Page 22 of This Side of Beautiful

His shift in mood hurt. “What did I do?”

“Nothing and everything.” He flipped his legs over the bed and stood up. “Going to take a shower, and please don’t follow me.”

“Didn’t you take a shower last night when we came inside from the pool?”

“I take more than one shower a day.” He walked toward the bathroom without turning around. His basketball shorts hung low, emphasizing his toned back and taut ass.

I rose on my arms. “Are you hard?”

Landon looked over his shoulder. “Can you go visit your family or something?”

“You are.” I clapped my hands. “Let me see.”

“Bye, Janae.” He touched the bathroom knob.

Before I lost my courage, I quickly said, “Can you write and produce a song with me? Maybe fly to Los Angeles and cut it in the studio. The song will be a smash, and we could perform it during our tour.” At his hesitation, I continued, “The cameras won’t record us if you don’t want them to. And it was Del’s idea, which I think is a good one.”

“Janae, we fought amongst ourselves and Del to get this far. The band just decided how we wanted the album to flow, and asking them to create a song with you might be too much.”

I countered, “It can be a single, and it doesn’t have to go on your album.”

“They won’t agree.”

“Then let me talk to them. I owe them an apology, too.”

“I don’t know.” He tapped the wall next to the door.

“It’s hard to talk to you with your back to me,” I reminded him.

“We’ll talk after I shower.”

I hugged a pillow to my chest and smiled. “So, I don’t have to leave?”

“No,” he snapped, and shut the bathroom door behind him.

“I can help you with your little problem,” I called after him.

“It’s not little,” he yelled back.

“No, it’s not at all,” I muttered before lying back down and smiling at the recessed lighting overhead. Whether he realized it or not, Landon had given me hope. And a possible hit record.

Chapter Eight

landon

I needed the cold shower.I didn’t want to be affected by her. I didn’t want to like her or enjoy her presence, and yet she made me feel normal in ways my guitar didn’t. Janae had an infectious, playful energy that eased my usual discomfort with people I considered strangers. She’d slept in my bed twice, and I’d been able to relax enough to sleep. I’d become accustomed to sleeping alone, and having a woman who insisted on curving her body to mine had been unnerving, to say the very least. I was thirty-one years old, and my body still responded like a teenager’s because a woman flirted with me in my bed. I believed in order and structure, and Janae welcomed chaos. Still, I was pleased she’d sought me out last night and hadn’t wanted to leave.

The water raining over me and cooling off my heated skin helped bring logic, not emotion, back to the forefront. Women had always been challenging to navigate. On the surface, I understood why they were attracted to me outside of my success. As the only child of two well-known musicians, I’d had unwanted attention most of my young life. With my hazel eyes and features considered handsome, cameras loved me whenever I held the hand of either of my parents or played the trumpet or piano.

As I grew older, my discomfort became a nuisance and then an embarrassment to my parents, who finally decided to keep me from the public eye. When I re-emerged as a talented musician in my own right and as the leader of a soul band, not the classical, Juilliard-trained musician they’d raised me to be, my tendency to shy away from interviews and perform with my head bowed only made me more of a mystery like a puzzle to solve. Except I was a simple man whose only complexity was processing the world differently than others.

When I first met Cedrick, I’d wished I were more like him. Charismatic and bold. He knew what to say or do in any situation without much thought. I envied his arrogance and assurance with women that extended beyond the bedroom. He would have had sex with Janae by now and not thought twice about it. Meanwhile, I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to build my inner confidence through the outer version of me. The outer me was a fit, virile man with intense eyes and an orthodontic-fixed smile that I’d been told transformed my face on the rare times others had noticed. The inner me warred for peace whenever I experienced discomfort around others, wondering if they could see the scared boy I’d been and, in some ways, still was.

“Everything okay?” Janae called.

I looked around the bathroom. I’d forgotten to bring another outfit in and didn’t want to wear the shorts I’d slept in. “Grab me a T-shirt and shorts.”

“You didn’t say ‘please.’” She giggled. “Get them yourself. I’ve seen your body.”

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