Page 17 of Our Deceptive Heat

Perhaps it’s all those designer label clothes. She’d look just as good in skinny, ripped jeans and a band shirt.

Instead, she wears blouses like armour and jeans that hide her body.

It all makes her untouchable.

A frozen queen who never shows her emotions, unless she is writing a song.

But when she does…oh, she goes up like a bonfire. She’s an eclipse that you can’t look away from. A once in a lifetime comet shooting through the darkness. There and gone. Impossible to hold but changing you forever more.

She changed me, but I can’t let go of her. I can’t exist wondering why she walked away from us, how she could walk away from us.

We were friends.

The very best of friends.

What happened?

Ryn leans forward and picks up a coffee cup.

“I want to write a song about friendship and how it all goes terribly wrong.”

There’s a great deal of satisfaction watching her choke on that mouthful of coffee.

“Hmm, bitter,” she murmurs.

Sure.

“So a song about friendships ending?”

“Yes, I want all the angst, the confusion, and all the feelings.”

She puts down her coffee cup and stares at me. I can see she knows what I’m doing. I raise a brow, challenging her.Go on, ask me, demand the answer, make a big deal about it?

Instead, she inclines her head. “I’ll go home and make some notes-”

“Oh, no. We’re doing this like we did in the old days.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“You owe us!” I say bluntly. “We want this song. We need it. So stay, help us, and then we can call it quits, and you can go back to whatever it is that you do when you ignore your friends.”

She flinches. I almost miss it, but I see it and what appears to be a flash of guilt in her eyes.

But then she looks up at me and stares. Cold as ice. I wonder what she’s thinking and lose myself in the myriad of blues and greens, and that swelling desperate feeling of missing this person so much that it felt like I’d cut my own arm off. And the rage returns.

Why did she leave?

She swallows and reaches into the tiny bag she’s got strapped over her shoulder. She pulls out the notebook she brings with her everywhere.

Once upon a time, I gave her the first notebook. It was a leather bound pad, the size of her palm, just big enough to jot notes. I got it for her on impulse and gave it to her the second time we worked together.

She’s still using it.

For some reason, that revelation makes my anger fade and hope insert itself.

If she hated us, she wouldn’t have that diary still. Surely.

Maybe I can convince her to tell us why.

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