My Life as an Album (Books 1-4)

by LJ Evans

  When I came back in from talking to Wil, I saw you were looking for apartments, and you would have thought I was insane if you’d known what went through my head right then. You thought it was insane when I actually said the words to you aloud after we’d had several dates and earth-shattering sex.

  It took everything I had to just say, “Apartments?” as if I was slightly curious instead of all testosterone male, demanding some woman give up everything for him.

  “Well, Wynn…do you remember Wynn?” you asked. I wanted to roll my eyes at you like you were so good at doing. Of course I knew Wynn.

  “Is she the one that played tonsil hockey with my kid brother, or was that you?” I asked, and I did it on purpose, with jealousy and ego in my heart, because I wanted you to not have feelings for Matt. I didn’t want you to be thinking about Matt at all.

  When you laughed and spit out your chai tea like you were six instead of twenty-three, I couldn’t help but smile at you. Smile at the memories and the Cam that I saw behind the veil of sadness.

  “That was me,” you said, and I was relieved when you kept going as if Matt’s name had meant nothing to you. “God. I’d wondered where I picked up that term. Must have been from you. Jake hated it.”

  And there it was. The first time you actually said his name, even though I’d brought up his funeral. But you’d said it without a wave of pain in your voice, which gave me more hope. I didn’t want you to not say his name. I knew there would be many more times in your life that you’d say his name, and that I’d have to be okay with it. But that day, it gave me a purpose. I was going to be the one to stop you from jumping off any more cliffs because of that name.

  I responded, “Probably because you were always teasing him about doing it with his long line of fabulous women.”

  Your smile widened instead of fading as we talked about him, and more hope bloomed in my chest.

  “Sorry. We got sidetracked. So what’s the deal with Wynn?” I asked.

  “She and I have been living together, but now she up and got engaged and is moving in with her fiancé.”

  “How dare she do something so terribly predictable!”

  You tossed a grape at me, but I just caught it and tossed it in my mouth, and your eyes journeyed to my lips while I ate. Do you have any idea what that did to me? My whole body was already aching to kiss you, but I didn’t. I waited. I held out for the right time, because ten minutes into our first talk in years would hardly seem like the right time to kiss you.

  I just looked through the ads you’d circled and gave some feedback on them. When I told you about my blind date with the psycho lady who thought I was being male chauvinistic instead of gentlemanly, you laughed. And while that story made me look bad, it was absolutely, one-hundred percent worth it because of that laugh.

  When you said you were planning on going to look at the places, I was nowhere near ready for our time together to end. Not when I’d just found you again. It’s what had me asking you, “Would you like me to tag along? You know, as your lawyer and all?”

  “Because I need a lawyer with me to rent an apartment?”

  “You never know,” I quipped back.

  But when we actually hit the apartments, it brought back our age gap, because it was very clear that the apartment managers thought I was paying for a place for my mistress. I know there are plenty of people who say I don’t deserve you. That I’m too old. But the truth is, I’d dated younger women before. In fact, the last woman I’d dated regularly before you was a twenty-one-year-old, purple-haired singer covered in piercings and tattoos. She’d been strong and forceful and secure. I’d been drawn to that. I’d been drawn to that ever since I’d gone horseback riding with an almost fifteen-year-old girl that didn’t belong to me.

  I convinced you to stop for lunch, because I was truly starving, but also because I needed to draw out our time even further. Besides, I’d ignored every call from Wil and wasn’t looking forward to his rant when we finally did talk.

  “That’s it. You’re officially fired as my apartment lawyer,” you told me.

  “Thank God. I hate looking for apartments anyway,” I said before I thought about it.

  “It’s your fault. You offered. I was perfectly content to go on my own.”

  “But then I would have had to say goodbye a lot sooner.” The truth slipped from my lips.

  You looked up at me in surprise, as if you hadn’t expected anyone to ever say that they enjoyed spending time with you. When you hid your face again, I couldn’t help brushing the silky strands aside so that I could see your blush in all its glory, but you were uncomfortable with it—the blush as well as my touch—and you jumped back like a filly who’s never been saddled before. So, I made a quiet joke again.

  “Hey, did Super Girl just blush?”

  “Well, times change,” you said, and I heard the sorrow that I’d seen in your eyes earlier.

  I looked around the diner. A place not far from the Vanderbilt campus. Full of college girls and football pictures. I risked continuing the talk of Jake. “Jake would have dug this place, though. Has all his favorite things: girls, food, and football.”

  You smiled instead of frowned, and that continued to fill my heart with hope.

  When you told me where you were off to next—the hospital and the teen groups you were leading—I was so damn proud of you. But while I drove you there, I was getting anxious, because I still didn’t want our time together to end. I was still desperate to kiss you. To know what it would feel like. To know if you’d respond at all or if your heart was still too broken into pieces to even fathom being kissed by another man.

  “Thanks. For everything today,” you said, fiddling with the handles of your bag.

  “I enjoyed it!” I said, the sincerity ringing through the car. But as you made to get out of the car, I blurted out, “Hey, I have to go in and deal with the client I left hanging earlier, but I could pick you back up. We could go to dinner?”

  You stared at me for a long time, and my hope started to wither, so I tried to make it seem like you could blow it off and it wouldn’t be a big deal. “Too much? I monopolized your whole day, and now you’re wondering what kind of psycho I turned out to be?”

  In my head, I was a psycho.

  You smiled. “I don’t think you could ever be a psycho. You’re too much of a teddy bear.”

  And God, did that hurt. Because no way on Earth did I want to be a teddy bear. No. Fucking. Way. “Geez, does that suck.”

  “What?”

  “No guy wants to be the teddy bear. They want to be the rock star,” I said and waited while you took in my words so that you could tell I wasn’t saying them in some friendly way. I was saying them in a way that shows a woman that a man wants her. That I wanted you.

  “I’m being pushy, right?” I asked with a snort of laughter. “God. Always that way. I see something I want, and I just go after it.”

  I held my breath then, waiting, and when you finally spoke, the tension in my chest eased enough for me to breathe again.

  “I think I’m just trying to adjust to the fact that Blake Abbott just asked me out on a date.”

  And that’s how we ended up on our first date. How I started to push at that veil of sadness that you were trying so hard to unwrap yourself from. How I got you to admit on that first date that you just might be able to fall for a man like me. It was your fault. You started it.

  You said, “You know, Jake used to tease me about liking you.”

  “No shit!”

  “Yep. Summer before fifth grade. He thought I had a little-girl crush on you.”

  “Did you?” I asked, wondering if there could possibly have been room in your Jake world for me, but there hadn’t been.

  You shook your head and said, “No. I didn’t have eyes for anyone but Jake.”

  It didn’t upset me. I had known that for the truth it was. It would have hurt more if you’d lied about it. B
ut you were never a liar. Not Super Girl. And with that knowledge, of you not lying, I asked the question I really had wanted to ask all along. “What about now? Do you think you could have a grown-up girl crush on me?”

  “You are not humble, are you?” you asked.

  “Where do you think Jake learned it from?” I teased back.

  “His godlike status.”

  “Well, yes. And me!” I grinned at you.

  You stared at my grin again, and my body reacted, the ache to kiss you growing into its own storm of desire. But I pushed for an answer instead of kissing you. “So? You didn’t answer me. You avoided it.”

  “Do you always move this fast?” you asked, which was kind of funny coming from Super Girl herself.

  I shrugged. “Unfortunately. It’s what Wil’s always complaining about. And you are still avoiding my question.”

  You took a deep breath and then quietly breathed out, “Yes. Yes, I think I could very much have a grown-up girl crush on you.”

  And that made me the happiest man there was on the planet. The happiest I’d been in more years than I could remember. I hadn’t been unhappy. I’d never considered my life lacking in some way, but there’d been that ache inside me for more, and you were filling it up with the handful of smiles you’d given me in one day.

  I made it all the way to the end of the night without kissing you. Nowadays, you’d find that humorous—me lasting a whole day without kissing you. But on our first date, it was right. It was respectful to both you and Jake. To the life you’d lived together.

  I felt your nervousness as we got closer to the steps of your apartment. I knew that you were running through scenarios in your head. I knew that you would probably skitter away without me having a chance to kiss you, not because you didn’t want to—you’d been watching my mouth all night, after all—but because you were unsure of yourself, and your feelings, and the life you’d given to Jake.

  I didn’t give you a chance to think too much, to run. When you turned toward me, I grabbed that scarf you hadn’t been wearing earlier in the day, pulled you close to me, and put my lips on yours, demanding that you respond. And you did.

  A response that spoke all about the passion, and sass, and force of life that had always filled you from the time I first met you until then. Even if it had been hidden for a few years behind grief and loss. It was still there. I was more determined than ever to bring it to the surface again.

  Lifting my lips from yours was the hardest thing I’d done all day. I wanted to keep them there. Forever. Because regardless of how many women I’d kissed, that one kiss had been the most perfect of them all. Don’t roll your eyes, Super Girl. It’s true. I’d found what I’d been missing. I held onto the scarf, because I knew that our first kiss was full of mixed emotions for you. I didn’t want you to run without knowing that I needed more.

  “I really liked that,” I told you. It was a compromise that my brain and heart had made to say just that instead of whooshing you off your feet, back to my car, to my home and my bed.

  You laughed, and I felt pride in knowing that I was bringing that to your lips as much as the pretty red color that was there from where my lips had rubbed against yours.

  “I’d like to do that again sometime. Maybe even tomorrow?” I said, deadly serious.

  You pushed at me, but I didn’t let go yet. I couldn’t. “You’re such an egomaniac. What makes you think I’d like to do it again?”

  I grinned lazily, eyes flying back to your lips, causing you to let out a little breath that I wasn’t sure you even knew you did but almost made me lose control for the hundredth time that day. “Let’s just say that I am not an idiot when it comes to girls.”

  You pretended to be offended by my cocky answer. “You’ll have to call me in the morning. Maybe I’ll have changed my mind by then.”

  When you tugged again, I let you go, because I already knew the answer. You would let me kiss you again. You would let me kiss you many more times. That was enough to make me happy for the night. I took your key, opened your door, and bopped your nose like I had a million times growing up before heading down the steps with my words flung back over my shoulder. “Sleep tight, Super Girl.”

  Falling For You

  “Just lay me down and steal my heart tonight.

  There's fire in your eyes.

  There's magic in your touch.”

  Performed by Lady Antebellum

  Written by Ryan Busbee / Kelley / Haywood / Scott / Ford Busbee

  Every day I saw you after that weaved you deeper and deeper into the heart that was already yours. Did you know that? Did you see it? It was like all the random pieces of my life had finally been sewn together. By you. By your touch and your feelings. By your love.

  When I told Matt about it, about dating you, he paused for a long time before saying, “If you break her heart, there won’t be anything left of you for them to find when you go missing.”

  And we both sat there for a long moment, choking back emotions. But I was glad he’d done it. Someone had to call me on it. On my daring to date Jake’s girl. On my daring to try to claim a piece of your heart that had belonged to him.

  “Thanks for that,” I said quietly.

  He was still quiet for even longer before he asked me, still choked up, “Are you sure she isn’t going to break yours?”

  We had our own bond. One of brotherhood.

  “I’m pretty sure she won’t. She seemed to like it when I kissed her.”

  “Yeah, well, Cam was always a good kisser,” he snarked back, and that made me mad at him for the first time.

  “Don’t,” I growled.

  To my surprise, he laughed. “God, you really do have it bad.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that, because it was true.

  “Just be careful, big brother. That one is as wild as any wild horse we’ve ever had on the ranch. She isn’t meant to be tamed.”

  And you weren’t. You aren’t. You're wild, and free, and stubborn, and goddamn beautiful. But you also let me stand next to you, and touch you, and go through life with my hand in your mane, not controlling you, but holding on so that we can cross the fields together.

  The first business trip I took after we were dating was the most painful trip I’d ever been on. I hated being that far away from you. I hated it not only because I missed you, but because we were so new that I was a little worried you’d think too much about what we’d been doing. That you’d remember the making out and my hands on your body and freak out and decide we shouldn’t be a thing.

  It would have broken my heart. So, I kept thinking about what we should do when I got back. A picnic out at the nearby lake was just what the doctor ordered—or at least, I stupidly thought it was. My memories of our childhood weren’t caught up in a well of grief like yours were. I didn’t think about it at that level. It was selfish. It was wrong. I was lucky you didn’t kick me the hell out of your apartment and never saw me again.

  Instead, after I’d made you cry, and I tried to kiss the tears away, you somehow shed the last veil of regret that was holding you back, and you kissed me. Passionately. Like you’d never kissed someone before. Like there had never been anything like just that moment.

  I lost my head. I hadn’t intended on us making love that day. I hadn’t intended on crossing that line until we’d been dating for much longer. I wanted to give you time. But that passion-fueled kiss, the throwing off of the grief that I’d felt you do, it was too much. Too emotional.

  And the only response I had was to kiss you until you were breathless. To kiss you until your body was ready to explode just like my body was. But even then, even after you started tugging at my T-shirt and I’d shed yours, I had to stop. I had to make sure it was what you wanted. With me. Not some shadow of something you’d lost that you would envision when it was my hands on your skin.

  So, I guess, for the second time, reading your journal was a good thing. It
wasn’t that I hadn’t already known, from that moment in your bedroom on, that what you were giving me was all about us and nothing about Jake, but seeing the words in black and white has something redeeming about them. Something gratifying. Something final.

  To me, that moment in your bed…it was my future.

  The feel of your skin beneath my hands, the way your throaty voice called my name, the way you arched and came apart in my embrace. That was the only place I ever wanted to live again. I wanted that forever.

  So, is it any real huge surprise that I asked you to move in that night? That I wanted forever to begin right then? That I didn’t want to waste one minute of our forever like Jake had? No fucking way. I wanted every single moment of that time.

  I still hate when I’m away from you. I still hate anything that causes us to be apart for more than a few hours. That isn’t me being some male asshole; it’s me loving you so much that I can’t enjoy any part of my life if you aren’t there.

  Ridiculous, I know. But hopefully, also lovable.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  I was nervous when I met your parents for the first time after we’d been dating. I knew they’d see what I saw when I saw our reflection in a window or a mirror. I saw someone older than the woman next to him. I didn’t know how they’d feel about it. But after your mama had all but insisted that you move in with me, I relaxed, because I knew they saw the truth. They saw the love I felt, and that was all that really mattered. Not our age, or our pasts, or where we lived, or what we did. The only thing that mattered was that when we were together, we filled each other’s hearts.

  It was why I felt comfortable asking your mama for the picture of you and Jake. The one I set on your nightstand in my bedroom. The one I showed you when I first told you I loved you, because I didn’t want you to think I ever expected you to forget him. To forget the part of you that had loved him first. That had loved him with so much of yourself that there had been nothing much left of you. But I wanted you to see that the you that you were now was so much more than the half-person that loved Jake.