Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Fuck.
Breathe each other in.
That sounds like the best possible time.
But studio first. I can act like an adult and control my hormones for at least an hour. It’s a nice fantasy to think about doing things in here, but it’s so pristine that I wouldn’t dare go past being close to Wilder. But being close to him leads to kissing him, which leads to jumping him. And doing that led to a mess in my kitchen at home, one uncooked dinner, and my mom walking in on us.
I still wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’d just order a few events differently. Minor changes. Like picking up our clothes and locking the bathroom door.
“Do you want to go in? As I said, this is our time. We can do anything in here that you want.”
I move to the glass window and take in the majesty of all the beautiful instruments. They glisten under the lighting, almost as though they’re just there for display. Some of them appear as though they’ve never been played.
“I… what if… I’ve never played anything so nice. What if I put fingerprints on the piano? Or that guitar? Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine how much one of those would cost.”
Wilder has nice guitars, but they’re the ones he’s had for years. He could afford a new one every day if he wanted one, but he’s attached. Same with Matt. Their guitars tell a story. They don’t want something shiny. They want beat-up, scratched, played hard, and loved even harder guitars.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I asked for specific guitars, and they’re here for us to play because I couldn’t sneak my own out with me. It doesn’t matter if we leave fingerprints. That does tend to happen when instruments have to be touched in order to produce a desired sound.”
He grins, but he’s not making fun of me. It’s more like he’s laughing with me.
“We don’t have anyone to play drums or bass. Even if we both played a guitar and then you recorded the piano after, that’s still all there would be. You don’t do acoustic.”
“Correction. I would love to do acoustic, so I think that statement should be, ‘I haven’t done acoustic yet.’”
I know Matt’s famous line was that the band wasn’t a country group, and they weren’t some pop duo, so acoustic songs, sob stories, and romantic bullshit could piss right off. I heard him say it over and over throughout the years. Most of the time, I thought he was joking. I didn’t realize this was an argument between him and Wilder.
What the guys were saying by the end, about Wilder being in the spotlight and the band being all about him, I think maybe it went deeper. They didn’t want him up there, alone on the stage, just his voice and a guitar. I’m not sure anyone could have stood up to keeping their heart intact if he’d done something so intimate.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come across as bitter. I’d like it to be a hopeful statement. I’d love to try recording some of these acoustic, but if that’s not how you see them going, then I can play bass and drums.”
“I’m sorry, you can what?”
“Bass for sure, and why not give the drums a go? How hard can it be?”
“Extremely hard.”
“I have a pretty good sense of rhythm, and we’re just having fun.”
It’s not like I can say that seeing Wilder pick up any instrument and just play it like it’s easy for him in a freaking talent overload will probably put my ovaries straight into an overload of their own. I do want to see him play. I want to see him absorbed in here and lost in his element so the world and all the bullshit of the past two weeks doesn’t exist. He booked this for me, but I want this to be his time. Our time. Something we create together.
I swallow thickly. “I know you’re amazing at anything and everything you try.”
“That’s not true. I’m terrible at making gourmet desserts.”
“Who isn’t?” My heart thumps ridiculously hard at his teasing smile. He probably makes the best dang desserts.
He motions to the room of pure freaking magical awesomeness right in front of us. “Shall we?”
Oh, we shall.
And we do.
My journal of songs is waiting for us on a stand right next to the guitars. “What?” I gape at him. “How?”
“I couriered it a few days ago. I couldn’t think about how to incorporate it into my old man disguise, and I wanted it to be perfectly safe. Don’t worry. I had a tracking number the whole time. I always knew where it was.”
“I’m not worried. Just surprised at the lengths you went to in order to get it here.”
“You’re not worried I would have lost it without making copies?”