Page 50 of Fall From Grace
We end up in front of a karaoke bar called Singing Notes, and the moment Logan realizes what it is, he refuses to go inside. “No,” he says. “Fuck this. This is what you wanted to do? Fuckingkaraoke? No.” He turns and takes a single step before I grab his wrist and stop him.
“Wait,” I say, pleading with him, well aware he can yank his wrist out of my hand and I’m not strong enough to stop him. “Please, just wait.”
Logan is prickly, and when he turns back toward me, he sends me the iciest look I’ve ever gotten.
As I release his wrist, I say, “Hearing you sing at the cemetery…” I need to be careful in what I say. I can’t tell him I suspect he might be a disgraced former rockstar; that’s a surefire way to piss him off and get him to leave before ever singing a single note.
I practiced this in my head over a dozen times. I can do this.
“It made me want to sing,” I tell him. “I haven’t since… since before—”
“How is that my problem?”
I take a step forward, standing less than six inches away from his chest. I angle my head back and gaze up into his eyes. “I want to sing with you tonight. Please.”
My heart beats fast in my chest, so fast it feels like it’s going to pop out and run away. This is scary. This is the very definition of nerve-wracking. I don’t know how people do stuff like this every single day. I’m not used to putting myself out there, but… I need to take it back. My love of singing. It doesn’t belong to my ex. It’s mine, and it’s time to reclaim it.
And who better to reclaim it with than Logan? Even if he’s not a former rockstar, he’s still the guy who helped me getout of my own head, my first. I might have regretted it in the beginning, but now… now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what we did.
People have sex. It can be fun. It doesn’t have to mean anything. You don’t need to wait for the perfect time, or hand your heart on a silver platter to the other person. Sometimes sex is just sex. Part of life.
I’m going to be okay, and maybe it is naive, but I want Logan to be okay, too. We both need to overcome some things, stuff we’ve been avoiding.
Sometimes you need to grab life by the horns and ride it until it throws you off… and then you need to get right back on the bull and ride it again. When it comes to singing, we can ride it together.
Chapter Twenty-One – Logan
There’s that fucking look again. I don’t know how to describe it. The way Wren gazes up at me from beneath those eyelashes… God, it’s enough to make me lose my mind—and I sure as fuck don’t get why. I’m used to fire, heat, and passion; the expression on her face is soft, gentle, pleading. Even if she said nothing more, it’s like she’s begging, pulling at something inside of me.
And I’m breaking.
I’m fucking cracking into two. I’m caving in, crumbling, losing sight of absolutely everything. It’s all hazy, and the only bit of clearness is the space where Wren is.
I want to sing with you tonight. Please.Her words echo in my head, and combine those words with the way she’s looking up at me, I am lost. So completely lost I don’t know what the plot is anymore. I don’t know why I’m here. All I see, all I know, is her.
My first instinct, to tell her to fuck off, that I won’t sing with her, doesn’t have the room to surface, because suddenly I say, “Fine. One song.” I give in, like it’s in my nature to give in—but it’s not. Giving in like this could be a terrible, awful idea, but it’s the only thing I can do.
And, fuck me, she lights up like the Fourth of July, bright as fireworks herself, and I hate that I feel my body warming up in response, like I’m fucking happy that she’s happy.
How stupid, right?
“Great,” she says with a grin, before she takes my hand and pulls me toward the karaoke bar’s front door. I’m too shocked at the softness of her hand to pull myself free of her; I’m not a fucking puppy. I don’t need her leading me anywhere.
Still… there are worse things to hold than her soft hand.
We step inside the bar, and I’m greeted with what must be a typical sight when it comes to karaoke bars: a smattering of small, round tables before a stage, where screens and speakers sit, a group of three already up there singing to their hearts’ content. The bar is on the left side of the space, a few stools near the counter. The walls are a dark wood color, and the lighting is dim. Multiple signs hang that say some variation of NO RECORDING, and those signs help settle the nerves inside me.
I’m not nervous to get up on the stage and sing because I’m used to that shit, but… I have to be careful. I can’t let anyone know who I am. Whatever song Wren picks, I need to make sure I don’t get into it too much. I’ll let her take the reins, let her dominate the song. I’m not used to doing stuff like that, but whatever.
We manage to find an empty table, and Wren finally releases my hand as she looks around. “Who do I talk to to get us up there?”
I have to roll my eyes at her. She’s so goddamned short, she probably can’t see a single thing from where she is. Even though getting on that stage isn’t something I want, when I spot the sign near the bar, I then see a paper resting on the edge of the counter. “I assume over there.” I point, and the moment I do, she disappears to fill it out.
She doesn’t talk about songs before she goes, so she must have something in mind already. Hmm. Maybe she’ll have us singing a song she and her ex used to sing all the time, or maybe she’ll pick something entirely new. As long as I know the song, I don’t really care.
I watch Wren go, watch her as she reaches the corner of the bar and studies the paper before she writes down our names—then she picks up the small binder beneath the paper and flips through it, must be the available song list. Eventually, I turn mygaze toward the stage, where the duo currently singing switched to another song.
Some silly duet from the eighties. The eighties has a lot of classics, but at this point the songs are so cliché it’s kind of ridiculous. I really hope she doesn’t choose a song like this.
