“I can’t. People will hate it.”
I nodded. “Some will.”
He grabbed a pillow and threw it at me. “What the fuck, Law.”
“Well, it’s true. Not everyone will like everything. There will be people who love it too. You play publicly in front of people, and they love it.” He often had panic attacks, and I hated that part. I’d sneak into the bathroom or outside and find him, and hold him until he calmed down. When he was onstage, it was all about the music. It was before or after that he came down. Still, he always went out there, and I respected the hell out of him for it.
“Yeah, but that’s never more than what…forty people? The Internet is…no. Just no.”
He tried to get up, but I pushed his guitar aside and straddled his lap. “First, you’re online already. People have recorded you when you’ve played. Second, I’ll do it. I’ll record it and make you a channel. I won’t tell you what it is. That way you don’t have to see it. Please, gorgeous. You’re so fucking good. People will love you. You gotta give them a chance to hear you.”
He looked at me with those blue eyes…I’d wondered about their color the first time I’d seen him onstage…and I knew, fucking knew I had him. That he would give this to me.
“Okay.”
“You might want to get dressed first. You’re mine, and no one else gets to see you this way.” I winked, and he grinned, but looked nervous.
Still, he got dressed. He sat in the chair with his guitar on his thigh. It took a few times for him to get it right. He sang the first song I’d fallen in love with about the sunrise over the mountains.
I made the channel online—Remington—and uploaded the video, then stripped him out of his clothes and fucked him until we melted into each other and he told me it felt like music when I was inside him.
Christ, the way he spoke to me. It short-circuited my damn brain. He was like poetry I didn’t know I loved.
We lay there afterward, his head on my chest. He had his hand in my hair. He liked to play with it, and even though I’d always hated people fucking with my hair, I liked it when he did it.
“My mom is sick,” he said after a while.
“What?” My heart thudded, maybe hard enough for him to feel it against his cheek.
“She got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She’s pretty young for it too. It’s not bad. We’re lucky in that she’s only slightly affected so far—some mild tremors, is all. But we don’t know how fast or slow it might progress. Symptoms are known to worsen as time goes on.”
“Fuck…I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know a lot about it, but I’d look it up. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Just make me forget. You always make me forget.”
I rolled him over and kissed him, then the freckles on his shoulders, turned him and rained kisses down his back too. His freckles were my favorite. I tasted them, connected them with my tongue, making him feel cherished, because no one had ever made him feel that way. He helped raise his siblings and worked while he was young, his money going to the household. He didn’t have a life, really, outside of me, music, and his family.
When he was writhing and saying my name over and over, I flipped him again and sucked him until he came in my mouth, something I liked more now. Then I kissed the top of his head and rubbed his back until he fell asleep.
We slept into the next day. I woke up before he did and grabbed my phone. I researched Parkinson’s disease first, before going to the channel I’d created and…holy fuck. He had thousands of views in twelve hours. How they all found him, I didn’t know. I read through the comments.
Holy shit! That voice.
Who in the fuck is this guy? He’s amazing.
My friend saw him play. There’s a video of him on her page too!
OMG. His messy hair and freckles!
Hey, those freckles were mine.
Jesus, he can sing.
His voice is like sex, but he’s not much to look at.
Fuck that person. Anger surged through me as I deleted the comment and kept reading. There were more assholes, of course, but most of the people fucking loved him. They wanted more from him, the way I knew they would.
“Remy. Rem, come on, wake up.” I shook his shoulder. “You have to see this.”
He grumbled but opened his eyes. I handed him my phone. I knew there were other videos of him out there, and I wasn’t sure what it was about this one that got so much attention. He’d been in a bit of a sex haze, had let himself be in a way he did with me that was different from his passion onstage. That was there too. It was what made me notice him, but when it was only us…it was more.
He didn’t speak for the longest time, just scrolled through the comments, the likes, the views, as they kept increasing.
“Holy fuck,” he finally said.
“See? I told you they’d love you. Come on, let’s make another one.”
Remy nodded slowly…kissed me, and then I recorded another song, one about shadows dancing off someone’s skin and how he wanted to stay there forever, and I hoped it was about me.
CHAPTER THREE
Remington
I hadn’t left my new house for three days. That wasn’t odd for me when I had downtime. I’d always been a bit of a loner, an introvert. I didn’t have a car since mine had died, though I knew I’d need one. The grocery order I’d put in had been delivered, and slowly some of the furniture too. It wasn’t much, but I couldn’t very well sit in an empty house, which was what it had been when I got there. My bed arrived today. The first night I’d been on an air mattress, then slept on the new couch. As long as I had my guitar, I was okay.
I was sitting in the living room with a cup of cold coffee on the table, playing. Simply letting my fingers lead me, but nothing sounded right, nothing felt right, like that bone-deep love I felt when I connected with something. I needed to write. I needed new songs, and this little break I was on wouldn’t last forever. Nothing I did was me, though. I couldn’t love it, and I didn’t know why.
When I glanced at my phone, I realized it was almost one and I’d been at it for three hours. Time got away from me sometimes.
I stood, stretched, figured I should get dressed and maybe start getting some work done on the house. I was in a pair of my favorite old jeans I’d tugged on when I got out of bed.
I scratched my bare chest, just as a knock came from the door. I had a few more items getting delivered, so I walked over and tugged it open without looking through the window blinds—and my heart dropped. Just stopped beating and fell from my chest somewhere deep in my gut, drowning there. Memories came slamming back into me, a tidal wave that threatened to pull me under. Kisses, touches, those blue eyes looking down at me, and curls falling in his face, and the way he used to smile at me like I was the whole goddamned world. It was the only time I really felt important. Onstage it wasn’t me they loved, it was my music, but with him it had been different.
When I found my voice, “Law,” tumbled out. He looked…fuck, he looked good. His face clean-shaven as always, and that cleft in his chin I used to playfully tease him about and stick my finger in. His curls were a little longer. My fingers twitched, remembering how soft they had been when I played with them. “What are you doing here?”