Counterpoint and Harmony (Songs and Sonatas Book 5)

by Jerica MacMillan

  She chuckles and shakes her head. “No. Once I started screaming, they hustled him off. Not before he got plenty of pictures though.” She covers her face with her hands. “God, TNZ ran with those photos for months. Every time my name came up for any reason, they’d show those again and again. It was some big joke to them. They’re the ones who still like to drag them out every so often. A few other places do too, but they’re the worst.”

  I grunt, not sure what to say, not wanting her to stop telling me her story. So many things that she’s said before make more sense now. About her mom. About why she would shut down every time I asked about her family or her life before coming to Marycliff. Some part of me still worries that if I say too much or push too hard, she’ll shut me out like she always used to.

  But her story spills out of her. All of it. The grueling lifestyle. Constant travel. Constant performances. The hundreds of fans she’d meet before and after every show, keeping a smile on her face through all of it and never letting on how exhausted she was, even if she’d only slept a few hours. The constant dieting, the high intensity workouts multiple times a day when she wasn’t on the road or in the air. Even sometimes when she was. The loneliness.

  How she’d beg for a break and get a few days, a week, never enough time to actually recover and feel refreshed. How her mom would bully her into working again before she was ready, agreeing to shows or interviews or meetings with producers to record a new single. Adding performances and tour stops without asking.

  “There are great parts, too,” she says when she sees me clenching my jaw after telling me about her mom’s iron-fisted control over her diet, forcing her into juice fasts before photo shoots, starving her before awards shows.

  “Oh yeah?” I manage. “What are those?”

  She cocks her head to the side, adjusting her position on the couch, and now her thigh is pressing against my leg from knee to shin. “Even though meeting so many fans at once on tour does get tiring, it’s cool to meet people who are so excited about me. They tell me their aspirations, how I inspire them, or how one of my songs got them through a tough time.”

  “Yeah, okay. I can see how that would be cool.” She grins at me, her leg still pressed against mine. I’m hyper aware of her, of her movements, of any part of her that’s touching any part of me, thrilling at her closeness while at the same time wondering if coming here was the worst mistake I’ve made in a long time.

  I’m supposed to be trying to get over her, after all. But I can’t resist her. Having her in my life again, in any capacity, is better than not having her at all. At the very least, now that I’ve established contact, I can’t bring myself to break it off again.

  “It is. And performing is amazing.”

  “Yeah. I get that. I love performing.”

  Her throaty chuckle sends blood rushing south, and I shift, trying to ignore the effect she has on me.

  She’s ducked her head again, but she looks up at me through her eyelashes, a smile playing over her lips, coquettish and seductive, though I’m not sure she’s doing it on purpose. “Yeah. My audiences are a lot different than yours.”

  I shrug, smiling back, unable to stop my fingers from reaching out to brush against her shoulder. “Still performing.”

  She stills under my touch, and her eyes dart to mine, holding them. “Yeah,” she breathes, visibly swallowing before she continues. “Yeah, it is still performing.” And then she leans into my touch.

  I turn my palm so that I can caress her, my hand sliding down her arm, then back up, over her shoulder to her neck, her cheek, my thumb brushing over her parted lips.

  Her breath leaves her in a whoosh. “What are you doing, Damian?”

  I shake my head, brushing my thumb across her lips again. “I’m not really sure.”

  She closes her eyes and presses her cheek into my hand before looking at me again. “You said—I thought—I didn’t—“

  “Shhh.” I kind of like seeing Charlie flustered and tongue-tied. She’s usually so poised and pulled together. About now is when her mask would slam into place, closing me out.

  Instead she stares at me with something like wonder in her eyes, her pupils large, leaving only a thin band of silver-blue surrounded by an even thinner ring of navy.

  I lean closer, staring into her eyes. “I’ve always loved your eyes,” I whisper.

  “Thank you.”

  Our faces are moving closer together. I’m aware of it happening, but I’m not sure if I’m the one moving now or if she is. Or maybe we both are.

  Either way, when our lips come together, it feels inevitable. Like everything before this, our texts, our phone calls, our conversation tonight, all of it was leading to this moment.

  First it’s a gentle press of lips against lips. But when I slide the tip of my tongue along the seam of her mouth, she opens for me with a gasp and surges against me, climbing into my lap and wrapping her arms around me, her tongue dueling with mine.

  I welcome her, shifting so she can straddle me comfortably, my hands sliding around her, gripping her ass, pulling her tightly against me. She rocks her hips, grinding onto my dick that went from a semi to full hardness the moment she opened her mouth.

  We devour each other, her hands tangling in my hair and pulling it free of my ponytail, cupping my cheeks, sliding down my back, like she wants to touch me everywhere and can’t get enough.

  I know exactly how she feels, because I want her the same way. I want to touch her everywhere. My fingers find the hem of her shirt and slip beneath it, sliding up until I find her satiny smooth skin, letting out a low groan when I make contact.

  Making that sound—or maybe it’s my fingers on her bare skin—breaks the spell, and she pulls back, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she stares down into my face, her hands gripping the hair on each side of my head.

  “What are you doing, Damian?” she asks again.

  I shake my head as much as I can with the way she’s holding me. “I don’t really know. I didn’t plan this.”

  “Me either.”

  At my quirked eyebrow and skeptical face, she lets out a huff of laughter and slides off my lap. I immediately miss the warm, soft weight of her, and keep my hand on her leg, unwilling to break contact or let her get away entirely.

  She gives me a pointed look. “Okay, yes, I orchestrated our visit. But I didn’t plan on that. I just …” Her face softens as her eyes roam over me. “I just wanted to see you, talk to you in person instead of on the phone.”

  My mouth pulls to the side. “I can’t remember ever spending time alone just talking where it didn’t end in at least a make-out session.”

  She laughs and runs her hands through her hair. “I guess that’s true. Still, though. We aren’t together anymore. You made it clear that you didn’t want that. So …”

  After waiting a beat, holding her gaze, she doesn’t continue. “So?” I prompt

  She shrugs. “So I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what to do with what just happened.”

  I sigh, sliding my hand up and down her leg and giving it a squeeze. “I don’t know either. I just know that ever since you left, I’ve missed you. The place in my life where you belong aches without you. I keep waiting for it to get better, to at least lessen in intensity, but it hasn’t. And now that we’re talking again …”

  “It never will,” she finishes for me, her voice hushed, barely audible.

  “No. It never will.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Modulation: The act or process of changing from one key (tonic, or tonal center) to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature.

  Charlie

  Damian’s eyes are dark, almost brooding, as he holds my gaze. His words echo through me. It never will.

  “You haunt me, Charlie. Everywhere I go, your name is mentioned or one of your songs is playing or pictures of you are on my phone, my computer, my TV.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

>   His head gives a slight turn, the barest gesture of denial. “Not your fault.” His whisper is as low as mine.

  We stare at each other for long moments, and part of me regrets breaking off our kiss. I also consider ending our staring contest by climbing back into his lap and kissing him again. But I don’t.

  His hand moves on my thigh again, a soft caress followed by a gentle squeeze. “What do you want, Charlie?”

  I suck in a breath, straightening as I consider him, then finally voice the most honest answer I can come up with. “Whatever you’ll give me.”

  His eyes fall closed as he absorbs my words. Then his hand moves to the back of my neck, and he pulls me in for another kiss. When his other hand finds my hip, then slides under my ass, I follow the pressure and climb back into his lap, straddling him again.

  We stay that way for hours. Kissing, mostly, but pausing to talk, exchange little stories about our time apart. Telling each other the things we’ve missed.

  “God, I could kiss you all night,” I confess at one point.

  He smiles, his fingers again sliding under my shirt, but never venturing under my bra. “Good. Because that’s kind of what I had in mind.”

  I let out a low chuckle, then lean in for another kiss, loving the way his lips and tongue move against mine. Despite my grinding and his questing fingers on my bare skin, we don’t progress beyond a prolonged make-out session.

  We eventually move to the bed, where making out turns into snuggling, interspersed with a few more kisses as we whisper to each other late into the night, finally falling asleep with our clothes still on and Damian’s arms wrapped around me, holding my back tightly against his front, his legs curled up under mine.

  When I wake up in the morning, I roll over to find him sliding his glasses and shoes back on. He gives me a soft smile and leans over for a quick kiss. “Sorry to wake you. I have class at ten, so I need to head home for a shower and clean clothes before then.”

  I stretch, enjoying the heat that flares in his eyes.

  He crosses his arms and shakes his head at me, a Cheshire grin on his lips. “Don’t try to distract me like that. It’s not fair.”

  With a short laugh, I sit up and reach for my phone on the side table. “No time for a quick breakfast?”

  He lets out a sigh. “I’d really love to. But I have a feeling that I wouldn’t make my class if I said yes. And I have a test this morning, so I can’t skip.”

  A pang of guilt shoots through me. “And I made it so you couldn’t study last night.”

  He shrugs. “It’s music history. If I don’t know it by now, I wouldn’t have gained anything from studying last night anyway.”

  I give him a doubtful look, but he doesn’t waver. “Alright. If you say so. At least let me call you an Uber.”

  “Charlie, you don’t have to—“

  I hold up a hand, cutting him off. “I’m the one who had you shanghaied and brought here last night. The least I can do is pay for your ride home. No arguing.”

  “Okay, fine. If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  I unlock my phone and request a car through the app. When I glance up, Damian has a funny look on his face. I don’t have any drool on my chin, I’d have felt that already. So I run my free hand through my hair, but he keeps staring at me.

  “What?” I finally demand. “Is my hair all smooshed? It can’t look worse than it did in the mornings when I had it super short. It always stuck up everywhere then.”

  He shakes his head slowly, his arms crossed over his chest. “No. Your hair’s fine. It’s just …”

  “What?” I prompt when he trails off and doesn’t seem like he’ll finish his thought.

  One shoulder lifts along with a corner of his mouth, but his smile looks rueful. “I thought you wore glasses. It’s weird to see you without them, and obviously you don’t need them. I thought we had that in common, but I guess it’s one more thing that I believed that wasn’t really true.”

  My breath leaves me in a gust, his last sentence hitting me like a punch in the gut and paralyzing my diaphragm. After what feels like an eternity with his eyes all dark and sad staring into me, I manage to suck in a breath. “It was part of trying to blend in. Make me look different so no one would recognize me. That’s all,” I finally say softly.

  He nods. “Yeah. That makes sense.” His eyes travel over me. “It’s just … strange. You’re so different. But at the same time, you’re almost the same.”

  “I am the same.”

  He studies me again for another long moment, one side of his mouth hitching in a sad, crooked smile. “No,” he says at last. “You’re not.”

  I look away, squeezing my eyes shut, uncertain what to say to that. I’ve already defended myself to him a million times. And still he’s throwing it in my face.

  His hand slides over my shoulder, then the bed dips as he sits down beside me. “Charlie, look at me.”

  Blinking a few more times to try to clear all the tears, I steel myself before looking him in the eyes again, doing my best to keep my game face on.

  He lets out a grunt. “Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out like that. I hate when you do that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That face. That’s your Charlotte James face. That’s the face you wear when you deflect and avoid instead of being yourself.”

  I stare at him, not sure what to do now. “I don’t know what you want from me, Damian. I thought we were moving past what happened, or at least trying to, but if you can’t let it go, then …”

  He shakes his head. “No, Charlie. That’s not what I meant. It’s just …” His eyes slide away from mine, and he lets out a frustrated sigh. “It just hit me that you don’t actually need glasses. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. But now all those times when you’d take them off and seem to forget about them make a lot more sense.” He tries for a smile, but it doesn’t really work.

  I nod, staring at my fingers as I twist them together in my lap.

  He moves, drawing my attention as he sits on the edge of the bed and takes off his glasses to scrub his hands over his face. “I’m fucking this all up, aren’t I?”

  “No. If that’s how you feel, I mean, I hoped, but … you’re entitled to your feelings. It’s just frustrating to me, because I feel like every time we take a step forward, something happens that knocks us two steps back. And now you have class, and a test, and”—I glance at the app on my phone—“your car is going to be here in two minutes, so you need to get downstairs.”

  He replaces his glasses and stands, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looks down at me. “You are different, Charlie. In a lot of ways. You’re more confident now than you were when we first met. You fired your mom, for one thing. And you’ve taken control of your life, which is what you’ve been wanting for a long time. That was part of why you came to Marycliff, but you were hiding there. You’re not hiding now. And I want to get to know you now, all of you, not just the parts you let me see before.”

  My breath stutters in my chest, the clash of his words with what I was just thinking making my head spin. I swallow convulsively, trying to control myself enough to respond. “Oh,” I say dumbly, the only thing that comes out.

  Damian gives me a crooked smile, then bends down and gives me another kiss, his tongue tasting me all too briefly before he pulls away. “I hate that I have to leave right now.” He’s still bent over so we’re eye to eye. “I’m glad you came. How long are you here?”

  “Just the one night. I have to get back. I already rescheduled my meeting with my producer that I was supposed to have this morning. We’re meeting at six tonight instead.”

  His eyebrows jump up. “That late?”

  I shrug. “He’s a night owl. Says he works best at night anyway. He was actually kinda happy that we didn’t have to meet at nine.”

  Damian chuckles. “Call me later. Okay? Tell me all about it then.”

  “Okay.”

&n
bsp; My hand goes behind his head, and I pull him in for one more goodbye kiss. “I’ll miss you,” I whisper against his lips.

  “I’ll miss you too,” he whispers back before he stands. I walk him to the door of the suite, wishing I could walk him all the way downstairs, but that’s not a good idea.

  “Talk to you tonight,” I say just before shutting the door behind him.

  “Tonight.” And then he’s gone.

  “You look like you had a nice trip,” Natalie says on the way to my meeting with The Professor later that evening.

  “What makes you say that?” It was a nice trip, but I’m tired after flying in, staying up late, and then waking up early. I didn’t go back to sleep after Damian left, instead ordering breakfast and scribbling down new song ideas. I managed to take a thirty minute power nap on the plane, and I’ve been drinking coffee since.

  Her smile turns knowing as her eyes skate over me. I look down at my outfit reflexively. Nothing over the top. I’ll be in the studio working on new tracks, so I’m wearing leggings and a loose pale pink top with my favorite pair of ankle boots. Comfy and cute, and paired with my oversized, rhinestone-studded sunglasses and a statement necklace, I look the part in case any photographers are lurking outside The Professor’s studio space.

  “You’re glowing, Charlie,” she says at last. “And now you’re blushing.”

  I turn away and sip my coffee, not willing to give her anything else. But she’s not to be stopped. Even though she’s my assistant, she’s become more like a friend since I hired her. But she must sense that she’s approaching a boundary line, because she backs off.

  “Sorry. I just … you seem happier, more relaxed. And it’s good. That’s all I meant.”

  I turn back and give her a quick smile. “I am happier. It was a good trip. I … reconnected with a good friend. I’m glad I went.”

  “A good friend, huh?”