Page 31 of A Wish for Us

I thought of how she’d looked when I arrived. She’d been enthralled by the orchestra. I wondered if I’d ever been like that. Just so caught up in it all. Not caring about anything else. Not letting anything else even enter my head while the music played. And I knew I had. Once upon a time. Before it all went wrong and this classical shit became the one thing I wanted to despise.

But as I stood there, letting the nicotine I needed so badly fill my lungs, I knew deep down I never could. For three years I’d been fighting a losing battle.

“It’s what you were born to do, Cromwell. It’s who you were born to be. You have more talent in your little finger than anyone I’ve ever known. Including myself.”

My throat clogged as I heard my dad’s voice in my head. When I looked down at my cigarette, my hand was shaking. I took one last drag, forcing myself to keep my shit together. But the usual stirring of red-hot anger and gutting devastation, so deep I couldn’t breathe, swirled in my stomach, like it did whenever I thought of him. Whenever I heard this music. Whenever I was around Bonnie.

I didn’t know what made her so different.

I threw my cigarette down. I felt like hitting something as the pianist took the solo. But my feet were soldered to the ground. The sounds of the ivories made me listen. Made me watch. But all I saw was me on that stage. Me, performing the one piece I’d never be able to finish. That one piece that had haunted me for too long.

The one I could never see in my head. The colors muted and lost to the dark. The one that made me walk away from my biggest love.

“Cromwell?” Bonnie’s voice cut over the roaring white noise that had filled my head, the piano that was bombarding my brain like the bombs that had rained down on my dad for most of his army life. I shut my eyes, palming my sockets again. A hand wrapped around my wrist. “Cromwell?” Bonnie pulled my arms down. Her big brown eyes were fixed on mine. “Are you okay?”

I needed to get away. I need to leave, to get gone, when—

The pianist took the floor again. Only this time it was… “Piano Concerto No. 6,” Bonnie said. “Mozart.”

I swallowed.“It’s my favorite, son. That’s my favorite thing you play that isn’t yours.”

I looked from left to right, lost. Bonnie’s hand tightened on my wrist. As I looked down at her fingers on my tattooed skin, I realized she hadn’t let go. “Come and sit down.” Her touch always seemed to cut through my darkness. And this time I let it happen. I didn’t fight it. Didn’t run away. I stayed. And I didn’t let myself worry about it.

Bonnie led me back to where we’d been sitting. A bottle of water appeared in my hand. I drank it, not even thinking about anything else. When Bonnie took the empty bottle from my hand, she put a long piece of red licorice there instead. She smiled as I met her eyes. I lay back on the grass, resting on my elbow. The orchestra had moved on to Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Major, the night coming to a close.

We sat in silence. But when I took a bite of the licorice, I chewed on the tasteless sweet and muttered, “It still tastes like shite.”

Bonnie laughed.

And I could finally breathe.

Chapter Ten

Bonnie

I didn’t know what to think as I sat beside Cromwell.

The way he’d looked as he’d smoked next to the tree. Like he was trapped in some kind of nightmare. He’d been shaking. His face was pale as he stared at the pianist like she was a ghost. It mirrored how he was the night in the music room. The flash of fear I’d seen in him as he looked at my work in the coffee shop. As though just the sound, sight, and reading of musical notes pulled him into some horror he didn’t want to face.

It was at these times he acted the most cruel. The most harsh. But it was also when my heart cried out for him the most. Because I understood what fear could do to a person. I could see something held him in its thrall. But I just didn’t know what. I didn’t know how to help.

When the orchestra finished, I got to my feet and applauded with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Cromwell stayed sitting on the grass. My heart beat loudly in my chest as I looked down at him. He was watching me. His blue eyes were fixed on me. His tattoos were like prized paintings on his bare arms, his piercings glittering in the stage lights. His muscular frame and tall height seemed to take up all of the grass and his presence to consume all the air in our vicinity.

I turned my head, focusing on the orchestra taking their bows. I could feel his eyes still on me. It made nervous shivers rattle down my spine. Because every time I saw Cromwell, every time we spoke, I heard the broken boy in his voice. And I saw him hunched over the piano, crying. And I heard the music he’d been playing so perfectly circling around my brain.

It was hard to dislike a person when you knew they were in pain.

When the orchestra left the stage, people began to disperse. I leaned down to pick up my things. I packed everything away into my basket and finally let myself look at Cromwell. He was staring straight ahead, his arms around his bent knees. I thought he would have gone by now. That was his usual behavior. But then nothing about Cromwell was making sense to me anymore.

“You okay?” I asked, and he looked up at me, eyes still glazed and lost.

Cromwell nodded, then silently stood and fell into step beside me as we walked toward the exit. He reached over and took my basket from my hands. My heart melted a little at that.

I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling freezing cold. “I thought you’d be out tonight. At the bar. Or the Barn. Playing your music.”

“No.” He didn’t elaborate further.

When we reached the main gates, I heard the sound of a horn. I looked over the road to see my mama in her car. “I’m over there,” I said, turning to Cromwell. His eyebrows were furrowed. “It’s my mama.” I ducked my head, cheeks on fire. “I’ve been staying with them this week while I’ve been sick.” Damn. I sounded like a kid who had to run home to her mama at the littlest thing that was wrong.

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