“Are you okay?” her sister asked, and Bo nodded mutely.
Lisa frowned.
“Are you sure?” she pressed. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” Bo replied, finally finding her voice. “I’d just . . . I think I’d like to go home now.”
“But there’s still one more performance listed on the programme,” Lisa argued.
“Is Max playing it?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not interested.” Bo tried to sound firm. “I really just want to go home. Get some sleep.”
“Well, we could stay for just—”
Lisa was cut off suddenly by the conductor walking to the front of the stage, speaking into a microphone that had been scurried up hurriedly at the end of the concerto.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the conductor began, sounding ever-so-slightly out of breath. “As a special addition to tonight’s programme, Maximilian Fitzroy has agreed to premiere the first movement of a piano concerto he himself has written.”
The audience broke into applause and surprised murmurs, but Bo only blinked, completely taken aback.But Max isn’t writing,she thought.He was supposed to take a year off, but he didn’t. He filled his calendar in fact. When did he find time to write?How?
“Maximilian Fitzroy is an enormous talent, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is proud to help him bring his music to life tonight. So, please stay in your seats and enjoy the world premiere of Maximilian Fitzroy’sThe Jacobien Concerto,played by Maximilian Fitzroy himself.”
Bo was stunned. So stunned in fact that her mouth dropped unattractively open. Without missing a beat, Lisa leaned towards her.
“Well,” Lisa remarked drily. “I think we know now why he sent you those tickets.”
Chapter Thirty-One
She travelled home to Lisa’s home in a daze, and Lisa, to her credit, didn’t try and talk to her, letting Bo stare absently out of the window, the lights of Sydney passing in a blur. When they walked in the door of Lisa’s house, Lisa led them straight to the living room, where she opened the liquor cabinet. She pulled from it a bottle of Balblair 82, which had been their father’s favourite tipple, and poured out two large measures, pushing one towards Bo.
“So,” Lisa began, “I think it’s safe to say that where Maximilian Fitzroy is concerned, there are some pretty deep feelings going on. Deep feelings for you.”
Bo said nothing, sipping at her whisky miserably.
“Fucking hell, Bo,” Lisa swore, abruptly losing patience. “Were you even really there tonight? Didn’t you hear the music he wrote andnamedfor you?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well, any fool with a working set of ears could tell that he’s in love with you, or at least, that he was in love with you at some point. I don’t understand. You said he wasn’t serious about you.”
“I don’t understand any of this either.” Bo sat back. “He did say that. He also said I was just a fling.”
“He told you that?”
Bo hesitated. “Well, not to my face. He said it to someone else, who said it to someone else, which I then overheard. Then I spoke to Max, and he confirmed it and . . . and . . .” she tapered off as Max’s words replayed in her head.
I said it, but not in the way you think.
Lisa rolled her eyes. “This is some next-level high school romance kind of shit, you understand that, right? Look, I don’t care who you overheard and what Max said, I know classical music, and that concerto tonight . . . theJacobien Concerto,lestI remind you, was a work of love. For God’s sake, Bo, he even sent you tickets.Front-row seats.He wanted you to hear his music. He wanted you to hear how much he loves you. This man literally opened a vein in front of six thousand people to tell you how much he loves you. How can’t you see it? No. How didn’t youhearit?”
Bo chewed on her lip. She’d heard Max’s music tonight, of course she had. She’d sat in her seat, riveted, as Max played an exquisite ten-minute melody, on the brink of tears the entire time. She heard in the rise and fall of his music the beginning of their relationship play out; heard in his notes the sultriness of a summer’s evening transform into tension as they’d met again in a legal office. The first movement had hints ofAdagio un poco mossobled into the middle as their relationship deepened, and there’d been an overarching sadness to the music, a feeling of despair as love grew stronger without ever being returned.
He loved me,Bo realized.He loved me and never said a word.She swallowed down another miserable mouthful of whisky.But then, I never said a word either.
“I wish he’d told me,” she whispered. “If he’d said even one thing that let me know . . .”
