Page 115 of Crescendo

“Oh, my god, Ella. I’ll pay you back.” She shook her head and I felt how wet my shirt was with her tears. At least that made them real.

“Please don’t,” I hiccuped through a sob. “You’ve done so much for me. Let me do this one thing for you.”

“You have no idea how much you’ve done for me too, Ella Hendrickson.” She leaned back, looking up at me, and I didn’t think I’d ever had anyone look at me with so much unsaid. “My whole world is better because you are in it.”

I held her face, swiping uselessly at her tears. “You have no idea how beautiful you are.”

“You too.”

No self-assured comeback, no witty remark. Everything was already different.

She pulled me down into a kiss and my breathing stopped. I wanted everything to stop, wanted to stay there with herforever. We’d known we only had two months, but I still didn’t know how to say goodbye to her.

We settled on the piano bench together and I hadn’t had enough time to enjoy how she felt pressed up beside me there. If I did that every day of my life, I didn’t think it would be enough. Sitting together on that bench had changed my whole life. I was a different person now and it was so much thanks to her, and I hated that we only had so long left.

Two months. A promise it was only casual. Trying so hard to make that be true, prevent myself from falling in love with her. But almost two months living with Lydia, basking in the exquisite pleasure of every little bit of who she was—it had been a fool’s errand. I loved her and I had to let her go home. I’d lost my time to figure out how to make this thing work. And I felt all of it sitting on that bench with her, holding her so hard she might leave an imprint on me that would never leave.

She already had.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, Ella Hendrickson!” she said, trying for amused and missing by… a lot.

I looked at her, still perfect even in her sadness. Maybe sadness wasn’t the curse I’d told myself it was. The sadness made it real. She’d brought me back to life and she deserved to be so adored that the sadness hurt this badly. “Very inconsiderate of me. But if I hadn’t—”

“I know.”

I nodded. All of the time in the universe would never be enough to appreciate this woman. “You’ll have to go tell everyone—Olivia, Clara, Bansi…”

“Come with me?”

“Of course.”

“Not yet, though.” She looked over my face, drinking every inch of me in. She looked at me like she loved me. But we couldn’t do that. Couldn’t go there in an emotional momentwhere we were being pushed to the edge and reality was more complicated than just being in love with someone. “Play with me?”

The tears rolled thicker and faster. I could barely see her or the piano, couldn’t speak, but I nodded and my fingers found the keys. And I couldn’t tell her I loved her but I put it into the music, put everything I knew about her and everything I felt for her into every note, and maybe she knew it anyway. We always had seemed to speak a musical language together, just the two of us.

∞∞∞

I’d moved through the last twenty-four hours on some weird autopilot, taking in nothing other than Lydia. Every touch, every word, every look—they were the only real things.

I’d forced a smile as we’d tracked everyone down and she’d told them all she had to go home, that her inspiration was back and she had a score to write, but that she’d miss them all. I’d forced a smile when they’d all looked at me, worried for me, and I’d pretended not to see it. And I’d forced a smile when Olivia told her to do the ugly things and Hannah told her not to forget the rock in favour of the classical.

We’d barely been a foot apart, the whole day filled with tears and laughter and words that wanted to be something else—platitudes that needed to be declarations.

And we’d made love that was beautiful and broken, soft and desperate, and a goodbye neither of us wanted to give. Until we were here, Lydia’s luggage waiting in the hall, her car on the way.

She pulled her coat on and met me by the door.

“You’re going to do amazingly,” I whispered. It was all the voice I had. “The score will be incredible, win praise and awards, and everyone will know that Lydia Howard Fox never lost her touch. And, maybe one day, you’ll be back here, playing it in the Royal Albert Hall, and I’ll get to watch you soar.”

She let out a wet laugh. “I’m not usually there when they’re playing my stuff, you know?”

I nodded slowly. There were so many things I couldn’t say but there was one I needed to. “But you could be. I know this whole thing was about finding your composer spark again, but you’re magical on the stage, Lydia. Everyone follows you, you’re the spark that sets everything off, regardless of what you’re playing. You’re a conductor as well as a composer, and you can do anything you want.”

“Darling,” she said through tears, and my heart still didn’t know what to do with the fact that she’d taken to calling me that. I wanted to be her darling. “You just think the whole world should be looking at me.”

“They should.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, it’s going to be you on that stage, the Royal Albert Hall hearing your name and your music, because you’re going to win that competition and I’m going to besoproud of you.”

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