“You,” he said, watching me intently.
I got a little lost in the curiosity of his eyes. His heavy-lidded squint could easily be mistaken for a sultry gaze, but upon closer examination, Beats seemed to have a sensitivity to light or some other outside element that forced his lids to overcompensate by half closing. A slight dark tinting under the eyes only drew more attention to them.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You’re not all you seem to be.”
“Neither are you.”
“I don’t know about that. Look at me. I’ve been stripped down to the bare minimum. But you… you’re all decorated up, looking like you just stepped out of the Hamptons, and then BAM—there you are knocking out a hard rock drum solo like a gift from the musical gods.”
My heart fluttered at the compliment. It was like he saw me. Not who I was supposed to be butme. Even the ones I was closest to, Quinn and Emma and Mom and Dad, didn’t really know me. They thought they did. But they didn’t.
Beats seemed to instinctively get that I was more than my exterior. More than my last name. And it was the highest compliment coming from someone as dynamic as him. Someone who had no choice but to live in the moment. The guys at my school tried so hard to be relevant and cool, but meeting Beats convinced me that it was an internal state of being and couldn’t be forced. You either were or you weren’t. Beatswas, a thousand times over.
“You know what I think?” he said, smiling slyly.
“No.”
“I think you’ve been sent here to destroy me.”
I almost laughed in his face. No one would ever accuse me of being a femme fatale. I wore bunny slipper-socks to bed.
“Or…” I offered up a more complimentary scenario for myself. “Maybe I’ve been sent here to save you.”
A muscle in his cheek twitched, and I caught the faintest dash of despair pass through his eyes. “I wish. You’re about a decade too late.”
I could tell the minute he said it, Beats regretted the words, and I watched him regress right before my eyes. The conflict. The indecision. My god, he was giving off such strong Jake vibes that I placed a hand to my chest to calm my beating heart. It was then that I realized why I was so drawn to Beats. He was my do-over. My chance to right one of life’s biggest wrongs. I could save him, and in the process, redeem myself.
“I don’t know, Beats,” I said, touching his leg with my sneakered toe. “Isn’t that when the saving happens—after the deed is done?”
Slowly, his gaze lifted until his eyes were focused on mine, imploring me to look beyond the obvious. Beyond the dirty clothes. Beyond his terrible housing predicament. Beyond the hopelessness of his situation. Beats wanted someone to see him. A long-ago scene flashed before my eyes, of Jake being rolled into the house in a wheelchair. It was the first time I’d seen him since the kidnapping over two months earlier. He was so broken and beaten. I was so frightened. Jake’s eyes followed me around the room until they hit their target. He had me locked and loaded. I stared straight into his shattered soul that day, and my toddler brain had no idea how to comprehend what it was seeing. Clearly, he wanted something. Somehow, I’d convinced myself that my brother was trying to suck the life right out of me. Instead of showing him the mercy he desperately needed, I screamed in his face and ran the other way.
Beats unleashed a very slow series of nods. “Yeah, I guessafterdoes make more sense.”
He averted his eyes then, resuming the unsettled movements of his hands and feet. Those sticks were in constant use.
“I always wanted to be a great musician like you,” I admitted.
“Like me?” He huffed. “That’s yet to be determined.”
“You will be. I can feel it.”
He shrugged noncommittally. A little of that confidence of his had faded. “You look like a pretty great drummer to me,” he said.
“Ha! We both know I’m nowhere near your level. That’s okay, though, because drumming isn’t a passion of mine.”
“What’s your passion?”
“Songwriting.”
He pondered a moment. “Like pop songs?”
“What makes you assume that?”
“Songwriters write what they know, Miss Swift.” He grinned.
“And you assume all I know is the upbeat stuff?”
