Page 96 of Sounds Like Love

He smiled, and his eyes glittered dangerously. “Are you about to make me a villain, bird?”

“Do you think because you’re some famous guy, he’d approve?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m a terrible influence.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m in your head,”he teased, and kissed me. It was brief. Barely more than a brush of his lips. But his thoughts ate into mine again, that sanguine pull of comfort. I loved the way he saw me. I loved myself in his eyes.

I hesitated. “We should probably get up and finish the song.”

“We don’t have to, you know. You can admit you’ll miss me,” he murmured, eyelids half-closed as he pulled his eyes down the length of me. “How many people can say they have a rock star in their head?”

“You’ll miss me more,” I teased.

“More than you know,”he admitted, his voice rumbling through my head in that intoxicating, heady growl.

I felt gooseflesh pull up on my skin, ending in a shiver. Things like this—comets crashing together, heavenly bodies crossing each other in the sky, tides meeting—rarely ended well. Maybe we wouldn’t, either.

Maybe all of this was just us feeling too intensely, and once we were out of each other’s heads, it wouldn’t feel as invasive and consuming. Maybe I was alluring to him because of our connection—and without it …

Maybe I was just like every other girl.

At Willa Grey’s concert, if I hadn’t met him in the private balcony, I’m sure I never would’ve entered his orbit. He never would’ve known I existed.

I was so very certain of that.

But he couldn’t stay in my head forever. Not if we wanted to get on with our lives. Our careers. I had to hope that this spark meant my well was full again. That pouring his emotions into this song had opened up something in him, too. And as soon as we put a name to it, we’d be done. Would our connection break permanently, then? What would it feel like? Lost reception, a missing limb?

After we finished this song … I wondered if he would stay. In his head, I could hear him worry about everyone’s motivations—everyone’s except mine, because he knew my mind. And I worried that he wouldn’t like me the same way once he lost access to my head.

“Maybe in the future we can work together again,” I said, shoving whatever feelings were rolling around in my chest to the farthest reaches of my hopeful heart.

He laughed. “Maybe next time I won’t make such a bad first impression.”

“You probably will,” I teased, “because I’ll probably interrupt your brooding alone time.”

“Brooding is an art form seldom done right,” he replied matter-of-factly. “But I’ll meet you as myself next time. If you’ll do the same?”

“I’m always myself.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “When I met you in LA, you walked like you were on nails, not a single hair out of place. You existed like you were just visiting. You were like stone. Immovable. But here?” And he lifted his hand, twirling a lock of my messy dark hair around his finger. “Here, you’re like poetry in motion.”

Poetry in motion. I think just then, I lost whatever battle I had been waging with myself. I’d been called a lot of things in my life, good and bad and everything in between … butpoetry in motion?

No. I’d never been called that.

“Here,” he went on, a bit quieter, “you look like you’re home.”

If I kissed him again, I wondered if I could hear all the ways he could describe me. If I was poetry, what kind? If I was in motion, what shape?

So I pressed my mouth against his to seek those answers and got lost in the sound.

SASHA AND Ilooked at the jumble of chords and lyrics, scratched out and erased and written over. It was done. Or at least so incredibly close. We sat together on the bench, thighs touching. I wasn’t sure if we wanted to be so close because of how comfortable we felt with each other, or because …

“I can barely hear you anymore,” Sasha murmured.

I played with my pen in my hand. “I think all we need is to name it. What do you think?”

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