“Ready.” She smiles. “How about you lead with whatever you want, and I’ll harmonize? I’m pretty good at picking up a chord as long as you go steady. We’ll improv.”
I laugh breathlessly. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Sure do. We’re about to create genius that we’ll never be able to repeat, and no one’s even going to record it.” She laughs, shrugging. “That’s how it goes.”
Right.
Just like those moments that are the most amazing in your life because you’re too busy feeling to document them.
Those moments come in music, too.
When you just play with all your heart, and let it come out of you full of beauty and wildness.
I can feel something in my fingertips, something vibrating and needing to come to life. I only hesitate a second before touching my fingers to the strings, making them quiver, vibrate, and sigh.
I hardly notice the room going quiet, full attention drawn in on us.
Time to let go and follow my heart.
It’s here. That song I’ve been working on, coming alive in my fingertips, this thing of burnt sparks across a dry landscape and the scent of cigarette smoke drifting from cynical lips, the weary creak of leather and boots, the movement of broad shoulders, the scent of blood in the desert and embers sparking in dry wood.
It’s the story of a hero who can’t let himself be a hero.
A man who can’t see that the heart inside him isn’t gunmetal, but gold.
And where I couldn’t find the words before...
Now they pour out of me like I’m exhaling that smoke and loveliness on my breath, taking in the pain on his lips, forming it into lyrics. And even with the haunting notes of Ember’s violin squealing around me, I’m singing those lightning notes into existence.
It hurts.
It hurts in all the best ways like only the most beautiful songs do, reaching down and pulling out my emotions until I’m such a wreck, but it’s all right.
It’s okay to be a wreck because I can’t look away from Blake Silverton.
He doesn’t look away from me, either. There’s something in his eyes, even if he’s not smiling anymore.
One look that says he’s walked every desert road I sing about.
He feels those heavy footsteps in his bones.
He’s stood beneath desolate skies as blue as his eyes and looked up and counted all the stars shining against a moonless night.
And he’s wished for something more.
Something that would ease his gunmetal heart, let it beat warm and alive and needy again.
Let it be me, I think, and that spills out in the chorus.
One line that I come back to, over and over.
“When you find somewhere to lay your head,” I sing, my voice nearly breaking but still holding steady and true. “Please, baby, let it be me.”
Let it be me, let it be me.
I sing it until my eyes are stinging and wet and there’s not a sound in the entire café but me and Ember and hearts turning into crystal drops of shattering music.
Sweet Jesus.
Does he know what I’m asking?
Does he know I’m begging him to let it be me?
12
Heart Notes (Blake)
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone sing like Peace.
There’s something about her voice.
About the way she pours herself into it, and it feels like those strings she’s plucking are twisted up in all the messy pieces of me. Every time she strums, it’s not the guitar that twitches.
It’s me.
It’s me, shaking up all wild with these messy feelings, completely pulled into her glistening green eyes and the ache of want making her voice hitch and turn husky.
No, maybe she ain’t studio-perfect, but she doesn’t have to be.
She’s perfect just like this.
I’d rather listen to her sing with all that rawness inside her bursting free like the sun coming up on a dead winter morning than hear the most flawless damn studio recording.
Shit. I hadn’t meant to get swept away. I hadn’t meant—
This.
When she’d asked me to come, I was just gonna stay for a song or two. Give her a little support, maybe get out of my own head, before leaving since she’d probably want to stay after and catch a ride home with Ember, anyway.
Now, I can’t move.
Can’t break free from the spell she’s weaving with her voice.
And I’m hardly the only one.
She’s got the entire café wrapped around her little finger. There are more than a few damp eyes in the house, plenty of breathless hitches in people’s throats to go around.
I don’t blame ’em.
That first song was the one that hit me like a sledgehammer.
This song about a lonely, desperate man, some gunslingin’ cowboy who can’t see himself as anything but broken and worn down and living only because he’s got a duty to others.
Till somebody else sees him as something more.
Rusted gunmetal, with a heart of gold.
And the way she looks at me?
My blood runs nuclear. White-hot. I want to ask her.
I want to ask so damn bad.
Is that how you see me, darlin’?
But I’m completely lost for words. Clubbed over the head by her beauty, her sweetness, her sexy, shining eyes.
I can’t go full caveman. I don’t want to break this.
This magic that she makes, with every note she sings and strums. She pulls Ember into it until they’re a haunting harmony that I could listen to for hours.
Fuck, I think a whole hour or more has passed with her singing her heart out, one song after another, and I realize I’m waiting.
I’m ready for that one song about how birds are meant to fly, so won’t you fly with me?
Her voice is almost raw from singing. She’s not even hiding the tears in her eyes.
That’s when it comes.
That sweet, sad song her old man taught her, and it feels like it’s a piece of her heart wrapped up in simple, quiet lyrics that still mean so much.
It’s starting to feel like a piece of me, too.
Hell, I don’t think I breathe the whole time she sings, with those liquid-gleaming green eyes locked on mine and a smile on her lips that’s like heartbreak and sunlight had a baby.
Aw, shit.
I think I might be in love with this gorgeous girl’s breathtaking, musical heart.
I’ve been trying so hard not to be that dude. Not let myself give in to the way she gets under my skin with that curvy body and delicate lips and her pillowy touch.
Except, somehow when I was trying to ignore my body, she got inside my head, inside my heart.
I’m not even gonna pretend my eyes ain’t stinging.
By the time she trails off, gasping for breath, chest heaving, I’m grinning like a fool.
A silence falls that makes the café feel like a cathedral.
All of these people gathered here to worship the beauty those two girls made together.
Then Peace ducks her head, running a hand through her wildfire hair, letting out a shy, raspy laugh.
“Sorry,” she says. “I think my voice has had enough for tonight. But I hope y’all enjoyed the show.”
There’s a soft chuckle from people who are clearly just as overcome with emotion right before the clapping starts.