Page 53 of Not Another Love Song

Gwen thought of Chelsea’s Instagram, filled with selfies of her and him. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me, but—”

“Anything.” Black eyes looked down on her, and he took a shaking breath. “Everything.”

She felt the heat spinning in her again, blossoming from his lips and his breath, and twisting through her chest and low in her belly.

“Tell me I can see you again,” he whispered, leaning into her. “For music or anything else.”

Her heartbeat thrummed. His breath against her forehead shivered her skin, and her eyes fluttered closed when his fingers reached for her jaw.

The door wrenched open, and they sprang apart as several violins walked in. And Gwen realized how ridiculous it was— how much respect she could lose as first chair if she were seen flirting with Xander, just for him to break her into a million pieces when he was done with her.

Giving a small wave to her coworkers, she whispered to him, “No, I can’t. That’s not a good idea.”

She heard him take a deep breath, watching his shoulders drop from the corner of her eye. She slipped past him, heading into the rehearsal room, and looked back to see him standing with his eyes pressed shut, one hand tugging at the roots of his hair.

She tried to focus on setting up, ignoring how he didn’t come in for another fifteen minutes. Just as Nathan began rehearsal, she heard the door open. She listened as heavy boots paced to the chair across from her. The chair creaked and groaned under his weight.

“So, as I mentioned before,” Nathan said, drawing her eyes from where they were firmly planted on her sheet music, “there will be a few changes to the normal lineup. A way to spice things up. We’re very proud this year to feature Xander in a new way. He’s been doing some composing, and has agreed to play a new piece at our concert.”

Gwen’s eyes snapped to Xander. He was bent down, picking his cello up out of the case. The tips of his ears were red. She felt her own cheeks darken as Nathan’s words made more sense to her.

“Xander, would you like to share it with us?” Nathan said.

He leaned back in his chair, cello bow in hand, and rubbed his eye with the other hand. “Not really, no.”

Nathan’s expression fell, taking it personally. Then from behind her, Diane piped up, “Oh, I’d love to hear it!”

A chorus started, echoing Diane’s sentiments, until Xander rolled his shoulders back, placed his bow on the Stradivarius, and pulled the first arpeggios of the song Gwen had played in his apartment.

She watched his left hand move through the fingering, sliding over the notes and humming through the melody that still haunted her in the mornings. She looked to his face, and found him frowning down at the floor. Not even half of the passion he normally played with.

He followed the tempo she’d set a few weeks ago, even taking her breaths and rallentandos, the way she’d breathed into the new sections as she prepared for the differing rhythms.

The fingerpicking. And he skipped the same notes she had. Even though he was the one to write them down. Even though his ideas were better. Even though she had played it like an amateur.

And when the crescendo came, the aggravated ending that eventually evened out into peace—when his lips pressed together, his cheeks pink and his eyes closed—when his tongue swiped across his bottom lip at the very same place in the song that he’d lapped at her skin—that was when she realized…

He still had the recording. Her recording.

The bow lifted off the strings. The orchestra clapped for him. He gave a false smile to the ground in thanks.

“Wonderful, Xander,” Nathan said. “Absolutely stunning. Do you have a title for it yet?”

He rubbed his brow, and shook his head, eyes pressing closed. “I had one. It’s wrong.”

Gwen swallowed and looked back at her music, turning pages as Nathan announced the next song.

Xander refused to look at her for the rest of rehearsal, not even for tempo. Gwen couldn’t decide which had been more distracting: his gaze on her face, her body, her instrument every moment for the past two weeks…or the absence of it now.

CELLO SUITE NO. 3

When Alex had found “Xander,” it was like a new world had opened up to him. Where Alex had been concerned with everyone and everything, Xander was not.

Alex had been prepared, on time, conscientious. Xander knew that the world would wait for him. Because it did.

Alex focused on mistakes. Alex talked too much about topics no one cared about. Alex’s eyes sought out Nathan Andrews’s approval after every take. Alex’s fingers tightened into claws at night, needing the stress of playing all day to be professionally massaged from his body.

Xander Thorne finally believed every single person who’d told him he was the best. He played like he was the best. He moved like he was the best.

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