Page 26 of What He Never Knew
“I’m a little curious,” I confessed. “But, if I’m being honest, I’m just glad to be out of the house.”
“Do you have any friends here?”
I shrugged. “I knew a few people when I was younger, kids I used to play with when we’d come visit at holidays. But none of them still live here. They’re all in college.”
I swallowed at that, my stomach twisting uncomfortably.Ishould have been away at college, too. I should have been graduating, with my sights set on higher education in New York.
I should have been so many things that I wasn’t, and I tried to pretend like that didn’t bother me.
“It must be hard,” Reese said, glancing at me over his right shoulder. “Being away from your family and friends.”
I didn’t return his gaze. “I don’t really have friends to miss back home,” I said, voice low. The unanswered texts and calls from Reneé weighed heavy in the phone I’d tucked in my back pocket, and they all begged to differ. “I miss my mom, though. She’s more like my best friend than my parent.”
I paused, sadness creeping in as a warm breeze blew up from the mountain. I shook it off as quickly as it had come, letting it float away with the wind.
“But, I’m here for a purpose,” I continued. “I want to be here. I have my eyes on the prize, and I know this is just a step on the ladder that will take me there.”
It sounded so cliché, the way I spoke about my dream. I didn’t know how to explain how badly I wanted it, how badly Ineededto be in New York City, to play at Carnegie, to do everything I said I’d do before my wolf had changed my entire life. How could I convey that feeling, that physicalneedto excel despite what had happened to me? It wasn’t just to prove my wolf wrong, or to rise up against the odds… it was to have purpose, to have something that made me feel alive again.
I was so tired of just feeling like a walking corpse, waiting to die.
Reese nodded, like he really understood as he pulled his gaze back to the city again. “Well, that’s part of why I brought you up here.”
It was my turn to look at him, though he kept his eyes cast toward the skyline. He was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again, as if he wasn’t certain what to say now that he had my attention.
“As beautiful as this view is,” he finally said. “This is a painful place for me to be.”
He swallowed, the motion visible in the constriction of his throat.
“If I were a pragmatic, normal human being, I wouldn’t ever come here. Ever. Because every time I do, it hurts. I mean, there is thisphysicalpain in the center of my chest standing up here,” he said, hand splaying over his chest to illustrate. “Like someone has their fist inside my rib cage, fingers wrapped around my heart in a vise grip.”
I frowned. “Why would you come here, then?”
“Because,” he answered, his hand slowly falling back to the railing. I thought that was the only explanation he was going to give, but after a long pause, he continued. “I’mnota normal, pragmatic human being. And neither are you.” He glanced at me briefly before gazing at the city again. “We’re artists. We’re musicians. We’re…” He sighed, shaking his head. “We’re not destined to run from our misery, we’re destined to bathe in it — and to somehow find a way to make it beautiful.”
I leaned a hip on the railing, shifting until my entire body faced him, but I didn’t know what to say. That heavy presence I’d felt when we first made it up to the incline radiated tenfold, and my heart kicked up a notch, as if it were preparing to fight or fly.
But I didn’t know who or what I’d be flying from.
“I brought you here because you need to understand,” he said, and he shifted until he faced me, too.
When his dark eyes locked on mine, my heart stopped altogether before thumping back to life in a quick gallop to catch up on the beats it had missed.
“In order to play the way you want to play,” he said. “In order to make the dreams you speak of a reality, you’re going to have to go to painful places — to the places you never want to go again.” Reese swallowed. “You’re going to have to look in the mirror at the worst parts of yourself, and at your past, and you’re going to have to get comfortable with the scars you see. No, more than that,” he clarified with a shake of his head. “You’re going to have to get toknoweach scar like it’s a permanent piece of every song you will ever play. Do you understand?”
For the first time since the night I left Bramlock, tears welled in my eyes — but I didn’t know why. It was as if that pain that radiated off Reese had penetrated me, and that vise grip he felt had transferred to my own heart.
My wolf’s eyes flashed in my mind like a bolt of white hot lightning.
“I… I don’t have any of that,” I whispered, mentally shaking him away. “My life has been pretty boring, I don’t really have scars to—”
“I don’t believe that,” Reese interrupted, voice firm. “And you don’t either.”
My mouth zipped shut at that, and I tried to stand taller, but somehow felt rooted so deep I couldn’t even gain an inch of height.
“Watching you play this week, I already know some areas we are going to have to target to help you overcome this injury and get to where you want to be.” Reese leaned one elbow on the railing, holding out his fingers and counting them off with his other hand. “Tension. Technique. Inflection.” He paused. “You know all those things, too. Those are the easy lessons, the ones you can go home and practice and see a gradual improvement in each week.”
Reese faced me, the warmth of his breath mixing with the night air that brushed my nose. There was a bright moon above us, and it cast his face in a haunting mix of glow and shadows, light and dark.