RUSH (City Lights, #3)(40)

Noah was quiet for a moment, then said, “And you were good. More than good.”

“I guess so. It turned out that I had…an aptitude.”

“You were a prodigy, you mean.”

“Yes, that’s the word, I guess. But my parents wanted me to have a normal life, with a normal school experience, and normal friends. So I took lessons and played in the local orchestras, instead of going off to some big concert hall or recording studio.”

“Do you resent that? You could have been a big star, early on.”

“No, I’m grateful. I didn’t want to be apart from my parents, or Montana, or…Chris. I thought the music would always be there and so I was content to wait. I got a partial scholarship to Juilliard, but then…things got rough during my senior year.”

“Your brother,” Noah said quietly.

“Yes. But also…well, there was a guy. A boyfriend. It ended right after Chris passed, and I…” I heaved a sigh. “Anyway, I wasn’t doing so well after that.”

“This boyfriend, he broke up with you, or vice-versa?”

“He broke up with me.”

Noah sat up and laid his arm along the back of the bench, behind my shoulders. “Are you f*cking kidding me?”

“No, I’m not, and aren’t you supposed to be behaving yourself?”

“Yeah, but…” He carved his hands through his hair. “This guy…he broke up with you? Right after your brother died?”

I nodded.

“Hello?”

“Oh, uh, yes,” I said. “But it’s no big deal. Bad timing. The perfect storm of horrible shit happening at once.”

“Bad timing.” Noah rapped his fingers on the bench. “That’s it?”

I glanced at him askance. “You sure are nosy.”

“I’m a journalist—or was, in a past life. I never left a story unfinished. Don’t leave me hanging here. This guy sounds like he needs a good ass-kicking. What happened?”

I could feel my face screw up in perplexity as I regarded this man sitting next to me. “Okay, I’ll tell you, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Quid pro quo, Clarice. You have to answer the question I asked you at the start of our walk. Why you don’t want to learn to be blind.”

He frowned, looked about to protest, and then nodded. “Fair enough.”

I told Noah about Chris’s death and coming back to Juilliard to find Keith had moved on with another woman. I shook my head, remorse and shame burning my cheeks, and my heart aching with old pain that never seemed to diminish.

“I fell for Keith completely,” I confessed. “And when I say fall, I really mean it. I fell for him, but I also I fell for his bullshit and lies. He was my first love, my first…lots of things,” I cleared my throat. “He told me he loved me and I did something really stupid.”

“Which was?”

“I believed him.”

“That’s not your fault, Charlotte,” Noah said in a low voice.

“No, I suppose not. But I should have been more careful. I came back to New York thinking, ‘My heart’s ripped to shreds, but at least I have Keith. At least he’ll be there for me.’ But I was just a country girl in the big city, I guess. A cliché that was easy prey to a serial dickhead like him.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. I simply ceased to exist. I wasn’t the blazing talent I had been. I was a mess. A sleepwalker wandering around the school.” I shrugged, wishing my feelings matched the empty gesture, but then Noah couldn’t see it anyway. “I lost everything. I lost my seat on the Spring Strings, lost Keith, lost my brother, and somewhere in there, I lost my music too.” I wiped my eyes. “So there you go. My so-called-not-so-interesting-on-hold life. In a nutshell.”

Another silence fell, and I waited for Noah to lecture me again, or berate me for letting a boyfriend impact me so negatively.

“He was an idiot, this guy,” he said finally, carefully, as if he were weighing his words before he spoke them.

“Or I just misread him. I was smitten and he wasn’t, and I got burned.”

“That’s why he’s an idiot. To have someone like you. To have earned the time and affection and the…the love of someone like you…and not even known what he had.”

“Someone like me?”

“Yeah, Charlotte. Someone like you.”

I bit my lip, waiting for him to tell me what that meant and feeling irritated with myself for not having the guts to ask him.

“Have you ever been in love?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” he said quickly. “My last girlfriend told me she loved me but I was in love with my adrenaline highs. And I thought being with someone meant staying in one place. I couldn’t do that.” He made a sour face. “Oh, the irony.”

“I feel stuck too,” I said. “A different kind of stuck. Like I have some huge ball and chain locked to my heart, not letting me put myself out there or…love anyone ever again.”

“I think you’re too generous to be so jaded,” he said quietly.

“I don’t feel jaded. I feel chastised for being so trusting. Love taught me two lessons: it could feel real and still be a complete lie, and it could be ripped away, leaving you with empty, grasping hands.”