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THE NEXT MORNING, I stared at my ceiling for far too long, wondering if I’d made up the conversation on the beach last night, or if I had actually agreed to write a song with Sebastian Fell.

God, I hoped it was a dream. I could almost convince myself that it was.

Except, if I willed the conversation to be a dream, then the kiss had to be, too.

And it had seriously been a good kiss—and that was the worst part, because we absolutely could not do that again.

Being in my head was bad enough, but feeling everything he felt, too?

Being seen so thoroughly it shook my very bones?

That was a kind of intimacy I didn’t want, didn’t need.

I didn’t even know what I was made of at my center; I certainly didn’t want a stranger to figure it out first.

Besides, nothing good ever came from sleeping with your cowriter. Not that I was thinking about that, because I wasn’t .

“What’s wrong with me?” I murmured, grabbing my comforter and pulling it over my head. I curled into a ball on my side. “It wasn’t that good,” I told myself. “It was just meh. He barely put any effort into it.”

Lies, all lies. Because if it was the truth, I wouldn’t feel my cheeks heat in a blush every time I thought about the way he anchored my head, the scent of bergamot that still lingered on my skin.

I felt like a schoolgirl with a crush.

I hated it. All of it.

What I hated more was how, because of Gigi, I knew so much about him.

That he was the bad boy of Renegade, the one no self-respecting mother would allow to date their kid.

That after he’d wrapped his Corvette around a telephone pole he spent months in the hospital.

That he faded into obscurity, appearing in brand deals and D-list reality shows, chasing something . Or maybe running away from something.

Who knows , I thought, and then froze, wondering if he could hear me right now. Are you in my head? Sebastian?

No answer.

I sighed in relief, thinking he must still be asleep, but it was short-lived.

“I thought you’d want some privacy with your thoughts,” he said.

I winced. “Oops.”

“No, no. Your opinions are perfectly valid. Though, I wouldn’t call Celebrity Bachelor a D-list reality show …”

I rolled my eyes and pushed myself up in bed. I wasn’t going to get more sleep. Outside, I heard Dad crank up his old lawn mower. It came to life with an exhausted growl, rattling the picture frames on the walls. “You were a guest in one episode. I hardly count that.”

“Ouch! I gave Riley Madds some great advice, thank you.”

He did? I didn’t remember. Gigi loved reality shows, so in order to feel closer to each other, we’d talk on the phone while watching some super-tan Prince Charming award roses to starry-eyed women.

I didn’t really see the appeal—most of the couples ended up breaking up months after the show, anyway—but Gigi was obsessed.

She loved how it was all so incredibly fake, but fake in the way that Disney World was fake: manufactured romance, packaged up and sold to the audience for the low, low price of an hour of your time a week.

“And what was that great advice?” I asked, pulling my hair back into a bun as I left my room and made my way down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Oh, just how you know when you’re in love.”

“Ah,” I replied, breezing into the kitchen. Mom had left a note for me on the counter—she’d gone to the grocery store, and there was frittata in the fridge.

So I took it out and popped it in the microwave. I couldn’t imagine anyone’s advice being helpful there, since the art of falling in love felt more like Russian roulette to most people. I leaned against the counter, watching the frittata on the plate go round and round. “And what did you tell him?”

“It’s easy. You know you’re in love when they are the first person you want to hear in the morning and the last person before you go to bed. My mom told me that once, and I just never forgot it.”

That surprised me. “ You told him that?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, bird,” he said admonishingly. “I wasn’t lying when I said I loved a good love song. My mom raised me on Nora Ephron rom-coms and The Princess Bride . Hell, her favorite babysitter was David Bowie in Labyrinth. ”

I laughed at that, imagining his mother—I dunno, someone cool with tattoos and a pixie haircut—sitting a toddler down in front of a TV and putting on a movie about lost babies and goblin kings.

There was a softness to his voice whenever he talked about her—the sort of fondness tinged at the edges with grief.

He never talked about her in the media. I’d always assumed he’d been raised by his dad.

Well, raised was a stretch, since Roman Fell and the Boulevard was in Guinness World Records for Longest World Tour.

“Raised by a romantic,” I said. “I would’ve never guessed. I like her already.”

“She was good,” he said.

I was quiet for a moment, waiting for him to go on. I could tell in his thoughts that he wanted to, memories standing just on the edge of a cliff. I finally asked, “Do you want to talk about her?”

He didn’t answer right away.

The microwave beeped, and I took out my frittata and sat down at the dining room nook facing the bay windows.

Outside, Dad sputtered along on his lawn mower, which belched black smoke into the air.

By the looks of the sharp turns he made, he hadn’t yet fixed the brakes.

And past him, on the waves, was the Marge bobbing up and down, puttering its way toward the pier, where it’d hang out for a few hours while Uncle Rick slung some margaritas and played a few ditties on his keyboard, before the boat took a U-ie and went back home.

“No,” he decided, dragging me out of my thoughts. “Besides, my sad Hallmark childhood isn’t that important.”

He sounded earnest, as if he genuinely thought that, but all the best songs came from the deepest places we could find, the rocks we didn’t want to turn over, the memories we didn’t want to inspect.

My life and experiences felt nebulous right now.

I didn’t know how to hold them down long enough to inspect them, and even if I did …

I wasn’t sure if I was ready to. I didn’t know how to think about Mom and the proverbial storm just ahead.

I didn’t know how to steel myself against the rain.

But Sebastian’s emotions? Sebastian’s history?

Maybe there was something there I could work with, something I could use instead of my own.

“Could you tell me what is important, then?” I asked and waited for a response. “Hello?”

“Do you want to get to work?” he asked instead.

The clock on the microwave read 9:34 a.m. Mom wouldn’t be home for a little while, and Dad still had the front yard to cut. They wouldn’t miss me. “Sure, lemme get dressed and I’ll meet you at the Revelry. Ten o’clock?”

“I’ll see you then,” he replied.

I poured another cup of coffee and put my dish in the sink. So, I thought, this is awkward. I can’t pretend we can willingly disconnect from each other whenever we want.

He sighed tragically. “Yeah, I realized that right after I said ‘See you then.’ I guess we can just acknowledge the silence? Also, what’s your coffee order?”

Why?

“I’m at this café and the barista is looking at me like I’m an alien. I think he’s recognized me.”

I snorted a laugh as I went to get dressed. If it’s Cool Beans, that’s Todd. He’s lovely. Pulling out a Rolling Stones T-shirt from my old dresser drawer, I put it on, and then grabbed my shorts from last night and tied back my hair. And I’ll take a Perfect Woman.

“Oh my god, they have one called Brews Lee!”

Yep.

“And Joe DiMatcha-io. I am in heaven. Bird, this is the best day ever. I’m going to pound back a Perfect Man.”

Rolling my eyes, I went to wash my face, find my flip-flops where I’d kicked them off last night, and sneak the Rev keys from the hook on the wall before Dad came back in from the yard.

FOR A SECOND, I actually thought that writing a song would be easier in person, but as I sat down at the Steinway and ran my fingers across the ivory and midnight keys, I was beginning to doubt that, too.

How did we start? At the beginning, or at the melody? With lyrics or the tune or some other, secret third thing?

“You seem frustrated.”

I spun around on the bench to Sebastian.

He was leaning just so casually against the doorway to the theater, holding two paper cups of coffee.

Today he was in another slick black T-shirt and dark-wash jeans, looking way too cool (well, hot) for small-town Vienna Shores.

The idea of his closet distressed me, probably lined with the exact same shirt twenty times, and the same dark jeans folded neatly beside them.

He knew they looked good on him. I’d bet he paid a stylist to tell him the exact shade of black to buy, the perfect T-shirt, the perfect cut of jeans. He looked untouchable. Shiny.

It was all manufactured, and yet whenever he was around, I felt my entire body tense, like now. I turned back to the keyboard, trying to push the feeling away. It wasn’t nerves. It was something else.

“I’m just working,” I told him, not lying but not telling the truth. “This is just what it looks like when I’m working.”

He made a humming noise deep in his throat, as if he didn’t believe me, and I watched him push off the doorway out of the corner of my eye and cross the theater to the stage.

The way he moved was intoxicating, like he was home in any room he found himself in.

I wondered what that was like. “So where do we start?” he asked, leaning against the lip of the stage, reaching up with my coffee.

I took it and arched an eyebrow. “ We? ”

He shrugged. “ Shocking , I realize, but I do compose occasionally.”

I cocked my head. Was he more a Moleskine sort or a leather-bound journal kind of guy? He seemed a bit too dramatic for—

He frowned. “I can hear you thinking.”