Overture (North Security #1)(21)

And then my father died, giving us one more thing in common.

Orphans, both of us.

I’m excited about the tour, her text says with a string of green-faced emojis, each of them about to throw up. She’s always had a dry sense of humor and a weak stomach.

You’re going to be amazing, I text back.

Her anxiety goes beyond stage fright. For many years after her parents’ deaths she didn’t even leave the penthouse in the hotel where she lived. Only recently did she begin to venture out, but it’s still difficult for her to deal with crowds.

I only agreed to it because you’re coming, she says. When do you get here, anyway? Can it be now?

Words appear on the screen even though I don’t feel myself typing them—I’m afraid to leave. I don’t want to. What if I never see Liam again? What if he never forgives me for lying to him? The thoughts are too private to be read, even by me.

I hold down the Backspace button until they’re gone.

Soon. I punctuate the word with a string of sobbing emojis. Three months, to be exact. It’s the closest I can come to revealing my true feelings, the same way the green-faced emojis revealed hers.

How is Liam doing?

Oh you know. The same. Stoic and strong and serious.

So he’s being an asshole?

No, of course not. I blush, trying to think of how to word this, how to describe what happened in the back office of the club. I’m not even sure I know the words. Not kiss or touch. Something more meaningful—and more fleeting. Actually, something happened.

Uh oh.

It’s hard to explain. We sort of… we almost kissed.

Oh my God. Samantha. SAMANTHA. Did he take advantage of you? I’m going to fly to Kingston right now and punch him in the face.

What? Don’t be silly, I say, typing quickly because she might actually do it despite her extreme fear of public transportation and the baby girl she has at home. She’s only doing the opening show in Tanglewood, which is where she lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if the label planted the opening show there just for her.

Beatrix Cartwright is maybe the most famous musician on the tour, besides Harry March himself. She has a massive internet following from playing covers of popular songs and posting the videos online. It’s a different direction than the old-world classical music that consumes me, but I admire her skill—as well as her poise in the face of notoriety.

He didn’t take advantage of anything, I tell her. If anything I took advantage of him.

I’m giving you such a look right now. A look of disbelief.

Really. I’m the one who wants him to see me as more than a child.

But you ARE a child.

I make a rude gesture using an emoticon in response. She’s only a few years older than me, and she’s already married with a baby. It’s actually common for people in our position—strange and rare though it is. We grow up fast and either settle down or burn out.

Well, she says. I’m sure he turned you down. Liam North doesn’t know how to have fun, which has never seemed like more of a virtue than right now.

Fun? The idea makes me smile. He knows how to fight and work and struggle. The idea of fun is as foreign to him as it is to me. We’re well suited that way. Yes, I admit. He turned me down.

What aren’t you telling me?

That makes me sigh. He really did turn me down. After he kissed me. It wasn’t almost anything. We did actually kiss.

OMG.

Don’t freak out. I know it’s probably inappropriate.

Probably???

God, how to explain the exhilaration of knowing he had chased after me, bursting into a nightclub, breaking through muscled bouncers to make sure that I was safe. And then the way his large hand had cupped my jaw, making me feel delicate.

I want him to do it again. The cursor blinks at the end of the sentence, waiting with an accusatory rhythm. When I press the Send button, I feel only a sense of rightness. It’s honest, at least.

A long time passes with the three little dots hovering where her response will go. She’s writing a long lecture about all the ways it’s wrong for me to lust after Liam, I’m guessing.

But her text is very short. What happens when you leave?

I know what she means. Both of us know what it is to be alone. To be left behind. It doesn’t matter that I’m the one walking away this time. Being adrift at sea is no better than being stranded on an island.

Then it’s over, I say, knowing there won’t be any civic responsibility after that.


LIAM

Leaning back in my office chair, I close my eyes. The strains of the violin wash over me, soothing the rough edges inside me. I’m in agony thinking of the day when the room next door will be silent. What will happen to every jagged, violent thought inside me?

And even still I look forward to the day that she’s gone. Because she shouldn’t be near me, shouldn’t have to soothe the devil that pants and snorts inside me. A goddamn bull, that’s what I am—and her innocence is the red I run toward.

Well, I won’t be able to ignore her today. We need to talk about the e-mail from Kimberly Cox. Good news, the subject line says. She goes on to explain that Samantha was given a short mention in the digital edition today to raise publicity for the tour, in advance of her deeper profile in the print magazine.

There are a hundred amazing things about Samantha Brooks. The mention could have shared any number of those things. The way she plays like a goddamn angel. The way she mastered violin beyond what most grown men can do at the tender age of six. The way she infuses new life into the classics, drawing the interest of maestros and luthiers from around the world.