Playing for Love at Deep Haven (11 page)

She rolled onto
her back, staring at the ceiling. She loved poetry, yes, but she couldn’t make
a living writing it. It didn’t pay back your twenty thousand dollar advance
when you were in breach of contract, either.

She could feel
his disappointment when he asked, “What happened to you? Since when are you so money
hungry?”

And just like
that, the dam burst. “Since I signed a contract to write a book that I can’t
write, okay? I can’t. I can’t write it. And I already spent the advance, so
just—” She wasn’t crying, but her eyes watered as she said the words aloud, and
she finished in a desperate rasp. She took a deep, shaky breath. “That’s why
I’m here. That’s why I blew the last chunk of my savings to be here. To leave
the apartment I shared with
Shep
and to write the
book I
have
to write. The book that
has a dead hero. I’m supposed to imagine how wonderful life
could have
been and write a perfect
happily ever after. And then I get here, and
you’re
here. And you’re making me forget who I am—”

“Maybe I’m
making you
remember
, Vile.”

“—and you’re
confusing me and distracting me with your regrets and your body and your
beautiful music and your teasing and your mole.”

He rolled toward
her, resting his cheek on his elbow. “My mole?”

She reached up
to touch the tiny brown mole under his eye with the pad of her thumb. “
Here.
It’s my spot. It belongs . . .” She caught herself
and started to lower her hand, but he intercepted her, moving her thumb back to
where it had been on his face.

“Say it.”

“It’s an old
poem. It wasn’t any good and I won’t remember it anyway.”

“Try.” His hand
spanned her hip again, his callused, warm fingers gently moving on her skin
like they would on guitar strings. She’d forgotten he used to do that.

“What are you
playing?” she asked, her eyes softening as she lay down on her bent arm,
watching him.

His gray eyes
sparkled. “I don’t know. I only know it’s in D-flat major.”

“Like ‘Clair de
Lune.’”

He nodded. “Tell
me, Violet-like-the-flower. Tell me the poem.”

She took a deep
breath and closed her eyes, her thumb still pressed lightly to his cheek. It
was a risk to share it with him, but she felt the words spill out of her mouth
before she could stop them. Her voice was soft and deliberate, the words as
much a part of her as her soul.

“
Dark and gray and perfect and new

We don’t know, we know, we knew

And all I want forever

Is my spot.

It belongs to me.
”

His hand glided
up her hip to her waist, his fingers still playing a phantom melody that only
he could hear. Her body grew warmer, more aware, more alive, empty and aching
for him where she’d just been filled. And the little brown dot under her softly
stroking thumb seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.

“
Crayons and brown and shy and unsure

That she knows what she knows and she knows it for
sure

A coda in time and it

Is my spot.

It belongs to me
.”

His hand rested
by her breasts, the heel pushing lightly into her softness, his fingers still
changing and shifting on her back as the music played in his head, and she
wished they lived in a bubble of now, where the next moment never arrived at
all, and all they had until forever was this moment right now. His music. Her
words. His body beside her.

“
Denim and black and broken and cold

Expired, erased, a quiet takes hold

Of her heart and she sees and she

Hates but she knows

My spot

Never belonged to me.”

Her voice broke,
and she moved her thumb away from him, sliding her hand gently down his face
like the track of a tear.

He pulled her up
against him roughly, her arms and breasts against his chest, her belly against
his stomach, her soft curls against his erection, his legs entwined with hers.
His eyes were closed, and he rested his forehead against hers, as his fingers
on her back finally stilled.

His lips found
hers, brushing them softly. “When did you write that?”

“That October,”
she whispered, so close to him that the
b
in
October
made her lips touch his
again.

The hand on the
small of her back curled into a fist, as though all the regret in his whole
body was channeled into that one spot.

“How many did
you write?”

He pressed his
lips to hers again, gently, though his fist remained taut on her back.

“A hundred or so,”
she said. “More than the days we’d spent together.”

“What made you
stop?” he asked.

She stared at
him, waiting a beat, then two. “
Shep
.”

His fist
unfurled.

***

He knew he had
no right to the anger that coursed through his body when she uttered the name
of her dead almost-fiancé. And yet. It was there. Zach had broken her heart,
and
Shep
had repaired it. And there was no way to
change that fact. She was right. This was complicated.

But then
something occurred to him that wasn’t complicated, that was simple: She was
here now. With him. Next to
him
. Right
now.

“I want to make
love to you again,” he said, nudging her hips with his.

“Do you have
another . . .?”

“No.” He said it
like a curse, like a dirty word.

Violet put her
palms flat on his chest and pushed him away gently.

“Just let me
hold you,” he protested in a grumble, tightening his arms around her, as his
erection prodded her tummy.

She grinned at
him, wise to his intentions, and he loosened his arms as she pushed again. “Not
a good idea, Casanova.”

He watched her
roll away and sit up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. He wasn’t
going to get what he wanted for several hours, which sucked.

He sighed,
reviewing the conversation that had led to her reciting ‘My Spot,’ and his eyes
widened as a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. He leaned up on his elbow,
watching her.

“So, the money,”
he said softly. “It’s not really the issue. You’re not . . .”

She held a sheet
over her breasts, but her back was bare as she looked at him over her shoulder,
her sable hair all messy and her chestnut eyes wide and dark and inevitable.
Never had a woman looked more insanely
fuckable
.
Never. His erection tented the sheet draped lightly over him, even though there
was nothing he could do about it right now. Later, however . . .

“I’m a grown-up,
Zach. Grown-ups need money. I have bills, rent.”

“Yeah, fine. But
you’re not
chasing
it. Money, I mean.
It’s not your priority.”

“It’s a
necessity, not an obsession.”

“You let me
think it was important to you, that being with Smalley had somehow—”

“It just seemed easier.”

“For me to think
you were shallow?”

“For you not to
be interested. To avoid a fling.”

Oosh
. A kick in the
nuts might possibly have stung less. That superficial fucking word had no
business between him and Violet.

“A
fling
?”

She shrugged and
turned away, which made him want to shake her.

“Is that what
you think this is?” he asked, unable to keep the edge out of his voice.

She glanced back
at him, her voice soft and measured as though she were speaking to a child. “I
have no idea what this is. Three days ago, you were a memory. Today, I’m in your
bed.”

“But there are
real feelings here.”

“Are there?” she
asked softly, looking away from him. “I’m not sure about that. Maybe they’re
only
residual
feelings. Old feelings
that seem intense because of our history? We’ve both changed so much. We’re adults
now. Do I feel something for you? Yes. What is it? I’m not really sure, Zach. I’m
not even sure if it’s real. And you’d be lying if you said you were.”

“So what do we
do?”

“What do you
want
to do?”

“Really? You
really
want me to tell you what I want
to do?”

She looked him
in the eye and nodded.

He took a deep
breath. Pouring out his heart didn’t come easily, never had, and he tensed
before speaking.

“I don’t want
you to go stay at the White Swan on Tuesday. I want you to stay here with me
for the next two weeks. I want you to write poetry. I want to write music. Maybe
we could even write a couple of songs together again. I want your head on my
shoulder while I play you something beautiful, and I want my body buried inside
yours ten times every night, and I want you to believe me when I say that once
upon a time I loved you.”

“And then?” Her voice
was a thread, a whisper of strangled sound.

He shook his
head and hedged, chickening out. “I don’t know.”

She flinched
before looking away from him, wrapping her arms around her body in that
defensive gesture he was growing to hate. But it told him exactly what he
needed to do: he needed to put himself out there, just as she had done so long
ago, no matter how scary it was. He needed to offer himself to her with the
full knowledge that she could reject him, pull on her jeans and walk away. He
needed to give her the chance to be the one in control of their fate.

“
Naw
, that’s bullshit. I know what I want.” He licked his
lips nervously before continuing. “All right, Vile. You ready?”

She looked up
and nodded, meeting his eyes.

“I want a second
chance. I want two weeks with you, and after two weeks, if you want to walk
away from me, you walk. You go. At the end of two weeks, it’ll all be up to
you. But I promise you, Violet, I will
never
walk away from you again.”

Her chest heaved
lightly. “That’s a big promise to make. The classically trained musician’s now
a heavy metal rocker, and the hippie poet’s now a suburban chick lit author.”

“That’s not all
we are. You can’t generalize each of us into convenient clichés. I don’t buy
it.” He ran his hand through his hair, frustrated with her. “There’s something
here, Violet. Something real. I know it. Can’t you give it a chance?”

“We’ve changed.
A lot. We’re really different now, Zach. You know, you might not still want me
at the end of two weeks. You might
want
to walk away again. You shouldn’t make that promise to me.” Her voice was
breathless, and he could hear an undercurrent of panic in it.

“I
should
make that promise,” he said,
determined to hold her eyes, determined to show her he was in earnest. “I can. Because
you’re all I’ve wanted for the past nine years. Because you’re all I want right
this minute. It doesn’t matter if you dress differently and I got a few
tattoos. Doesn’t matter if you write twenty chick lit books and insist that
Greenwich is where you have to live forever. Nothing matters but you and me.”

And then the
damnedest thing happened: Zach, who’d always had an impossible time acknowledging
his feelings, let alone expressing them, realized that every word was true. And
saying them felt a million times better than he ever thought it could. It was
scary, sure, but it didn’t feel terrifying, like it had in college, when she
told him she was in love with him. In fact, after years of holding it all
inside, it felt like a relief. Like taking a breath after nearly drowning—a
big, giant, grateful breath of the freshest, smoothest air the earth had to
offer, and he wanted to fill his lungs until they matched the fullness of his
heart.

She didn’t lower
her arms, and her eyes stayed wary. But her lips didn’t harden. They didn’t
straighten into an angry, untrusting line. Her next question—asked so quietly,
it was almost as though she was talking to herself—surprised him.

“How do you know
I won’t break your heart?”

“I don’t.” He
shrugged, knowing that a chance with her was worth a broken heart. Knowing that
fate cost something and he was willing to pay it. “But at least then we’d be
even.”

She tilted her
head to the side, her face serious and tentative and beautiful. “Two weeks.”

“Two weeks.”

She smiled. Small
at first, then growing until her lips parted and she laughed softly, bowing her
chin to her chest before looking back up at him. His breath caught because her
eyes were happy. Her eyes were hopeful.

“Okay.”