Page 92 of Love is a Lyric
Conner put a hand on Ben’s arm. “You need to listen to everything before you get mad.”
Ben’s steps echoed off the gleaming marble floors as he approached the couch, letting himself sit so all energy could flow to his overloaded mind.
Piper’s music.
He needed Quinn to say it, to tell him what she’d done.
Even if he’d already begun to guess.
Quinn brushed a hand through her blond hair before dropping it to her lap and clenching her other fingers around it.
Ben felt the ring in his palm, remembering a time he’d dreamed of giving it to Quinn. That was the future he’d seen for himself, one without choice. The music dictated who he loved.
He knew now fate was only a fantasy.
“It started when I was visiting Piper about six years ago.” Quinn dropped her gaze, not looking at them. “That’s when I heard it. The song.” She closed her eyes as if calling the lyrics forth. “Come to me, I beg of you. Love me for eternity.”
“Fate,” he breathed. The song they’d ended up naming their band after, the one that got them a record deal and everything else they could have wanted in life. Lyrics Quinn claimed she wrote.
“What do you mean you heard it?” He already knew, but he needed her to say it out loud, to let him know the thoughts rolling through his head weren’t crazy. The Quinn he’d thought he’d known wouldn’t do this, would she?
“She was only fifteen. I told myself she had no need to keep it to herself.” She finally met his gaze, and he knew the next words would tear him right open. “By the time she found out I took it, she wasn’t even mad. She saw that YouTube video and was proud of me, of us. She wanted to make me happy. She always did.”
That was the Piper he’d come to know, the one always thinking about everyone else. Except this time, she hadn’t thought of him. It wasn’t only Quinn who’d lied to him all these years.
“Keep going,” Conner prodded.
“There’s more?” Ben met Conner’s sad eyes.
Quinn’s back shook as she buried her face in her hands. “There’s a lot more.” She didn’t say anything else for a long moment before lifting a tear-stained face. “All of them.”
“All of—” Ben shot to his feet. “All of them?” He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry or to rage at Quinn. “You’ve stolen every song we’ve recorded from your sister?” From Piper.
“I didn’t steal them.” Her voice was weak. “Piper agreed to it. She never wanted to be a singer. I didn’t even know she still played piano. But she believed in her words and let me broadcast them.”
“While claiming they were your own.” His thoughts went in a thousand different directions before finally landing on one path. All this time, he’d pushed himself into loving Quinn because his music needed her lyrics, because the words spoke to something inside him.
And they were Piper’s.
“I know.” Quinn stood. “I’m an awful person. It probably won’t surprise you that the songs I’ve let you see for the new album are ones Piper never wanted me to use, or that I’ve said awful things to her, treated her terribly. And that’s my cross to bear.” She advanced on Ben. “But I know you, Ben, and I know that look on your face.”
“What look?” He thought back on the conversations with Piper where he’d revealed his ideas about fate and how he’d fallen in love with Quinn because of the music. She hadn’t said a word as her lies built up and up.
Quinn jabbed him in the chest with a finger, fire replacing the tears in her eyes. “I have spent years being loved only for my music, never for me. You think I didn’t know, but I could feel it, Ben.” She put a hand over her heart. “Right here.”
Conner’s lonely comment made much more sense now. Quinn had always known.
“I won’t let the same thing happen to Piper. She has always taken care of me, and now it’s my turn. You will not fall in love with her because of her words. She is good, Ben. The kind of person who doesn’t belong in our world.”
“I know.” Also the person who’d lied to him again and again. He knew fate didn’t choose his path anymore. There was no connection between his music and her lyrics. “I need to… I don’t know if I can do this.”
Quinn reached for him, but he stepped back. “You said we’d survive anything.”
He’d thought they would, thatFatewas bigger than the issues between them. But then, she’d spoken words that cracked something inside him, something intrinsic to who he was. It was like the cord connecting his music to Piper’s words snapped, leaving him adrift without the directions to call him home.
Once upon a time, this band was his home.
But it was all a lie. Their success, their careers, their music.
He stumbled back away from his bandmates, his best friends, knowing if he walked out the door, nothing would be the same. Not this time.
His back hit the door, and he reached for the table beside it to take his keys. “Fate doesn’t exist, Quinn.” He didn’t know whether he meant the idea of fate or the band that wouldn’t exist without Piper. “It’s time to stop pretending it does.”
