by Zoe Lee
But then he sighed her name and reality crashed back in.
It would be so beautiful, but so short-lived and meaningless, if she gave in to this now.
“All of that would make sense to me if we were together,” she finally replied.
“This is… maddening,” he growled.
“Yes, it is,” she snapped, shoving at his shoulders so that he stepped back, giving her the illusion of some breathing room in the confined corner of the rooftop. “You’re telling me that you pressured me to offer my opinions, even while I told you repeatedly that I didn’t want to, not because you needed my input to make your decision—because you’d already made your decision—but because you literally just wanted to know what I thought? And didn’t want to bias me, somehow, by telling me that you’d already decided? Even though I kind of made it clear that we could never be together if you were going to say yes?”
He raked his hands through his hair but paused midway, as her point seemed to hit. “Well, yeah, I…” His response trailed off and he frowned, brows knitting over his nose. “Before you said that you could never be with another person trying seriously to pursue a music career, I was thinking about what it would be like to be with you. I wanted to talk it through, your pride in my gifts versus your concerns over how my pursuit of music could change our relationship. We could argue about our past experiences, insecurities, fears about all of the things that could happen, hopes for what we want for the other, all of it.”
“So then, what? When I said I couldn’t be with another big-time musician, you didn’t hear me or shift the discussion? You decided to pursue that hypothetical argument?”
“Maybe,” he murmured, his brows relaxing but his eyes squinting a little. “I don’t remember the order of my thoughts; I was wound up and overwhelmed. I know I thought that once we were tired of arguing in circles, we could have seared our bodies together and burned away all of the arguments in the heat of—passion.” His deep, mysterious eyes tracked over her face, his lips pursed to say more before he finally did. “I think it didn’t change, when you refused to offer your opinions. If there’s duality in your opinions, then that would be sexy and challenging in all the right ways, and I would’ve enjoyed that.”
Astonished and vaguely insulted, but somehow also flattered by that nonsense, she gaped at him again and practically stammered out in frustration, “You… bloody moron.”
“Look, I was pissed that you wouldn’t answer,” he muttered. “It felt like you thought that if you gave me your opinions, you would be confirming we had something going—and that by refusing to give your opinions, you were denying that we had anything going.”
Astrid clutched the concrete ledge behind her and struggled to regain a modicum of composure. “I was utterly blindsided by that conversation, but this is—not what I wanted to discuss, Seth. I just wanted to apologize for the article draft because, as I said, I was angry with you when I wrote it. But I shouldn’t have sent it and I never meant for you to read it.”
“You were scared,” he countered.
“I was angry,” she repeated. “Don’t tell me how I felt.”
“Fine, you were angry. But behind that anger, you were scared,” he said relentlessly. “Scared to admit that you did have an opinion, that you do think I’m squandering my gifts. Scared to admit that there was something brewing between us in front of anyone, even me.”
“And why should I have pushed through that fear to tell you? When you were toying with my emotions and my fears by deliberately hiding that you’d already said no?”
“Because I was still freaked out and grieving,” he retorted with brutal honesty. “Maybe it was fucked up, but I warned you. You knew I was fucked up, that my perspective was bad.”
Astrid’s heart clenched, remembering how delicate he’d been, how vulnerable, and admitted begrudgingly, “It’s maybe unfair to be upset now with what you said that day, if your mind still wasn’t back to its usual… fortitude and clarity. But it felt like a betrayal.”
He assured her quietly, unwaveringly, “It wasn’t meant to hurt you. I’m sorry that it did. I was so hopeful that you felt the same growing connection that I did. Or, did until you denied it in front of everyone and refused to help me. And my headspace was bad and maybe I twisted it all up and pushed you so hard because I wanted to know what you’d do. And when you left, which was absolutely fair of you to do, I felt… justified that I pushed.”
“Me too,” she laughed bitterly. “You pushed at me and didn’t hear me, and I used it to justify leaving, to justify writing that draft—to justify emailing the draft to Downbeat. I was so blinded by hurt that it never crossed my mind they’d forward it to you. Also blind.”
“I—”
“Listen, all that talk, you wanted my opinions, even though you had already said no to Downbeat, and you say you were hurt because I said I couldn’t be with someone pursuing music in a serious, big way. But… Downbeat isn’t the only game in town, right? And here you are, doing multiple solo shows in a very major city. So what’s this, then? It’s new.”
For a moment, she thought that he would bolt, his eyes wide and his arms crossed again, veins popping and biceps almost vibrating with tension and resistance.
But then his eyes snagged on hers and he shook his head as he explained wryly, “It’s a new direction, yeah, but I’m still not directed at fame. It’s just… I’ve been writing like a fucking beast, in my head too much, lyrics and music popping into existence nearly constantly. And I bought an old factory with stellar acoustics right after you left Maybelle, so I have a new top-of-the-line recording setup. I threatened everyone and said that if they didn’t respect the sanctity of the studio, I would lock myself in again, indefinitely.”
“You… you wrote all of that since I left?”
“All that and more,” he answered, and she swore he flushed a little.
To that, she fell almost eerily quiet.
His weight shifted as if he were awkward and then he told her almost defiantly, “Hedda said, Write the feelings down. Write them down so they make you strong instead of making you feel weak or alone or weird. Write them and then we’ll sing them, and you’ll see, you’re not the only one.”
“Oh, Seth,” she whispered.
“See, because you left, and it was all jumbled up,” he went on, his calmness subsumed by intensity, by rawness and honesty. “All I could think about was you. Everyone gave me advice. Leave you be; go after you. Rejoin Downbeat; keep being an artist the way I was before. Meet someone who loves me just the way I am. Do something romantic to win you. None of it resonated. The only thing that helped was my creativity, writing it down.”
“But… but that means… all those songs are…”
“About you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, Astrid,” he rasped, and her eyes welled up uncontrollably when he carefully planted his hands on the ledge just next to hers, his thumbs nudging her pinkies. His eyes bore into hers as if he’d never been scared of his own fears or doubts or mistakes in his entire life, and added, “I haven’t been clear enough with you. In your reality, you’re a music journalist who lives near Chicago and you don’t need me. But in mine, I’m a part-time restaurant owner who lives in Maybelle, a songwriter-musician, and I’m in love with you. ”
Nothing in her entire life had prepared her for this unadorned truth, this reality where Seth Riveau loved her. Not because she’d earned it, not because he’d pursued it, not even in spite of anything, but because it was. Because he saw it as fate, plain and simple. And he accepted it—more, he was embracing it, trusting it, even if he wasn’t too happy with her.
It was magnificent, but it also pierced through her. Because if she hadn’t earned it, if he hadn’t pursued it, if he hadn’t fought against it to get there, then how could it have anything to do with her? How was it all that different from an obsession with a person he didn’t truly know? Being in love before had made her feel special, triumphant, and terri
fied to lose it. But if she hadn’t won it, then she had no control over keeping it or losing it, did she?
She couldn’t hear it, her panic and relief at him being right there filling her ears with the roaring of a waterfall, but she saw his lips shape her name clearly: Astrid. Astrid. Astrid.
One of his delightful hands reached out for her, hovering for a split second near her hip before he covered her waist with it, burning hot through her soft sweater. He picked her up and put her on the ledge, a few feet deep with a fence above it so that there was no chance of anyone falling off the roof. He pressed her hands into the rough surface of it, grainy as if it were shedding stone dust. “There’s hours of things I want to say to you,” he gritted out, “but I can’t come up with any more words right now, baby, so just let me show you—”
She whimpered, defenseless against this, unwilling to walk away now.
He cupped her knees and pulled them wide before he worked her jeans and panties right off her body. Then they froze, Astrid’s weight on her hands, her legs lifted and opened wide, bent, Seth staring down at her with his eyes hooded so that she couldn’t know him at all in that moment. Her ribs clutched her heart in a death grip as he ran his hands up her thighs and hooked them around his waist. His hands splayed wide on her lower back and the upper curve of her ass, yanking her in tight to him. His mouth fell to hers, fused with it, so that they were sealed together, her naked lower body rubbing shamelessly against his cotton tee and denim jeans. She clawed at his back frantically—she’d missed him so damn much, missed being close to him, intimate with him—when he jerked his pants undone.
“Are you still safe and clean, baby?” he asked, lips buried in her neck, his breath humid against her collarbone, careful and as far from impulsive as any person she’d ever met.
“I haven’t been with anyone since you,” she promised, clasping his thick, leaking cock and drawing him to her, too far gone and too long alone to tease either of them. He burrowed into her, her every muscle tautening as his body met hers fully. “Seth, oh God, I’ve never—”
Her head fell back as he ravaged her neck and modest cleavage with bites, then rough licks of his tongue over the bites, almost but not quite soothing them. She cried out softly.
Their bodies rutted together without any of their usual grace or finesse, without any measure of their usual restraint. He humped into her animalistically and she grunted with every impact, her nails scratching up his scalp and shoulders. He was showing her his need and desire and love, studded with the unadulterated need to fit together, her cool to his sweet, his patience to her generosity, all that they’d said to each other punctuating that sensuality with the bites and scratches they marked into each other’s skin.
“I hurt you, I never should have—”
“Don’t,” he said calmly, lifting his head to pin her with his glowing eyes.
Tears pooled; she was afraid that he was not only shutting the door on her apology, but also locking away everything that had come before. She sobbed, “Please, I’m so sorry, love—”
Seth smothered her words with his mouth again, air blowing out like a bellows and hitting her cheeks and nose, his grip sure and bruisingly tight on her hips. Everything else that she’d wanted to say to him, everything else she’d planned to say, dissolved beneath the intensity of his kiss, his moans pouring like the sweetest love song into the air around them, held inside the little bubble of false intimacy in the alcove behind the sun umbrellas.
She shifted her hold on him, her hands spreading wide and soft on his slender, strong chest, the charms on his necklaces bumping into her fingertips. She let her legs relax onto the stone beneath her, curling her hips up gently so that he was as deep inside of her as he could get in this position. Her head tipped back and her eyes found his eyes fixed on her face, just like they had always been. She held them, begging him to see who she’d really always been underneath the mistakes and the cool attitude she’d cultivated with him.
Something in him shifted too. All of the emotions that never overwhelmed him or slipped from his control, because he embraced them and channeled them into his beautiful music, rose up to the surface. “You’re so beautiful, darlin’, and I want to see you fall apart,” he urged gently, while his fingers stroked where they were joined. “I want to remember this forever, dream about those maybes, and write songs about those lives.”
She whimpered again, her belly twisted tight and tighter, everything she was now ready to fly apart to the heavens. It was the yearning, the fantasy of another life, of other versions of themselves, the agony of knowing that it would never happen, that there was nothing she could say to change his mind. With a sob, her orgasm broke, hard pulses that wracked her body, scratching her skin on the stone, and rent silent screams from her throat, the culmination of their goodbye so bittersweet she almost wished it had never happened.
While she was still feeling unmoored, all of her emotions and wishes swirling her through the clouds, she watched all of it burn brighter and brighter in Seth’s eyes, confusion, rejection, love, all of it. It broke free of the surface with a great giant splash as he choked out a rough series of curses and lost it, pouring into her, his face buried in her hair.
His hands traced her body, languid and appreciative. He leaned back, not enough to move his spent cock from inside of her, comforting and teasing too, and looked at her with so much emotion. “Hardly anything’s changed since the last time we had this fight,” he slurred in exhaustion, “except that I’m working on my own music, setting up a little indie studio right there in Maybelle, I’m in love with you, and you fucked me like it’s goodbye.”
He separated his body from hers and pushed his hands through his hair, while the fall night wind chilled her core. “Damn, Astrid, now the fog’s lifting from everything and I can see it all perfectly. Maybe we should’ve started this conversation by making love, not arguing,” he chuckled breathlessly, rifling through the storage cabinet next to the sun umbrellas rack until he found some napkins. He gave her most of them, then turned away to let her clean up, and it was painful to see that slim poet’s silhouette facing away from her.
Then his slurred words sank fully into her overwhelmed, tired mind. “Wait, what?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Seth
Frowning, Seth hopped as he tugged his tight jeans up over his ass. “What, what?”
“I think,” Astrid said stiffly as she swept up her hair and redid it, “we’ve crossed our wires somewhere during the time we’ve been up on this roof yelling at each other.”
“I thought you came here because you wanted to apologize for what you wrote,” he summarized, clearing away all of the other hits they’d taken from each other tonight.
“Well, that’s where I’d intended to begin,” she said, blinking quickly in irritation.
Something despicable and unwelcome like hope soured Seth’s stomach.
But he wasn’t dumb enough to pretend he felt nothing just because it hurt, so he pulled in an excruciatingly measured breath. “I’m starving after the show; I can’t eat before I go on. Why don’t we find someplace quiet where I can eat and we can talk? It sounds like we need to go back to the beginning and try this again,” he suggested, keeping his calm and ease.
“Only bars and diners are open this late, that I know of,” she sighed. “But my house isn’t that far away at this time of night. I have food and of course it’s quiet.”
Her expression was tense, but he suspected that his was too, despite his efforts. So he agreed with a simple nod and dragged open the employee’s roof access door, watching her glide down the industrial stairs like she were a fairy queen. By unspoken agreement, when they reached the bottom, she pushed out the Exit Only door directly into the service alley behind the club. He would text Ambrose tomorrow to make his apologies, and he supposed that she’d text Barley or someone else in Barnyard to let them know that she was okay too.
At the corner, Astrid pulled her keys out of her ba
ck pocket, the metal jabbing out from between her fingers like a steampunk crown, and used them to point right, away from the main entrance into the club. He sauntered right, keeping to the outside of her.
“Why did Barnyard come to see my set, or part of my set, tonight?”
His question clearly startled her; her heel caught in the divot where the sidewalk was buckling and made a rubbery scraping noise as she staggered a step then righted herself.
“I mentioned that Hank came to talk to me. He found me at a restaurant where I was eating with Barley, Kerri, and the rest of Barnyard. They didn’t hear all the details, but when Hank told me that you were going to play here and that I should give you a second chance, they made it their business to come too. My daughter also, but more for… moral support.”
“Hank talked me up to Barnyard?” he couldn’t help but ask with surprised pleasure.
“Of course,” Astrid huffed, “Hank loves you.”
“So glad to hear he does,” he muttered under his breath.
Astrid either didn’t hear or convincingly pretended she didn’t, powering across the street while the lights on a car flashed when she unlocked it. “Here we are,” she said briskly.
Once they were both in the car and buckled up, Astrid put all the windows down and accelerated into the street, her control of the modest but powerful car sexy. The wind whipped the soft wisps of hair around her face, softening her queenly manner into something more imaginable, graspable, realistic, and helped him cool down too.
“So,” Seth continued, knowing that he was being pushy, but he needed to get this straightened out because when they parted ways after this, he needed it to be done. No more of this sour hope turning into ulcers or flaying his heart on the way to melting his mind. “Hank guilted you into apologizing to me, so you came to the show to do it in person.”
