Page 2 of Perfect Pitch

“I wouldn’t care if they did. That’s not the point.”

Her fingers continue their ministration even as she asks, “Do you know what you want to cover them?”

I reach into my pocket and pull out a folded page of sheet music. There are no words, just notes. My soul has both the sounds and the lyrics memorized.

“As if I’d be able to forget or forgive. How should I go on and live?” I sing softly.

“No man was worth this,” she presumes. Her nails scrape along the fully healed slashes I made.

I blink back tears before lifting my other wrist and rasping the next part in French. “Tu étais ma première, mon impossibilité.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were my first, my impossibility.” Taking a breath to compose myself, I lick my dry lips and admit, “You’re right. No man is worth damnation. But the loss of my child is.”

Her hand clamps down tightly, causing a bite of pain I welcome. It’s something to feel besides numb.

Broken.

Hollow.

I wouldn’t have shared as much as I did if it wasn’t for the ironclad NDA my lawyer made Kitty sign before I entered her studio. Woman to woman, I feel her try to infuse me with her strength while trying to drain me of my pain. “Will you help me?”

My heart is racing like a racehorse when she doesn’t say anything. Then the adrenaline gives away when she murmurs, “Whatever it takes.” She stands, releasing my hands so they gently fall into my lap. “Let me make the transfer.”

I nod, unable to say more, to give more. After all, look at what sharing all of myself with another person did to me in the first place. It did nothing but leave me a hollow shell of the woman I was before. But I swear I will find a way to suck every moment of life dry for us both until we meet again.

Kitty startles me from my reverie when she probes gently, “Do you want to include the song title?”

I think hard about the longstanding Kensington family tradition I’ll never be able to fulfill—naming my daughter after the place she was born. I found out she was a girl. I don’t know whether she would have looked like me or her father. Would she have been a fighter or a musician? The only thing I know is she was ours.

But first, she was mine. A Kensington. With that, I make a quick decision and manage a choked “Columbia,” before a single tear slides out of my eye.

Just one.

The only one I’ll permit myself since I pushed my emotions to their absolute limits to overcome the wake of devastation a monster left in my life.

One who is still out there somewhere.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

Several prominent members of British society attended the premiere of Simon Houde’s and Evangeline Brogan’s performance of Oklahoma!

Count yourself lucky if you were one of them.

—Moore You Want

I curse as I drop my bag inside the bedroom of the condo I share with the other men who protect rock legend Beckett Miller round-the-clock. Quickly changing, I slip into a suit and am knotting my tie when the emotions of the last few days slam into me.

Until I received the call from Charlie to haul my ass to Asheville, I’d spent the time in between seeing Austyn last in a panic as I tried to recover from letting her slip through my fingers. I tried to protect everyone without anyone I love being hurt. There’s a price to be paid for such wishes—instead of being my burden, it was the woman I love who sacrificed.

Pale, I stare at my image realizing that instead of the plethora of things I’d willingly protect, there are too few things I’d die for. I’ve lost one and almost lost both. It’s too high of a price to be paid.

Far too much of a cost.

“Maybe...” But I quickly stop. Everything’s a possibility. Maybe if I wasn’t the man charged with protecting her father. Maybe if we hadn’t fallen in love. If she hadn’t moved into my heart, consuming my thoughts.

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