by Virna DePaul
“No.” I pushed his hand away and moved to the window. “It can’t work. I live in New York. My dreams are here. Yours are worldwide. You’re always on the road. You’ll never settle. Just leave me in peace, please.”
Just then, I felt him close the space between us, and he laced his warm arms around me, holding me close, his hands pulling back my shoulders. Instinctively, my head fell back against him. “Abby, don’t say these things,” he said. “You’re just angry. You have every right to be, but—”
“No, Liam!” I ripped myself away. I couldn’t give in to my body’s wishes again. Look where that had gotten me—hurt and humiliated in front of everyone.
“Abby…” He held his arms out at his sides, pleading. “Hit me.”
“What? No.”
He rushed up and scooped up my hands. “Yes, hit me. Hurt me like I hurt you.”
“I don’t want to,” I hissed. “I’m not like you.”
“Yes, you are. You’re just like me, goddamn it!” He was practically screaming when he had no right to. “You love with all your heart, you hurt with all your soul, you do it all the way or not at all. You”—he grabbed my hands and struck his chest with them—“are just like me. Now hit me.”
“Leave me alone,” I growled.
“You were just as afraid of me as I was of you.”
“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s a lie. I was never afraid of you.”
“Really? Then why did I see a text where you told Rosemary you weren’t sure what to think of me yet? Huh? After we’d made love three times already? Why couldn’t you be honest and tell me that? Why are we so alike? Huh?” He inched closer, and I knew he was trying to push my buttons, but I would not give in.
“You snooped through my phone?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry, but I had to know what I meant to you. If anything. But I guess the answer is nothing, so if you want, I’ll just leave.” His pleading look was killing me. Those eyes.
“No. Don’t go,” I heard myself say.
What? Why had I said that? What did I want?
“Wait,” I said, backtracking. “I didn’t mean—”
He pulled me in, taking my hands and kissing them. “People make mistakes, Ab. I made a mistake. I was confused. I was falling for you, but I also had a life. I’m willing to give that up, though, because I want you. I choose you. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.” His voice rumbled low. “Please don’t punish me for being confused…”
I couldn’t listen to him. I understood what he was saying, and I didn’t hate him anymore. I wasn’t angry at him anymore. I just felt we were wrong for each other. “I’m not trying to punish you.” I just couldn’t allow myself to be in a vulnerable position ever again. It hurt too much. “I’m not mad at you, Liam. I forgive you…it’s fine. But…we won’t work. So, please…” It hurt me to say this more than it would hurt for him to hear it. “Just leave.”
His loaded eyes read mine, scanned for signs of a joke, pleaded with me to change my mind. When I said nothing more, he finally blinked, backed away, slowly letting go of my hands. “As you wish.” One last, soft smile, then he turned and headed to the studio door.
My heart broke into a million pieces.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Liam
I had to try.
I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t come and said my piece.
At least now she knew where I stood. All cards had been laid out on the table. I wanted her. If she didn’t see the same potential in me, then how could I blame her?
I paused at the door. Not to be dramatic, just to wait an extra second. I didn’t want to leave without her. I was about to walk out, shut the door behind me, lose her when she suddenly was running. I turned, and her body pinned mine against the door.
“Liam…” she cried. “Wait.”
Ripe, full lips covered mine. She was on fire, full of the kind of confliction and fervor I’d never seen before in anyone.
“You love me,” I told her. I could feel it. It wasn’t a lie, and it wasn’t infatuation. “Tell me you do.”
“I don’t. I don’t love you. I could hate you right now.” She pounded her fists against my chest.
“But you don’t. You want me.”
“It’s just physical.”
“Then I’ll take whatever you’ll give me.” I hugged her around her waist, nice and tight. I soaked in her aura, even as she slammed her fists against my chest, sobbing, kissing me at the same time. “Abby, what do you want?” I pressed my lips against her cheeks, mouth, and ear.
“I don’t know. I just… I don’t think I can bear it… I don’t want you to go…” Her shoulders shook against my chest.
“Then I won’t.” I locked the door, lifted her off her feet, and carried her over to the opposite mirrored wall. We kissed with her back pressed against the glass. Abby was on fire. To me, she was always full of passion. I’d seen it firsthand with her cello. Some people saw a prim and proper, classically trained musician, but I saw a woman full of zeal for life. Abby didn’t do half-assed-ness. She did things to perfection. Well done or not at all.
Go big or go home.
Nobody understood that more than I did. It was how I operated on a daily basis. It was why Point Break had come as far as it had. We were more alike than she or anyone thought. I wasn’t happy to see her tears, but I was glad they existed, that she felt this strongly about our misunderstanding, my fuckup. I had affected her. The fact she was hurting this much showed she cared. She loved me. I was sure of it.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you. So sorry,” I whispered, nibbling her ear. “You didn’t deserve that.”
Abby’s words seemed to be stuck in her throat, and I still sensed that she didn’t know what she wanted, only that she needed me right now to quell her desires and stress. It was only right. I was the cause of her stress—I should be the one to get rid of it.
When I pulled down the straps of her dress and bra, she arched her chest upward, obviously wanting me to kiss her. I held her tightly against the mirror, her legs wrapped around my waist as I held her bottom with one hand, while my other hand sank deep into her hair. I lowered my face to her breast, taking it into my mouth, circling her nipple with my tongue, sucking it firmly. She moaned, and I released her hair to cup her other breast.
Her hips ground against mine. She was not messing around. Though her brain might still be pissed, her body wanted me inside her, to please her, to make the pain disappear. That was probably wrong, and she simply wanted a release, but I preferred to think that I was capable of lifting all unhappiness off her. I wanted to make her forget her father’s absence, her mother’s disappointment with life. I wanted her to reach her goals and love her life. I knew she was perfectly capable of reaching them without me, but I wanted to share them with her, smile when she got there. I wanted to be in her life when it all happened.
“What do you want from me?” I asked again. I wanted to hear her say it. I wanted her to declare it.
“Nothing.”
“Stop lying. Tell me what you want.”
She shook her head, tears overflowing. “Nothing…”
I grabbed her face and stared into her soul. “Tell…me…what…you…want.”
She fought and pressed her palms against me. “I want you to leave me alone.”
“Is that why your legs are wrapped around me?” I asked, kissing each tear to make it go away. “Why is it so hard for you to admit it? Tell me what you want!”
Finally, through gritted teeth, she said, “I want you to fuck me.” Her hips pushed against mine, and her eyes pressed out a fresh round of tears.
“Was that so hard, love?” I knew I was fucking around with her, but nothing was more beautiful to me than hearing a woman say, loud and proud, that she wanted sex. She might be shy. She might be coy. But when a woman had needs, and I was the only man to fulfill her, that was fucking hot.
“Inside me,” she spoke through tears.
“What’s that? You want me inside you?”
“Make love to me,” she whispered, sweat forming at her hairline.
“Make love to you, or fuck you, Abby?” Underneath her sundress, my hands held her ass, and I felt heat and dampness there. My fingers crept into her panties, searching for her warmth. The moisture found me first, and I slid a finger into her. She groaned against my ear, and nothing in this world was more musical. I slid another finger in.
“Both,” she groaned.
“That’s my girl.”
Setting her on her feet, I dropped to my knees and gazed up at her, running my hands up her smooth legs, hooking my fingers over the top edge of her panties. Slowly, watching her slightly parted mouth as she panted, I slid them down to her ankles. She stepped out of them then lifted her skirt just high enough to show me everything—her secrets and whole world.
I was rock hard at the first kiss, but now I thought I would explode just from the view. Fucking sexy. She lifted a finger to her lips, sucked on it, then pressed it against her clit, teasing me, showing me where to please her first. I was all too happy to oblige, pressing my mouth against her cleft, sliding out my tongue, and licking between her lips.
“Oh, Liam…” Her breath caught in her throat.
“I love you, Abby,” I said, licking and sucking on her flesh, feeling her pussy pressing harder against my face. Loved her, loved her womanly gifts against my face, adored her inside and out.
Undoing my jeans first, I stood and carried her again over to an old sixties-looking record player cabinet under a painting of a vase full of flowers. I set her down gently and moved between her legs, spreading them wider, sliding my cock up and down her pussy. I teased her there, running the head of my cock in small circles around her opening. But she’d lost all patience. Her fists gripped my shirt, one on my shoulder and one at my back. Unable to wait anymore, she gathered up my body and placed me where she wanted me then, grabbing my ass, she plunged me in.
“Jesus,” I moaned.
I was being used, and I knew it. Did I fucking care? No, I did not.
Making her feel good was the least I could do to make things up to her, and I didn’t mind how violently she manhandled me. I slid into her, kissing, drawing back to look into her beautiful, dark eyes. Her skin was flushed pink, and her nipples seemed bigger. She breathed heavily the more I pounded into her.
Make love and fuck at the same time, that was what I’d wanted forever. I just hadn’t found the right woman to do it with.
Good answer, Ab.
“I’m going to come,” she said through gasps. I watched her nipples harden, then a warm gooseflesh erupted all over her skin. Her eyes shut. Her reaction from what I was doing to her made me come close to losing it myself, perching me right on the edge of climax.
With one hand supporting her back, I slid my other between our stomachs and pressed my fingertips against her clit, rubbing there while my cock kept plunging into her. “Look at me,” I urged.
At first, she refused. I knew what she was doing. Safeguarding again. Even now, during sex, after she’d asked me to make love to her and fuck her at the same time, she couldn’t look me straight in the eye. She probably planned to forget this as soon as it was over.
“Look at me,” I said again, softer this time.
When she did, I saw so much in her eyes—fear of losing what little we had, anger that I’d caused her pain, and maybe I was reading too much into them, but love. Whether or not she was choosing to ignore that love, it was definitely there. “Come for me,” I said. “Feel good, Abby. I want you to.”
Her muscles began tightening all around me, gripping my cock and making me insane. She cried out, closing her eyes, turning her head. I let go, too, and together, we rode wave after wave of release until our panting subsided. With what little strength we had left, we held each other up for support.
It took a moment, but then I felt it. Sobbing against my shoulder. Her whole body slumped against me. “You were never part of the plan.” She shook her head. Hot tears seeped through my shirt.
“You were never part of my plan either, love.” I held her face in two hands, peering into her eyes. “But that’s okay.”
“No.” Abby looked like her whole world was imploding on her. Collecting herself, she pushed me away, picked up her panties and put them on, averting her eyes to the walls, the cello, the window—looking at anything but me. “Just, please go, Liam. You don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” I said. “I see us as the start of something beautiful. I want to see how we develop, Ab. My parents spent less time together at the beginning than we have, and look how long they’ve been together. It’s either there or it isn’t, and I know it’s there for us. But…” I threw my hands up. “I can’t make you see it.”
Putting myself back together, I stood there, waiting for her to realize that we were perfect for each other.
“Abby, I didn’t use a condom. And we’ve never...that is, I’m clean…”
“I am too. And I’m on the pill. So you don’t have to worry.”
I wasn’t worried about her getting pregnant. Fuck, right now, part of me would celebrate it. A child would tie us together forever. But while forever was what I wanted with Abby, I wanted it to be her choice. Her decision to trust me. Her inability, to despite all the hurt and anger, to let me go.
I didn’t want to give up hope. Maybe she would come around. Maybe I could keep trying to convince her after I left, got back on the road, slogged through the shows and my life. With some time, she could see what I saw.
We stared at each other a moment, and I thought maybe more words were building in a wave against her lips, and she was waiting for them to spill, but she simply went over to her cello and started packing it up along with sheet music, rosin, bow, and other scattered things. I wouldn’t be convincing her today. It was possible this encounter had simply been an experiment for her, too, and maybe her results wouldn’t be in for a while.
Sighing, I turned to leave then paused. “You know, plans are only to keep you focused,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “Sometimes, new stuff comes into your life, and you have to make room for it or lose it forever. You have to make exceptions for things that enhance your life, Abby. Even if they weren’t in your plans to begin with.”
Her back was turned, her silhouette against the lit windowpane outlining the most beautiful girl I’d ever known. Even if she didn’t want me, my opinion of her would never change. You don’t think I’ll enhance your life, do you? I wanted to ask. That’s the problem.
My mother always told me not to ask questions that might have answers I didn’t want to hear, so I kept quiet.
I walked up to her one last time, kissed her cheek, and whispered. “I love you.”
Picking up the pieces of my shattered heart, scattered all over the floor by the woman I loved, I tucked them into my pocket with the rest of my worldly belongings and got the fuck out of there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Abby
Most kids probably never dreamed of having lunch by the fountain at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side. But facing Avery Fisher Hall with the satisfaction of knowing that I might work there someday, I did. Then again, I was a freak. When I was little, Ma would bring me here and say that one day, when I was older, I was going to walk into that tall-columned building with my cello case. I was going to play here someday, and that dream solidified into a hard-core goal.
My mother had always shaped my dreams, either consciously championing me, or because I wanted them as badly as she did. So it was no small wonder that, as I sat outside in the Lincoln Center courtyard, I got a text from her asking me to wait before going inside to pick up my audition packet. She had something for me.
The recently vacated position I was auditioning for was Associate Principal Cello, and maybe that was wishful thinking, but I did graduate from Juilliard with top honors, so even if they gave me Back Ro
w You Suck Cello, I wouldn’t care—I’d be IN. And I wanted my mom to be a part of that moment and every other Philharmonic moment.
So I waited.
It was a gorgeous Monday afternoon, with clear skies and a humid breeze blowing off the river, warming my shoulders, but my heart still felt cold. Had I done the right thing? I wanted to stay on my life track, and I wanted to find my own apartment here. Being with Liam could have brought trouble in the future, so yes, for all intents and purposes, I’d done the right thing by cutting him off.
But then…why did I feel so terrible?
Why did I wake up every day with a sinkhole in my heart, opening my eyes to a new day only to remember that Liam’s smile wouldn’t be in it, and that was all because of me?
It’ll take time, I told myself. You’d miss a painting, too, if someone suddenly took it off the wall and moved it.
You can get used to anything not being there, Abby, I reminded myself. Given enough time, I’d get over him. I just needed to stay distracted, which included not looking through recent Point Break concert pics on my phone. I closed my browser.
My mother texted me again: Almost there.
I looked up the sidewalk and waited for her familiar visage. Finally, after a minute, she rounded the corner, toting a little brown bag. Just seeing that little bag made my heart sparkle. Her smile shone just as brightly. She hurried toward me, then we crashed into a big hug.
“I couldn’t let you go in there without this, could I?” She handed the bag to me.
“I knew something wasn’t right. I should have known.” I smiled, taking the bag from her. When I opened it, the lovely rich scent of almond oil hit me. Inside was an almond bear claw, and sharing one before going inside to hear the Philharmonic play was our tradition. There were no performances scheduled for today, but we’d be entering the building just the same. “Thank you.”
