Riven, page 24
“Yeah?”
He nodded and guided my hand between his legs as he watched me.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to touch me. I want to look at you. I love you,” he added, eyes fluttering shut as I ran my hand up the delicate skin on the inside of his thigh.
“I love you,” I breathed, and then I took him apart.
I touched him everywhere, until he was pushing his hips off the bed and begging me with mouth, eyes, body, to give him what he needed. My own need was huge, but I loved him like this, completely bare while I was clothed, giving him his pleasure and delaying mine until the last possible moment, when it felt like equal parts reward and relief.
When I eased on top of his beautiful, writhing body, and took his mouth, Theo moaned, opening to me as sweetly as a ripe peach split by two thumbs.
“What do you want, love?” I asked.
“You, you, you, please you, always you,” Theo chanted, and the worship in his voice took my breath away. I fumbled with my fly just enough to push my jeans down over my hips, letting out a moan of relief as my hard flesh was released.
“Just like this,” Theo said, rolling his hips up.
I pressed into him slowly, and his face was ecstasy as he wrapped his legs around me. We moved together, already on the edge, the grip and slide of our bodies pure, sweet pleasure. Theo clutched at my shoulders and I knew he was going to come by the way his neck tightened and he threw his head back. It was always my favorite moment. The moment his breath caught, like the pleasure was too large for him to do anything but feel it as it ripped through him.
He came with a silent cry, heat spilling between us, breath sweet against my face. His body shuddered beneath me, around me, and I couldn’t hold on any longer.
When I came it was like a dark wave, sweet pulses of pleasure that washed through me as I lost myself in Theo’s body. He cradled me like I was coming home.
Theo
“Oh my god, I’m gonna puke.” I squeezed Caleb’s hand so hard that he winced. He leaned in to give me a kiss, to calm me down, but I said, “No, seriously. I’m seriously gonna puke,” and he moved back, with wide eyes and a pitying smile. Thank god he was patient, because I’d been a nervous fucking wreck for days.
My album, which I’d been working on for the last four months, was about to drop. I’d decided on a simultaneous e-release so it could be downloaded immediately, but now I was regretting my decision, since it also meant that people could hate it immediately.
The two songs that I’d written while I was on tour with Riven set the mood for the album, and while at first I’d found myself writing in the patterns of Riven songs, eventually my brain caught up to reality and realized that I didn’t have to do it that way anymore. That I could write any way I wanted. Anything I wanted. I had about a week where the sprawling freedom of infinity made it so I couldn’t write anything, but then I settled back into my usual writing routine, and I felt giddy, like a kid. Well, a kid who had someone else’s life, since even as a kid, I’d never felt like I could do what I wanted.
It had taken about a month for the chaos that followed my leaving Riven to die down. I hid at Caleb’s for most of it. He took my phone and my tablet and put them in the closet so I didn’t have to deal with any of it. Of course, I knew where they were, could have accessed them whenever I wanted. But he’d given me the option of living a life without fame for a little while, and I’d jumped on it.
Part of which was distancing myself from Lewis, and getting a new manager. Clarissa Kane was young—only two years older than me—and she called me soon after the news about Riven broke and left a message saying that she was interested in a new kind of music distribution, one that used new media and current technology to let the artist control the content, and allowed the consumer to buy more directly. If I would be interested in talking with her, she’d said, I should give her a call.
I had turned my apartment in Manhattan into a kind of ersatz recording studio to cut my record, since all I’d really wanted was privacy and complete control. Exactly what I’d never had when recording with Riven. Caleb was amazing, helping me contact a producer, and people to play on the album, all things I’d never had to do before.
I was awed by Caleb. His strength and his determination humbled me. I started spending most of my time at the farmhouse, coming back to the city once a week or so to get more stuff. Eventually, I decided it was silly, and one morning as we lay in bed, I’d told Caleb that I was moving in. He gaped at me, and I saw all the fears and all the arguments flicker through him, so I put a hand over his mouth and said, “I already did it. I live here now. I know you want me here, so just deal with it.”
His eyes cycled through fear, then desire, then relief, and I took my hand away so he could kiss the shit out of me, since he clearly didn’t have any words.
I met Huey, and it had been kind of awkward, until Caleb got up to use the bathroom and I finally got to speak my piece. Huey’s eyes went soft when I promised him I was going to look out for Caleb. And I could have sworn they got a little misty when I thanked him for helping Caleb stay okay until he could find me.
“What did you do to Huey?” Caleb asked later, but I just smiled.
It was Caleb’s sister’s birthday not long after that, and he called her for the first time in three years. When she passed the phone to his mom, Caleb hung his head and listened to her yell at him for staying away so long. When he croaked out that he couldn’t stand to disappoint her again, whatever she said made him sob. But after he hung up the phone, there was a peace in him that hadn’t been there before.
The next day he told me that he wanted to record the songs he’d been working on, and that’s when I decided to finish the studio in my apartment. The songs were mostly finished, and he was planning to record the album next month. And, though he waved my praise away with a vaguely pleased look, it was fucking brilliant—he might not have known it yet, but it was going to blow people away.
Now, I begged Caleb, “Distract me, please.” It was 11:42 and the album dropped at midnight.
“Uh. Sure, okay. Um. What do you get from a pampered cow?”
“Omigod, is this a farm joke? I don’t know, what?”
“Spoiled milk.”
I just shook my head at him. “You’re awful.”
“Right, sorry, okay. Oh, tell me about your plan for the studio. You said you figured out what you wanted to do.”
I leaned against him on the couch.
“Yeah, okay, so tell me what you think. I want to subsidize albums—or, I dunno what you’d call it. Bankroll them, but that sounds all Daddy Warbucks or something. There are so many amazing bands and musicians, and they can’t afford studio time, or they don’t know any producers or anything. So what if I set it all up, paid people for their time or whatever, and let people record here. Then they would have the files and they could release the albums. If they made money, they could pay the studio back, if not they just wouldn’t.”
Caleb ran a hand over my hair, playing with the ends. He smiled at me.
“How would you pick the bands?”
“I dunno, I haven’t gotten that far. Maybe…well, I’d want it to only be people who really couldn’t afford to do it themselves. Maybe they could submit a song online and a little thingie about their goals and stuff? Like how people apply for grants or whatever? I could choose, or I guess I could hire someone to do it? I should ask Clarissa. Either way, I just want it to be people making great music. Stuff that’s different than what’s out there already. And also it’d be people who were interested in doing it themselves, you know, because this would be them releasing their own stuff.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Caleb said. And this time when he leaned toward me, I kissed him, relishing the taste of him. We started to get a little carried away, when he said, “Hey, it’s time.”
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. Okay.”
I reached a hand out to the laptop open on the coffee table, and pressed the button that would release my first solo album into the world.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “I can’t believe it.”
“You did it, baby,” Caleb rumbled against my ear, and ran fingers through my hair. “Whoa,” he said, looking at me. “You’re really pale. You okay?”
I nodded, unable to speak. I was okay. I was so much better than okay.
Finally, I said, “I’m just sitting here realizing that I have everything I’ve ever wanted. It…I…it’s just a lot.”
Caleb pulled me to him and held me.
“Me too,” he said. “It is a lot.”
He let me go and reached for the computer.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m downloading my boyfriend’s first solo album, duh,” he said, looking at me like I was nuts.
“I have the masters right—”
“Not the point, love.”
He clicked Download and paid for the album, then opened it. I’d done the same thing hundreds of times with hundreds of bands, but it felt entirely surreal.
When the first notes of the opening track started playing automatically upon downloading, I reached to shut it off, but Caleb caught my hand. He leaned back on the couch and pulled me to him, arm around my shoulders.
And then we just listened. He sat there with me, and listened to the whole album, and every time I moved to shut it off or get up, he just kissed my head and pulled me back to him. Even though he’d heard the songs already, he listened intently, like he was meeting them for the first time.
As we reached the second to last song, I started to squirm.
“What? Do you have to pee or something?”
“No. I just, um…I didn’t tell you, but there’s a thirteenth track.”
“Oh, yeah? You decide to record the one with the waltzy chorus? You know I thought it was cool.”
“No, I—not exactly.”
“Okay, well, hush and let me listen.”
The last morning of recording the album, I’d sat bolt upright before dawn, but hadn’t been sure what woke me. I had stayed over at the apartment because I’d been up late working the night before. We’d recorded everything, and I had just planned to go back through and layer a couple of guitar parts, add a few lines of harmony. Small things. When I sent her home, I’d even told Samantha, my amazing producer, that I didn’t need her to come in that day, since I’d just be fiddling.
But when I’d woken up, I found myself drifting over to the piano and sitting down in the darkness. I started to play the song I’d played for Caleb the night he gave me the piano. For months, I’d heard it in my head, in pieces. But now, it fell together as completely and effortlessly as the last pieces in a puzzle. I couldn’t even play fast enough to keep up with what I heard in my head. And when I finished it, I played through it again and again and again, as the sun rose, illuminating the city outside my windows.
I hummed along with it, at first, then bits of the lyrics rearranged themselves, words hooking other words, catching at verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, and fitting themselves together as I played.
I switched on the mics and laid it down in one take. When I listened back, I couldn’t believe it. The track was raw and aching, and I could hear the love in my voice. The need. Then, about two-thirds of the way through, in the piano part between the bridge and the penultimate chorus, a mourning dove called out. They roosted in the eaves, and I often heard their cries in the morning. When I looked over, I saw two of them, sitting on the windowsill, still and ruffled in the sun.
I never did another take.
When the first notes of the track began, I held my breath. It was such a personal song, such a private song. At first I hadn’t even meant it to be part of the album. I’d thought I would just bring it home to Caleb. Surprise him with it in our bed. But then days had gone by, and I hadn’t played it for him yet. Then a week, and I hadn’t mentioned it. I’d uploaded it to be the final track on the album, and as I’d watched the bar load to completion, I’d felt a flutter in my stomach and known it was right.
With Riven, I’d had so much to hide behind. This…I wanted this to reveal something.
The track sounded different than the others, since it wasn’t produced. You could hear the bellows of the pedals as they were pressed and released, hear the slide of my fingers and the echo of the keys. As my voice came in, I saw Caleb’s eyes widen. I turned to him and watched him listen to the song I’d written for him. The song that had gathered inside me, that I’d held tight all these months and finally unspooled for him in the early morning light. The song that told him all the things he already knew, but in the language we both felt deeper than words.
I watched the appreciation in his face turn to awe, and then he looked at me, tears streaming down his face, looking happier than I had ever imagined he could. He grinned through tears and grabbed me, pulled me onto his lap, and squeezed me so hard I could barely move. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him, face in his neck, as I felt him breathe deeply.
We held each other as my song—our song—played, and the album started all over again.
For everyone who needs a fresh start
Acknowledgments
Starting over is scary and wonderful and sometimes necessary. Thanks to everyone who has supported me in starting things anew.
My deep thanks to Anni and Jenny, for your invaluable critiques.
To my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, for everything you do.
To Shauna Summers and the rest of the Loveswept team for your enthusiasm and support for this book. It’s been a total pleasure.
To my amazing readers, who make it all possible.
And to the people I’ve shared music with over the years. In some ways, you’re always still here.
BY ROAN PARRISH
In the Middle of Somewhere
Out of Nowhere
Where We Left Off
Small Change
Heart of the Steal (co-author)
Riven
The Remaking of Corbin Wale
About the Author
ROAN PARRISH lives in Philadelphia, where she is gradually attempting to write love stories in every genre. When not writing, she can usually be found cutting her friends’ hair, meandering through whatever city she’s in while listening to torch songs and melodic death metal, or cooking overly elaborate meals. She loves bonfires, winter beaches, minor chord harmonies, and self-tattooing. One time she may or may not have baked a six-layer chocolate cake and then thrown it out the window in a fit of pique.
roanparrish.com
Facebook.com/roanparrish
Twitter: @RoanParrish
Did Riven steal your heart?
Read on for a sneak peek at
Rend
A novel by Roan Parrish
Available from Loveswept
Chapter 1
I shuffled the papers, files, and leaky pens on my desk into some semblance of order, and swept a busted phone charger and an apple core into the garbage, along with the cheesy dollar store smiley-face eraser my last client had left. I wouldn’t be at work for a week, and I didn’t want that thing grinning up at me when I got back.
Sun streamed through the cracks in the blinds and the A/C unit in the window chugged valiantly, to little effect. Sweat along my spine and under my arms dampened my shirt, and my hair was the riot of curls it had been all summer. I wiped hopelessly at my forehead with the heel of my hand.
This was August at Mariposa. This was August in New York.
“Boy, you look like two hours after church in Georgia,” a warm voice said from my doorway.
“Hey, Imari.” I smiled at her.
Imari had run Mariposa since it was a group of three volunteers circulating information to a few foster programs, eight years ago. Now, it was a full-time nonprofit that worked with clients all across the city to provide resources for transitioning out of the foster system. We had ten full-time staff and a number of volunteers, and ran programming at two satellite offices in foster care facilities to work with youth before they aged out of the system.
Imari had also been the one to hire me when most people would’ve told me to fuck off. I was never sure what it was about me glaring and telling her to shove it that made her think potential employee of the month. All I know is that after I snarled at her about how her suggestion that I list references on my résumé was unrealistic because who the hell did she think paid more than five seconds’ attention to foster kids in public schools, she narrowed her eyes at me, and said Hmm. Then she told me to come to this address the next day because she thought I could be useful.
That was three years ago now, and I was pretty sure working at Mariposa had saved my life. At least, it had saved the life I wanted to have from the one I’d expected.
Imari held out a client file to me.
“This is Noé Caldera. Nineteen, mad as hell, and a pain in the ass.” As I took the file from her she bopped me on the knuckles and winked before handing it over. “Sound familiar?”
I mm-hmmed flatly and opened the file to see a glaring boy whose combination of hostility and fear were as familiar as breathing. I’d seen it in the faces of hundreds of boys I’d been with at St. Jerome’s. Hell, I’d seen it every day in the mirror.
“I’m hoping you have more luck with him than Nando or I had.”
“Shit, Imari, if he won’t listen to you—”
