Page 64 of Sins (The Sins Trilogy 1)
I hate these thoughts and denials. Nine years. If she were alive, she would’ve found her way back to me long before now. I need to accept the truth—the ashes I helped scatter can’t magically come together and become a living woman again—but a small part of me still can’t. It thinks she has to be alive somewhere because otherwise I would’ve shriveled and died as well. It doesn’t recognize that the living go on living, even if it’s as an empty husk.
Harry hesitates, his face tight with concern. “Did you dump Audrey because she bleached her hair and got colored contacts?”
He saw her at the last public event she and I attended together. Even though he’s wasting his life, getting yet another pointless postgraduate liberal arts degree, he’s still a Blackwood and gets all the invitations my family receives as a courtesy. Since he likes good booze and dolled-up women, he attends as many as possible.
“She’s prettier as a brunette,” I say tonelessly.
He grows glum. “Maybe some people know.”
“About Lauren?” I say, deliberately misunderstanding him. “So what? She’s dead.” Lauren was the very public mistake I made within two years of Ivy’s death. There’s no reason for anybody to know about Ivy. I was too young and unimportant back then, our love too short…with the abrupt end that still leaves me reeling every time I think about it. Recently, the old memories have been coming more frequently. Maybe I’m getting old. Or sentimental.
Harry knows better than to bring up Ivy. Silently, he checks his phone. He’s almost never off that damned thing. His phone plays Grand Galop Chromatique, and I tense at the cheery music coming through the tinny speakers. I can’t stand Chopin and Liszt. Actually, I can’t stand most classical piano pieces now. They hurt too much.
It’s a bravura panty-dropper from the nineteenth century. Did it make you want to get naked with me?
“Turn that off.”
Harry raises a finger. “Wait a minute.”
“I said turn that shit off!” Grand Galop Chromatique is one of the worst. Every rapid note of the music feels like a blender blade shredding me.
“It’s from this video that’s going viral, titled Showing the Jerk How It’s Done. But the pianist…” Harry squints hard. “What the fuck?”
Grinding my teeth, I snatch the phone out of his hand. But just a glimpse of the strawberry blonde in the video stops me cold.
The pianist is young—maybe in her mid- or late twenties—and looks exactly like Ivy, from the hair to the posture to the gray eyes. If that were all, I’d consider it a coincidence. But there’s more.
It’s the way she plays—the sublime expression, her body utterly relaxed. Her technique and tempo are flawless. She has the same unshakable confidence and wild exuberance Ivy used to play the piece with.
It’s already a crazy coincidence that there’s a woman who looks just like Ivy. But one who plays like her?
To be able to play Liszt like that not only requires talent, but years of diligent practice.
“What the fuck is this?” I find myself asking in an awful voice I don’t recognize as my own.
Harry takes his phone back. “I don’t know. But somebody posted this less than an hour ago, and tagged the location as L.A. Hammers and Strings.”
She’s dead, Tony. You helped scatter her ashes. There’s no second chance.
I know that. The pain of losing her is still as sharp and excruciating as having my bones shaved. But I can’t ignore the video. As crazy as it sounds, I want to go and see this pianist in person.
“TJ, pull over,” I say.
The Cullinan stops.
I turn to Harry. “Get out.”
“What? How am I going to get back to campus?”
“Call an Uber.” I’m not taking him, hungover with no filter on his mouth or brain. I shove him out when he doesn’t move, shut the door and instruct TJ, “To Hammers and Strings.”
