Page 179 of Composed
“Will you play us music one day?” Melody asks.
“You like music?” Hendrix’s voice cracks.
“Duh.” Lyric pulls a face. “We’re rock princesses. Daddy and our uncles have been playing us music forever.”
Hendrix sucks in a hard breath.
I grip the leg of her chair with my free hand and pull her as close as possible to my side.
“Rixie, if this is too much,” I say quietly, brushing my knuckles against her cheek, “we can run away right now. You and me. Just say the word.”
If she hears my offer, she doesn’t respond as she turns to Carter. “You share music with them?”
“Of course we share music with them.” Carter shrugs, shifting his weight. “We share everything with them. Lyric is gonna be a drumming pro just like her daddy one day.”
Lyric beams. “Damn right.”
A harsh broken sob tears from Hendrix as her gaze collides with mine. “You share music with them.”
Chapter fifty-six
Hendrix • Then
Because Of You – First To Eleven
Twenty Years Old
Musicrushesmyearsthe second I step through the door.
A sharp lick, a gritty chord, a jagged strum.
I close my eyes, my backpack dangling from my fingertips, as the echo of my dad playing stirs the air. I can’t remember the last time he picked up a guitar.
He’s sure as shit not done it since I was a kid and started playing for real.
Then, when I came home with my second-hand Hummingbird at fourteen, he locked the music away for good. His guitars gather dust in the spare room, his vinyl collection decays in the attic. I wonder if he started playing again when I left for university.
Did the silence disappear from this house the same day I did?
Before I can stop myself, I’m drawn up the stairs by the sound of his haunting melody.
I remember the first time I heard him play. I was only four, I think. He was fooling around with an electric in the spare room, playing an old Jimi Hendrix song. Ironic, really. A song from my namesake was the first time I felt the magic stirring in my veins.
I fell in love with music that day.
And it was that same day I started to realise my dad didn’t love me.
The moment he saw me sitting on the stairs, my fingers dancing through the air while I tried to mirror his movements, he slammed the door shut and only silence remained.
I wanted to share it with him, the music, the melodies in my mind, but he refused to listen.
He wouldn’t let me into his world—but I couldn’t stay away either.
The more in love I fell with music, the deeper his resentment grew.
I pause on the last step.
My hand shakes on the white banister when I peer through the cracked door to the spare room. My dad is hunched on the floor, a vintage Martin D45 angled in his lap. Pain rips through my stomach at the sight.
