Then I wrap my arms around Billie so I can take the wheel.
We sway together as we start to move, and I nearly bite off my tongue when the side of her breast brushes my arm.
Billie shifts a little, turning her head to look out the window. My chest cramps thinking she must really be unhappy if she’s this quiet.
“What do you think you’re missing?” I start to make the turn at the end of a row, careful not to jostle her bad arm. “Being a bookkeeper?”
She turns her head the other way, giving me a view of her profile. Her mouth looks especially lush from this angle, and I tamp down the urge to remember how soft her lips were.
How they tasted.
“You know what’s funny? I’ve been wondering that myself. And then when you and I played that game at the hospital?—”
I groan. “God, that was cheesy. The humming? So embarrassing. Sorry.”
“It wasn’t cheesy at all.” She puts a hand on my knee. “It was great. You were totally lit up, and it made me realize that the only place I’m lit up that way is when I’m…outside. Moving my body. It’s when I’m working with people and I’m around animals and just, like, reallife, you know? Remember that time you found me in the barn in the middle of the night and I was cuddling with Meredith?”
I let out a soft chuckle, my pulse skipping a beat at the memory. “We talked about that at the hospital. You were having those bad dreams then, right?”
“I was. And you made me feel better by playing your guitar. I hummed the song, and you picked it right up.”
I groan again, despite the weird flutter that happens inside my chest. I loved that guitar. But I stopped playing after Momand Dad died, and I haven’t so much as touched the damn thing since.
Last I saw it, the guitar was in the old storage shed on the Rivers’ side of the ranch. No clue if it’s still there.
Not like I’d wanna play if itwerestill around. But if I did?—
“Do you ever think about picking up the guitar again? You were really good, and I had fun playing that game with you.”
I swallow. Why is my throat tight? Is it the way Billie can read my mind?
Or is it the memory of how happy I felt—how alive—whenever I played music? No one’s ever pushed me to take it back up. I think my brothers and my friends know it’s a sore subject.
I don’t knowwhyit’s a sore subject. Music, singing, playing…maybe I associate all that with my parents? Our time as a whole, happy family?
I wonder if I stopped playing because music made me feel, period. And feeling got dangerous after I lost my parents.
My guitar had the power to make me feel happy or sad or lonely or excited or turned on. Which meant Ididn’thave power over my emotions—the music did. And once my parents died, I was afraid that playing music would make me feel things I couldn’t handle. I’ve always known that grief is lurking in the corners of my consciousness, and if I played music, I worried it would flood my body and I’d drown in it.
So I set down my guitar and never picked it back up again.
My chest spasms, a vast, empty feeling opening up inside me.
That seemed like the right choice at the time. Now? I’m not so sure. I remember feeling proud that I didn’t cry at my parents’ funeral. Come to think of it, I haven’t cried since.
But closing off my feelings might be more of a problem than a cure. Am I ready to face that fact, though? What if I let myself experience that grief and it absolutely destroys me?
“Nah.” I sniff. “Don’t got the time.”
“That’s a lie. You should do it.”
“You should mind your own damn business.”
One side of that pretty little mouth kicks up. “I know. So anyway, the other night I did it again—I had a nightmare, so I snuck into the barn and I was cuddling the horses and I was feeling real sorry for myself that I only got to be around them on my own time. Dad runs a tight ship, and he wants me in the office seven to four every day, five days a week.”
“Brutal.”
“No shit.” She puts her hands on the wheel inside mine. “Can I drive?”
