Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
When the song finished, silence broke into the room. I felt Bonnie against me. I smelled her peach scent and I saw her bared skin. I hadn’t even realized my fingers had started moving again until the colors showed me the way. And I let them. No fighting it this time. No hiding it from Bonnie. I just thought of her and us and right now, and I used the guitar she loved so much to tell her without words what I was feeling.
Like with muscle memory, my body reacted to being able to create. Real, pure instruments in my hands. Not laptop keys and synthetic beats but wood and string and the colors that led. Peach and vanilla, milk-colored skin and brown hair pushing me on, inspiring notes.
I wasn’t sure how long I played. It could have been two minutes or two hours. I let my fingers loose, let them free from the shackles I’d forced on them three years ago. And with every note played, a part of the anger I fueled each day with my refusal to play, to compose, fell away until it was nothing but vapor, flying away with all of my reluctance to finally feel this.
This addictive, soaring feeling that only music could give. My body reacted like it had taken a deep breath after years of shutting down my lungs. I breathed. My heart beat. My blood pumped through my veins. And I composed music. It was part of me, not something I did. Part of my makeup.
And after this, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to go back.
My hands came to a stop. My fingers felt numb from playing. But it was a good kind of numbness. Addicting. I blinked, clearing my eyes, and saw the piano looking at me from across the room. The violin. The cello. The drums. Adrenaline rushed through me, urging me to play them all. Now I’d had a hit, I needed more and more.
“Cromwell…” Bonnie’s voice sliced through my thoughts. Her hand came up to my cheek, and she turned her head. She had tear tracks down her cheeks. Her lashes were clumped together from the wetness, and her lips were red. Bonnie always had the most peculiar color of lips. Such a deep red that they almost looked unnatural.
Her hand was a damn furnace on my skin. I turned into her palm, and a quick gasp of breath escaped Bonnie’s mouth. “That was beautiful,” she said and dropped her hand. It ran over my fingers that lay on the guitar’s neck.
“These hands,” she said. I could only see her cheeks move from this angle, but I knew she was smiling. “The music they can create.” She sighed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
My chest expanded, something inside of it swelling at her words. Her finger ran over and over my hand until she finally pulled it away. She yawned, and I could see her eyes were getting small from tiredness. “I’m exhausted, Cromwell. I need to go home.”
I didn’t. For the first time in I didn’t know how long, I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay in this music room. Because I wasn’t sure what would happen when we left it. I wasn’t sure if the anger would return. The need to run from all of this.
I didn’t know if Bonnie would walk away. After the way I’d treated her, I thought she might.
“Cromwell?” Bonnie pushed. I couldn’t hold on to this moment any longer. I pulled my hands back from the guitar. I needed to get off the stool. I moved my legs, but before I got up, I moved my mouth to her ear.
“I like your song, Farraday,” I whispered and caught her quick exhale.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the peach and vanilla. Bonnie arched into my chest. I dropped my head, running my nose down her neck until my mouth was at her bare shoulder. I brushed my lips over the pale soft skin. Then I kissed it once and moved back off the stool.
I got the guitar case off the floor and took the guitar from Bonnie’s hands. She hadn’t moved off the stool. When the guitar was packed, I finally looked down at her. She’d been watching me the whole time. I could tell by the embarrassed expression on her face. “I’ll walk you back,” I said.
Bonnie got up. Her feet faltered. She pushed her arm out. I grabbed hold of her, pulling her to my side to keep her steady. She was out of breath and seemed too hot.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said nervously. She tried to push away from me.
I kept my arm around her. “I might just keep you here to make sure you don’t fall.”
Bonnie smiled a little and sank back into my side. I walked her back to her dorm. The night was quiet. I didn’t know what time it was. But it must have been three or four in the morning.