Still Life with Strings (37 page)

“Let’s go inside and
we’ll talk about this,” he says, stepping forward to take my hand, but I move
out of his reach.

Frustration grips me as
I look around. The house is gorgeous, a long bungalow with a wraparound porch,
surrounded by woodland. It’s getting dark and it’s cold out, so I turn away
from him and walk inside anyway. I’m not in the mood to have a fight out in the
open.

Ben and Clark are in
the kitchen, unpacking the food supplies they brought with them.

“Where’s my room?” I
ask, standing in the doorway, hands on hips.

Ben gives me a funny
look and replies, “The last door at the end of the hall.”

I nod and walk out,
making my way down the hall. I don’t realise Shane was hot on my heels until I
open the door and he pushes me in, shutting it behind him.

“I don’t get why you’re
pissed. You seemed fine earlier,” he says as he stalks me to the other side of
the room.

Letting out a sigh, I
apologise, “I’m sorry. I think the car nap might have made me cranky.” Going to
sit down on the bed, I look up at him. “So, are you going to tell me what’s
been going on?”

He sits down beside me
and takes my hands into his. “The other night at the concert, Mona asked if we
could talk. I should have told her no, but she wouldn’t stop pestering me, so I
finally gave in and went to her dressing room.”

“I know,” I say
quietly.

Shane looks confused.
“You know?”

Pulling my hands from
his, I begin to pick at my nails and confess, “I was sent to deliver drinks to
that room. When I got there I saw you both inside, so I waited in the corridor
and listened.”

“Jade.”

“Look, I know it sounds
bad, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know what you were doing there.”

His expression is
unreadable now, and it makes me nervous. “So you must have heard how she broke
off her engagement to Justin and that she wants me back.”

“Yeah,” I whisper,
swallowing hard. “I didn’t stay and listen to all of it, though. I couldn’t.”

A period of quiet falls
between us, and I wish he’d say something. After several minutes he does. “She
threw herself at me.”

“Threw herself at you
in what way?”

“She kissed me,” he
answers, eyes gauging my reaction.

My heart rate starts to
speed up. “And did you kiss her back?”

“Of course not! She
took me by surprise. I pushed her away immediately and told her she was being
absurd. If you had stayed, you would have heard what I said to her afterward. I
told her…”

He falls silent, and I
grip his hand in mine. “You told her what?”

Everything hangs in the
balance as I wait for his reply, my entire being on a knife’s edge.

His voice is barely
audible as he lifts his eyes to mine and murmurs, “I told her that I was in
love with someone else, in love so deep that it makes me understand what I had
with her was never love at all.”

I gape at him,
open-mouthed, as my heart sings in my chest, thumping a mile a minute in glee.

“You’re in love
with…me?”

“Yes,” he answers, the
one word spoken with agony as his eyes fall away from mine. “You must have
known. I’m so ridiculously smitten with you, Jade. I have been since the first
night we met.”

Running my hand down
his cheek, I ask, “Why do you sound so sad?”

“Because I know it’s
not what you wanted. I promised you an arrangement, and love was never supposed
to come into it.”

“Oh, Shane.”

“I can go if you want
me to,” he says, still staring into his lap. “I can get a bus or a train back
to Dublin,” he continues before I interrupt him by pulling him to me and
planting my mouth on his. He groans into me, grabbing onto the kiss like it’s a
life raft and he’s about to go under.

Our tongues do battle
as his chest presses hard against mine, his hands running through my hair. I
break the kiss, my breathing erratic, as I stare at him with glittering eyes.
“You’re not the only one who feels…” I trail off, unable to finish.

He squeezes his eyes
shut before opening them again. “Babe, please finish what you were going to
say,” he begs.

An idea strikes me.
Instead of speaking, I stand up from the bed and slowly pull off my top. His
watches me heatedly, and then I turn around. A loud gasp escapes him as he
takes in my tattoo for the very first time. I stand there, as still as if I
were the Blue Lady performing on the street. A moment later I feel his warmth
against my skin. He’s behind me now, his fingers tracing the ornate musical
notes that have been inked along my shoulders, musical notes to the very first
track on ‘Songs for Her.’

He looks awestruck.
“Are these?”

I nod my head,
swallowing down a lump of emotion that’s gotten stuck in my throat. My eyes are
watering with tears, and I don’t even know why. Shane keeps tracing the notes,
like if he stops they might disappear.

“You once told me
there’s nothing more committed than ink under your skin,” he says in a silky
voice laden with pure pleasure.

“I might have said
something along those lines,” I whisper.

“You’re shaking, honey.
Why are you shaking?” he asks, turning me around to face him. When he sees my
tears, he brings his fingers up and wipes them away from my cheeks.

“Because this is
fucking scary.”

“Loving me back is
scary?”

“I never said…”

His fingers move to my lips
to shush me. “The ink says it all, Bluebird. Tell me, what made you get this
tattoo?”

I laugh through my
tears. “It was a moment of reckless insanity, I guess. I was in the parlour
having a new sparrow done, and you came on the radio playing the song you wrote
for me. Getting the tattoo just felt right.”

He studies me for a
long moment. “Do you regret getting it?”

I look back at him, not
a flicker of uncertainty in my words when I say, “No, and I never will.”

Even if this love isn’t
forever, I’ll never regret meeting him. He’s changed my world irrevocably, and
the markings on my back symbolise us so completely.

His arm wraps around my
waist, his hand going to my shoulders again like he can’t get enough of the
feel of the ink.

“You’re my muse,” he
murmurs into my lips. “And I love you, Jade Lennon.”

For a long time I just
stare at him, before at last the right words come to me. “I love you, too,
Shane Arthur.”

***

Believe it or not, we
don’t immediately jump into bed and shag each other senseless. We do, however,
lie in each other’s arm, touching one another in small ways. He still hasn’t
told me why he was AWOL yesterday, so I ask him.

He gives me a sketchy
look as he turns his head to me on the pillows and answers, “Right after I set
Mona straight, Justin showed up drunk off his face.”

“Oh, no,” I breathe.

“Yeah. He swung for me,
clearly looking for a fight. I tried to calm him down, but there was no talking
to him.”

“And?”

“And I punched him in
the face. There was nothing else for it.”

I burst out laughing.
It’s more the way he says it than the actual idea of him hitting Justin that
sets me off, his phrasing so polite and proper. So one of us did get to punch
the bastard after all.

When I finally gather
myself, I quip, “I sincerely hope you broke his nose.”

Shane grimaces. “I did,
actually. It was pretty bad. An ambulance had to be called.”

“Shit.”

“Anyway, I thought I
was done with him once he was taken to the hospital. I went home and tried
calling you, but your phone was switched off. You were probably sleeping, since
it was fairly late. I was going to come see you the next morning, but the
police showed up at my house to arrest me. Justin had reported me for assault.”

I sit up straight now.
“Oh, my God!”

Shane grimaces and
strokes my hair. “I was angry at first. They brought me to the station and
everything. It was hours before I managed to contact Mona to come and tell them
that I only hit Justin in self-defence. In the end she showed up and gave a
statement. I was off the hook. The problem was, she’d brought Mum along with
her, and after I was let out of the station, they decided to stage an
intervention.”

“Uh, what?”

“They said they wanted
to have a talk and persuaded me to come back to my parents’ house. I
reluctantly agreed. Big mistake. They sat me down in my dad’s study and
basically talked at me, telling me what a bad decision I was making by not
giving things with Mona another shot. I seriously thought I’d stepped into the
Twilight Zone. I mean, Mum must have the shortest memory in history if she thought
being with Mona would be good for me.”

“I don’t think it’s
about Mona being good for you, Shane. I think your mother would simply prefer
you to be with someone like her rather than someone like me.”

His thumb brushes over
my temple as he leans down to give me a kiss. “And that right there proves that
Mum has the worst taste possible. You’re the best person I’ve ever met. Mona is
quite possibly the worst.”

I laugh and move to
straddle him. He stares up at me and slides his fingers into mine. “Oh, you do
love to flatter, Mr Arthur,” I purr at him.

“Perhaps I’m hoping it
will get me somewhere,” he replies, his voice pure gravel.

I move my hips a
little, and he responds immediately, the bulge in his pants getting harder.
“You’re in with a good chance, but first, you need to finish your story.”

He lets out a long
sigh. “They kept me in the room for hours, arguing with me and, as Mum put it”
—he pauses and makes bunny ears with his fingers— “
trying to get me to see
sense
. Mona even broke out the waterworks at one point. It was pure hell. I
wanted to leave, but it’s difficult to get out of a room when there are two
hysterical women standing in your way. Eventually Mona pulled a strop and left.
Then it was Mum’s turn to start crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried
comforting her and asking if she could just let me live my life in a way that
would make me happy. She’d knocked back a couple of shots of gin at this point
and got all soppy, bawling her eyes out and saying she only wants what’s best
for me. A while later she fell asleep. Dad came down then and helped me get her
to bed. He’d been hiding upstairs all night, pretending to be dealing with some
urgent work matters.”

“As you would,” I put
in, laughing.

“Indeed. After that I
was so exhausted from dealing with everything that I fell asleep on the couch.
I woke up at nine this morning and barely made it home to pack for the trip.
I’d been so stressed when the police came to take me to the station the day
before that I forgot my phone. That’s why I hadn’t contacted you.”

My lips curve. “So you
weren’t ignoring me?”

He brings his hands to
my hips and squeezes. “I would never ignore you, babe. In fact, you’re kind of
impossible to ignore.”

I’m about to bend down
to kiss him again when there’s a light knock on the door, followed by Ben
exclaiming, “Come and look, it’s snowing out.”

I shake my head. “He’s
like a five-year-old sometimes.”

Keeping a hold of my
hips, Shane slides me off his body. “Come on, Bluebird. Let’s go see the snow.”

We leave the room and
go to stand by the sliding doors in the kitchen to stare out at the falling
sheet of whiteness. It comes down so hard that the entire ground is covered in
a thick blanket within an hour. After we eat dinner, Ben suggests a snowball
fight, and I think I’m the only one who’s against the idea. When they all
finally wrangle me into to joining in, I go and grab a thick scarf and some
gloves before putting on my coat.

The cold air makes my
nose go red as I bend down and scoop up some snow, moulding it into a spherical
shape. As I’m doing this, I suddenly get lobbed in the shoulder, the snowball
smashing to pieces as it hits me. Looking to my right, I see Shane standing
several yards away, wearing a huge grin. There’s snow in his ruffled hair, but
I try to ignore how adorable it makes him look and instead run after him,
snowball in hand.

He dashes through the
tall trees that lead into forestland and I stop running, taking aim and
flinging my snowball at him. It hits him right on the cheek, and I laugh
uncontrollably. My laughter dies on my lips when he makes a deep growling noise
and grabs up a handful of snow. Now I’m in for it. I run in the opposite
direction, back toward the house. Shane throws the snow at me, not bothering to
make it into a ball.

It hits me in the leg,
but I keep running. Seconds later I’m being tackled to the ground by two strong
arms. He chuckles in my ear as I struggle to get free of his grasp, but he
straddles me. My thighs are caught between his legs, both his hands capturing
mine and raising them over my head.