Refrain (Soul Series Book 3) (11 page)

“You mean that?” My free hand winds into the hair tumbling past her shoulders, spearing into the heavy mass at her nape.

“Yes, I mean it.” She sighs and reaches up to grip my wrist. “But at the same time, I’m so disappointed. You have to give me the space to be disappointed, Rhyson. To regret another missed opportunity, another delay.”

I nod because I can do that.

“Don’t ask me not to be ambitious,” she adds earnestly. “Not to want to perform and to be the best artist I can be. Don’t ask me to not
want
that.”

“Kai, that’s all part of what makes you the woman I’m crazy about.” I press her a little closer. “Remember what we said? That we want to be known?”

I wait for her to nod, to recall the promises we made on the other side of our mistakes a few months ago. We hurt each other out of insecurity and mistrust, but we vowed to live our lives truly known, if by no one else in the world then by each other.

“I know you,” I whisper, holding her eyes and wishing for more light so the shadows can’t hide anything from me. “I
see
you, baby. I live you.”

She grins at our own way of expressing that.

“I live you too.” Her eyes seek mine to find the answering emotion that has to be there on my face because it’s too massive to remain trapped inside of me. It must be spilling into my expression like a silent confession. “So with all that said, for the record, I am excited and amazed that we did this, that we made this baby together. I saw our little blob today, and I just . . . I just already love . . . her or him.”

“It’s her.” I slide our hands from my chest to rest between us and press into her stomach. “That’s our little girl.”

“You can’t know for sure, Rhys, and I don’t want you disappointed if it’s a boy.”

“I wouldn’t be disappointed, and we’ll know soon.”

“You wanna find out?” she asks shyly.

“Hell, yeah, we’re finding out.” I scoff at even the notion of not finding out. “We need to know if we’re planning for a boy or a girl. There’s names. We have to get the name right. Nothing stupid or weird. Or Southern.”

“Southern?” She laughs and sputters, all fake offended. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Oh, you don’t,
Kai
Anne
?” I give her my “really” face accompanied by my best imitation of her Southern drawl.

“I thought you loved my name.” She can’t even hold the laugh back long enough to look affronted.

“Of course I do.” I kiss her nose. “I just think we can do better.”

I wince when she pinches me.

“Ow!” I snatch her closer and start tickling. She almost flips us both off the piano bench squirming and straining away from my fingers. The more I touch her, the less it’s funny. The less we laugh. I go from searching out the spots that will make her squeal, to searching out her lips. She wraps her arms around my neck and dusts kisses across my cheeks, my nose, my chin. Affection gathers inside me until it brims over. She’s my best friend. My whole world spins on this girl. She’s my axis. I’m not sure how it happened, but she’s the most essential thing in my life, and I’m humbled that she chooses to spend the rest of her life with me. Floored that she’s having my baby.

She finds my hand, linking our fingers and bringing them up between us. “If I ask you a question, will
you
be honest with
me
?”

I asked her that earlier, and she answered with fearless honesty. It’s not as easy as it looks when you’re staring down the barrel of that question.

“Yeah.” I nod and run my palm over her silky hair. “Of course.”

“What’s going on with your hand?” She squeezes my right hand for emphasis.

Shit. She would ask me about the one thing I really don’t want to talk about.

“Kai—”

“Tell me.”

I slump against the piano, impervious to the discomfort of the keys digging into my back. I spread one hand over her hip to anchor her to my lap, or maybe to anchor myself.

“It’s not quite right.”

She doesn’t respond right away. When I glance up at her face, I see all the reasons I didn’t want to tell her. The guilt and devastation. I know she’ll blame herself for this, and I don’t want her to do that. Did it feel great slamming my fist into a brick patio? No, but I would do it again and again if it meant protecting her from scum like Malcolm and Drex. I’d cut it off if I had to.

“And that’s why you gave Bristol such a hard time about playing next week in Vegas.”

“Pep, it’s not—”

“How not quite right?” Her eyes land on our hands linked together.

I pull my right hand from hers to curl and uncurl a fist.

“Maybe some loss of dexterity and control, which is huge for the way I play. Maybe the casual listener wouldn’t hear it, but I do.”

“Would I?”

I can’t help but think about how I “hear” our love. The same way I “see” music in colors with my synesthesia, I hear our love like a song. The connection between us hums like a melody through my blood. I’ve never felt so in tune with another person, like there’s a frequency we discovered in the wild for just the two of us.

“Would I, Rhys?” she asks again when I don’t answer right away. “Would I hear the difference?”

“Probably.” I hope she’ll drop it, even though I know that’s futile.

“Let me hear.”

Shit.

“Pep, it’s late.” I rise up a few inches from the bench with Kai still cradled against me. “I have to be up and in the studio all day tomorrow.”

She wiggles out of my arms and plants herself on the bench at the piano.

“Rhys, play.” Her slim hand encircles my wrist, and she tugs me down beside her. “Please.”

My hands are poised over the keys, but I hesitate. Music has been the one thing that made me exceptional. This
instrument
is what made me exceptional. I play many instruments, but the piano is where it all began. Where I’ve always shone brightest. The scariest thing in my world is mediocrity.

“What should I play?” I finally ask, sliding my eyes to the curves and lines of her profile.

“Play something I’ve heard before to see if I hear . . . the difference.” Her eyes search mine in the barely lit inches separating us. “Play my song.”

Despite the heaviness of my heart and the soreness of my hand, a gravelly chuckle scrapes in my throat.

“Which one? They’re all yours lately.”

She laughs and lowers her lashes like the truth makes her shy. Nothing inspires me more than Kai. Every song on my next album somehow ties to her, to our life together. To our past. To our future.

“‘My Soul to Keep.’” She drops her rumpled head to my shoulder.

“I’ll play if you sing it with me.”

She tenses beside me, telegraphing her typical reluctance to sing in front of me before she nods against my shoulder.

From the first notes, I hear the deficit. When I was young, I didn’t truly appreciate my gift. It came so easily at first I thought it was magic until I started instruction, started polishing a gift that was very much in the rough. And after all those years, all that was dazzling, at least to my ears, feels reduced to a mere glimmer. I didn’t realize how completely this defined me until it was threatened.

No one but me has heard the difference. My fingers falter because I can’t stand for anyone to hear, to know that I may have lost something I foolishly took for granted. The ease of perfection. I don’t want Kai to hear. As soon as I stop, she presses my fingers back to the keys, narrowing her eyes at me.

“You said you’d play if I sang with you.” She lifts one dark brow. “We’re just coming to the first verse. Why’d you stop?”

“Do you hear the difference?” I ask softly, shifting my eyes to my hands hovering over the keys. My right hand looks the same, but something hasn’t healed that the doctors assured me should have by now.

“Maybe.” She shrugs her slim shoulders. “You’ve barely played anything. Are we gonna sing or what?”

“Pep.” I drop my hands to my lap.

“Rhyson.” She covers them with hers, leaning forward and around so I’m forced to look at her. “You said you wanted to be known, but you won’t even play a song you wrote for
me
? What if it were me? What if I was the one keeping something this important from you?”

She’s right. I remember what that felt like. When I discovered she’d cut me out of the sex tape fiasco, I felt betrayed. Yes, because she lied, but also because she didn’t trust me to be able to handle anything and not walk away.

Without acknowledging that she’s made her point, I start from the top with the few measures of instrumentation before the words come in. I begin, and she joins in.

I was lost before you found me, or maybe I found you

Maybe it was fate or kismet, or something much more true

It could have been an answered prayer, a sacred certainty

All I know is what we have now. I’ve got no plans to leave

Not an ocean, not forever

Nothing wide or deep

Will ever end this love between us

My soul is yours to keep

The arrangement requires her voice to vault from sweet, husky alto to a soprano that soars, all the while weaving in and out, our voices dancing then sparring. Her harmony, companion to my anchoring melody. An unquiet silence follows the final note. Though I’m done playing, though we’ve stopped singing, the sounds left an impression in the air around us. My ears won’t let go, clinging to the memory of our voices together. I wonder if Kai still hears it too.

“So . . .” I clear my throat. “Did you notice any difference?”

“Yes, I was much more relaxed than the last time we sang together,” she says with a straight face. “I’m getting better.”

“Pep, come on.” Her words coax a grin out of me even as I wait for the verdict.

“It’s not that bad, Rhys.”

“Not that bad?” I gape at her. “I was ‘not that bad’ when I was three years old. Is anything as mediocre as ‘not that bad’?”

I shove my fingers into my hair. Damn. It’s even worse than I thought.

“You didn’t let me finish, prima donna.” She traps my hands between hers. “You sound magnificent like you always do, but I know what you mean. I hear what you’re saying. It’s subtle, but I spent too many nights on my bed in Glory Falls listening to your album not to detect even the smallest change.”

“So you do hear it?” I knew I wasn’t imagining it, but to hear her say it sinks my heart a little more.

“Like I said, it’s subtle. I don’t think most people would notice. And it probably is just dexterity. Hopefully something more therapy can address. Maybe see the doctor before we leave for Vegas?”

“Can’t.” I shake my head and lace our fingers together. “He’s in Poland for the next two weeks.”

“Who goes to Poland?” Kai grimaces, I have to laugh at her expression.

“I hear Poland’s a perfectly beautiful place.”

“I’ve never been. You can take me some day.” She allows a bit of a smile on her lips. “We’ll go see him when he gets back from
Poland
.”

“We?” I tilt my head down to search her eyes.

“Yes, we. I honestly think it’s something that can easily be fixed.” Kai climbs onto my lap to rest her forehead against mine and hang her arms over my shoulders. “But I’m still trying not to feel guilty about this, Rhys.”

“Baby, no.” She’s so petite my two hands almost span her entire back. “Don’t do that. Don’t think that. That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you.”

“I know, but . . .” She swallows and squeezes her eyes closed. “If I hadn’t . . . God, that one night has caused us so many problems.”

That one night with Drex
has
caused us a lot of problems—a lot of pain—but I don’t care as long as I get to spend the rest of my life with this girl. She’s worth anything.

“So can I come with you to the doctor?” Her breath whispers over my lips.

“Yeah. You know why?” I smile against her mouth. “Because everything is easier with you.”

“Easy?” She teases me with her eyes, slipping her hand between us to wrap around my ever-hardening dick. “This doesn’t feel easy. It feels pretty hard to me.”

She grinds into me, a slow, deep move that marries her heat to my hardness. I stifle a groan, and my cock strains against my sleep pants. I was really trying to be good tonight. My hands smooth down her back, edge into her panties to stroke over her ass.

“What’d Dr. Allister say about . . .” I open my mouth over the silkiness of her throat, tonguing the hollow at the base.

“About what?” Her words melt into a moan as I twist a nipple between my fingers. I slide my mouth up to her ear, sucking on her earlobe.

“About fucking,” I drop the word in her ear, absorbing the shudder of her slim body against me. I bend to bite her nipple through her shirt.

“We’re good,” she gasps. “We’re fine. I mean, we can.”

Her hands plunge into my pants, and she drags her finger deep between the cheeks of my ass.

It should
not
feel that good, but damn it really does.

“Let me eat your pussy,” I whisper to her hotly, my mouth watering.

“Let me suck your dick,” she whispers back, her eyes teasing and taunting and promising.

“Okay.” I slump my back against the piano and let her go. “You twisted my arm.”

She slides off the bench and between my knees. I lift my hips just enough for her to shimmy the pants down over my thighs and around my ankles. Her mouth is like a wet furnace around me, scorching the sensitive head. She sips at the drops leaking from the tip. Her moans reverberate around my cock as her hands work my balls. There’s no finesse. No technique. No checking to see if she’s pleasing me. Just her own raw hunger. I recognize it because that’s what I feel every time I taste her. She’s back and forth. Up and down. Feasting on me, lips stung and red, stretched around me. Eyes closed tightly and brows pinched together like she can’t suck it hard enough, fast enough. Her tilted eyes open and peer up at me like a little cat lapping the cream.

Did I say I had power over her?

She has all of it and she knows it. Her hands splay over my thighs, pushing and spreading me wider as she sinks deeper, her head bobbing slow and then fast. Setting her own pace, she exercises supremacy over me as I dissolve from the inside. Fisting her hair, I send my cock deeper until the tip slips into the tight black hole of her throat. I can tell it’s almost too much. A tear slides from the corner of her eye, and a mixture of the juices from her mouth and my dick saturates the corners of her lips. It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. My balls tighten in warning.