He drew in a breath and inhaled the floral sweetness that lifted off her still damp hair. “Whatfor?”
“This… the trip… everything.” She spoke softly, but he could hear the gravity in her voice. “I haven’t gone anywhere without Holi or Mom since… In a longtime.”
Jacques squeezed her against him. Questions lined up in his mind. He went with the first one. “Do you like totravel?”
She drew in a long breath and let it go before answering. “You know, I don’t reallyknow.”
He frowned in the near darkness. “You don’tknow?”
Rainey rustled beneath the covers, rolling more onto her back so she could look up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I don’t know,” she said, sounding just as mystified. “I used to think I hated it because we toured so much with my dad when we were growing up. Did you know I completed fourth through seventh grade on a tourbus?”
Jacques turned onto his side, keeping her encircled in his arms, so he could see her better. “Seriously?” he asked,stunned.
She nodded. “Yep. We travelled with my dad, so we had a tutor who toured with us.” Jacques watched her blink up at the shadowed ceiling, her eyes tracking the flickers dancing and stretching along its length. “And that really wasn’t so bad. I mean, every time we stopped in a new city, Mom would plan little educational fieldtrips.”
She brought her eyes to his, and even in the dim light, he could see the glint of fondness. “I mean, if you’re going to learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill, what better place to do it than at Bunker Hill,right?”
A smile captured his face. “You actually didthat?”
“Yeah,” she said, smiling at the memory. “It was spring. Spring in Boston isamazing.”
“I’ve never been,” he murmured. “Love to go,though.”
Rainey was quiet for a minute, and he watched her smile disintegrate. “After my dad’s show that night, he didn’t come back to our hotel suite.” Her voice was flat, her eyes hard like black buttons in the darkness. “I didn’t know until I woke up the next morning, and Mom was crying. We were supposed to leave first thing, but Dad didn’t come back until after lunch. Larry found him. He told us kids he’d gotten lost after the show. I think John Lee was the only one who believedhim.”
A sour burn ignited in Jacques stomach. “How old wereyou?”
She brought her eyes back to his, a look of almost startled surprise in their depths, as if she’d lost her way in the memory. But she blinked twice, and the hardness in her eyessoftened.
“I was ten.” Her brows shifted up in a wry expression. “Do you know he had the gall to include a song called ‘Lost in Boston’ on his nextalbum?”
Jacques swore under his breath. Dylan Reeves was overdue for abeating.
“Yep.” Rainey heaved a sigh. “So, I don’t really know if I like to travel. Maybe I do. Maybe if my memories of visiting new places weren’t tangled up with shit like that, I’d love to travel. I mean…” She paused and pressed her lips together before locking eyes with him. “…I mean, I’ve really enjoyed today,” she saidsoftly.
Satisfaction soaked through him. He’d thought she was having a good time, but hearing her say it gratified him more than it should. Jacques knew that the trip was something she felt she had to do. Of course, he wanted to help her, but he also wanted her to be unafraid, and, more than anything, he wanted her to behappy.
Lying with her in his arms, Jacques certainlywas.
Rainey stifled a yawn and rolled back onto her side to face him. He snuggled her closer, the sight of her sleepy, soft face irresistibly cute. How he would manage to resist placing a kiss on her lips, he did notknow.
“We should get some rest,” he murmured. Rainey nodded, so Jacques reached for the remote and flicked off the TV, plunging the room indarkness.
“Goodnight, Jacques,” she whispered, her breath feathering against his neck. Her hand smoothed against his chest as she said the words, and his abs clenched inbliss.
“Goodnight, Rainey.” Permission to touch her, to hold her all night saturated him with a stunning sense of rightness. He should have felt content, and in a sense, he did. But Jacques also couldn’t deny that having her so close pushed him to the edge of endurance. His desire for Rainey was beyond anything he’d even known. And on the frayed edges of his desire and the blanket of contentment, he was aware of the texture offear.
The fear that he would know this contentment only to loseit.
So, when Rainey’s breath evened out and her arm across his chest went slack as she slid into sleep, he could not follow. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he could make out the exquisite silhouette of her shape in the shadows. The diffused light seeping through the hotel blinds lit her skin with an almost otherworldly luminescence, as though she belonged to Picasso’s BluePeriod.
Jacques had been in love before, and he knew its sting. He had loved Emmie, his high school sweetheart. Loving her had swallowed nearly five years of his life. Because Jacques was pretty sure he’d loved Emmie even before his ill-fated afternoon in her driveway. They’d dated for four years — until a week after he’d dropped out of college. And it was because he’d dropped out that she endedit.
She loved him, Emmie had sworn. She’d never deny that. But she expected a certain life, and it wasn’t one a starving musician could build with her. At the time, he didn’t know what hurt more: that she didn’t believe in his dream the way he did or that, even if she didn’t, she couldn’t accept him as he was. That who he was, successful or not, wasn’t enough for her. Because no matter what, he’d argued, he would have taken care of her. Even if it meant working a day job for the rest of his life so he could play on nights and weekends. He said as much to her the day she told him it was over, trying like hell to make her change hermind.
Lying next to Rainey, he remembered that day and how he felt he’d been cored like an apple. Like everything at his center, body and soul, had been unceremoniously sliced away, leaving a hole practically everyone could peer through. How it had felt almost the same as losing his parents. Emmie became another person who had chosen something else overhim.
What scared him most now was that it could happen again with Rainey. And Jacques was beginning to believe it would hurt just as much. Maybe more. If he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he was falling hard and fast. And the truth of the matter was — whatever she might feel for him — Rainey seemed to have tighter control over herheart.