Page 76 of Sounds Like Love

“I go sit in that private box at the Fonda when I need to clear my head,”he said.

“Is that why you were at Willa’s concert?”

“No, I was there because Willa asked.” Sasha tilted his head a little, leaning back on his hands. A seagull circled over a fry in the parking lot, and he watched it thoughtfully for a long moment.“But most of the time, I just go to sit and listen,” he finally added. “I know the manager, so she lets me in whenever I want. Which is often.”

I whistled. “A premium box at a music hall? You’re probably very popular with your friends.”

He barked a laugh. “You know me well enough by now,” he said, sounding a little depreciative. “I don’t have a lot of friends, and I hate the idea ofpayingfor company, so I don’t have an assistant, either. That just seems too sad.”

“And too much like my dad,”he added in my head.

The seagull finally took his chance and swooped down to the fry, but as soon as he nabbed it, another seagull chased after him, and they squawked away in a fight.

“So you just go to concerts and sit up in that private balcony and watch shows?”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Sounds a bit spoiled, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds lucky. Is that why you were so snarky with me when we first met, because you weren’t expecting anyone?”

He nodded, a little embarrassed. “At first, I actually thought you were someone the manager of the venue wanted to set me up with. Her name’s Tania,” he added as an aside. “She’s very nice. She sort of bullied me into teaching an after-school music program twice a week at her kid’s school. I think she could tell I missed music, but I’m glad she did. She likes to meddle in that way.”

“So does Willa,” I added wryly, though I couldn’t get the image out of my head of Sebastian Fell sitting alone in that dark balcony, quietly watching shows while the world lived so brightly below him, singing along to their favorite bands.

It sounded …lonely.

“I’d rather be alone than surrounded by people who just want something from me.”He stared straight ahead at the crashing waves.

Are you scared that I do, too?

“Yes,”he admitted, still unable to look at me.“It scares me a lot, bird, because you know more about me than … anyone else. But what scares me the most is that I don’t know what you’d want.”

My heart squeezed tightly, because I couldn’t imagine how isolating that felt—to not have someone in your corner like Gigi or Mitch or my parents were in mine. To not have a person to lean on, someone to tell secrets to, someone to eat ice cream with after a breakup and watch shitty movies with and share inside jokes with. I said that, and I couldn’t even tell my best friend about my burnout, afraid of what she’d think. We weren’t so dissimilar after all, Sasha and me.

I scooted up a little closer beside him, until our shoulders touched.

He gave me a curious look. “What’re you doing?”

In reply, I grabbed the side of his head and pulled it over onto my shoulder.

“What are you—”

“Shut up and just lean on me, okay? Because you can. I won’t betray your trust. I’m not that kind of person,” I told him.I promise.

He didn’t say he believed me. He didn’t say hedidn’t, either. No, he simply rested his head against my shoulder, and the tenseness of his body unraveled as he leaned against me and closed his eyes.“She always smells so good.”

That pit in my stomach, where anxiety usually festered and twisted, burned with something different at his thoughts. I didn’t want him to think that any time spent with me—however small—was a nightmare. Or anything close. It certainly wasn’t a nightmare for me. Hadn’t been in a while.

And I didn’t want it to be for him, either.

“It’s just hard,”he said, hearing my thoughts.“It’s me, not you.”

But I was in his head, too, and I could hear the lie.

I said, looking out at the waves, “You can listen to my thoughts as I say this and you can tell that I mean it—I don’t want anything from you, Sasha. This song, this experience—when it’s done, I trust that if it’s good, we’ll know what to do with it, and …” I hesitated, thinking about the idea of a comeback. He deserved one. “And if you want it, the song is yours.”

I knew what I was saying—what I was giving him. The song might be no good at all, or it could catch the eye of a much bigger artist and make much better royalties, set me up for awards and recognition. This was the business of music that I didn’t like. The game of it. If I let him have the song, I gave all that up.

In surprise, he jerked his head off my shoulder. “No, bird, I can’t agree to that.”

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