She was exactly as I’d imagined. Tanned. Blond. And gorgeous. Every guy’s fantasy, and yet, he was here with me.
“Thanks,” Nate said suddenly.
“For what?”
“I was a total dick tonight. Thanks for not leaving.”
The radio was on low, an old song by The Fray, and for a few seconds, we listened to it, Nate’s fingers tapping along the tops of his knees while he hummed the melody.
“Trevor was such a pussy when it came to music, ya know?”
My head rested against the back of the seat and I turned slightly so that I could see him.
“What do you mean?”
“The Fray. Good band. Solid songwriting skills with a lot of melody, but not a whole lot of guitar and drums. I like heavy guitar and loud aggressive drums. Five Finger Death Punch is more my speed.” Nate shook his head, his eyes ahead and his mind elsewhere. “But Trevor loved The Fray. He was real big on melody, and it’s why we worked together so well. It’s why we clicked. I was all about technique and arpeggio scales and fast riffs, but he kept things in perspective, he smoothed things out, and together, man, we wrote some good songs.”
That surprised me and I sat up a little straighter.
“You wrote your own stuff?”
Earlier, at the Coffee House, Nate had played a bunch of songs with Brent, showing off some impressive guitar skills while singing all of the girls into a frenzy. He had something real special, and though it had taken a few songs for him to open up, once he did, I was mesmerized.
He’d made me feel as if I was the only girl in the room, and I’m pretty sure every other girl had felt the same way. How could they not? When he looked at me, I felt as if he was touching something inside me and that something was alive. It was hot and aching and a little scared.
I wanted to be touched. I wanted to feel. And maybe to forget.
“Yeah,” he answered softly, bringing me back. “We wrote a lot. Some of it was crap, but some of it was pretty good. We were gonna record them this summer, maybe put them up on iTunes or something…”
Nate sighed and I felt his pain. I felt it cross my chest and hit me hard like an old friend saying hello.
“We were gonna go for it. Even talked about moving to LA or New York when we graduated. And now…”
He shuddered and ran his hands along the tops of his legs. Back and forth. And then again.
“Shit,” he muttered. “How did I end up here?”
For a moment, I panicked. “Here with me?”
“No,” he answered. “Just here…here looking down a road that I don’t recognize anymore. A road that I never thought I’d be on, you know? Trevor was supposed to be with me. It was always us against everyone else. Us and our music.”
“Nate, you can’t give up on your dreams. You don’t know what’s going to happen. None of us do. Trevor could wake up tomorrow.” But I knew the likelihood wasn’t great. I’d heard Gram talking to one of her friends the day before. I’d heard words like sepsis, brain damage, possible infection.
“It doesn’t matter what I say or think, Monroe. There is only the truth. And the simple truth is that Trevor is laid up in a hospital because of me. He might never wake up because of me. Or if he does, he might be screwed up so badly he might wish he’d just died. It sucks, and I can’t change a thing, no matter how bad I want to.”
He scrubbed at his eyes angrily, pushing his hair off his face. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair because I’m sitting in a car on a hot summer night with a beautiful girl. I’m smelling her shampoo and imagining what it would feel like to hold her. I’m feeling things I shouldn’t be feeling, because I don’t deserve them.”
He swore again. “But what makes it worse is that I want to be here with you and that makes me feel like crap. It makes me feel guilty. I feel…”
He looked at me, and my heart melted a little more when I saw moisture in the corners of his eyes. I undid my seat belt and moved closer, my eyes not leaving his. My heart felt like it was gonna beat right out of my chest, it roared in my ears, heavy and strong and…
Alive.
I reached for him, my palm on his cheek, and my heart turned over when he leaned into me. He closed his eyes, and I gently wiped away the single tear that fell.
“What do you feel?” I asked so softly I barely heard myself, and at first, I thought that maybe the words had only echoed inside my head.
His hands moved into my hair, and I couldn’t move if I wanted to. When my eyes focused, I gazed into his. I saw the pain that lay there. The anguish and the sorrow. But I saw something else.
“Do you have to ask?” he said hoarsely.
I stared into his eyes for so long that my vision blurred. His fingers wrapped around my skull, tangling in my hair and pulling me even closer. I smelled mint gum and something subtle, but nice.
It was hot in the car, but his body heat made it ten times more so, and my dress clung to my skin, my hair to the back of my neck.
He rested his forehead on mine and drew in a ragged breath that I felt deep in my own lungs. Every single inch of me felt as if it was on fire. Hot. Achy. Tremulous.
I swear my limbs had melted into rubber the moment he touched me, and I was afraid that if he let go, I’d pitch forward.
My hands crept up his chest. I felt his beating heart and the heat from his body through his shirt, and he groaned a little when I continued upward until I wrapped them around his neck. I couldn’t think about anything other than getting closer to him. I shifted my hips and he moved so that I was practically sitting in his lap.
“God, Monroe. This is so wrong.”
No way was it wrong. It was so right.
I had to swallow that damn lump again, and when I did, I managed to croak. “Why?”
“It’s so wrong to feel, to be with you when Trevor is—”
“Stop it,” I said loudly, pushing at him once and then again until he was forced to look into my eyes. “What happened is done. You can’t change anything, Nate. At some point, you’re going to have to forgive yourself and just…live again.”
Holy hell. If my therapist could hear me now, he’d be fist-pumping his way to the freaking moon.
“Is that what you’re doing, Monroe? Have you forgiven yourself?”
For a few moments, there was no sound other than the breeze buffeting the hood of the car and our breaths falling in short, hard spurts. Images I didn’t ever want to see flashed before my eyes, and I shook my head violently.
“I don’t want to talk about Malcolm.”
For a second, he said nothing and then he exhaled and I could feel him pulling away, but I needed something more. He needed something more.
“I haven’t forgiven myself. I don’t think I ever will but…” I paused as the enormity of the words in my head washed over me. They pressed into my chest and made it hard to breathe or speak.
When I spoke again, it was barely a whisper. “I’m learning to live again, and that’s a start.”
“It’s hard,” he said, his dark eyes hooded, his gaze on my mouth.
My hands encircled his neck, and I felt his fist in my hair as I bent forward. “I know,” I breathed into him, my mouth hovering above his.
Our noses touched, and my breath caught at the back of my throat. I think I whimpered or maybe I sobbed. I don’t know. I couldn’t hear. I could barely function.
Because when he moved enough so that his lips were on mine, everything stopped except us.
There was nothing but Nathan and this hot Louisiana night. There was nothing but the need to connect to someone so badly I felt it ache in every part of my body.
His mouth was warm, his lips firm as he slid them over mine. Bombs could have been going off for all I knew, because it sure as heck felt like it. My world was rocking and I was letting it.