My stunned gaze flies to his with wonderment. He feels him, too?
“I was standing at the bedroom window earlier today, and I swear to god, I thought I could hear your voice. You were singing that song you, Ry, and your dad performed together. The one I recorded on video.”
“‘Come Closer,’” I reply, amazed by the serendipity of him mentioning that particular song. “I hadn’t touched my guitar or the piano since Ryder…”Died. I still have trouble saying it out loud. “Fallon recently took me to a recording studio, and it’s one of the songs I played.”
Jayson misses a step, and he accidentally stumbles onto my left foot. “Sorry.”
“No damage.” I shift us around and try my hardest not to let Fallon’s penetrating blue gaze affect me, but I can feel him watching us. He’s with Charlotte, Christopher, Daniel, and Drew at the firepit, and their surreptitious glances make me feel like a bug under a magnifying glass.
Jayson’s palm slides up the curvature of my spine to my upper back, his fingertips at the base of my neck. “So, how was it?”
“How was what?”
“The recording studio.”
“Terrifying.”
“I bet you kicked ass. I loved listening to you sing. Best part of my day when we were kids was sitting at my open window while you played your guitar.”
Warmed by his compliment, I reply, “I loved hearing you laugh. You had the best laugh. I miss hearing it.” The confession sneaks out unintentionally. I wasn’t blushing before but I sure as hell am now.
Jayson’s moonlight gaze drops to mine, some unknown question lurking there, thick with a messy mountain of sentimentality I don’t have a clue how to untangle.
“I’m not going to interfere if Fallon is who you want,” he says quietly.
Notif you love him,butif he’s who you want.Like he’s testing me. I’m not in the mood to fight tonight, and discussing the topic of my relationship with Fallon would surely lead to one.
I close my eyes and drop my forehead to his chest. “Jayson, please don’t.”
“Liz, you need to be sure he’s the man you think he is.”
I know exactly who Fallon is, the good and the bad, but Jayson’s discomforted comment implies that there’s something he knows that I don’t.
The song fades into another, and I step back, studying his face for what he’s not telling me. “Why would you say that?”
His entire body tenses, just for a second, before he schools his features into something neutral. But I saw it.
My pulse pounds harder the longer I look at him, and I try to decipher the secrets I can see hiding behind the false fortifications he just erected. Jayson isn’t telling me something. The realization isn’t logical—it’s instinctual. The same way that always let me read him like an open book when we were younger.
Before I can press him for an answer, a whirlwind of blonde hair and slender arms latches onto Jayson’s side. “Uncle Jayson!” Charlotte exclaims.
There’s a tug on my wrist, and I’m unexpectedly pulled away and whisked into Fallon’s arms. I grab hold of his shoulders to regain my balance.
“Subtlety is not your forte.”
He has the nerve to ingeniously blink his baby blues at me. “No idea what you’re referring to.”
“Don’t think I don’t know what you just did.”
When I saw his and Charlotte’s heads together, I knew they were up to something. Charlotte wasn’t at all happy when I told her and Christopher that Jayson would be coming tonight. It’s ridiculous the grudges my kids can hold about stuff from my past that has nothing to do with them.
Fallon’s fingertips skim down the valley of my back to rest just above my ass. Where Jayson’s touch was almost timid, Fallon’s is the exact opposite—one familiar and nostalgic like a warm comfort, the other exciting and full of unrestrained possession.
He braces my lower lumbar and shallowly dips me, nipping a kiss to my lips. “I can’t help it if she likes me better.”
“Hero worship is more like it.” Charlotte is as starry-eyed over him as I am. “Kind of like her mother.”
Fallon’s grin doesn’t display the humor I was going for. “I still don’t know why you see me that way.”
