Page 59 of Bribed by the Billionaire Bad Boy

We’re on opposite sides of the stage, singing each about our own cages, apart and in unison as the crescendo builds. We should never be this close.

But, here we are, a mere few inches apart.

Lex’s attention finds me; far too near, intense; and he lifts a hand. When I think he might touch me, caress my skin, do something that a lover might, he flicks one of my braids instead. The song doesn’t stop even if a brush of laughter enters my tone. I nudge him with my shoulder, and pour my heart into the rest of the piece.

When at last the final notes ring out, I breathe into the silence, abuzz. My skin vibrates.

The dark angel beside me releases a soft breath, like he can feel the very same tingles running over his skin that I can. This time when his hand lifts, he does touch me like a lover might. But of course we aren’t lovers. I don’t know what we are or how we’ve even come so far. His fingers skim down my cheek, and a shudder trembles down my spine. Voice tender, he murmurs, “Please tell me you can feel that?”

My heart thumps. Feelwhat?

His hand drops away. “You are so much more than brilliant.”

“I—” An ache builds, tightening. I’m not. I know these songs because I wrote them. I wrote them in the corner of my room on the floor no less. I wrote themfor myself. Of course I can manage them well. “This is nothing.”

He laughs. “The most astonishing thing about you is the fact you believe that, sugar.”

All too soon, he’s standing, stuffing his hands in his pockets, trailing away. “Our muffins are burning,” he half-sings, and I shoot up.

“What?” I scramble to put the lid down over the keys and rush after him. “Don’t joke about that. I’ll cry. I’ll seriously cry. We’d have to make them again. I am not leaving here without muffins.”

He snorts. “Your priorities are the best.”

I’m trembling. My heartbeat races, flooding my veins with fire. How he manages tugging me along so effortlessly really isn’t fair. It’s not fair at all.

But maybe, just maybe, if it’s with him, this strange power of his will be enough. Enough to make me more. Enough to overcome people like Agatha. At least for opening night.

I feel it, Lex.

I feel it.

But only with you.

Lex

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know what to do with the information or the realization when it hits me, in the shadows, on the bench by her side.

It’s a foreign sensation entirely, and it’s a contradiction in and of itself.

Fear and peace.

Hot and cold.

Longing and loneliness.

From the first moment, I rushed in and fell, embracing a pattern I’ve known all my life. A pattern that took me from three weeks of piano, to a month of violin, to four days of coding, to two of French.

It’s a pattern that’s never reliable. A pattern I’ve never scorned until it led me to something I don’t want to end.

Twelve weeks of her.

I, Lex Hawthorn, am in love.

For however long it might last.

Calypso