I shove the images down — deep, deep, deep — before they can consume me. This feeling, right here, this unbearable sorrow, is the reason I put my guitar in a musty closet and my songwriting book in a locked dresser drawer. Dashing the tears from my cheeks, I whirl away from the mic without finishing the song and head for the exit. Even tossing and turning in bed has to be better than this torture.
I need a few hours’ break from being Felicity Wilde.
I’m halfway to the door when my red-rimmed eyes lift to the glass wall dividing the rehearsal space from the sound room. My feet slam to a halt when my gaze snags on the man standing there, staring at me through the pane.
I must be hallucinating.
He can’t be here.
But he is.
He doesn’t move an inch; nor do I. We hover on the edge of a razor-sharp precipice, drinking each other in through a thin wall of glass.
Ten feet.
Two years.
An instant.
A lifetime.
I try to school my expression, but I’m not sure it cooperates. My pulse pounds a mad tattoo inside my veins as my hands grip the wood neck of my guitar, a vain attempt to ground myself in reality. I stare at him, eyes sweeping across his sun-bronzed skin, skirting around those bottomless two-tone eyes that have always managed to carve a mark in my heart with a mere glance.
He looks totally different, and exactly the same.
Same beard, but it’s fuller now, as though he hasn’t bothered to shave properly at any point in the recent past. Same tall frame, but it’s no longer lean — he’s filled out with new muscles, his tanned biceps straining the confines of a faded black t-shirt I swear he owned last time I saw him. Same mismatched eyes — one blue, one brown, both holding me to the spot like steel manacles. They’re full of so much pain I can’t breathe properly when I look into them, so I stare at his chin instead, hoping he can’t see my heart jumping beneath the fabric of my thin blue dress.
A minute passes in unremitting silence. Ryder hasn’t moved — and the look on his face suggests he won’t be doing so anytime soon. Unless I plan on staying in this glass box all night, engaged in a staring contest with a man I can hardly bear to keep my eyes on… there’s no choice. I simply have to walk through that door and bypass the six-foot-two roadblock standing between me and the elevator.
Just breathe.
One foot at a time.
The exit is right there.
Like a soldier on the front lines, I take a steadying breath and force myself into motion. Five measly steps — they take an eternity. My hand shakes as it reaches for the door and pulls it wide on silent hinges. My thudding heart is the only sound I hear as I step over the threshold. And then I’m there — face to face with the man who’s enmeshed so deep beneath my skin, I know I’ll never get him out. Not in this lifetime; not even in the next.
When I come to a stop, leaving a handful of feet between us, Ryder’s eyes flare with sudden sadness as they flicker down to the guitar in my hands.
“She left you the Gibson.”
I stare up at him, every word lodged stubbornly in my throat, refusing to escape.
“I’m sorry about your grandmother.” His voice is stripped bare, his emotions held tightly in check. “I only heard this morning, when I got back. If I’d known…”
He trails off.
If he’d known.
In another lifetime, if he’d known… he would’ve been there at my side to say goodbye to Gran. In another world, if he’d known… he would’ve held my hand while she disappeared into the earth.
“Felicity,” he whispers, a crack breaking the word right down the middle, a fault line of regret that sends aftershocks through my soul. I swallow hard, trying in vain to rid myself of the emotions strangling me from the inside out.
“Felicity…”
“You— you aren’t supposed to be here,” I breathe, my words barely audible as they slip past my lips. They dissipate like smoke in the air between us. “Not until tomorrow.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” He doesn’t look sorry. Not at all. “But… I knew you’d be here.”