The girl could play. Like really play. And react. And improvise. And create.
No one had ever shocked the hell out of me the way Echo Mansfield had just done. I played it cool, but inside? Inside, I was mesmerized. I was under a spell I didn’t see coming. Her hands, so delicate, her fingers nimble and quick, the fall of her hair across her shoulders, and the way she bit her bottom lip when she was concentrating. All of it pulled me in and made me wonder why the hell she’d been hiding.
We ran over the song I’d been working on for the last two days and nailed the ending. She was right. The D minor was perfect. It lent that little bit of melancholy I’d been missing. Then I tossed her the lyrics I’d written.
“What are these?” She shot me a questioning look and grabbed the notebook.
“What do they look like?”
“Don’t be a dick.” She made a face and studied the words. “What do you want me to do with these?”
I began playing. “Sing them. Make them work.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not…” She shook her head and would have put the guitar down, but I stopped her cold.
“You tone deaf?”
“No.”
“Got laryngitis?”
“Seriously?” She sighed and settled back a bit. It took every fucking thing in me not to stare at her chest. Trust me, it was hard. I could see the outline of her nipples, the soft pink of them, and I suddenly wondered what she was wearing underneath my sleep pants.
“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Why are we doing this? Why do you want me to do this?”
“Humor me. Come up with the melody while I play.” I paused. “Unless I’m too intimidating. Unless you’re too scared.”
“As if.” She glared at me and practically growled, “Play the damn song.”
I hid a smile—didn’t want to piss her off too much—and began to play. I’d written the music around a bunch of lyrics I’d scribbled in my notebook over a year ago. It had been at the end of a long tour, and I was missing my place in Tennessee. The gas tank was empty, and I felt like I had nothing left to give. I’d ended a relationship that sucked, but instead of feeling good about it, I felt nothing. Whiskey and pills had been a staple of my diet, and I’m not proud to admit I dabbled in a lot of each. I’d been in a bad place, and the lyrics were about finding a way out. About me finding my way back. I thought I had the song down, but I’d always felt like I was missing something.
Maybe Echo was the key to making the song work.
I ran through the intro and played a few more chords before she joined in. And let me tell you, I think the world damn near stopped turning. I’d never heard Echo sing, but she had the same whiskey-soaked vocal cords that her dad did. The same ear for notes and feel and cadence. I listened to her wrap her talent around my words and music, and something inside me broke apart. It splintered into a hundred million pieces of light. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Echo Mansfield made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope. Wonder. Excitement.
I closed my eyes, and she took me on a ride, my fingers making the music, her voice making magic. I joined in on the last bit, our voices harmonized like they were making goddamn love to each other.
I only want to breathe again
To close my eyes and sleep
But in the dark of midnight
My soul it just won’t keep
If only I could find my way back
And have you in my arms
I’d rest forever in your peace
And shelter from the storm
She let the last note resonate until we both faded to nothing. I set down my guitar and got to my feet. I moved past her into the kitchen. Went to the fridge and grabbed two beers. I tossed her a bottle, took a good long gulp of the one in my hand, and leaned against the counter. I stared at her as the minutes ticked by, long enough to finish half my beer. Long enough to really look at her.
Echo was dummied down. She wore no makeup, and her skin glowed. Her full mouth was red, her cheeks heated. Her hair fell in a long tangle of waves nearly to her waist. And damn but my clothes were a good look on her. She’d surprised the hell out of me, and it had been years since anyone had managed that.
I studied her for a few more moments, until the silence became a heavy thing. “When do you have the time?” I asked finally, draining my beer and setting the empty bottle on the counter.
“Time for what?” She spoke so low, I barely heard her.
“To learn. To grow. To do what you just did. To do something real. Something that makes a difference.”
I took a step forward, but then thought better of it and shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “I mean, between all the selfies and Instagram and Twitter and vacations and parties, I don’t how you find the time for anything that isn’t plastic.”
“Who are you to judge me?”
“I’m not judging.” And I wasn’t. I was curious.
Her eyes narrowed. “You think I’m shallow.”
“Yeah. I do.” From what I knew about her, she lived for social media and nothing else. A week ago? I wouldn’t have given a damn. But something had just changed. And her lack of desire to do anything with her life pissed me off. Maybe I should have taken a closer look at that—my reaction. Maybe I should have wondered why I cared. But right now, in this moment, I was real curious to hear her answer.
She got to her feet, and I saw her anger. “You don’t know me at all.”
“Fill me in.” I took another step forward, a new, raw energy sliding over my body and fueling a recklessness that usually got me into trouble. “Tell me what it is you do with all your time. Lyric is at Berklee, and Harmony—”
“We’re not doing this, Boyd.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to. Because my family isn’t something I’m going to discuss with you. Because I don’t like you. Because it’s none of your business.”
“You’re in my space now, so it kinda is.” She was pissed, and the air practically crackled with whatever the hell it was going on between us.
She moved closer, close enough to thump me in the chest.
“This isn’t your space.”
“We could argue that all night and never agree. So let’s skip that shit, shall we?” I leaned forward. “Who else knows you can sing like that? And play guitar?”
She blinked and would have moved away, but I grabbed her arm and held her close. She was breathing fast and hard, and when she licked those damn lips of hers, my focus shifted. Suddenly, I didn’t give a flying fuck about her answer. Suddenly, I wanted to scoop her up and put my hands and mouth on her. I wanted to taste her secret places, the ones that existed in my memory.
Shit. Fuck. Damn. This wasn’t good.
“Why do you care?” she rasped.
Taking a deep breath, I let her go and ran my hands through my hair. I was losing it and needed to regroup.
“You’re sitting on the kind of talent that most entertainers would sell their soul to the devil for. And no one knows about it. Your father is Axel Mansfield, and he sure as shit should know.”
“We are not bringing my father into this.” Her voice was ragged, and her anger intensified. I knew I needed to back off that one.
“Okay, let’s take Axel out of the equation.” I shook my head because I was stumped. “Why doesn’t anyone know?”
“I don’t—” She backed away. “Lyric is the one pursuing music. She’s got the chops. I just… I’m not…” She stammered a bit and then was silent.
It was then I realized she had no clue that she was so damn good. She doesn’t know. And that blew my mind. I found myself thinking things I probably shouldn’t, but then part of me was like, why the hell not?
“Let’s write some songs together,” I said in a rush, watching her closely.
Her head shot up. “What?” She made a weird sound and took another step back. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that for once in your life, you can do something real. I’m saying that, from what I can tell, we’re stuck here for at least another couple of days. We can spend that time doing something creative, or we can hang out in bed.” I winked. “I’m open to both if that works.”
Now she was really pissed, and I kinda liked it.
“You’re still such an asshole. You know what me and my sisters called you when our parents first hooked up?”
I closed the distance between us, but she didn’t back away. In fact, she thumped me in the chest again.
“Fucking hot?”
She made a sound that sounded primal. “Mister Dick.”
“That’s not very nice.” I grinned.
“Bodhi was the nice one.”
“Bodhi was a kid.” My brother was still a kid to me, even though he was in his last year of college.
“We’re not having sex,” she said flatly. “If you were the last man on the—”
“Yeah, I figured that was a long shot. So now that sex is off the table, let’s write some songs.”
She still didn’t get it. “Why?”
“Why not?” I shrugged. “What are you afraid of, Echo? There’s no one here but me and you and a whole lotta time on our hands. We don’t like each other all that much, but that doesn’t mean we can’t write some amazing stuff. When’s the last time you did something that wasn’t staged or planned or meant to be provocative? Let’s be provocative, but from the well of creation. Not some plastic photo aimed to snag a million likes.”
“Twenty million,” she shot back.
“What?”
“The most likes I’ve ever gotten from a photo.” Her eyes flashed. “And just so you know, I was holding a puppy and promoting animal adoption.”
“In a bikini, no doubt.”
“Actually, I was naked.”
“Of course you were.”
She ignored that one and stared up at me for a good five seconds before cocking her head. “I’ll spend tomorrow with you working on music if…” She narrowed her eyes. “If you tell me why you broke things off the way you did. That summer at the plantation.”
I dropped my eyes and hid a groan. Shit. She wanted to go there?
“What good would that do?” I asked. “It’s history.”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t move away either. I knew her well enough to know she wasn’t going to let this go. I also knew that maybe it was time to clear the air. I wouldn’t get into her dad’s threats, but I could give up my brother no problem. “Bodhi found out about us and threatened to tell Brit.”
“Who’s Brit?”
Here’s the part where I really looked like an asshole. I cleared my throat and shrugged. “My girlfriend.”
Her mouth dropped open, and I knew hell was about to rain down on me.
“Your girlfriend?” she spat, thumping me again. “You had a girlfriend the whole time you were fucking me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never asked.” She opened her mouth—to yell, no doubt—but I plowed forward. “Look, I was two weeks shy of eighteen and pissed off, and you were in my face twenty-four seven. I didn’t want to be on some plantation out in the middle of nowhere because my mom decided to marry Axel. I had a life in Los Angeles. Friends. And yeah, Brit was part of that. I know it was a dick move not to say anything, but if we’re being really honest here, you were the one after me. Christ, you were relentless.”
“I was not.” But she knew the truth. I saw it in her face.
“How many times did you walk into the bathroom when I was in the shower? Wearing nothing but your bra and a thong? How many times did you sit across from me at dinner with your tits nearly falling out a bikini top?” I leaned forward. “Who made the first move? It wasn’t me. You came to my room that first night. You stood by my bed as I watched and took off your clothes. Do you remember? We didn’t say one word to each other. You crawled on top of me, kissed me until I didn’t know up from down, and then you rode me like a fucking pro. I didn’t know you were a virgin until the next morning when you told me.
“By then, it was too late. You were like a fever I couldn’t break. Those weeks…it was different from anything I’d felt up until then. I backed off because it was so goddamn intense. And because I was a stupid kid. I broke things off cold turkey and moved on.”
“Do you know how that made me feel?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
I glared at her as fresh memories washed over me. “Whatever I did to you…I was a dumb-ass seventeen-year-old kid. But my mom didn’t deserve the way you behaved. You made things unbearable for her and things went for shit for all of us.”
She stared at me for a good long while without saying anything, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of this. Seriously. What the hell were we doing? I was just about to let her off the hook when she spoke quietly. “Guess I better rest my vocal cords.”
And just like that, the game changed.
She turned and headed for the bedroom, leaving me alone to think about a bunch of things I’d rather forget. Mainly, Echo, and the best and worst summer of my life.