After Forever by Jasinda Wilder Read Free Book Online Page B

comforting and terrifying, exhilarating and guilt-inducing.  
    She cried for a few minutes, and then the sobs trickled to a stop and she straightened, wiped her eyes with her forearm, sliding away from me, back across the couch, putting several feet between us once more, not looking at me. “Thanks,” she murmured.
    “It’s hard,” I said. “No one could go through this without crying.”
    She nodded, then got up and vanished into the bathroom. I heard the water going, and she returned with a damp face and less-puffy eyes. “I should go.”
    I nodded. She really should. “Thanks for the food.”
    “You have my number?”  
    “Yeah.”
    “Call if you need anything.” She met my eyes. Hers, so green and so like Ever’s, were conflicted, as if offering something she wasn’t sure she should. “For real. Whatever time it is. Okay?”
    I nodded. “I will. Thanks.”
    Awkward silence then, our eyes not quite locking, not quite looking away, aware of the moment we’d shared, the vulnerability witnessed, accepted. Holding someone as they cried bound you to them somehow. And we were already bound together, through Ever.  
    She slid her coat on and I stared out the window as she zipped it, facing away from me as she did so. I kept my eyes on the falling snow as she adjusted her shorts, tugging them down with a shimmy of her hips, kept my eyes on the heavy gray clouds thick with snow and darkening with falling night, on the sidewalk going white, on the walls. Anywhere, everywhere, except Ever.
    Except Eden.  
    Eden, not Ever.
    Fuck.  

    ~ ~ ~ ~

    Eden

      I collapsed into bed, on top of the blankets, letting the cool air dry my naked body. I’d taken a long, hot shower when I got home from Cade’s apartment—from Cade and Ever’s apartment. It was still her apartment.  
    I tugged the blankets onto myself, but then got too hot and kicked them off. Then I had to put on a T-shirt, because for some reason, when I lay there naked, all I could feel was the simple, innocent way Cade had held me. It wasn’t an arousing memory. He’d held me while I bawled like a baby—how embarrassing—and that was it. Only, I never cried in front of guys. When I got dumped, I’d get pissed, I’d scream and yell because I had a hell of a temper, but I’d never cry. Not in front of guys. But I had, in front of Cade. He’d made it easy somehow.  
    But I couldn’t forget the feel of his palm on my shoulder, strong fingers, hard and callused.  
    I forced myself to think of anything else. I hummed the section of the Beethoven sonata I was memorizing. Visualized the notes. Each individual stroke of the bow. Each movement of my fingers on the neck. Anything, everything. I thought of nothing at all.
    I tried every trick I knew to get to sleep, but couldn’t. I got out of bed and uncased my cello, sat on my chair, the cushion smooth and cold under my ass, my T-shirt slipping off one shoulder. The dark, varnished wood of Apollo’s sides was cool against my bare thighs, and I felt the vibrations shiver through me as I drew the bow across his strings, not thinking, not playing anything specific, just playing to get my head straight, to give my confused, aching heart a reprieve. I played in the dark, not needing light to know where his strings were, how he felt, how to pull the music from within him, from within me.  
    I played until my wrist and fingers ached. Every note of what I’d played was stuck in my head, and I realized it was the next movement of my solo. I had to turn on the light to find my notes, and I scribbled madly, frantic to get the notation down while it was fresh in my head. When I had it written down, I played it again, and I knew it was brilliant.  
    It was deep, dark, slow and soulful and masculine.  
    It was the music of Cade’s sad amber eyes, the sound of his sorrow.
    I still couldn’t sleep, so I put in my earbuds and turned my iPod to shuffle, lay down in the darkness, and listened to “Broken