Dirty Secret (The Burke Brothers #1)(47)
Author: Emma Hart

It’s not about hearing him sing.

It’s about feeling him.

I know the song. It’s our song. It was an acoustic melody on the beach before it was an LA-recorded hit. It was his heart and my soul before it was America’s latest teenage jam.

It was something.

It is something.

And I listen. As he tells me his heart beats for me the way I breathe for him, I listen. As he sings to me how his skin vibrates at my touch, I listen to him describe how mine buzzes for him.

And I’m nineteen. All over again, I’m a teenage girl, falling hopelessly in love with a guy with a guitar.

I’m just a girl, falling innocently in love with someone who’s just a boy.

I close my eyes and fall away with the melody. He’d hum it so often. Finally I let myself remember. I let myself recollect how he’d hum random parts whenever our hug would last a minute too long. I let myself feel how he’d sing my name without saying it, and how every syllable of his unspoken words would cascade through me like a never-ending love song.

But the melody changes and I don’t know it anymore. It’s new, and the words are raw, untouched by me, and my heart aches.

Seasons pass and feelings change, but don’t you know we’re still the same,

I still want you the way I did before, I still want you the way you wanted me,

I deny it ’cause it hurts, I fight it ’cause it burns,

But I want everythin’ you have to give . . . Give to me . . .

’Cause forever ain’t the same, without your touch . . .

It’s a surplus gain, an endless pain . . .

I push the door open. “It’s a forbidden gain,” I say softly. “ ‘Surplus’ is too fancy. ‘Forbidden’ works better.”

Conner stops playing and looks back at me.

I walk into the garage, letting the door close behind me, and take his notebook in my hands.

“ ‘Forever’s just a dream, something to imagine . . . Don’t deny me ’cause it hurts, don’t fight it ’cause it burns, you know you want me . . .’ ” I swallow, saying the words the way he’d sing them. “ ‘I’ll give you everythin’, all I got to give, if you give to me . . .’ ”

I pause, running my eyes over the words. Apart from the correction I already made, there’s nothing wrong with these words.

He’s always thought it was easy for me to tear his words apart, but he couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s hard. Like tearing a part of his soul just to mend it again.

“Well?”

I shrug heavily. “That’s it. Just that one word.”

Aidan’s drum kit is in the corner, and I walk to it. I sit on the stool and twirl the drumsticks between my fingers. Slowly, I knock them against the drums.

Conner’s eyes are on me.

I look up, a smirk playing with my lips. “I’m good, no?” I spin the right drumstick and drop it. “Shit. Aidan never got past teaching me to drum roll.”

I shrug and perform said drum roll. The low drum vibrates through the garage and I celebrate with a ba-dum-tish. Yeah, I still got it, baby. I still got it.

Conner fights his smile as he looks at me. “All right, princess. What beats are you putting with the lyrics?”

I hold the drumsticks up. “I can only do a ba-dum-tish. I’ve heard better beats driving over potholes.”

He laughs. “Okay, okay. A forbidden gain, right?”

“Right.” I set the sticks down.

Conner looks at me, his lips twitching, then gives his attention back to his notepad. His lips move silently, forming the words on the paper. His head nods along with the beat, and I slowly walk to the door.

He looks peaceful despite the torment in his eyes. As he mutters the lyrics silently, I watch a little of his stress leave him.

“Conner?”

“What?”

I run my tongue across my lips. “Come to bed.”

“It’ll be there in the morning.” He turns back to the paper, dismissing me.

I storm across the garage to him and snatch the notepad. I throw it against the wall behind me and it hits it with a loud thud before falling to the ground. Pages are bent and maybe a little ripped, but I don’t care.

“What the fuck, Sof?”

I reach forward and grab the pen. “I’m not letting you sleep on the sofa.”

He tugs back, not letting it go. “I said I’m fine. I’m working, anyway.”

“Goddammit, Conner! I’m tellin’ you to come to bed, so do it!” I yank hard.

He stumbles and stands, still gripping the pen like it’s holding him steady.

Then he’s there, in front of me, right in front of me, a breath away, a touch too close. He inhales slowly and looks down at me. I should move, let go of the pen, but I can’t, so I don’t. I stand, my eyes finding his, my heart pounding inside my chest.

I swallow. Neither of us moves. We just stare. Tension zings. Silence screams. Fingers twitch. Jaws clench. Lips part.

His eyes bore into mine so harshly and so intimately I can feel his gaze everywhere. It doesn’t matter if he’s not looking anywhere but my eyes. It doesn’t matter that the rest of me is untouched by those indigo eyes.

I feel this gaze crawling over my skin. I feel it tickling my hairs until they stand on end and teasing my flesh until it pebbles into a million tiny goose bumps. I feel it tightening my chest and warming me through my veins.

But my heart feels it most. It feels the sear of it until it stops beating completely, then thumps almost. Blood rushes through my body until the pulse is screaming in my ears and I’m hot everywhere.

If it wasn’t held in by my ribs, it would break free.

“Fine.” Conner says the word softly, slicing through the silence.

He steps back, lets go of the pen, and turns. Just like that, everything stops. The pounding and the warmth, it ends.

In a second, I go from feeling more vibrant and alive than I ever have to a state of mere existence.

I watch him go through the door. The stairs creak as he goes up them, each broken sound a torture device created especially for me.

I throw the pen, too. I hear it as the plastic cracks, and I feel oddly happy.

Good. Something else hurts like I do.

I close the door behind me more quietly than I’d like and walk upstairs. I squeeze into his bedroom through a tiny space in the doorway and push it shut slowly behind me. Mila’s sleeping peacefully, and a tiny snore leaves her when I step on a creaky floorboard.

I try not to look as Conner pulls his shirt over his head, but I do. I glance at his tattoo, curving over the back of his shoulder and across his shoulder blade. I trace the line of his spine, a perfect line down the center of his back, surrounded by well-toned muscle.