Page 36 of Forbidden Lyrics

“You sure?” I ask.

“The front door will be open. Let yourself in.”

The call disconnects, and I grab the first outfit from my closet without even registering its color as I slip it over my head.

I’ve always prided myself on being reliable. And right now, Gibbs needs me.

Chapter Ten

Dove

The haunting melody echoes from the second floor as I close the front door behind me. The place is pitch black except for a single light glowing at the top of the stairs. It only adds to the eeriness, leaving goosebumps along my arms.

“Gibson?” I call out, but the music doesn’t stop.

With a deep breath, I slip off my sneakers, tiptoe up the stairs, and peek through the cracked door to Gibson’s room. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling his guitar in his lap, with his dark hair a mess and a pen hanging from one side of his mouth. But he doesn’t notice me. He’s too enveloped in the song. The melody. The poison as it seeps from his veins onto paper, one note at a time.

His fingers strum a few more chords before his brows pinch in concentration, and he tries the same set of notes in a different octave. Satisfied, he stops playing and takes the pen from his mouth before jotting down the sequence on a pad of paper lying on the floor.

I feel like I’m intruding on something special. Intimate. But I’m too mesmerized to leave. He’s beautiful like this. Wounded. Vulnerable. But brave, too, as he faces the monsters in his head and fights them the only way he knows how.

And in this moment, I see him. The real him. With all his demons, all his strengths, on full display. And I’ve never been more attracted to someone in my entire life. More desperate to close the distance between us. To peel away a few more of his protective layers the same way he’s managed to shed mine.

“I can feel you watching me,” he mutters, though he doesn’t bother to look up at me.

Crap.

I clear my throat. “Hey.”

“You can come in.”

I push the door open quietly and inch into his room while ignoring the overwhelming feeling that I’m trespassing. Because I am. I invited myself here. I practically forced my way in.

I should leave––

“Take a seat,” he orders, dipping his chin toward the carpet beside him.

Without a word, I do as I’m told and kneel down. “Any updates?”

“Riv woke up. Reese is staying with him in his room. Milo feels like shit. Aaaand, that’s about it.” He strums his guitar again. “Tell me what you think about this.”

He plays back his song from the beginning, each note building on the last until the chorus hits like a sledgehammer of emotion, leaving me breathless.

He stops and looks at me with bags under his eyes. “What do you think?”

I think it’s amazing. Gorgeous. Gut-wrenching. I think it’s beauty and pain rolled into a cataclysmic explosion of heartbreak. And that’s without lyrics. Without drums. Or Fender’s flair. It’s…

“That bad?” he jokes, taking my silence as confirmation that I hate it.

He has no idea.

Looking up at me with those stupid hazel eyes that are glazed with vulnerability, though I know he’d never admit it, he waits for me to agree with him. To tell him it’s crap when it’s the opposite.

“I think it’s good,” I tell him, trying to keep my emotions in check when all I want to do is pull him into a hug.

“Thanks.”

“What are your thoughts for the vocals?” I ask.

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