Page 44 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

Her palms were warm, soothing, when she pressed them to his face. “You need to put your own story in words and music. It’s time to express those emotions in a medium you connect with and breathe life back into the memories. Retell them. Reclaim them. Give them a form you can deal with them in.”

Jase pressed a kiss to her palm as his hands slid down to cup her arse. The stirrings in his jeans reminded him it would take nothing to lower her to the floor and kiss her like he really wanted to.

“I feel like I should write a song about wanting to do really dirty things to your songwriting partner.”

Cerys smiled at him. “I think you should write a song about evading tough conversations.”

“Fine, I’ll write both.” He slid his hands beneath her hoodie, allowing his palms to settle on the skin just above the waistband of her yoga pants.

“Releasing the kind of emotions you have today, it can be a lot. An emotional upheaval can leave you even more emotionally vulnerable. What kind of person would I be if I took advantage of that?”

“A merciful one. You’d be a fantastic fucking distraction.”

Cerys laughed. “Oh, God. Yeah. Because that’s just what every girl wants to be. A distraction.”

Jase sighed and placed a chaste kiss at the corner of her mouth. “You know we’re going to happen, right?”

“I don’t know anything beyond us fixing the second verse before I go make dinner.” Her words said one thing, but the soft, breathy way she answered suggested something altogether different.

“I don’t know that any of this will happen in the right order. Usually I just fuck someone, maybe don’t even catch their name. This—you and me—is the closest thing to friendship I’ve ever had with a woman. You’re going to have to learn to read between the lines. Distraction is code for words I’m not good at expressing.”

Cerys nodded. “I think ourfriendshipwill be good in helping you figure out how. Because talking in code relies too much on interpretation. So, I return to the second verse.”

“Fine,” he said, nudging her off his lap playfully. “We’ll work on the second verse. Then we’ll go make dinner.” He got to his feet and brushed off his joggers. “Oh, and Cerys?”

“Yes?”

Jase helped her to her feet, keeping her so close it would take nothing to bend his lips to hers. To see if her lips would be as soft as he thought. “So you don’t think I’m being deliberately cryptic, you’re so much more than a distraction. I know shit’s complicated, but don’t think I don’t know the difference between a distraction and something terrifyingly real.”

Her eyes were wide, and he could see the flecks of green in the blue around her pupil.

“Unexpected,” he muttered, before stepping away. “Anyway. Second verse. I’ll focus on Matt.”

Arms suddenly slipped around his waist, and he felt Cerys press up against his back. The warmth of her, the feel of her breath, how solid and grounded he felt with her arms around him anchored him completely in the moment. Thoughts that had begun to scatter completely coalesced. He reached behind him and placed his palms on her thighs while looking down at long slender fingers that coaxed the most beautiful music from a piano he’d ever heard. Thin gold rings stacked on her fingers.

As quickly as they’d arrived, they left. Cerys coughed and picked up the notebook. “Is the theme ‘where were you?’ Like, where was Matt when all these things happened? Or why weren’t you with me to shoulder the burden?”

Jase looked at the floor and took a deep breath before he turned. “Can it be both? I feel like I need to ask both questions.”

This time when he looked at her, there was a look of such deep understanding that he felt a sense of belonging to someone unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.

“It’s your song, Jase. It can be absolutely anything you want it to be.”

He nodded. “Let’s do both. How about this:

He kicks me,

I want him to kick you.

Let there be a net for me to slip through.

But pain’s all I get,

and you’re not aware yet.

My brother, where the fuck were you?”

The pen scratched across the paper as Cerys scribbled the lyrics down. But he left the room before the final word was written.

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