Resonance, page 30
“We could skip it.”
“You can’t hate Meatloaf, Dan, he—oh shit!”
I jerked the wheel even as I swept a look over the road in alarm, but there was no danger. “Goddammit,” I muttered. Someday I’d acclimate to his abrupt shifts in thought patterns. Today wasn’t that day.
“I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
I thumbed toward the back seat. “Check my case back there.”
Owen thrust himself into the space between our seats, and I kept an eye on the rearview as he rummaged around until he grabbed something, coming back with the swim trunks I’d bought him hanging from the tip of his index finger.
An amused smile played over the corners of his mouth. “Really?”
“It’s not quite chartreuse, but I figure it’s kin. A cousin, maybe? Half-brother?”
Owen eyed the Day-Glo-orange fabric. People would see him coming from miles away.
“I figured the sharks deserved some warning,” I explained.
“Aren’t sharks attracted to bright things?”
“They’re attracted to thrashing. Possibly excessive jawing.” My lips quirked. “So just keep quiet and move calmly and you’ll be fine.”
“Or…” he proposed, “I’ll just stay close to you, since you’re clearly the meatier morsel between us.”
“Unless one of ’em’s on a diet.”
“You’re a cruel man, Daniel Grim.”
“Yeah? Not feeling the love anymore?” I teased, and he cracked up. “I can’t keep up with your fickle nature.”
Arms folded over the porch rail, Owen studied the shifting blue-green waves in the distance as they battered the dusky bronze shoreline.
I caught the screen door behind me and guided it gently into the frame before coming up behind him and wrapping my arms around him. My body molded to the curve of his, and I rested my chin on his shoulder.
“It’s beautiful. I was gonna try to play it cool, but I can’t. It’s amazing.” He lifted his chin toward the horizon. “Can see the curve of the Earth and everything.”
“Want to go down?”
“In a minute, yeah.” Gulls called and swooped against the late afternoon pink of the sky, and for a handful of seconds, Owen tracked their graceful dives in silence. “Do you think the place where your mom and dad made that record is still there?” He rubbed his smooth cheek against the roughness of mine as he spoke.
“Nah, it’s long gone. I checked.”
“You did?”
“Mm-hmm.” I nodded into his shoulder. “It’s a souvenir place now. Nook Island Emporium.”
“We should go anyway.”
“We will.” I caught his hand in mine. “Come on.”
My planning skills had failed beyond bathing suits. I hadn’t even brought sunblock, and we carried a few beers, some beach towels we discovered in a closet, and our phones to the beach in a grocery sack.
“Ugh,” Owen groaned as his phone buzzed and he checked it. “I told them I was gonna be gone for a couple of days. Don’t they know I’m trying to enjoy the first moments of sand beneath my feet? Although… I have to say I think some has already migrated to a few places I don’t necessarily want it.”
“That’s what the ocean’s for.” I canted my head toward the phone. “And the industry never waits. Just see what they want.”
As Owen took the call, I grabbed a couple of beers from the sack and cracked the tabs, passing him one. He gave me a grateful smile, and as he spoke to his rep I watched his face, how helplessly expressive it was, and grinned to myself. Shortly after I’d gotten back from the tour with Ryder, Owen had begun working exclusively with Soundhouse as a writer, solving our mostly negligible boss-employee quandary. Though not before we’d exploited its upsides to obscene and excessive degrees, playing out damn near every fantasy imaginable, and plenty I’d never thought of. There was a reason I didn’t keep anything important on my desk anymore.
“What’d he say?” I stretched out on my towel, resting back on my elbows as Owen tucked the phone away and followed suit, wrinkling his nose.
“Mara Collins needs a song with a storyteller vibe that’ll appeal to her Christian audience, but that’s not really my thing. I told him I’d see what I could come up with.” He took a swig of his beer, gaze going distant. “Actually, I have something I was playing with the night of the robbery that could work maybe, but I never finished it.” His focus sharpened on me. “Feel like brainstorming with me a little over the weekend?”
I dusted some sand from my can and took a healthy swallow, nodding. “Funny, I was just lying here thinking, ‘damn, Owen hasn’t asked me to do his job for him lately.’”
He nudged my shoulder with his. “You’re a dick.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’ll help you. You realize you do most of the work anyway, right? The other stuff’s different,” I added when he started to protest. We’d been writing together with increasing frequency, collecting the songs into an as yet unnamed and uncategorized catalog. I wasn’t sure anything would come of it, but I was enjoying the process, and if it turned out we could sell them, well, that’d be another nice bump to my replenished bank account. I didn’t need it, though. Between Owen’s paychecks, residuals from the greatest hits album with Ryder, the tour payout, and the impending sale of the Gatlinburg shop, we were doing fine. And that was a joy in and of itself.
“Speaking of other stuff.” Owen glanced over at me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I want to try it: a small show at the shop. Just me and you playing our stuff. Baby steps, right?” He smiled softly, and I matched it with one of my own.
“It’ll be just fine. I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”
“And you’ll do all the talking?”
“Until you’re ready to, yeah.” I’d proposed doing a short set of the songs we’d written together in the shop a couple of months back because Owen still talked about wanting to get over his stage fright. He’d started seeing a therapist Quinn had introduced him to in an attempt work through some underlying issues he thought were holding him back. I could see the progress in the trust that had built between us. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
Getting him back on the stage at my side was just one more forward step, and looking at his hopeful expression nearly made my breath hitch the way it squeezed my heart. “Know what I was thinking about the other day?”
“Hmm?” His eyelids lowered to half-mast, a satisfied drowsiness in the movement. He’d been pushing himself tirelessly writing, and I was glad to have pulled him away for a vacation, even if we ended up writing a little bit. He needed it. We both did.
“That time you were talking about music and high school and the Rockabilly girls and how you couldn’t ever find your niche. Think you’ve figured it out now.”
“My stuff’s all over the map, though.”
“Exactly. You did that bluegrassy one for Jon Cole, the pop piece for Jessa Star, that one with an industrial crossover feel for Halcyon Phase. You’re not meant to be confined to a single genre or place. You’re—”
Owen’s lips quirked. “Ubiquitous?”
“Well, I wasn’t gonna go all ten-dollar word on it, but yeah. Eclectic. Everywhere.”
“Huh.” He dug the base of his beer can in the sand and lowered flat on his back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I never thought about it that way. But I think I like that, actually.” He cut a narrow look at me from the corners of his eyes. “I thought I was the one who said the insightful shit.”
“I reckon we can share custody on occasion.” I set my can down, and Owen yelped as I spread my cool hand over his chest and leaned to brush a kiss over his lips. “Fact, you can keep the majority share, since my mind tends to go in uncivilized directions when you’re around.”
After the sun had sunk from the sky, we returned to the cottage, boiled shrimp, and ate until we damn near made ourselves sick. Then we lay in the hammock strung across the front porch, listening to the rush of waves and the chirp of crickets.
“I was pretty gung ho on figuring out if it was possible to fuck in a hammock, earlier.” Owen’s bare legs were tangled with mine, and the sag of the hammock pulled his weight further on top of me as he shifted closer. “But I’m getting the idea it’d be a lot more complicated in reality than it is in my head.”
“I think we’d have to think of it as more of a swing.”
“Like a sex swing?” His brows rose in a salacious arch, and I chuckled.
“Something like that, yeah.”
The intimation lingered between us, gathering momentum, becoming wisps of desire that would curl around us like smoke until it coalesced in fire. Minutes from now. Maybe a little longer. I could see it in the back of my mind: we’d start here but finish in bed, my head between his knees, my fingers and tongue inside him while he writhed and pulled the sheets. Those quiet gasps of sound he made that’d rise in volume to become a wail that would drive me out of my mind with lust. He’d make promises and demands in the same rush of breath, come with me buried deep in the heat of his body, fingers curled into the hair at my temples, mouth panting against mine. My entire field of vision nothing but his eyes.
“I like this, too, though.” Owen combed his fingertips through the whorls of hair on my chest. “I was thinking about how you said I belong everywhere. But that’s just my music.” He wiggled around until he could tilt his head back and gaze at me. “I belong to you.”
It satisfied some deeply possessive craving in me, and I couldn’t help the content rumble in my chest as he said it. Or the acknowledgment in kind I vocalized a second later. “We belong to each other.” I stilled his arm, outlining the splash of tattoos with the corner of my thumb. The hummingbird and the guitars. His grandfather’s pocket watch. A stargazer lily that reminded him of the bulbs his aunt once planted and that he waited for each spring because he found the smell so intoxicating but too brief. And beneath the elegant curve of petals, the fresh, stark ink of a record. The pale blue label was blank except for a tiny imprint of the year: 2018. He’d come home that day with the plastic wrap taped to his arm, shiny with ointment, and shyly exposed it to me as I stood in the kitchen cooking dinner. When I’d stopped what I was doing to pull him close and look at it, asking why there was nothing else written on it, his cheeks flushed pink, but the words left his lips with such conviction that I pulled him into my arms even as he was still speaking them. Because the music is still being written.
Owen’s fingers moved lightly over my collarbone before he buried his lips against my neck. “Thank you,” he said simply, and the warmth of his breath and his weight in my arms wrapped around my chest and held fast.
“You’re welcome,” I told him, and knew he heard it the same way I’d heard him. That behind the words, we were saying the same thing.
Not ready to leave the Rhythm World yet? Check out Bend, a Rhythm of Love novella featuring a music tour that takes place on a train, a grumpy band manager, and the exuberant documentarian who loves to push buttons.
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MORE BY NEVE WILDER
Extracurricular Activities Series
High-heat new adult/college romance. Also available as audiobooks.
Playing For Keeps Series
High heat, sports romance, co-written with Riley Hart. Also available as audiobooks.
Wages of Sin Series
High-heat contemporary romantic suspense co-written with Onley James. Also available as audiobooks.
Bend (Novella), Rhythm 1.5
Franklin U Series
Multi author, new adult/college series. Also available as audiobooks.
Bet You
Nook Island Series
Contemporary romance
Sightlines (Novella), Nook 1.5
Ace’s Wild Series
(multi author series)
Reunion (Novella)
Rhythm of Love Series
Contemporary Romance set in the music industry. Also available as audiobooks.
ABOUT NEVE WILDER
Neve Wilder lives in the southern US, where the summers are hot and the winters are...sometimes cold.
She reads promiscuously, across multiple genres, but her favorite stories always contain an element of romance. Incidentally, this is also what she likes to write. Slow-burners with delicious tension? Yes. Whiplash-inducing page-turners, also yes. Down and dirty scorchers? Yes. And every flavor in between.
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Neve Wilder, Resonance
