by Ren Benton
She glanced from side to side as if checking for witnesses. Finding none to consult, she leaned forward and whispered, “Aren’t we already fighting?”
“You might not recognize the view from the other side, but one person indulging another person being loudly wrong does not a fight make.”
He barely recognized the scenery himself. He’d put her need for reassurance ahead of his own hurt feelings and reactive anger, and he hadn’t shouted or run away to avoid shouting. The petty swiping at the beginning was something he needed to work on, but the rest of it demonstrated discernible progress.
It only took thirty-six years and a few hundred hours of therapy.
Gin closed her eyes as if exhausted by the role reversal. “When do you get docile?”
“I think you dismissed sex prematurely.”
Her grin told him the crisis had passed — at least for now. When she thought she was right, she had a habit of retreating, regrouping, and trying again from another angle later in a moment of weakness for her opponent. “I’ll concede there are immediate agreeable effects, but they wear off about twenty minutes after the deed is done and I think we both lack the stamina for the solution I predict you’re going to propose.”
She was probably right about the proposal and the stamina, but Lex was willing to test the theory. “If you’re not even going to try, you’ll just have to get used to me being oppositional.”
“Oh. No. However will I adapt to this completely foreign state of affairs with which I have no prior experience whatsoever?”
Sarcasm looked good on her. Distractingly so. He turned his back on her and gave the computer a baleful stare. “Get out. Some of us have a ton of work to do.”
“Matt would love to help.”
“I knew that was coming.”
“Sure you did.” Her arms looped around his neck from behind, and she rested her chin on the top of his head. “Thank you for indulging me.”
“I owe you a few of those.” He pressed his nose against her bare wrist and inhaled her warmth to tide him over until the next time she held him. “I’ll get it right this time.”
He was talking about more than the soundtrack, but following through on that small promise was the first step toward earning the right to make bigger ones.
“I know you will.” She dropped a kiss on his head before her arms slipped away. “The hard part will be convincing me you didn’t have it right the first time.”
Lex bounded up the stairs hours later, fueled by an excess of smugness. The score would be so easy to fix, he was tempted to give himself credit for creating deliberate ambiguity that lent itself to a minor tone adjustment.
Once he knew he was rooting for Gin instead of watching his own downfall unfold, his whole perception of the story shifted. He would always believe she deserved better, but if a half-victory put her heart at ease, he’d damn well make it sound like the masses should be marching in celebration for her.
He should be recording the new music, but he wanted Gin to hear the difference a little understanding made. He knew it was good, so he wasn’t looking to be scratched behind the ears and called a good boy — he just needed to share it with her.
He hooked his hand around the doorframe and swung into the office. “Knock, knock.”
Green eyes peered over the top of her monitor. “Who’s there?”
“Interrupting musical genius.”
Her voice shook with premature laughter. “Interrupting musical ge—”
“Interrupting musical genius who has righted all his wrongs and is eager to show you our new masterpiece at your earliest convenience.”
She pushed a button on her keyboard, and canned laughter spilled from the speakers.
He’d never felt more fake-validated. “That is the best use of technology I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s the best use of technology there is, and I rarely get an opportunity to use it, so thank you.” She rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder as if she’d been hunched over her desk far too long without a break. “My earliest convenience will be in about half an hour.”
Longer than that with him distracting her, but she’d hunch less and blink more with him competing with the computer for her attention, which would take some strain off her neck and eyes. “Can I watch?”
“I don’t mind, but you might come to regret that decision.”
He pulled a chair into the space beside hers. “Regrettable Life Choices is the middle name of my side band.”
She returned to proofreading her credits. “You missed seeing off Simone.”
“I didn’t miss it a bit.” The reminder that she was gone lifted a hundred-and-something pound weight from his spirit. “Which was it this time, the silent treatment or screaming?”
Gin rubbed one eye, dragging down that side of her face. “Passive-aggressive diatribe about children who respect their mothers.”
An odd choice, given Simone’s preference to be portrayed as Gin’s slightly older sister or best friend. “That’s new.”
“No. You’ve just had the luxury of skipping it in the rotation. There was a nice moment when she mentioned Justin Timberlake’s devotion to his mama and she and Ethan almost bonded over breaking up a marriage to broaden my social media reach, but then she realized who she was scheming with and the spell was broken.”
The phone on the vacant desk jingled, and Gin reached for it.
The possibility of her getting an earful of Melanie filled him with dread. “Let the machine get it.”
She showed him the caller ID display. “It’s Ethan.” She pushed a button to answer on speaker. “Hello, handsome. Do you need bail money?”
“They’d have to catch me first. If anyone asks, as far as you know, Simone got safely on the plane, none the worse for wear for spending the afternoon with a” — Ethan switched to an exaggerated whisper — “homosexual.”
This time, she rubbed both eyes. “I should have insisted on taking her.”
“I’m fine. Besides, you wouldn’t want to be stuck here, away from your movie and your music man.”
Lex asked, “What do you mean, stuck?”
“It’s snowing, and the news says more is coming in fast.”
Lex leaned over the arm of his chair to look out the window, past the trees, at a patch of cloudless blue sky.
Gin voiced confusion on his behalf. “In May?”
“That’s what I asked, and one of the locals shrugged and said, ‘Colorado,’ like it’s stupid not to expect a blizzard when the thermometer’s been approaching eighty every afternoon. Look, I’m a southern boy. I’ve barely seen snow. I’m sure as hell not confident driving in it, so I’m checking into a hotel until the roads are less terrifying.”
The furrow in Gin’s forehead reflected only a fraction of Lex’s skepticism, but her words were supportive — possibly due to guilt for sending Ethan on the errand. “Of course. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“You listen to Lex. He knows how to survive in these Arctic conditions. I’ll call you in the morning with an update.”
They said their goodbyes while Lex looked out the window again and shook his head at the sheer gall. “I bet he flew in his boyfriend and is just playing hooky.”
“I hope so. He’s been miserable, and this stunt driving thing Chris is going to hasn’t helped. I’ll have to start leaving Ethan home when I travel, too.”
Lex didn’t want to think about Gin traveling without even the security of a friend. “He’s not a cat. He should get a say in being left behind.”
“He and Maisie had to flip a coin to decide who would get stuck babysitting me. Next time, I’ll stand next to Chris and make Ethan choose which one of us he really wants to see every day.”
It seemed like an obvious choice to Lex.
It became more obvious when she propped her chin on her shoulder and slid him a coy look. “You realize what this means, don’t you?”
Screaming sex on the dining room table, if he was lucky, but r
esponsible adults finished their work before play.
He turned the responsible adult’s chair to face her computer. “Before you get too excited about what we’re going to do with all this privacy, finish your credits and come down to the dungeon to listen to a whole lot of I told you so.”
Gin barely got a chance to shut down her computer before Lex herded her down to the studio and directed her toward her usual chair.
She picked up the guitar occupying the space and gave the strings a fond strum. The resultant ailing sound made her fall into the seat with the guitar clutched to her bosom. It went beyond flat — there was something bloated about the dull tone. “What did you do to Juliet?”
“I made her sound wet. Behave yourself and I’ll do the same to you.” He stretched one long arm past her and cued the start of the movie using the keyboard. “Remember the music here, or do I need to refresh your memory?”
“I’m using it in the trailer.” Her chest tightened at the prospect of changing it now. She’d thought he was only tinkering with the ending. “I’ve heard it two hundred times. It’s perfect the way it is.”
“Not yet.” He relieved her of the guitar. “Watch.”
He had to mean listen, but she wasn’t going to argue semantics when she needed to save her breath to fight him about butchering the best score she’d ever had.
He sat on the floor behind her, leaving her nothing to look at but the movie. In the opening shot, the delta unfurled across the screen, thick and heavy in its vegetation, its water, even its air, so dense the music had always struggled to the surface to be heard.
This time, it floated into the scene so gently, she didn’t register its arrival until the third bar. The previous version entered with tension, whereas the new seemed to wake from slumber where it had always been and always would remain. It was the difference between a story told in the voice of a desperate child and that of a woman weighted with experience and resolve.
He’d made her — this part of her — sound strong.
Her sigh made a feeble counterpoint. “Oh, Lex.”
“Tell me.”
His voice thrummed through her like a sexual demand. She swallowed against a throat gone dry and tried to keep her voice from trembling. “You were right.”
“About what?”
Another rough demand, another throb in her core. He continued playing after that piece of music ended, smoothly shifting to the next, yearning and swollen with its newfound resonance.
“About making it better.” She leaned her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes, letting the pain in the next shift break over her. “Even if I’d been able to come up with this, I would have been too cowardly to play it because it’s too close to the bleeding parts.”
“Do you want me to change it?”
“No.” Now that she’d heard it, anything less would be a disservice to the story she’d tried to tell, an omission that would forever fall short of the truth. “I needed you to say it for me.”
The back of her chair collapsed at his yank of a lever, and she followed it down without a flinch, trusting Lex would catch her before she hit the floor. Warm, tender lips touched her forehead and made the inside of her eyelids prickle with thorny emotion.
She couldn’t cope with gentleness from Lex. He was a demand she yielded to, a push that forced her to act against caution, her surrogate courage. If he made himself a soft, safe place, she’d sink into him and disappear, hiding forever from everything that scared her.
She arched her neck to put her mouth in closer proximity to his. “You said you’d make me wet.”
Long, elegant hands framed her face as if he’d mistaken her for someone delicate. The fluttering pulse in her throat may have given him the wrong impression. His fingers neither shied away from her scar nor lingered over it, affording it precisely the same attention as the undamaged skin beyond its borders. His palms slid over her breasts, and she sank her fingers into his hair to anchor her against the movement of the chair caused by her restless need for more. His hands had a short attention span, however, and continued on their journey, spreading their warm glow to her ribs and her belly.
She moaned as his fingers slipped into her underwear.
Lex hummed in approval of what he felt. “This is why I picked up a guitar.”
Her hips lifted as he strummed her clit. “To finger groupies in the studio?”
“I don’t like anyone but you in my studio.” His light touch teased — she had to supply the pressure her body craved by pushing against his fingers. “I like you here a lot.”
She panted against his neck while he made her writhe with frustrated desire. “I can’t imagine you without music, but it’s not why I want you.”
“Tell me,” he demanded again.
There were more reasons than she could count. He’d brought her down here because of one, but he didn’t need music to prove he understood her. “You see my jagged edges and lean into them. I don’t have to pretend to be soft for you.”
He made a satisfied sound deep in his throat and tipped the chair even more. “And when you’re not acting, you relax and melt for me.”
It was difficult to defend her hardness while pouring into his lap — and difficult to remember why she’d want to when softness molded so cozily around his planes and angles.
She straddled his thighs and pushed up his shirt, baring his chest. He took over whipping it off while she admired the movement of lean muscles beneath taut skin. “Health has been good to you, Perry.”
“Mm. Stroke my ego harder.”
She added nails to the downward course of her fingertips, scraping over each well-defined brick in his abdominal wall. “Even without the music and appreciation of my lacerating qualities, I’d melt at the sight of you. You look like you move well without your clothes.”
Eager to test the theory, she popped open the button of his jeans. “Now would be a good time to mention if someone will have to leave to fetch a rubber.”
“The rental car fiasco lightened my wallet so much, it felt weird in my pocket.” He shifted his weight onto one hip, extracted the wallet in question, and dropped it on the floor near her knee. “So I stuffed it with latex.”
She ran a fingertip over the bulging leather. “Well. This should keep you docile until dinner.”
By the time he was through demonstrating how well he moved without his clothes, they both needed a nap to replenish their stamina.
Gin opened her eyes to unrelieved darkness. The arm she was using for a pillow flexed as Lex stirred. The way they were tangled together, he couldn’t move much else. “How did you escape to turn off the lights?”
“I didn’t. Power must be out. Don’t move.” He unknotted their limbs and found a route off the couch that involved passing over her. “Less chance of your phone getting stepped on if only one of us is stomping around.”
Her ears strained to translate his shuffling sounds. She’d been down here without light before, but nudity added an extra layer of vulnerability to the creepiness. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms securely around her legs, cutting off the peepshow for any monsters who happened to have night vision.
“Let there be light.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as the LED flashlight on her phone activated. By the time the glare through her lids became bearable enough to open them, Lex was zipping his pants.
He tossed her flannel shirt to her. “Isn’t there a generator out back?”
She slipped her arms in the sleeves and fastened the buttons. Being covered made her feel no safer than the light source did, as if unseen monsters were only biding their time. “It’s supposed to come on automatically.”
“I feel extra manly, for some reason.” He scooped his depleted wallet from the floor. “I’ll take a look and grunt like I studied engines instead of piano.”
He waited while she finished dressing, then took her hand and led the way upstairs. Despite the double walls of windows, it was
no brighter in the living room. In the absence of the subliminal hum of appliances, preternatural quiet gripped the house.
A premonition of doom roosted on Gin’s shoulders, icy talons piercing toward her heart.
Lex adjusted the angle of the light until their reflection in the glass gave way to snow piled inches deep on the sill. “Ethan wasn’t kidding about the blizzard. Let me get a jacket, and I’ll try to get the generator going before we freeze.”
“No,” she croaked.
She would have liked to calmly and rationally articulate why she preferred he not go outside, but what burst out of her mouth instead was a gushing babble of no and please delivered with such numb terror he had to squeeze her face between his hands to keep her from shaking apart.
I’ll go check it out.
The phone spun on the coffee table where he’d tossed it, bluish light flashing against the windows like lightning.
I’ll be right back.
She dug her fingernails into his wrists, ten little barbs holding onto him. Better scarred by her claws than out there with the boogeyman. “No. Please. No.”
“Okay. I won’t go. It’s okay, Gin.”
He continued to murmur nonsense in a soothing tone until her alternating refusals and pleas ran out and her grip grew too weak to keep him captive. She couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t save him.
Tears poured from her eyes as if a dam had broken.
Instead of making a break for the nearest exit while he had the chance, Lex kissed her forehead. “Is that fireplace just for looks, or can I show off my Yankee ancestry by building you a fire?”
Lex built a fire to warm the living room while Gin hovered over him with the light. Then they ventured down the hall together to fetch his laptop and his castoff phone to use as a supplemental flashlight. He made a sack from the comforter and stuffed it with more blankets and pillows from the other bedrooms to construct a nest for them in front of the fireplace.
