Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7) (16 page)

If she needed detail, then I’d be the one to talk. “I hit an armadillo and my car can’t be repaired until tomorrow, so we need a place for the night.”

“And you have nothing?”

Tyler held up the backpack. “Just this.”

“I’ve got some sleeping bags people leave behind by accident. We’ll get you in one of the cabins. Won’t be fancy, but it has a warm shower and a roof.”

“Sounds like heaven,” I said. Tyler’s face stayed neutral.

She walked us next door to a cabin not much bigger than the shed where my dad kept his riding lawn mower in the backyard. It had a tiny bathroom with a shower that barely fit one person, a microwave and a fridge, no sink, and two army cot-like beds.

A basket full of fruit and protein bars looked like nirvana.

“Perfect. How much?” Tyler asked.

“Forty,” Rosita said. Tyler reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wad of cash, and peeled off two twenties. She pocketed them.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Come over to the rec hall and get the sleeping bags from me after you’re unpacked,” she called out as she left.

“You mean in three seconds,” Tyler muttered, dumping my backpack on one of the beds.

We hadn’t said a word since the kiss. He’d left me sleeping in the cab of Andy’s tow truck, and I’d awoken to find him and Andy climbing back in, Tyler putting my head right back where it had been. Exhaustion had made me doze off, but now I was wide awake.

He’d been
raped
.

So many questions filled my mind, but I couldn’t ask. He walked toward the door and turned to me, hand reaching out.

I took it, and we walked over to the rec hall, hand in hand. It felt like the dry air had sucked all the moisture out of me, making my throat ache. My skin felt like tissue paper, my feet like bricks, and while the sun was high in the sky it seemed so close, like a peeping Tom. 

Tyler opened the door with one strong hand, his fingers outstretched like a spider’s legs, the pads of his fingers pushing the screen door open. We walked into a large, open room, like something from my weeks at Girl Scout summer camp when I was in elementary school.

“Nice,” he said, taking in the space. No fireplace like the camps back home in Missouri. Just a long, big room with a few old couches, a bookcase covered with crooked board games, stacked like someone was in a rush, and a few folding tables in a drunken line.

And the oldest baby grand piano I’ve ever seen.

I let go of Tyler’s hand and walked toward it, my body twitching to do something. The problem with long car trips is that you’re just trying to get from Point A to Point B so fast that you don’t accomplish much other than buying gas, eating, going to the bathroom, and driving.

And almost killing armadillos.

Plus, there’s that whole kissing a guy thing.

My fingers rested on the keys and began playing Chopin before I could even think. I melted into the melody, then cruised right past it.

“You play.” He wasn’t asking. His voice held a tone of awe I could listen to forever. 

I just smiled in response, then went into “Say Something,” the opening chords haunting and instantly recognizable. My fingers felt like liquid across the keys, my body swaying in time. 

Tyler just stared, his eyes encouraging me, his face so still it was like time stopped.

Chapter Eleven

Tyler

Too many events. Too many words. Too much rushing and the sense of desperation as time ticked by so slowly, yet tomorrow loomed. I’d barely practiced. I’d have to borrow a bass when we got there. Lena’s guitar thumped against my back in the case, forgotten. I’d take it off when we got back to the cabin, but we had most of the afternoon to kill. My stomach reminded me we hadn’t eaten much, either.

By the time we walked into the rec hall holding hands, I was a mess.  

I’d never told anyone what I’d just told Maggie.

I felt like a thousand bobbleheads were all bouncing inside of me. For eternity.

I told her.

I told her
and she kissed me
.

What fresh hell was this? Or was it heaven?

And now this chick—
my
chick?—was playing piano like she’d been doing it for three lifetimes. As the chords to “Say Something” filled the room I listened.
Really
listened. Was she telling me something, or just picking a popular song?

She cut it short, though, as I pulled Lena’s guitar off my back and started strumming with her.

“I don’t know the words,” Maggie said with a smile, her face filled with all the questions my inner bobbleheads nodded to.

“You know the words to this?” I played the opening notes to “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer”. 

She replied by playing the matching chords. Perfectly. With a jaunty, intense tone that made the song fresh and vibrant. Holy shit.

And then, by God, we played. Neither of us had a rock-star’s voice like Trevor or Liam, but we had a throaty grace between the two of us, her alto matching my gravelly tones. We complemented each other with a melodic blend that I felt, rather than heard, as my fingers took us through the song. 

Oh, I wasted

my only answered prayer

on a woman

who didn’t believe in God....

Chills. Tiny warm spiders ran through my veins like they’d replaced my blood.

Maggie didn’t look at me as we sang. Not once. Her eyes were closed and her shoulders rose and fell as her hands played magic on my spine. 

At one she walked away

At two she said no

At three she said please

At four she said more

Our voices combined, like two wisps of smoke reaching high, and soon the sound that came out of us was like twin strands of DNA, reaching toward God.

The song ended and I couldn’t breathe.

Just couldn’t. If I moved, I worried this would end. My eyes felt like pieces of the sun. All I could see was Maggie, sitting on the bench at the piano, looking right back at me with eyes that looked like stars. 

Holy shit!

Before I could think, I played the opening chord to “Random Acts of Crazy".

And I began:

Your Mama told you to watch out for me

Your God told you to walk away

Your Daddy said nothing, for he was gone

And you weren’t sure what to say

The night you found me, wandering and lost

Naked by the side of the road

My guitar shattered, my body bereft

You fought everything you were told

Maggie joined with unselfconscious joy, her body playing and finding its way without sheet music. I could have played these parts in my sleep, though the bass part wasn’t the same as guitar. Somehow the music was just in me.

In her.

When a naked soul finds you

You don’t have a choice

You have to stop and pause

You can turn away and never look back

But it will yank you back, because

Random acts of crazy draw you in

Random acts of kindness draw you in

Random acts of love draw you in

We finished, her fingers playing a little ditty at the end that sounded like bells floating on the hush of a misty morning dew. The silence echoed like a question.

Like a prayer.

A burst of applause from one person filled the air like a lightning strike. It
cracked
, splitting the air in two. 

“That was amazing!” Rosita called out, her voice almost a scream.

Maggie turned a deep shade of red that made me want her so much. So bad. The push of blood to her cheeks drove me crazy. My body itched, my fingers skittering along the strings. A pulse of blood in my body, like a giant bomb inside me, made me need to move. To kiss. To touch.

“Are you professional musicians?” Rosita asked, calling out over her own clapping.

Maggie thumbed toward me. “He is,” she said, dipping her head. She looked at me through her eyelashes and I nearly grabbed her and kissed her right then and there.

Instead, though, I just stared.

“You both should be!” Rosita shivered. “Your voices! You sound like you’re in love!” A bell rang in the distance. “Damn! Gotta go. One of the other campers.” She scurried out, her wide backside banging into the loose screen door and making it clap one final smack as she departed.

You sound like you’re in love.

Maggie

My hands hummed. They didn’t tremble. No shivering. Not a tremor or a shake. They hummed like the energy from a thousand high tension wires were buzzing through and I was a conduit.

That same energy flowed between me and Tyler as our eyes met.

“How did you—?” He crossed the room with steps that ate the floor, Lena’s guitar in his hands, the empty case still on his back. Those songs. Those two songs. I got so lost in them, like finding out every part of me was a little bit of every part of everything. Of the sky, the air, the piano...and of Tyler.

“I’ve played around at home with Random Acts’ songs. Nothing fancy, I just love the songs and I’ve never—” 

The kiss hit me before he even touched me. His lips said everything we didn’t say in the song or in the car. His hands spoke thousands of words with their slow claiming of me, his embrace a place to relax and stand tall, a sanctuary for contradictions and discovery. 

And then, without a single word, he reached for my humming hand and walked me with great deliberation back to the little cabin. I snagged two sleeping bags in the corner as we left.

We weren’t even in the little cabin fully before he set down Lena’s guitar, whipped off the case, and was kissing me again, the rasp of his stubble just jarring enough to make me feel everything without experiencing it fully. As the kiss deepened, though, it altered, changing me with it. Fingers in my hand, a flat palm against my back, the wet heat of our clothes and skin pressing against each other, the wild taste of Tyler in my mouth.

I broke away and breathed hard, Tyler’s mouth open, his eyes dark and inviting.

“Let’s get you out of these wet clothes,” he said. 

“I know,” I said with a small, breathy laugh. “I’m going to catch a cold.”

“No, Maggie. I mean,” he said, pulling me closer to him, warm heat pouring from his body to mine, “—let’s get you out of these clothes.”

The last time I had a man break through the physical wall between two bodies and enter into me was a night filled with pain, horror, brutality and the weeping knowledge that all three of my attackers enjoyed every second of what they did to helpless me.

Before the gang rape I had dated a few guys. More than a few, actually. I had slept with two. And after, it took a while—but I kissed a couple.

There’s this moment when you cross a bridge between yourself and another human being. And there’s an implied agreement, a consent that evolves from nuance and risk. There’s this moment when it’s like stepping through a dimension. Like realizing that your reality is not the only one that’s true.

I’d felt that before, so when Tyler kissed me it wasn’t unfamiliar. But this time it was as if the truth called out its secret name across all the dimensions, echoing into hidden places neither of us even knew existed.

The flutter of his fingers on my arm as his palms slid up and wrapped around my back. The light touch of his lips against mine, as he kissed once, then twice, and then I kissed him back. The push of my fingers against the hard ridge of muscle at the base of his ribs. The feel of being in the space of someone else, and yet doing it knowingly. On my terms. With all my rules.

I was sure Tyler had rules, too. I was as sure of that as I was of the knowledge that he was kissing me because he wanted to, that his fingers were lightly brushing against the base of my back because he knew I wanted that, too. In this moment, his rules were as important as mine.

Finally, I had met someone who understood how important the rules are, and he was telling me that right now, with his tongue, with his touch. The promise of respecting what he knew was packed into the force of my response.

It wasn’t that sex was even a need any more. No longer a craving, or something to use as a palate cleanser, it was a way of fulfilling a promise to my former self. Making love with Tyler would be like reaching my hand back in time to the Maggie who lay broken and bruised, battered and beaten, torn and terrified, and saying, “Come here, let me comfort you. The world is not always like this.”