Page 70 of The Sound of Us

“I’ve decided I’m not going to hide how I feel anymore,” I calledout to Isla, who was changing in her room. “I was trying to pretend that everything was okay with Dante when it wasn’t. I didn’t like having to keep what we had secret. It made me feel like he was ashamed of me, or maybe he had someone else. I’m on to a big story here, Iz. I’m kicking ass at school and at the station. I shouldn’t have to hide. I’m going to tell him how I feel, even if it means finding out that he doesn’t want me.”

“If he didn’t want you, he wouldn’t have been jealous of Blake and he wouldn’t have said ‘Skye, I want you.’ The question is, do you want him?” She walked into my room looking stunning in her favorite red strapless dress. “How do I look?”

“Fabulous. Are you finally going to tell Nick how you feel?”

“Of course not,” she huffed. “Then he might want to go out and have dinner or drinks and then he might walk me home and then he might kiss me and that might lead to…”

“Sex.” I opened my closet and flicked idly through my clothes. I still had the dresses I’d bought when I started college. Some of them had never been worn.

“Sex I can do,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of sex since…” She waved a vague hand in the air. “I’ve erased all the badness with multiple sexual encounters. But Nick is different. He isn’t therapy peen.”

“Therapy peen? Is that really a thing?”

“My therapist said it’s a way for me to take control. So yes. It’s a thing.”

“Sounds like it’s an intimacy issue.”

“Strangers know the deal,” she said. “There are no expectations.”

“Maybe it’s time to stop trying to prove to yourself that you’re okay with nameless strangers and start being okay by letting Nick in,” I suggested. “If I can do it, you can do it.”

“They’re not always nameless,” she said, with a grin. “I like to have a name to shout out when I’m pretending to come. ‘Oh, Todd. You’re so huge. Tyler, will it fit? Do me, Ryan. Faster, Scott…’”

Laughter bubbled up in my chest. “You’re hopeless.”

“So are you if you don’t take your own advice.” She reached into my closet and handed me a tight green sheath dress I’d bought for the year-end baller bash that I’d never had a chance to attend. “Go big or go home, babe.”

I looked down at my scarred leg. If I could do this, I could do anything, including taking a risk on a man who made my heart sing.

“I’ll need shoes.”

Isla raced across the hallway and returned a few minutes later with a stack of shoeboxes. “Don’t worry, babe. I’ve got you covered.”

We drank. We danced. We sang. We danced some more. Music thrummed through me, making my heart pound. It was the perfect distraction from the air whispering over my scarred leg and the truth flowing from my battered heart. I was all in and tonight I wanted to let Dante know.

Dante played his bass as if it were an extension of his fingers, steadily, deftly weaving the band’s rhythm and melody into an impenetrable musical cloak that I wanted to wrap around my naked self. There was something highly erotic about watching him play—an intimacy I wanted to share as his fingers moved over the strings, pulling me closer with every note. He was a different person on stage, so obviously born to make music. He was a performer. A rock star. And every time I looked at the stage, his gaze was fixed on me.

Near the end of the night, as the band moved into a slower set, Dante took the mic. “I don’t sing very often,” he said, his deep voice resonating through the speakers. “But this is a special song for a special girl, so be gentle with me.” His hands moved over the strings and into the intro baseline to “Stand By Me.” He controlled the bass in a way that was both powerful and graceful, commanding and elegant at once. Then he started to sing, and his eyes found me and never let go.

He was in my head, my heart, my very bones.

He saw me, and I saw him. He forgave me and I forgave him.

As the last notes drifted away, Dante put down his bass and jumped off the stage. The crowd parted as he made his way over to me.

Before I could say anything, he wrapped one arm around my waist, and pulled me against his body before covering my lips with his. He kissed me deeply, possessively, ravaging my mouth, leaving no doubt that I was his and he was mine and we were together in every sense of the word. My defenses gave way before the force of his desire, my back arching as he owned me with his passion.

I was undone.

It was too much, his kiss. Too good. It was like the perfect sunset when the sky is streaked with crimson and gold and every inch of your body is bathed in beauty. It opened me, his kiss, knocked down the walls and let the light rush in, sweeping away the pain and unveiling emotions so deep and true they bared my very soul. And there I was. The girl who had been hiding. The woman who had been afraid to follow her heart.

I wanted him. His lips. His hands. His breath. His body.

His kiss.

Our chemistry. Sparking, igniting, and melding us together.

A sound escaped my lips, a cross between a whimper and a moan. I could feel his heart beating in his chest. He kissed away my fear, my pain, my hurt, my insecurities and doubts. He was everywhere, everything, his lips on my neck, my collarbone, jaw, chin, and cheeks, destroying me with adoration and filling me up with fire.

---