Page 76 of Places I've Never Been

Adam squeezed her gently and looked out at the black water, the night, and the pinpricks of light above. “No moon, though.”

“I think it’s behind us.” Mattie sucked in a breath. “Oh…yes. Yes! The moon is behind us…the stars set to guide us…that could fit in the bridge, don’t you think?”

He frowned. “For the second song?”

She craned her neck to look at him. “Yes. Or it could be part of the chorus. Not sure we have that nailed yet, though I like where it’s headed. I loved that little run you put in. It could work with this phrase, I think.”

He stilled his expression. The last thing he wanted to do while he had Mattie Bellamy naked in his arms was work on the damn song. “Maybe. We can check it out—” He was going to say later, but he didn’t get the chance.

Mattie slipped away from him toward the edge of the bed. “I have to write that down.”

She couldn’t quite reach her bag from the bed, so she stood up to get it. She was so focused on getting her notebook and pens and writing down the snippet of a phrase that she didn’t even seem to notice she was naked.

Her process fascinated him, and when they were in a work session he loved watching the way her mind worked. She made connections he never saw, then easily shifted when he added melody that didn’t quite work with the words. She took suggestions from the band well and made the whole process easy.

Writing a song with her was like playing a game or putting together a puzzle, and she experienced every emotion they weretrying to convey in the song. He could tell by the look on her face as she sang. Now that he’d worked with her, he could see how her partnership with Devon Morales had gone wrong. Devon clearly wasn’t smart enough to realize that it was her love for music he saw in her eyes, not her love for him.

“Mattie?”

“Mhmm.” She stood with the notebook balanced on one hand and scribbled something. “Just have to get this down before I forget.”

He lay back on the pillows with a frustrated sigh. The moment had slipped away, just like that. She was exactly like the waves, always in motion and impossible to capture for more than a second. Most of the time he found her dreamy approach to life completely captivating.

This was not one of those times.

“Do you ever go a day without writing in a notebook?”

“Hmm?” Mattie sat on the edge of the daybed and murmured under her breath, but she wasn’t talking to him. He caught words here or there as she worked out the lyric. She made frantic marks on a page already filled with them, held up a finger, and bobbed it up and down to her own internal rhythm. Then she shook her head, scratched something out, and wrote something else.

She was a world away. He wanted her back.

How could he make that happen? If he stole the notebook, she’d probably scream. Not the reaction he really wanted, unless he was causing it in a more intimate, body-rocking kind of way.

He scooted over to her and massaged her shoulders while peered over her shoulder at the notebook. She’d written the phrasethe moon is behind us…the stars set to guide usbelow two more lines.

It’s not over, life’s not done.

When one thing ends, another’s begun.

“I like that line.”

“Hmm?” Mattie put the pen in her mouth. “You like what?”

“You.” He squeezed her shoulders. “And that phrase. ‘When one thing ends, another’s begun.’ That’s what I wanted to tell my dad.”

She nodded. “I remember. I wrote it down, see?”

Mattie flipped back a couple of pages and there it was:It’s not over, life’s not done. She’d drawn circles and a star around it.

He hummed a few bars of the melody that kept haunting his mind.

Mattie nodded her head in time to the beat. “That works. That really works. What if we added a bit here”—she tapped her pen on a blank spot— “then we’d have a solid hook, I think. It should be right up top.”

Adam traced his fingers down her arm. “Sounds good.”

Mattie shivered. “Focus, please. I think we’re almost there.”

Adam kissed her shoulder, then he shifted her hair aside to kiss the back of her neck.

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