The keys move beneath my fingers without any thought at all.
The melody pours out of me in a way that’s never happened before. Notes tangle with each other until I can almost see them in the air, twisting, entwining.
This is perfect. So perfectly her.
“Kit?”
Shit.
I nearly trap my hand as I slam the fallboard down. “Stasi.”
When I twist, she’s right fucking there, watching me with those eyes that follow me into my dreams. Every night since she’s arrived.
I’ve never felt so exhausted, and yet so exhilarated, as I have since Anastasia walked into this house. As though I’ve been waiting for her my entire life, to finally feel something.
Her brown eyes blink, and I take in the cotton pajamas she’s wearing as she fiddles with the sleeves.
“Did I wake you?”
She shakes her head.
It’s late. Later than I should be playing, but I couldn’t help myself. I woke up from yet another dream of her, and I had to come down here and play, push the melody from inside my head out through my hands until it became real. Tangible.
Almost as real as the girl in front of me.
She pushes her hair away from her face, and my eyes flick to it.
“I’ve never seen you with your hair down.”
She always has it tied back. She’s always moving, always climbing, running, chasing, laughing. The only time I ever see her quiet is in those moments that belong to her and Silas, curled up on the floor of the upstairs hallway as though that space belongs solely to them.
Not that I’m jealous.
Not of Silas, and not of Rafe.
My twin, her partner in crime, in mischief.
My brothers are happier than I’ve ever seen them. As though we’ve found our missing piece, and it was her. She fits with them.
But she fits with me too.
Her cheeks darken. She reaches up as if to tie it back, and I jerk a hand out in a plea. “Don’t.”
Our eyes meet. “Leave it down,” I breathe. “Please.”
And slowly, her hand lowers. She shifts on her feet, and I follow her gaze. To the piano.
“Play for me, Kit?” Her voice is hoarse. “I can’t sleep.”
She moves towards me slowly, and I shift to make space for her on the stool as she slides in next to me. “Bad dreams?”
She nods, her movement jerky. “Make me forget.”
I want to ask her about her dreams. I want to draw out her secrets and hoard them, banish them so they don’t put those circles under her eyes, but I sense her reluctance to talk about them.
So instead, I raise the fallboard, revealing the keys.
And as I set my fingers to them, the black and white moving in perfect synchronicity beneath my hands, I show her myself instead.
As though I’m opening up my chest, offering it to her.
Here I am. Waiting for you.
I breathe in sharply as she lays her head against my shoulder, a note jarring as my fingers slip off a key. “Sorry.”
“It’s beautiful,” she murmurs. “Did you write this?”
“For you.”
My confession drops between us, as she lifts her head from my shoulder to look up at me. I glance down, taking in the light in her tawny gaze. “I wrote this for you.”
I watch her face closely, even as my fingers dance across the keys for her. And it feels like a gut punch when a tear appears, sliding down her face as she drops her eyes to her lap.
I immediately lift my fingers from the keys, but her hands quickly press down over mine, even as she shakes her head with a tearful laugh.
“No. Ignore me. Keep going, Kit. This is… it’s beautiful. And I want to remember it.”
Slowly, I start back up again. “I’ll play it for you any time you want me to.”
So I play.
Hell, I’d play forever if she asked me to.
And Stasi rests her head back against my shoulder, warm and vibrant and here. Even as she feels like she’s slipping through my fingers.
I don’t ask.
And the tears… they don’t stop.
