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“I’m scared,” he breathes.
“Of what?”
“Everything,” he chokes out. I turn and see his eyes filling with tears.
I want to grab him and hold him so badly. Want to tell him everything will be fine. He will be as great as ever…
“I’m scared I will suck…or that I won’t,” he sighs and sets the case down. “I’m tired, TJ. So fucking tired of it all.”
“Playing?”
“All of it, really…I don’t even know anymore. This time off, time away…I’ve been writing, playing the piano one-handed…I’m afraid to pick the violin up again, because I’m afraid it won’t be the same, or worse, that it will be…. that doesn’t make any sense.”
It makes more sense than realizes.
“What have you been writing?”
“Nothing.”
I smile at him and cock a brow. I move closer again and pick up his left hand. He doesn’t protest. It’s the same beautiful hand I was mesmerized by in this very elevator months ago. The knuckle on his ring finger is larger, and that finger is a bit tweaked. But if you didn’t know that it had been mangled and pieced back together, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at it. His caramel skin and long fingers…those fingers have brought me so much pleasure in and out of the bedroom.
Wrapped around my cock, inside my ass…stroking the side of my face in the morning…reaching for me after the concert at the University. And here in this elevator with his music bringing me out of my head and anxiety attack.
“Play for me,” I whisper. “Just you and me, here, for old times’ sake. And then I’ll go.”
He doesn’t lift the violin to play. He steps over to the buttons on the elevator and pushes L.
Lobby.
The elevator stutters to a start and then settles into a smooth trip down.
“I can’t give what you want, TJ.”
The tiny little stitch that had been sown in my shattered heart by his arms around me. By his breath against my neck. His hands blanketing mine…that stitch unwound with those words. The knot to secure it never pulled taut.
Why? I want to scream. Why don’t you love me? But he does love me. I feel it. He’s in denial. Denial of so many things. I can’t force it. I won’t force it.
The doors open and he holds them for me.
“You don’t have to give me anything, just don’t give up on yourself.”
Chapter forty-six
My hands are trembling as I reach for the buttons and press P as the doors softly close.
TJ’s were rock solid. Mine are trembling.
What did I just do?
I have a violin in my hands for the first time in months. It feels…. weird. But holding TJ’s hands against it with mine. That was nice.
I step into my apartment and head over to the windows. I place the violin on the table so I can open the curtains. I hate dark rooms. I closed the curtains when I left to go to my parents, not expecting to be back for a while.
Then I stare at the violin. I pick it up again. It’s never felt so strange in my hands. Not even the first time I picked it up as a kid. It always felt like part of me. An extension of me. I was born to play it. But today. Today it was the fear I’ve had since the accident realized.
I place it under my chin and lift the bow to play. Moving the fingers of my left hand along the strings feels so awkward. Watching my fingers, they don’t seem to want to go where I try to place them. Like my brain is speaking a language my fingers no longer understand.
Fuck.
