t want to be online. I don’t want people saying anything about me, good or bad, and I don’t want people to know me when they don’t. I just don’t want tobein that position.”
“Fame can be exhausting, but so can loneliness,” he murmurs.
My throat aches, becoming all shards of glass and thorny thorns. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t have any family left.” The band is Wilder’s family. So is his fanbase, all the people he works with, and all the friends he’s made along the way. And he’s made so many of them. “You have the whole world, though. People want to know you not because of what you can do for them, but because you’re an incredible person with the purest heart and the sweetest soul. You’re good shit. Funny. Kind. Witty. And entirely and unapologetically who you are.”
“Careful. Don’t fall in love with me.” He has the grace to laugh a real laugh that causes him to shoot his hand out and clutch his stomach. He groans under his breath.
I stumble forward a step, ready to help him, but he waves me off. He gives me his signature crooked grin that has melted hearts and caused emergency fire-extinguishing measures in panties all over the world. Probably. Most likely.
And then he resorts to straight-up bribery, the same way I did for the IV.
“Please? If I tell you that it would make me feel better?”
“Still no chance.” Actually, there’s a chance. My eyes flick to the corner where Matt’s guitar rests safely in the case.
“You’re staring right at Matt’s guitar. Some part of you wants to play for me.” This is exactly the kind of rogue boyish charm that got Wilder a record deal in the first place.
“They’ll hear.” Shit. Why did I just say that? That sounds likeyes, I secretly want to play for you so you know all my secrets, such that we can’t go back to a place of pretending or normalcy, and I have to immediately quit my job.
I know I was contemplating it not even twenty minutes ago, but knowing it’s the right thing to do and actually moving on are two very different things. I can come to terms with it eventually and maybe even make peace with it, but not within half a fucking hour.
“They might, but probably not. Even if they do, they won’t care. They probably all have headphones on by now and are back in their bunks, chilling.”
“If Matt found out I touched his guitar, he’d be so angry.”
“He wouldn’t be. Not ifyoudid it. If I did…”
