Page 48 of Chocolate Cherry Cabin

“Don’t pour too much money into it.” She sucked on the insides of her cheeks, mulling over the piano issue. Louis’s fix might pass for one night. Although the missing key was annoying.

“Can you sing?” Louis asked, nudging her aside with his hip as he settled onto the bench beside her.

“What?”

He began to play a song that sounded disjointed and out of tune. In other words, perfectly Louis, as well as in sync with the old piano.

“What are you playing?” Hannah leaned closer, intrigued.

“You don’t know it?”

She shook her head. The tune picked up tempo and she marveled at Louis’s hidden talent. It reminded her of discovering a well-hidden chocolate egg a week after Easter—after you’d already eaten your stash and were craving another hit of chocolate.

He began singing, his voice low and gravelly. The kind that might fit someone eating a can of beans under a bridge, ready to scare you witless.

Wait. She knew this song.

“Tom Waits?” she breathed, as his fingers danced faster and faster. “Nobody knows Tom Waits.”

And nobody knew how to play him on the piano. By heart.

Louis kept playing. “A girl in high school got me hooked.”

Hannah frowned. She was quite certain nobody else in Sweetheart Creek High had been listening to this artist.

“I snuck a listen through her headphones when she went to the bathroom during chem,” he explained.

“I knew I couldn’t trust you.” She started to sway as Louis continued to play “Just the Right Bullets.” She was about ready to dive in as well, until he got to the second-to-last verse. The lyrics. The singer wanted the subject of the song to be happy. It was his only wish, and that he’d fix things for her—fix everything to make her happy.

She couldn’t help but feel as though Louis had chosen this song on purpose, and that it was saying more than she was willing to hear. She slid off the end of the bench, a lump in her throat.

“Nobody knows Tom Waits,” she repeated, hugging herself as the lofty room echoed the song back at them.

Louis stopped playing, then smoothed dust off the keys. Neat and tidy. Black and white. Almost perfect.

“I do,” he replied quietly.

But why?

“It’s still out of tune.”

“Getting closer?”

Hannah couldn’t meet his eye. Couldn’t quite consider the subtext, the deeper meaning behind his words.

And when had he learned to play piano? Piano likethat?

She finally looked up, locking her gaze on his. “It has a ways to go before it’ll be what I need.”

* * *

As they walked from his truck to her door, Louis slowed his steps. He didn’t get many days off during the regular hockey season, and he wanted to spend as much of today with Hannah as he could before tonight’s away game. He wanted a chance to show her that maybe he was closer to what she was looking for than she realized.

“Come fly with me,” he said.

“What?”

“Fly with me.”

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