What He Never Knew (What He Doesn't Know, #3)(32)

I glanced at Reese, and he offered a tight smile. “It would be a good chance to practice in a performance atmosphere.”

His words were solid enough, but I didn’t miss the pained crease between his brows at the near proximity of Charlie. It was like he was holding his breath or breathing in straight smoke, and he wasn’t going to have another clean breath until she was out of his house.

Suddenly, that became my only mission.

“I think it sounds like a great idea,” I said, more to Reese than to Charlie.

“Wonderful!” she said, smile doubling at me before she turned back to Reese. “Well, again, sorry I interrupted your lesson. I just wanted to go over those last details since I won’t be back in the office until Monday.”

“It’s no problem at all. Here, let me walk you out.” Reese extended one arm toward the door, the opposite hand hovering close to Charlie’s lower back. He didn’t touch her, though, and I wondered if he was afraid it’d burn if he did.

I stood rooted to the spot as Charlie said her goodbyes at the door, and when Reese rounded back into the room, he stopped at the door frame, leaning against it with his hands sliding into the pockets of his slacks. His eyes searched mine, but he didn’t say a word.

“That was her, wasn’t it?”

The only indication that he’d heard me was the slight bob of his Adam’s apple, and the barely visible crease between his brows.

My heart broke staring at him in that moment, seeing the pain that still crippled him when she was near.

“You work with her?” I asked after a long pause. “You see her every day, and you talk to each other… and… are you friends?”

Reese blew out a long breath, pushing off from the wall and crossing to where I stood. At first, I thought he was going to run right into me, blow me over like a stick in the wind, but he swept past, sitting at the piano behind where I stood.

“It’s complicated,” he said, hands already floating over the keys. It was like he needed to touch the piano in that moment, to let his hands do something familiar and comfortable now that he’d been shaken by Charlie’s unannounced visit.

“I’d say.”

I took a seat next to him, listening as he played, watching his face and wondering what the hell was going on in that dark, guarded mind of his.

“We were friends as kids, but there was always something more… we both knew it,” he said, eyes on his hands. “When I left for New York, for Juilliard, she asked me to kiss her. And I didn’t.” He swallowed, like that was the biggest mistake of his life. “And when I came back, she was married.”

He shook his head, hands picking up speed where they played.

“She wasn’t happy, not when I first came back. I hated it, hated seeing her so miserable, seeing her husband so unaffected by her visible pain. But, of course, once I showed up? Her husband woke up. He fought for her,” Reese said, hands pausing over the keys. They kicked back to life with his next words. “And he won.”

I swallowed, watching his fingers flick over the keys, bringing a familiar melody to life. It was the one he’d played the first night I’d met him at The Kinky Starfish.

What had he said it was called again? The Darkest Dawn?

“But,” Reese continued after a moment. “I’m still close with her entire family. Her parents are like the only family I still have, if I’m being honest.”

My eyes floated up to the one and only framed photo in the room we sat in, the family that stared back at Reese as he played. The man in the photo looked like Reese in ten years, and the woman standing next to him shared Reese’s smile. The girl in the photo, the one standing next to Reese, had his eyes.

And though I didn’t have details, I now had confirmation of what I’d always wondered.

They were gone.

His family was gone, just like my father.

“And yes,” he said, still playing that soft, sad melody. “We work together. So, I see her a lot. I see them all a lot.”

“All?”

He nodded, a sickening expression sweeping over his face. “Her. Her parents. Her husband,” he explained, pausing again before he dropped another bomb. “Her kids.”

“Kids?”

At that, he stopped playing, running his hands back through his hair with a huff. “Alright, that’s enough for today. We can pick up on this next week.”

Reese stood without another word and blew out of the room, leaving me alone on the bench. My eyes scanned the photo of the family on top of the piano, and I took a steadying breath before standing to follow.

He was in the kitchen, downing a glass of cold water as I slid onto one of the barstools. He wouldn’t meet my gaze, just stared at his hands splayed on the granite between us, and I knew in that moment he felt ashamed. Something told me he didn’t open up like this to anyone, that maybe I was the first one he’d talked to about Charlie.

And I heard him in my head, asking me to be vulnerable, to sit down at his piano and bleed.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to if I didn’t start opening up, too.

“I’ve never been in love,” I whispered.

Reese looked at me then, the crease between his brows softening. “Never?”

I shook my head.

He stared at me for a long moment, like he wasn’t sure what to say. But the longer he looked, the more his shoulders relaxed. I hoped the change in subject was a welcome relief.