Page 66 of Come Back to Me

The very thought of it sends a shiver down my spine, and I’m back to scribbling more notes.

They flood out of me.

And every time I finish a line, Cody’s all-seeing eyes pop into my mind.

By the time I’ve finished, my notepad is a quarter full and the winds section is underway.

Lodging a mental reminder to buy another notepad because one isn’t enough for each of the sections the symphony needs, I glance up, aware that Millie stopped talking about icebergs a while back.

Only…

For a moment, I swear to fuck I’m hallucinating.

Then, when I study the person opposite me, I realize itisCody and not the music bringing him to life. Millie and her breasts are nowhere in sight either.

“Where’s Millie?” I blurt out.

“Millie?”

“Yeah, the woman I was...” I cringe. “Oh, fuck. She left.”

He shrugs. “You were sitting by yourself when I came in.”

“What are you doing here?” I grumble, because being at the center of his attention is making me realize I fucked up the winds section by making it too short.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

This is so bad.

I don’t know why, because it’s not like he’s dating someone, but something about him puts me on edge.

Yet, whenever I’m near him, I want to hum.

Unaware that I’m actually humming, I force myself to put the pencil down.

“That’s nice,” he croons, lifting a bottle of something to his mouth, making me realize that Millie not only departed and he didn’t just sit down, but he also ordered a fucking drink and I never noticed.

The urge to palm my face is real, but I don’t. Instead, biting my lip, I shuffle around the booth and do what I couldn’t with Millie.

As I move, my thighs rub together, and the heat that sparks has me stifling a moan.

When I’m sitting beside him, that apple and lime aftershave of his does what Millie’s perfume didn’t.

I swallow and, shyly, show him my notes.

He clears his throat. Is that… C-flat? “I don’t read sheet music. Hum it for me?”

I etch down C-flat as a reminder for myself and do as he asks, suddenly more vulnerable than I’ve ever been in my whole life.

“That’s...” He struggles to find the words once I’ve finished humming the violino piccolo part. “...haunting.”

I gasp at his choice of adjective and grab his arm. “That’s what I wanted. But only for the woodwind section. I was thinking about using an oboe d’amore. I can’t decide if the violino would strengthen the tenor of the symphony or not.”

“It’ll send shivers up and down your spine,” he muses, his thumb snagging the corner of the sticker on his nonalcoholic beer. “What went wrong with the date then?”

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