Page 9 of Christmas Music
Seriously.
“I’ll need a studio,” I told Parker quietly, answering the question she’d asked about ten minutes earlier.
I felt her frown and then saw her, out of the corner of my eye, look to where I was looking, take in the bronzed form of Connor, and then look back at me. I didn’t have to see her to know she had both eyebrows raised in surprise and doubt.
“And you’re thinking Connor’s going to help you with that little problem?”
I turned to her, all joking gone from my face. “He’s been in Nashville performing. You know he has. He must have a studio here, right? And if he has one, I don’t see why I couldn’t ask to use it.”
She nodded, her face turned serious but her eyebrows still lifted high. “Sure. Right. Splitting a studio with the guy you’ve had a crush on since eighth grade seems like exactly the right choice when it comes to writing a song that may win you that record contract you want so badly. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”
I looked back at Connor, who was still writing furiously. “Because you’ve never written a song, Parker. You don’t know how desperate it makes you when you have a song that needs to be out in the world.”
I heard a soft snort, which told me she saw right through me, but didn’t look back at her. Connor had looked up again and met my eyes, his own narrowed in thought.
This time, I didn’t look away. Instead, I got up and walked toward him, keeping my gaze locked with his and trying to figure out how, exactly, one asked a not-so-friendly friend from high school if she could borrow his studio for the week.
CHAPTER5
Connor
Iwatched Olivia tip her head like she was thinking about something... then stand up and start walking right toward me, her eyes still on mine and her stride confident and full of intent.
And I’m not ashamed to say I started panicking.
No, it wasn’t manly or anything like that, but this was a girl I’d spent most of high school wishing I could touch and being ignored by. This girl had been not only the most popular girl in the entire town but also Homecoming and Prom queen, and when she ran for Nashville when we graduated, every single person in town had been sure she’d be a star in no time.
That girl was meant for success, and everyone knew it.
I had never been in her league. And no matter how much that bothered me, it didn’t change the fact that even now, when I’d had some success of my own and felt like I might know what I was doing—sort of—I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was Beauty and I was something a whole lot more like the Beast.
I started to get up to walk away, to go anywhere but right there, but Dev’s hand came down on my arm, stopping me.
“She’s just going to follow you if you leave,” he noted calmly. “Might as well stick around and see what she wants.”
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one the Prom queen was coming for.
I almost told him to just take a message for me. See what she wanted and tell me about it later. But then I remembered that we weren’t actually in high school anymore—no matter how much my heart seemed to think we were—and that I was a Real Live Adult who could handle whatever Olivia Johns might throw at me.
In theory.
She arrived at the table before I could figure out exactly how I was going to handle anything, and promptly slid her elbows onto the surface, leaning on them and getting way, way too close to me. I leaned back an inch, and then another, reminding myself that this girl had never even initiated a conversation with me before, and that I was going to treat her like the girl who’d ignored me since we were twelve.
Rather than the girl who’d started a riot of butterflies under my skin the moment she got close enough to touch. Sure, my blood felt like it had started circulating twice as fast as it was supposed to and my heart was doing a weird flipping thing in my chest, but that was normal, right?
I mean, I was about to enter myself in a really important contest. One that might change my entire future. I was probably just feeling the adrenaline connected to that.
“What’s up, Olivia Johns?” Dev asked, his voice breaking through the stare she’d been giving me.
She shifted her gaze to him, but then quickly back to me. “Oh, just wondering whether Connor was going to enter this little festival or not. I saw you writing and figured you might be working on some lyrics or something already.”
I’d give her this much, it sounded natural. She sounded like she was actually curious. And at the thought, something in me loosened, just a little bit. “Lyrics?” I asked, pretending ignorance. “What makes you think I even know how to write them?”
She huffed and slid herself onto the barstool next to me. “Connor. We’ve been living in the same town for what, three or four years now? I know you’ve been performing in Nashville. And I’m guessing you couldn’t do that if you didn’t, you know, know how to write music.”
The thing that had started coming loose unwound all the way at her statement. “You knew I was in Nashville?”
A shrug, like it didn’t matter much. “Sure. Music industry is a small place.”
