Page 134 of Twisted Knight

“He doesn’t. He has to do with me.” I shift in my seat so I can face him some. “The boarding school I went to had a phenomenal music program. I’d always played, but it was there that I fell in love with the sounds it could make and the feelings those sounds could evoke. Then Cass died, and I came back home to try and figure life out without her.”

“It’s a horrible feeling.”

“It is. Days and nights ran together. Time felt like it crawled, but I remember one night in particular when I was at a super low point. I was sick of everyone telling me it would get better. Sick of being told how I should feel. I put my headphones in and on a random shuffle, heard a piece by Clayton Seaburn for the first time. His notes, the way he strung them together, sounded how I felt. His work became my therapy. It helped me get through one of the hardest times in my life.”

“And now you offer that same light in the darkness to others.”

I study him as emotion wells in my throat at the poignancy of his comment. “Something like that,” I murmur.

“What did you play for them today? One of his?” he asks as the ocean comes into view off to the left of us.

“I wouldn’t even attempt to play one of his pieces,” I say.

“You’ve been playing for longer than half your life. You can’t be that bad,” he teases.

“If I told you what I played, would you even know what I was talking about?”

“Not unless it’s classic rock, no.”

“It’s doable on a cello, but doesn’t sound quite the same. You really don’t like classical music of any kind?”

The look he gives me says it all.

“Is that look more along the lines of you tolerate it but it’s not your jam, or you’d rather stab your own eyes out with a fork than be forced to listen to it?”

“Fork is a bit harsh. Maybe something more along the lines of a spoon.”

“A spoon?” I laugh. “Is it that bad?”

“Is this where I reserve the right not to answer in the interest of self-preservation?” A text alerts from his phone sitting in the console and he laughs. “Saved by the text.”

“Lucky you.”

“Don’t I know it,” he says as he glances down at the text. “That’s Audrey. Your car is back at the office.”

“That was kind of you to arrange for it to get back there.”

“Of course. If we left it there, who knows what we’d come back to. No car. No wheels. A new paint job done by spray paint.”

“I’m sure it would have been fine, but I appreciate you taking care of it for me. You sound like you know firsthand about it,” I joke.

“I do.”

That’s all he says. He doesn’t elaborate, and the way those two words are spoken tells me the conversation is over.

An awkward silence falls over the car. It’s something that hasn’t really happened before between us. Other than the one night at the diner, we’ve never really spent any time together outside of work or sleeping together. Sure, we talk after a round of toe-curling sex, but not about anything meaningful. Not our pasts. Not our present. Not what this even is between us besides the joking reminder that this is “just sex” every so often.

And at the office, some of our late-night “work” sessions have ended up with the elevators locked again, takeout food cold and forgotten as the two of us somehow end up losing a few items of clothing.

To say this fling between us has been fun is an understatement. I’ve never done something like this. There’s a thrill in its secrecy. A high in doing something others wouldn’t approve of. An adrenaline rush in looking across the room at a man who everyone else thinks is calculating the risks of major decisions while I know he’s actually cursing me for wearing one of his favorite sweaters and texting me exactly what he wants to do to me while I’m wearing nothing but it later.

“What about you, Holden Knight?” I ask.

“What about me?”

“It’s kind of weird to me that we pretty much know every inch of each other’s bodies and yet I don’t know much about you other than that.”

“Sure you do.”