Page 38 of Coaching Prince Charming

And I kissed him again, hard, hoping that he understood what it meant. You are more than enough for me. I am yours for as long as I breathe. Whether it translated or not, I didn’t know, but Nate seemed happy enough to keep the kiss going.

ELEVEN

Nate

Carter’s fingers glided along the piano keys, and magic swirled around the vast living room. I had once told him how incredible the melody he’d improvised was, and Carter had blinked at me, all confused. “That’s just warm-up,” he’d said, a cocky smirk on his sexy lips.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows with a whiskey on ice in my hand. The city lights lit the night sky, glimmering far around. People, cars, and the sounds of life were all outside our little universe. Here, Carter and I ruled and made all the wonders come to life.

Carter’s melody was pure improv. He wasn’t in the habit of writing his music down. He swore he would remember it if it was good enough. But it was his low opinion of his music that made a lot of the sounds fade from his memory.

I often wondered what his future might look like. Most commonly, when Carter practiced piano or guitar — which had a place of honor on one of my armchairs as of late since Carter split his time evenly between his place and mine — I gazed out the window and imagined the incredible life that awaited him. Would I have a role to play in it? Selfishly, I wanted to. I wanted to witness his rise to fame. I wanted to be the person he came home to and popped a bottle of champagne with. I wanted to wait for him backstage and be the first to kiss him after a performance.

Silly old romantic, a voice whispered from the back of my head. But that was the thing about Carter. He made me feel much younger than I was. And when I felt my years, they didn’t weigh so heavy. Lately, I sometimes thought of myself as only thirty-eight.

My thoughts jumped ahead. I could see him doing anything under the sun. Scoring movies, performing in front of crowds, joining a band, or going at it solo. I could imagine him succeeding at anything so long as his fingers were near an instrument and the passion for the art burned bright in him.

I had once floated the idea of helping him out. It had been an admittedly stupid idea, but I had thought to help him get ahead of the line. Carter had simply shaken his head. “No way I’d let you do that. If I can’t make it happen, I don’t want it.” I never mentioned it again because my feelings for him doubled in that instant, and I understood exactly what he wanted.

There were better ways to support him than to offer my contacts or my money, which he adamantly refused as well. Carter was doing gigs in restaurants and bars a few times a week, which was enough to cover his rent but not much else. He feared Dana would discover the regular expense and put the pieces together, so he avoided spending more than he had while living in the Titans’ team house.

The only kind of support he needed was the emotional one. He loved practicing in front of me, so I made sure to listen. And I loved listening to his music nearly as much as I loved being kissed by him.

I often found a way to watch his performances as days got cold and short. And I often found bits of time to run away somewhere new with him. Those were the best days.

Elsewhere in my life, the Titans had felt the sting of a loss and were determined never to let that happen again. They couldn’t win every game, but they never lost due to the lack of trying. Coaching them became another kind of pleasure. It kept me busy, and, truth be told, seeing the boys win was far more gratifying than I had expected.

“Do you like this?” Carter asked from behind the piano.

I swirled the whiskey in my glass and smiled. “Do you need to ask?”

Carter grinned, then waggled his eyebrows at me. “What are you thinking about?”

“Everything,” I said softly. Rain began pattering against the huge windows. The drops caught the city lights, twinkling and blurring the world.

“Everything?” Carter repeated, mock impressed.

I nodded slowly. “I’m thinking about how different my life is from what I expected.”

“Or what you were used to,” Carter offered.

“That, too.” I took a lick of my whiskey and set the glass on the small round table near the corner of the room.

Carter got up and crossed the space between us. He put a hand on my face and looked up at me. “You stopped bitching about those four gray hairs on the back of your head.”

I narrowed my eyes at him as if to thank him for reminding me. “Bitching?” I asked, incredulous.

“And moaning,” Carter said decisively.

He was being smug with me, but he knew what that earned him. In the two months of being with me, he had studied this lesson well. In this one thing, Carter seemed to deliberately be a slow learner. So I had to teach him again.

He didn’t see it coming, judging by the yelp that burst from his mouth when I bent and swept him off his feet. Tossing him over my left shoulder like a sack of beans, I didn’t mind his flailing or pleading for mercy. I smacked his peachy ass with my right hand, my left arm wrapped around his legs, and turned to carry him into the bedroom. “You’ve got a mouth on you, kid,” I said.

The slap on the back of my head was well deserved. He hated it when I called him that, even if I was only teasing, which made it that much more interesting. As I neared the wide arch between the living room and the kitchen, my doorbell rang.

We froze instantly, and I carefully dropped Carter to his feet. “That’s got to be Beckett.”

Carter agreed. “Someday, he’ll have to learn I’m in the running to be his new uncle.”

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