He sighed and took the empty sheet of paper from my outstretched hand. “Fine, I’ll bite. Why?”
“Because you lose who you are when you lose the only thing that gives you purpose. If I took music away from you right now, what exactly would you have, Braden?”
He paled significantly, his bravado almost gone as he shook his head. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
I reached out to comfort him. I touched his shoulder, realized how massive it felt beneath my hand, how warm, how right, and shuddered. “I’m not going to let that happen either. That’s why I’m here. To help you find your focus, your identity, your purpose so that music isn’t just your passion, but also trickles into every area of your life. You aren’t just Braden Connor—rock god. You’re so much more. And until you see that, see your worth, make a plan…” I grabbed a bottle of the green glitter. “Create a vision where you’re not standing still, panicked, in a vicious cycle of fear—”
“I’m not afraid,” he snapped.
I tilted my head. “I’m not the one who said it, Braden.”
He tensed beneath my hand. And then he reached out and grabbed another glitter container from the table, gave me an annoyed look, and grumbled, “I wanna use the blue.” He eyed me up and down. “You know, to match my balls.”
I squeezed his shoulder and laughed. “That’s the spirit—ish.” I didn’t ask him why he had blue balls. I didn’t even want to go there, even though my curiosity made me want to comment. I put the professional boundary back in place and waited for him to get started.
He exhaled, and then his grin slowly lit up the room. “If I’m playing with glitter, we’re going to need alcohol. Take a picture of this and post it to social media, and I’ll drive your rental into the ocean. Got it?”
“Got it.” I laughed. I didn’t have a rental. He was my ride. He was my everything for the coming days, he just didn’t know it yet. “Let’s get started on that vision board!”
I almost cheered when he pulled out a chair and started organizing all the different pictures and arts and crafts around him, and then his eyes fell to the polaroid camera.
Braden’s head lifted. “You up for an adventure, Coach?”
Chapter Six
Piper
I was used to clients just doing what they were told, then finding a breakthrough and moving on. But with Braden, it was like he wanted me to be a part of it, in a big way. So when he said he had an idea, I thought, oh cool, he’s gonna take some pictures of his guitar or something.
I didn’t expect that I’d be gallivanting all over his beachfront property while he took pictures of things he wanted to put on his board.
“It’s serene.” Braden snapped a picture of the ocean. “No matter what happens in my life, I want the ocean to be something I come back to, something that represents my music and the way I want to inspire the world around me.”
I gulped. “That’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.” He winked.
I just rolled my eyes. “Flirting with your coach gets you an F.”
He cackled out a dark laugh. “Are you saying you want to F me?”
“Ah, middle-school humor, how refreshing,” I countered, even though my entire body broke out in chills with the way he was looking at me.
Bad, it was so bad. And totally against the rules of client and coach. But damn, he was impossible not to like. Not helpful at the moment when I was starving for more and more of his smiles.
“Admit it, you just won’t laugh because you don’t want to encourage my very obvious advances.”
I frowned. “Obvious advances, huh? You’re a flirt. Trust me, I work with guys like you all the time.” Lies. I’d never worked with anyone who had Braden’s magnetism. It was intimidating and impossible to ignore.
He snapped another picture, this time of my face. “So you work with musically gifted savants who have red hair, mad kissing skills, and big hands? Crazy, and here I thought I was the only one.” He winked.
I opened my mouth to say something when he suddenly held out his hands. “Right there, don’t move.” He lifted the camera and took another shot. His blue eyes were intense, locked onto me so vividly that I forgot to breathe, forgot what I was even there for. Because all I kept thinking about was him. I was here for him, in so many ways.
I’d never been the type of person to make it personal—my job. But with him, it felt that way, and I couldn’t figure out why.
On the outside, I was a professional doing her job.
On the inside, I was counting his smiles.
And wondering what I had to sacrifice to get more.
I was greedy for them.
A few days in and the way he looked at me gave me hope that not all guys were narcissistic jerks.
“One more.” He smirked. “Jump in the air. I want to take a picture of pure joy.”
I burst out laughing. “What makes you think jumping would make me joyful?”
“Oh, you know, just thinking that a life coach very much likes to live for the tiny moments because it reminds her that she’s alive.”
I gaped. “That was deep.”
“Musician.” He pointed at himself. “Now jump.”
It felt like a double entendre. The air felt pregnant with tension and unspoken meaning. I didn’t want to dissect what was happening, so I just listened rather than gave orders.
“Like this?” I jumped into the air, throwing sand while he snapped the picture.
He bent over laughing, and then his eyes got wide.
“What?”
“STOP!” He held out his hands. “Just…don’t move!”
I heard “don’t move,” but the ocean was so loud that I didn’t stop moving until I took another step, directly onto something slimy.
“Ew, gross—oh, shit!” I yelped and then went crashing down next to a jellyfish that, even though it looked dead, could still sting the crap out of my foot.
“Piper!” Braden was at my side in an instant. “Thank God it only got the side.”
Fire raged over my foot then headed up my ankle and kept going. Tears stung the backs of my eyes and then dropped down my wind-stung cheeks as I whimpered in pain. “Are you sure? Because it feels like it got my entire leg!”
He swiped his thumbs under my eyes, wiping my tears away. “I’m sorry, I should have thought it through. It’s jellyfish season. There’s more on the beach than usual.”
I sniffled as the wind picked up, matting my hair to my tear-stained cheeks, and messing up my lip gloss.
“Up you go.” He gently picked me up, cradling me in his arms.
“Oh.” I pressed a hand to his chest and watched him steel his expression as he glanced at my foot and started to walk. “You really don’t have to—”
“This is my fault.” I could feel him limping on his bad leg and hated that I was probably adding to his pain, along with his memory of the incident.
“Brad—”
He shot me a glare. “Let me carry you, Piper.”
“Okay.” Part of me wondered if he was carrying me out of the guilt that still clung to his memory or if he was just worried.