Page 83 of A Wish for Us

I sighed, feeling the rawness of my chest from the confession. “Ihadto play.” I laughed without humor. “I had no choice. My dad was right; I needed music like I needed air. But after Dad…I couldn’t touch another instrument. I couldn’t hear classical, never mind play it. Compose. So Iturned to EDM.”

I lifted my head and met Bonnie’s watery eyes. She ran her finger down my cheek.

“I like EDM because the colors are so bright.” I tried to make her understand. “It gave me the outlet I needed, a chance to play. But the emotions aren’t as strong.” I took Bonnie’s hand and placed it over my heart. “The other music, the classical, it makes my emotions too strong. It consumes me. But it fuels me too. After Dad, I was numb. So numb that I never wanted to feel again. With EDM the process was less…everything. I love it. It’s music after all. I like it because it doesn’t make me feel.”

I smirked. “Until this summer, when with one insult, you cut that numbness wide open. ‘Your music has no soul.’”

Bonnie winced. “I’m sorry. I would never have said that if I’d known.”

I shook my head. “No. It was the push I needed. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the start.”

“The start of what?”

“Of the music coming back to me.” I thought back to my mother. “My mum remarried earlier this year, and it destroyed me. I got lost in the nightclub scene, the girls and the drink.” I felt Bonnie tense. But it was the truth. “Then Lewis took the job here and contacted me again.”

“Your dad contacted Lewis about you years ago?”

I nodded.

“He loved you.” Bonnie smiled and kissed my hand. “He loved you so much.”

My vision blurred with tears. “Yeah.”

Bonnie moved closer still until she lay on the same pillow as me. “You honor him by being here, Cromwell. By finishing that piece. By playing any instrument you had given up on three years ago.”

“But the way I left things…” I tucked my face into Bonnie’s neck.

“He sees you now.” I froze. Bonnie wore such conviction on her face. “I believe that, Cromwell. I believe that with everything I am.”

I kissed her again. Bonnie’s lips had started to change in color. A tinge of purple to the previous red. But they were no less beautiful. “What happened at the hospital?” I asked. Bonnie’s face fell. It took my stomach plummetingwith it. “Bonnie?”

“I’m in accelerated failure.” Her words were like bullets to my chest. I opened my mouth to ask her to explain, but she beat me to it. “It means I have only a short time left until my heart can’t take it anymore.” I was frozen, unable to move as I stared into her eyes. Her eyes that held more strength than I’d ever seen in anyone before. “I won’t be able to attend college anymore. In a short while, I’ll be too weak to leave this room.” I could hear what she said, but my pulse was slamming in my neck, the blood rushing around my body.

“You gave me back music,” I said. Bonnie blinked at the sudden change in conversation. Then her face melted. I took a deep inhale. “It was you, Farraday. You gave me back what I’d lost.” I ran my thumb over her bottom lip as her eyes glistened. “It was you who brought the music back to my heart.” I paused, trying to find the words to say what I meant. I had to settle for, “You helped my music rediscover its soul.”

“Cromwell,” she murmured and kissed my lips. I could feel her lips tremble. Then her eyes closed and she confessed, “I’m scared.” My stomach fell and my chest ripped in two. “I’m scared, Cromwell. I thought I had more time.” Her tears tumbled from her eyes and tracked down her cheeks.

My hand fell over her chest where her heart was. I felt its erratic and too-slow beat under my palm. The feel and sound were a pulsing circle of auburn in my mind. She stilled as I touched her. Then she covered my hand. “How is it possible, Cromwell?” She took in a shallow, wheezy breath. “How can a heart be so damaged yet feel so impossibly full? How can a heart be failing when it’s filled with so much life?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, devastation sweeping through me until it was all that I could feel.

“And how can I live with the sadness of knowing that I won’t get to compose with you? That I won’t finish what we started?”

“We will finish it.” I held her tighter. “I don’t care if you’re bedbound. But we’ll finish.”

Her eyes closed. “You promise?”

“I swear it,” I said firmly. “And when you get your heart, we’ll hear it performed by the school’s orchestra at the end of the year.”

“I won’t be able to play anything as we compose,” she said, humiliationlacing her words.

“Then I’ll play.”

“I won’t be able to write.”

“Then I’ll write it for us.”

“Us.” Bonnie smiled. This time there was no sadness in her eyes. “Us,” she repeated. “I like the sound of that.” She closed her eyes. “It sounds like a song.”

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