Page 94 of Resist Me

“Pretty please without cherries on top because they’re gross?”

He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. I stretched my legs out and planted one of my feet on the bench between his legs. He slipped his fingers underneath the material of my jeans and held onto my ankle, stroking it languidly. It was oddly comforting.

When the food arrived, he looked at it like it might explode without warning. “This is gonna put me in a coma.”

“Hell yeah, it is. We can take off our pants, fall into bed and watch something dumb.”

“I can’t.”

I took a large bite to hide my disappointment. Even as he began to eat, he kept his hand on my leg. It helped keep me from retreating into my head.

“Why can’t you?” I asked after a while.

“I need to practice. There’s an entry performance I have to do for the heads of the music department.”

“If it’s the song I heard you playing at your place, it sounds perfect.”

“No, that’s one my mom composed. This is La Campanella, arguably one of the hardest pieces to play.”

“Why don’t you do the other song? I bet it’s nicer than this ‘little bell.’”

His brows raised. “If you tell me that you speak Italian, my brain might actually explode.”

“No, I took it in high school, but I couldn’t string together a sentence if my life depended on it.” He smiled and I watched the way he moved his fork across the top of his french toast. “Wanna know what I think?”

Stabbing a piece, he brought it to his mouth and motioned for me to go on. It took me a moment to tear my eyes away from his lips around that damn fork. He knew what he was doing, I was sure of it.

“Music is art. No matter what form art comes in, it can be felt. It’s meant to stimulate certain emotions. You could play some fancy, old as dirt song but even if you nail it, it’s just robotic, you know? Maybe the technical aspects are important but at that point, haven’t you lost the entire point of music, the passion of it? Do you want to do this for the rest of your life so that you can play a song a thousand other people have already played or do you want to make them feel something? If you ask me, that takes more skill than being a copycat.”

The expression on his face made me feel proud of how astute I’d just been. Bet he thought I was just a jock with a pretty face. While he processed that, I proceeded to demolish the rest of my food.

“If you don’t eat all of that,” I said, “I’ll be very unimpressed and won’t be boning you anymore, sugarplum.”

He snorted a laugh. “You can stop with that now. I get it. You’re better at being annoying.”

“Sure thing, sweetums. Hurry up. I get bored easily.”

To my surprise, he ate all of the food, so apparently, he was capable. He just chose to deny himself all the pleasures that came from unhealthy food. After he dropped cash on the table, he stood. I stared at the money, both unsurprised and weirded out that he just carried it around like this was the nineties.

He held his hand out and I eyed it for a moment before I took it. Once we were outside, he pulled me to the side and cupped both sides of my neck. I let him kiss me, not really caring who was around.

“Let’s go fall into a coma,” he suggested.

“Why’d you change your mind?”

There was a new intensity in his eyes. “Because I didn’t like how sad you looked when I said no.”

And that was my heart trying to escape my rib cage because it was ready to fall really damn hard. Hopefully it didn’t end up splattered on the floor.

*****

“Where’s Willow?” I demanded.

Kai raised a brow and leaned back against the counter. “Wanna try that again?”

After taking a breath, I painted on a smile. “Hey, Kai. Nice to see you. I’ve missed youso much. Do you know where my lovely but problematic sister is?”

“No, I don’t. Did you try texting her?”

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