Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Double gah. I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear that.
I walk across the quiet, dark lounge to the piano of my dreams. The bench isn’t anything special, but the second I set my fingers on the keys, the slightly cool surface so smooth against my fingertips, I know I’m a goner.
“Wait.”
“Ahhhh!” I leap up and spin around, half expecting the piano police to be right behind me, ready to haul my ass for even daring to sully such a gorgeous work of art.
“Sorry!” He puts his hands up in an innocent don’t jump out of your skin, we’re all good gesture. “I just thought…I…don’t know your name. And I wanted to.”
It’s cute how he hesitates and starts again, almost as though he’s nervous too. It brings him crashing down from his god status in my brain to something near a regular human level.
“Bellatrix.” Yeah, I probably should have made something up, but I’m not a good liar, and knowing me, I’d probably pick something like Brunhilda or Patrick Pantigon Partridgenificant The Third.
“Bellatrix,” he repeats, rolling my name over his tongue. Of course, he makes it sound as magical as the word itself implies. He motions to the piano. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Please. Sit down. I’ll control any further outbursts.”
I arrange myself back on the bench. Immediately, I’m lost to the world.
Almost.
I should have asked him his name, but I can’t do that now. Maybe after.
I don’t forget that he’s there watching me. I mean, my lady boner certainly doesn’t, but I lose my self-consciousness.
In a single lifetime, I’m pretty sure we only get one magical experience, and that’s if we’re lucky. I’m going to enjoy the shit out of mine.
How did the worst night of my life just turn into one of the best?
Chapter three
Rowleigh
Is this real?
The thought beats my brain into a near-mushy pulp as Bellatrix’s hands fly over the piano’s keys, creating the most haunting, beautiful melody. It’s the kind of music that wraps its long, lean fingers around your soul. It’s reminiscent of all memories. Good and bad. Poignant and sweet, painful and bruised. The memory of the past and the memories that have yet to be made.
I’m sure this is her own work. I wonder if it’s something she wrote or if she’s just hammering it out as she goes along, a revelation of her soul in the most intuitive way she can offer up. Music is the language of the senses. It’s ethereal and magical.
Like her.
Tall and stately, she holds herself with a natural poise and grace that was noticeable from the moment she walked into the lounge. She was hesitant, and the shadows under her red-rimmed eyes belied the calm she presented. She’d said she was having a terrible night, but her bravery was obvious despite the stooped slump of her shoulders.
All of that fled the second she sat down at the piano. It was not just her hands that worked the magic. The piano itself was like another dimension. Passing through it stripped it down to just the music. Nothing else existed.
I’m lulled into a trance of forgetting, washed clean like having a good cry. There’s no business and no money. For just this moment, I haven’t sold my soul for the connections it brought or the empire that opened up before me. I’m not that man, ruthlessly driven because there’s nothing else in the world. I’m not a bad father who would give anything to not have his daughter hate him. My past isn’t the timeless tale of a love that didn’t work out and ended too soon, leaving the injured party spiraling. I’m not the man who was never taught how to love but wanted so desperately to do it and still failed. I’m not nearing forty but still utterly alone at the heart of myself despite a world that seems so full.
I’m out from behind the bar before I know what I’m doing. My feet take me silently across the room, the music hooking strings into my soul and winding me in.
Halfway across the room, the magic seems stronger. It undoes the years, the layers, the heartache, the grief, and the ambition that I’ve used as a shield and as a poor bandage slapped across a life that will never be whole again.
Bellatrix’s back is perfectly straight, her posture immaculate, but as I edge around to the side, I can see that her eyes are closed.
Her. Eyes. Are. Closed.
She doesn’t even have to look at the keys to pull such haunting, lovely notes from them. Her body doesn’t move, but her hands fly, her fingers caressing the keys like a lover.
Just then, her lids flutter open, her head turning. She paralyzes me with the power of her soft hazel eyes as the shadows of the room play over her face. Her hands don’t stop, but it’s clear that though she’d surrendered herself, she was also fully aware of my movements.