For just a moment, he considered telling her the truth, that it was him, not her—but that wouldn’t be a good idea. Talking about it would make it worse and possibly awkward. It didn’t matter what she thought, just so long as she kept that hard boundary between them.
“Uh…did I do something wrong?”
No, not at all. It’s what my insides are fucking doing.
“We just need to keep this professional. You’re here to work and nothing else.”
“Oh. Um…okay.” Pursing her lips, she stood. “Uh…then I guess we’re done now?” After he gave her a short nod, she asked, “Do you need me to do anything else today?”
Goddamn. He was a fucking asshole. Her heart was wide open and he’d just cut it. Well, at least it fit his reputation: once an asshole, always an asshole. And that was for the best. If she thought he was just another jerk, maybe she’d keep her distance.
And they could get this album in the can and go their respective ways.
“No. I think we’ve done enough work for the day.”
With another nod and her lips shut tight, she backed away before turning and leaving the control room before exiting the studio. And it was as if she’d taken the air with her.
After she left, he let his shoulders drop, letting the confusion flood his body. Fuck. That had been far too close…way too goddamned intense.
And where the hell had it come from? He’d done so well over the last several years maintaining his shit and keeping a steady, even keel. No matter what his insides felt, he knew he couldn’t go there. If you loved someone, you could lose them—and so it was better to not even go there in the first place.
But more than that, the truth he was hiding from…someone like Raine, he could ruin her completely, just like everything else he’d done in his miserable life.
No fucking way.
But his heart was refusing to take the message.
So Quentin knew there was only one way through that—and that was to relentlessly focus on work. So he pulled up his old second solo album, the one that would never see the light of day, and picked at it like he always did.
But this time he stayed up until far past midnight.
Chapter 10
When Raine awoke the next morning, she felt better than she had in ages.
No…better than ever.
And she realized, as she took a long, warm shower, that it was true. She felt light and free, almost like a new person. It was the strangest feeling.
As she rinsed the shampoo out of her hair, a little of the pink in her locks washing away with the suds, her mind went back to yesterday. Despite the excitement of writing such a powerful song, the end of the day had been nagging at her. What the hell had she done to make Quentin pull back like that, to flinch as if her hands had been radioactive? Especially when they should have simply been enjoying the moment: she’d had a fucking breakthrough.
As hard as it was to admit it, she also knew he’d been one-hundred percent right in terms of her writing. The recent songs she’d been working on up until now had been, for lack of a better word, safe. Easy. Predictable, even. Although she believed her fans would have eaten it up anyway, she knew now that recording those songs would have made her a sellout. There hadn’t been anything real about any of them. It had been nothing but fake rage and tears for the masses.
And Quentin had seen through it all.
He’d seen her.
And, up until that odd moment at the end of the session, he hadn’t looked away from her ugliness.
As she toweled off, still turning over those last few minutes together, she thought maybe she’d figured out specifically what had caused his reaction.
It had to be when she’d touched his forearm. That was when he’d backed away. Before that, she’d felt something else—some kind of shared creative joy and energy, something she wouldn’t be able to describe with words…but, when she’d touched him, it was almost like a hug of friendship. Raine wasn’t typically a touchy-feely type of person, but she’d learned after spending five years with Mal as a manager that he often calmed down when she’d do something like that. There was something to be said about touch.
But that wasn’t why she’d done it. For some reason, she’d felt close to Quentin then, like they’d been partners who’d just won a battle—and touching his arm had felt as natural as breathing. After all, hadn’t they just been through that gauntlet together?
His reaction simply emphasized that she really didn’t know him any more than he knew her. She’d only been there a day, so what had she expected?
Today, she planned to go to the kitchen at seven to enjoy a cup of coffee and leisurely eat breakfast before working. If nothing else, she hoped it would signal that she wasn’t looking for a fight.
