Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
When we got onto the stage, despite the lights being pointed straight at us, blinding us to the audience itself, I knew precisely where Reid was.
I could feel him.
As we tuned our instruments, I also worked on tuning him out.
I needed to focus.
We weren’t the only quartet performing tonight.
We were actually one of the last. I could feel the audience was tired and starting to lose interest. I didn’t care.
By our second song, I was lost in the music, and I couldn’t feel anything but my bow and the gentle press of my cello between my thighs. When we got to our final song, I closed my eyes and let the music move me.
This piece was meant for the ballet.
It was to be played with a full orchestra with masterful dancers on the stage, commanding attention and conveying the emotion in the piece. We didn’t have that. The only thing we had to pull the emotion from the music was our string instruments, and it was all we needed.
As we got to the part that was supposed to be a duet with Ginnie and me, where the music was a softer, comforting embrace, speaking of love and of loss, it was just me. The others plucked their strings, giving me the tempo and the beat as they imitated other instruments in the orchestra, and I was centered.
The music flowed through me. I wasn’t looking at the score. I wasn’t paying attention to anything around me. I was only feeling what Prokofiev and even Shakespeare himself meant for us to feel during this scene.
Most people when they think of the pain and the anger of Romeo and Juliet, think of that final scene, the death of the lovers.
But the wars between the Montagues and the Capulets were real to me.
The clashing of two great families in a way that disregards the individuals of those families had always been a constant in my life.
Whether my family was warring with the Astrids, the DuBois family, or any other number of families at any given time period, I was never kept in the loop. But I was expected to know to whom we were and weren’t talking, regardless of how I felt about any of it.
All of that frustration, all of the sorrow, the pain, everything flowed through me into the music.
Finally exhausted and sweating from the bright lights above me, I let out a breath of satisfaction as my bow dropped to my side.
The audience erupted into applause.
I inhaled deeply as I let the blissful emptiness from expending such raw emotion through music flow over me. I had given my all to my music and to the audience, and they were giving back applause, praise, and even gratitude.
We took our bows and made a few comments about the charity we were supporting. Then we made our way off the stage.
A volunteer music intern took my cello and promised to put it in my dressing room, allowing me a few minutes to mingle.
The others were set to celebrate a job well done, but I made my excuses, not wanting to answer Ginnie’s burning questions about Reid, and made my way to the back hallway, my intent to sneak out the backstage door for a few cooling, night air breaths, as was my habit.
I made it maybe four steps before a hand wrapped around my upper arm and pulled me into a side green room lounge.
In that moment of post-concert euphoria, I had forgotten about Reid.
Big mistake.
CHAPTER 12
REID
Fuck the job.
Fuck staying away from her.
A man didn’t taste the sweetness of liquid sugar on his tongue, while holding the pure innocence—yet dangerous destructiveness—of fire, and then walk away because of cold, bitter propriety.
Before she could say a word, before she could think of an excuse to push me away, I grabbed the back of Charlotte’s head, lacing my fingers in those beautiful brown locks, and pulled her lips to mine.
This wasn’t just a kiss, some delicate thing.
I was devouring her, claiming her.
This beautiful siren who had been so breathtakingly stunning on stage. I’d forgotten to breathe. The way she was utterly consumed by the music had transfixed me.
In my life, I’d been fortunate enough to see true beauty.
Sunrise at the Taj Mahal when the golden light bathes the white marble in pastel pinks and oranges. The Iguazu Falls as the water thundered around me while I was surrounded by water crystal rainbows. The simple perfection of a soprano hitting the perfect note at the La Scala Opera House in Milan. Camping outside while watching the night sky light up in vibrant emerald and sapphire from the northern lights.
I’d also borne witness to the most terrible.
Illness wiping out villages, killing the young and the old. Corruption, greed, and evil wreaked on the already impoverished. The pain and hopelessness of famine.