They climaxed like two asteroids colliding in the sky, sending rubble and debris in a hundred directions. She whimpered and tightened her thighs, twisting her fingers in his hair and bearing down, accepting the pleasure for all it was worth, glorying in the flooding sensation he let loose inside of her. She felt the slick wetness that pooled with her own while her soulmate’s body jerked violently against her, moaning brokenly into her neck as if he hadn’t released in a hundred years. It felt the same way for her. Urgent and consuming and mind-blowing.
The orgasm took so much out of her that she collapsed as soon as it ended, her limbs turning to dead weight. But Beat, even in his own state of depletion, compensated to hold her upright, his arms going around her like twin vises. “Shhhh, Melody,” he whispered against her temple, kissed it reverently. “Everything is going to be better now.”
The organ in her chest squeezed painfully.
It would be so simple to stay in those arms forever. To forget the zombielike state he’d left her in after the Today show. She’d been a soaring bird one moment and roadkill the next, and the wound was still too fresh. She hoped she wouldn’t need to nurse it forever, but if that was the case, so be it. Her responsibility was to herself first and she couldn’t let her relationship with Beat heal around her broken bone. She needed to set it first or nothing would ever feel right.
“You’re still leaving, aren’t you?” he said, sounding almost dazed.
After a second, she nodded, holding him tighter. “Christmas Eve is only two days away. I’ll see you then.”
He didn’t seem capable of responding, though it took her several tries to extricate herself from the death grip his arms had around her. Once she accomplished that feat, she pulled her skirt back down. Leaving after what they’d just shared felt extremely wrong, so wrong that she could barely lift her finger to press the button that brought the elevator back to life.
It moved downward sluggishly while her pulse beat seven thousand miles an hour in her chest, her head demanding she do the right thing and go home, get some perspective, while her heart screamed at her to turn and run back into his perfect arms.
In the end, her mind won.
“The crazy thing is . . .” he said behind her, almost to himself. “In the end, it was fine, wasn’t it? I guarded this secret like it would set the world on fire. I don’t know what’s going to happen with my father—maybe it will burn his world down. I don’t know. But . . . it’s out there now. The truth. And everything is still standing. The show goes on. Everything just carries on. She didn’t even look at me any differently than she always has.”
“Love doesn’t come and go that easily, Beat. You need to believe you can lean on it, even when you have to lean really hard.” Melody swallowed the lump in her throat. “I think maybe the people who love us want to be tested and leaned on sometimes, so they can show us how much we mean. Expressing love and trust is a gift to the person who receives it.”
His chest dipped and expanded. “I’ll give those things to you, Melody Gallard. Every day. If you let me back in.”
“When,” she whispered. “When. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
Beat sucked in a breath and nodded, falling back against the elevator wall to watch her leave through bloodshot eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Two
December 24
Beat watched his parents embrace from the opposite end of the limousine and felt a multitude of knots loosen in his chest. He hadn’t been privy to their conversation, but their body language throughout the ride to Rockefeller Center told him exactly what they were discussing. Octavia was making her confession. His mother shook as she spoke, his father reaching out in concern. Offering forgiveness and comforting Octavia.
Just like that.
A thirty-year-old secret, shame, and regret abolished by love.
Even as the relief swept Beat, he couldn’t appreciate it to the fullest. Not without his heart. That thing that used to beat inside of his rib cage was walking around outside of his body, probably in her kelly green coat. Maybe she’d already made it to Rockefeller Center with Trina, where they would meet with the production team and Steel Birds would take the stage.
The city passed in a blur outside, snow beginning to wander down lazily from the sky. New Yorkers were doing last-minute shopping, tourists posed for pictures in front of Radio City Music Hall, Santa rang a bell for the Salvation Army on the corner, sirens blipped every so often, and steam rose from the edges of a manhole cover. Was Melody seeing all this? What did she think about the city this time of night? Was she smiling at that very moment?
Beat’s fingers dug into his bent knees and tried to slow down his pulse. Not easy, knowing he’d be seeing her in a few minutes. Although, honestly, he’d been seeing her everywhere he looked for the last forty-eight hours. It didn’t matter that they’d ceased the live stream, due to a lack of bandwidth to support the viewership, and he could no longer watch Melody on his phone. She was tattooed on the back of his eyelids.
The determined curl of her upper lip as she sang “Rattle the Cage” at the compound.
That giggle she let loose sometimes when she wasn’t prepared to laugh.
Her beautiful eyes full of tears, happy and sad and angry ones.
Her flushed face as he fucked her two days ago.
Everywhere. She was everywhere. And that was where he wanted her. He didn’t want a single ounce of her to slip free, so he endured the ice pick that buried in his chest every time another memory presented itself and made him miss her even more.
More and more and more.
Bring it on.
The limousine came to a stop outside of the Applause Network building on Forty-Ninth Street, located a half block from the Rockefeller Center stage where the reunion would take place. Beat could hear the crowd from there—and obviously, so could Octavia. She pressed a hand to the center of her chest and sucked in a long breath through her nose.
“Wow,” she said, laughing. “I’d forgotten what this feels like.”
“You’re going to knock them dead, darling,” Rudy said, his voice laden with more emotion than usual. “Just like you always did.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, kissing her husband. “Beat, you’re still okay with introducing us?”
He cleared the rust from his throat. “Are you kidding? It’s an honor.”
The limousine door opened, the driver’s hand appearing inside to help Octavia step out of the vehicle, but she didn’t take it right away. Instead, she tilted her head at Beat, her expression brimming with sympathy. “I have a good feeling about tonight,” she said. “No one can stay mad at anyone for long on a snowy Christmas Eve.”
“She isn’t mad at me,” he rasped, losing his breath just by talking about her.
She simply couldn’t be with him.
He’d been careless with the world’s most priceless treasure. Melody’s heart. And she didn’t trust him with it anymore.
Beat’s eye sockets burned like they’d been freshly branded onto his face. He dug his thumbs into them to counteract the sting, but it only got worse. His reflection in the window of the limousine was haggard and drawn. Sunken, lifeless eyes and a bristled jaw. Rudy called his name and he realized it was their turn to exit the limousine. A crowd had assembled on the curb and they screamed, some of them being physically restrained by security as Octavia passed through the parted sea of people and disappeared into the building.