Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 54196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
“Oh God,” she whispers almost to herself, her hand flying to her mouth. “What am I doing? I have to—I…”
She turns, and she starts to make a beeline for the door back to the hallway back to her form. But I stop her gently, my hand taking hers.
“Wait, Zara—”
“I really have to—”
“You wanna play music?”
She pauses at Anders’s words, swallowing and then slowly nodding, even if she won’t look at him. Or any of us.
“Hey,” I say softly, giving her hand a squeeze before letting it go.
“Don’t leave because of us.”
“I—I can’t stay,” she whispers quietly, still looking down.
“You can,” I growl. “That was us. That was our bad. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
She frowns, looking up at me.
“Griffin, you didn’t—”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” I growl again.
Zara swallows, and slowly, I see that she knows what I’m doing. I’m taking the responsibility off her. Even if we both know damn well, she kissed me, I’m letting her wash herself of it if it’s going to trip her up. That’s nothing I’d ever want, for her to feel bad, or guilty, or regretful about what just happened.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you either,” Carson says quietly, and she turns to flash a quick smile at him, too.
“We’re all here for the music,” I growl. “So, let’s just play, okay?”
Zara swallows, nodding quietly.
Anders glances at me and Carson and grins as he nods. He knows what we just did too, taking the blame away from her like that. And I can see there in that look between all three of us that we’re okay. No lines have been crossed. And these are still the guys who’re basically my brothers.
“Grab your guitar, lady,” Anders grins at Zara. “Let’s play some tunes.”
She blushes, but quickly, she nods, biting her lip.
“Yeah, let’s… yeah.”
She goes to her case and pulls out her acoustic guitar, and just like that, it’s like we all take a collective breath. It’s like the explosive heat of that kiss, or what happened with her and Anders last night just gets put on pause. I sit behind my drum kit, which is just set up for brush sticks, not real sticks since we can’t exactly rock the fuck out down here at night. Carson grabs the acoustic bass we’ve got down here, and Anders pulls out his acoustic too.
“Here,” he nods at Zara, pulling some papers out of his guitar case and passing them her way. They’re chord sheets for some of our songs, so she can follow along.
She frowns as she eyes them.
“Wait, where…?”
She glances up.
“Do you guys not have lyrics?”
I chuckle.
“Uh, no. Not yet at least.”
Zara’s brows arch as she makes a face.
“Yeah, you, uh, I mean you need lyrics. I mean you don’t need lyrics, but no purely instrumental band is going to win the Battle of the Bands.”
Anders glances at us and then turns to grin at her.
“Why do you think we hired you?”
Zara snorts. “Oh, was there a hiring here I missed? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my first check.”
He chuckles.
“You write songs, right?”
She chews on her lip.
“Maybe.”
“Well, got anything you want to set to music?”
Zara shrugs. “Can I hear the music first?”
The three of us glance at each other, and I nod, grinning.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
I almost want to laugh at the looks on all of our faces. Jesus, we’re nervous. We’ve never been nervous about playing before, even when we first got together and totally sucked. But, I mean, Zara’s a real musician. Like an actual trained one. And shit, that’s a little intimidating.
But we sack up, and when I count us down, suddenly, we just fall into it. Carson’s bass-line blends into my beats, and on cue, Anders comes in with the guitar lines. We hit our groove, and then we’re just in the zone, rocking out and just having a fun fucking time, which is the whole damn reason we’re even doing this.
At some point, I finally force myself to look up at Zara, to see how much she thinks we suck, or fuck, to see if she’s left or something. But when I do, my grin just spreads across my jaw as I see the look on her face.
…She’s loving it.
She’s grooving into it, her eyes closed and her head bobbing with the tempo. Her body moves too, swaying with the music. And man, that feels good. I mean she’s the real deal, and if she’s liking it, we’ve got a chance.
Zara suddenly picks her guitar up, and once Anders calls out what key we’re in, suddenly, she starts to overlay her own parts on top of what we’re playing. And suddenly, holy fuck are we playing something real. Her part just brings a missing piece to the puzzle that we didn’t even know was missing, and all of a sudden, it just sounds right.