“You want to get Zeke’s attention?” he drawls, grinning. “Close the fall showcase.”
I’ve been so focused on getting my contract back and getting out of Vanier I haven’t stopped to think about what to do if I stay this semester.
It’s a big deal. Everyone gets written up in the media, and whoever is selected to close gets a ten-grand honorarium.
“It’s not the worst idea,” I tell him.
“I’m full of ‘em today. Really getting into this mentoring thing. My girl’s a peach. And cute.” My spine stiffens as he continues. “I know you said not to go there, but Ty, you met her. She’s fucking adorable. And that voice... I wanna record her saying my name when she comes.”
I step closer, my chest tightening. “She’s not your girl.” The words are out before I can stop them.
His grin turns smug. “She came to me needing something today. I gave it to her.”
“What exactly did you give her?”
Before Beck can answer, the sound of applause echoes as performers change.
I glance at the girl taking the stage and freeze an inch from pummeling my roommate.
Even twenty feet from the stage, Annie’s dark-rimmed eyes seem to reach straight into my soul.
Her hair’s dark and waving over her shoulders. I stopped dying my hair, and she started.
She’s wearing high-heeled boots and tight jeans and a shirt—if you can call it a shirt—that pushes up her breasts and stops halfway down her stomach.
My abs clench hard.
I can’t decide which part is most responsible for my reaction: the long line of her legs or the soft shadowed dip between her breasts or the slick lips, shiny as if she’s been sucking on them.
She looks ripe, like fruit you’ve been impatiently waiting to soften, telling yourself it’s not time yet.
Annie lifts a guitar over her head, and Beck whistles admiringly.
“What do you know? My manatee talked herself into a slot at Leo’s. I tell you, Ty, this girl might be it for me.”
“Put your dick back in.” My quick retort surprises both of us.
The woman on the stage isn’t the girl I fell for two years ago. It should be comforting to know that.
Instead, it’s disconcerting as hell.
A body bumps mine, a girl blinking at me with apology and thinly veiled invitation. I barely notice, shoving my hands in my pockets as my gaze locks on the stage.
Beck’s watching me, though his phone’s trained on the stage. “You want her too.”
“That’s bullshit.” I shove both hands through my hair, trying to fight the discomfort clawing at my insides.
“Look at you. You’re a mess.”
The woman whose hair sways as she bends the strings of the guitar, fingers picking the opening chords of a song, isn’t the girl I fell for.
Which means Annie’s gone.
After leaving Dallas, I consoled myself with the fact that she was still intact somewhere, like a dragonfly in amber—the earnest girl with a disarming smile who’d bleed because that’s what we’re meant to do.
But she’s not, and before I can process the churning in my gut at that realization, the woman on stage starts to sing.
Annie always had the kind of voice you wanted to listen to all day. This is lower, sultrier. It’s an invitation and a promise, and it wraps around my spine, drags down.
Annie Jamieson just grabbed my cock in the middle of this bar.
My confusion’s gone, squashed by something more deliberate.
The fact that she’s here, that she’s changed, that she can still turn me on without even touching me, pisses me off.
Beck hollers, and I ignore him, cutting through the half-drunk crowd to backstage.
“Wasn’t sure you were coming.” The woman who runs open mic night looks at her list. “You want in after her?”
I glance at Annie. “Next one.”
I stalk to the edge of the stage. At this new angle, I can see Annie swaying with her own music, the spell she's weaving on the faces of the crowd.
Tightness works through my gut. We’re going to talk about this right the fuck now.
How she’s here. Why she’s here.
Why the fact that she’s here is affecting me so goddamn much.
My gaze lands on the small silver handbag sitting on an unused speaker. It’s familiar, and I reach for it.
When Annie comes off stage, beaming and sweating from the spotlight, her attention goes to the speaker. “Where’s my—”
I hold up the bag, and her eyes flash. When she swipes for the bag, it falls between us, the contents spilling out.
“What are you doing here?” she demands as we both drop to the ground. She reaches for her phone, her face a breath away from mine.
“Leo’s is my place. I should be asking you the same thing.” I retrieve one of the cards and hold it up in the half light. “It almost looks like you. This you. Whoever she is.”
I grab her bag and straighten. She rises too, her gaze lingering on the purse in my hands as if I might run away with it.
“What would your dad say if he could see you like this?” I press.
Annie’s close enough I see her breasts heaving under her low-cut top. “I don’t care.”
I’m not even mad at her. I’m mad at me, at the way she affects me still, at the fact that I left her for my dreams but also so the sweet, smart girl I craved like a drug could grow up without my influence.
But she’s not here. That girl is gone.
“Besides,” she goes on, “he doesn’t know everything that happens in the world.”
A single piece in a twisted puzzle clicks into place. “He doesn’t know you’re here.”
There’s a hint of panic in those eyes, a vulnerability I catalogue, memorize.
I feel the power shift between us, like I’m suddenly gaining the upper hand.
“Where does he think you are?” I ask.
She looks like she wants to deny me, but there’s no point lying. I can find out.
“Columbia.”
The next act on stage is playing something down tempo. Now that she’s close, I smell her. She’s memories and dreams, gold and glory, and parts of me that were dead five minutes ago suddenly ache.
“You shouldn’t be so surprised to see me,” she goes on. “You saw me at auditions. Couldn’t believe I’d actually get in?”
It’s my turn to be back on my heels. “I thought I imagined you.”
Her brows pull together. “Why would you do that?”
I don’t fucking know. Because I wanted you here?
“Whatever,” she says, realizing I’m not going to answer. “Give my bag back.”
I open it and tuck the license back in. When I do, my fingers close on the round glass shape on a chain. I lift it high between us. When the glass flashes in the light, my gut twists.
Hard.
The pendant is flat, cut in the shape of a heart. At first, I think it’s purple glass, but when I look closer, I see it’s two pieces of clear glass edged with dull gold binding the edges together around the dark-purple thing inside it.
To preserve it.
I can’t place it, but familiarity and nostalgia wash over me in uninvited waves.
“What is this?” I demand.