“Just write the truth, Mr. Sarcastic. And don’t worry about sugarcoating it for anyone.” She wrapped her arms over mine, around her waist. “Things that are the most personal resonate with the most people. It’s a human experience. And even if we haven’t had that experience… Johnny, I’ve never had that specific experience that you had. But I can feel what you’re feeling when you talk about it. You make me feel.”
“But you feel things so easily,” I half-teased.
“Don’t let that be your excuse not to write your songs.”
“Honestly… even if I write the songs, I don’t know if I could play them. I just don’t know if I can bare my soul like that to the world, Angie.”
“Then start with Noah. Play your songs for Noah. And when you survive that, which I know you will, play them for Shane. Then play them for Lex. Then play them for Dane. And by that time, if you realize that it feels good to play them for other people, play them for Yash. And for Trey. Just take it one set of ears at a time. And I’m telling you, you’ll be glad you did.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then you can go back to hiding in your fortress and shutting people out.” She glanced up at me. “I’m serious. You’ve been there before, right? For a long damn time. What have you got to lose?”
I sighed. “I’ll think about that.”
“Good. And when you think about that… think about how willing you’d be to die on that sword. To stand by what you write, so that you’ll only write songs you believe in so strongly, it won’t even matter if no one likes them but you. That’s where it starts. That’s what Elle always tells me. And when you write songs you believe in that much… other people will love them, too. I know it.”
“I get what you’re saying. I do. But writing those kinds of songs… It’s harder than it sounds.”
“It sounds incredibly fucking hard.” Angeline turned herself over, pulling up her knees to straddle me, and wrapped her arms around my neck. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, baby.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re really trying to be stern with me while your beautiful tits are in my face?” My hands smoothed up her body to cup them gently. Then I leaned in and fed a perfect nipple into my mouth. I gave it a soft, sucking kiss.
She squirmed a little in my lap. “Don’t try to change the subject with sweet sex talk,” she breathed. “Nothing is going to be easy if you want to heal.” She lifted my face in her hands and kissed me softly, and I bit her lip, but she didn’t let me turn it into anything more.
Instead, she stroked my hair back from my temples with her thumbs while gazing into my eyes.
“Write your songs, Johnny. And go to therapy. Tell your friends and family what you’re going through.Everythingis screaming at you that you can’t build your future anymore unless you take care of the damage caused by your past.” She pressed her hand gently to my chest. “Think of it as a bullet,” she said softly, “that’s still lodged in your heart, encapsulated in layers of scar tissue. It takes painstaking surgery to unearth it and repair the damage.”
I took hold of her hand and held it against my pounding heart. How did she always say the right thing? I couldn’t even say anything back worth a damn. But my eyes were starting to burn.
“Your injury is psychological,” she told me, with so much compassion, I felt it like warm rain, soothing me. “It’s invisible to the world. But I see it. Rory sees it. It’s an emotional wound, so deep, you need help healing it.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
“Please tell me you’re going to do everything I just asked you to do.” She pleaded with me with her pretty gray-blue eyes.
My arms slipped around her. I opened my mouth to answer, but she quickly pressed her finger to my lips, stopping me. “But don’t say yes if you don’t mean it.”
The look in her eyes was so sad and so filled with hope at the same time, it broke my heart to think I’d ever made her doubt me.
“Actually,” she said with gentle conviction, “don’t say yes at all. Don’t say anything. Your actions have always told me far more about where your heart is at. So show me. Show me who you really are, Johnny O’Reilly. Because you’re much more than my best friend’s brother. You’re much more than a rock star. And you’re much more than that boy who was left to fend for himself in that terrible moment in that car. You’re all of those things, and so much more.”
She kissed me, and the sweet strength in this girl… it coursed through me like a cleansing fire. I didn’t even have words for how much she made me want to be a better man. It was a bone deep, soul deep urge, to want to break myself apart and fit myself back together, better and stronger than before, so I could be worthy of the woman she was.
“Don’t be afraid that people will think less of you when they know the whole truth,” she whispered to me.
My heart thudded, because she’d just tweaked a raw, exposed nerve. The fear of abandonment was still acute. Maybe it always would be. “But what if they do?”
“Just be you, Johnny. Write your songs. I’m telling you,” she promised me, with conviction. “It won’t change a thing.”
But she was wrong about that.
It changed everything.
ChapterThirty-Eight
Johnny
