My Song for You: A Pushing Limits Novel (8 page)

I parked behind Kirk’s jeep on the street in front of Mason’s building. Mason lived in a studio loft that had once belonged to a musician. The man had soundproofed the place, which meant it was a perfect location for us to practice.

I knocked on Mason’s door. Logan and I didn’t have to wait long before it opened.

Mason’s gaze dropped to Logan. “Is there something you’ve been keeping from us?”

“Logan, this is Mason, the drummer,” I said. “Logan’s the son of one of my friends. She has to work and her babysitter is sick.”

Mason raised an eyebrow. “So you thought you’d fucking bring him to work, like one of those spend-the-day-at-your-parent’s-job events?”

“Fuckin’,” Logan repeated.

Shit
. “Logan, we don’t use that word,” I gently admonished.

That caused Mason to snicker. “If you didn’t want him talking like you, why the hell bring him here?”

“Fuckin’.”

I grounded my teeth together. “I’m seriously going to kill you, Mas.” Right before Callie killed me.

He grinned at me. “You’re welcome.”

We entered the loft, Logan holding tight to my hand. Mason lived on the top floor, in one corner of the building. Large windows filled most of the space on the two exterior walls. Mason wasn’t much into furniture and went for the minimalist look, which meant there was plenty of room for our instruments and amps in the center of the room. Much like Callie’s parents, Mason had great taste in furniture. But unlike Callie’s parents, Mason’s taste ran more modern.

And yes, I’d finally pieced together why Callie’s furniture looked more expensive than what I would’ve expected a twenty-two-year-old to own, and why it had looked familiar. She had inherited it when her parents died.

“Hey, man.” Tomas gave me his standard head nod, his lips stretched into a wide grin.

“Congrats. I heard you’re now drumming for Burning Wire.” They were a new band that had started to generate buzz in the L.A. music scene. They weren’t bad, but Tomas was much too talented for the band.

“Thanks. They’re a great bunch of guys.” He peered down at Logan. “Hey, buddy.” He gave the four-year-old a fist bump, which Logan happily returned. Then to Mason and me he said, “I’ll let you guys get to work. See ya later!”

The introduction of Logan to the rest of the guys in the band went a little more smoothly than it had with Mason. Hailey had the day off and was sitting with Nolan on the black leather couch.

“Logan, this is Nolan, our lead singer, and his girlfriend, Hailey.”

“You have puppy, yes?” he asked them, his small body pressed against my legs.

“Would you like to see a picture of him?” Hailey asked.

Logan took a tentative step forward. “Yes. Please.”

She removed her smartphone from her purse and handed it to him. On the screen was a fluffy, nine-week-old golden retriever puppy, snoozing on Nolan’s shirtless chest. The puppy wasn’t the only one sleeping on the couch. Nolan looked pretty out of it.

“His name is Rocky,” she said. “He’s a golden retriever.”

“Why the fuck is our lead singer half-naked with a dog sleeping on him?” Mason asked. “Who the hell removed his nuts and gave him ovaries?” He laughed. I glared at him, my message clear. He abruptly stopped.

Kirk and Aaron looked from Mason to me, amused.

“My sister makes me cough up a quarter every time I swear around her kids,” Aaron said.

“Not a bad idea.” I pointed at Mason. “Every time you swear, you have to pay Logan a dollar.”

“Why the fuck do I have to pay him a dollar when Aaron only has to pay a fucking quarter?”

“Oh, look at that, Logan,” I said, doing everything in my power not to strangle our drummer. “Uncle Mason owes you two bucks. By the time practice is over, you could be a millionaire.”

The guys and Hailey laughed. All the guys but Mason, that is. He reached into his back jeans pocket and pulled out his wallet, then handed Logan the money. Logan’s face lit up.

“Do you wanna feel some music now?” I asked him.

“Don’t you mean f—uh, hear music?” Mason said, frowning. I had no idea if that was because not being allowed to swear would kill him or because my question confused him.

“Logan’s deaf.”

“If he’s deaf, why’s he wearing a hearing aid?”

“It’s not a hearing aid. It’s a cochlear implant, but he doesn’t like how music sounds with it. So I thought that maybe instead he could feel the vibrations through the floor while we play.” At the volume we practiced at, he was bound to feel something.

“Wanna feel music,” Logan said, pointing to the drum set.

I crouched down to his level. “I want to feel the music,” I corrected. Christ, I was beginning to sound like his parent. “Can you say that for me?”

“I want to feel music,” he enunciated slowly. Close enough.

“I’m going to remove the processor now. All right?”

Logan nodded, and I repeated the steps Callie had showed me this morning so that the sound waves wouldn’t be transmitted to his brain, to be converted into sound.

“He can’t hear now?” Mason asked.

“Nope. Now he’s completely deaf.”

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Sorry. Just needed to get those out.”

Kirk slapped Mason on the back. “That’s four bucks.”

“How the fuck do you figure that? The kid can’t fucking hear me.”

“Yes, but maybe he can lip-read,” Kirk said. “Besides, we didn’t say Logan had to hear you in order for you to owe him. Read the fine print.”

“Promise me, puck boy, that you’ll never have kids.” Mason removed ten bucks from his wallet and handed it to Logan. “There you go, kid. Now I’ve got a four-cuss credit.”

Logan looked at me and grinned, having no idea why he had just earned the money. The bigger question was how I was going to explain his sudden windfall to his mother. Either way, she would be less than thrilled at how much Logan’s vocabulary had grown in one afternoon.

I indicated for Logan to follow me to my guitar. I lifted the strap over my head and turned the guitar on, then indicated for Logan to sit near me on the hardwood floor. Watching his expression, I strummed a few random chords. His eyes widened and he placed his hands on the floor. I played some more, and his face lit up brighter than before.

“I wanna try something,” I said to the guys. “Each of you play a couple of bars from ‘Take Me Tonight,’ but one at a time. I want him to feel the vibrations from the different instruments.” The lyrics weren’t exactly kid-friendly, but Logan couldn’t hear them, so it didn’t matter.

I indicated for Mason to go first. Logan bopped his head in time to the drum beat. This was followed with Kirk on the bass, Aaron on the keyboards, and finally me on the guitar again. The drums and bass got the biggest reaction from him.

“Told you drums are the best,” Mason said. “You know, if it weren’t for the part where he obviously likes drums better than the guitar, I’d swear he was your son.”

“Idiot. I’ve already told you he isn’t my son.”

“I heard what you said, but are you sure you’ve never banged his mother?”

What the fuck? “Of course I haven’t.”

“Maybe you’ve just forgotten it. You were drunk or something.”

“I’m positive I’ve never f—uh, slept with her.”

“Then how come he looks a lot like you?”

Logan looked back and forth between us. Fortunately, he couldn’t hear Mason.

“Just because he and I both have dark brown hair doesn’t make him my son. Kirk has brown hair too.”

“Yeah, but Kirk’s hair isn’t wavy and Kirk doesn’t have dimples. You and the boy have the same dimples.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s my son.” God, sometimes I wondered whether Mason’s mother had dropped him on his head shortly after he was born.

“What color is his mom’s hair?” he asked.

“Red.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Dimples?”

Callie’s smile popped into my head. “None, but that doesn’t prove anything.”

Mason shrugged. “Whatever you say. But I still think he looks a lot like a mini-you.” He snorted. “As if one of you isn’t already enough.”

Logan signed something, but I had no idea what it meant. Seeing that I didn’t understand, he said, “No play?”

Everyone’s gaze shifted back and forth between me and Logan, but I couldn’t tell if they were buying into Mason’s way-off theory.

“For the last time,” I said, “he’s not my son. So let’s drop it and play.”

Mason got the hint and began playing the opening beats of our upcoming single. We all joined in soon after.

We continued playing for the next few hours. Surprisingly, Logan didn’t get bored watching us. At one point he got up and bounced around like he was dancing, the way little kids do. The light steaming through the windows shone on him, like he was the real star of the show. Hailey joined him. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

For a moment, I imagined that Hailey wasn’t the one dancing with Logan, and that it was Callie.

A sudden longing for the girl who’d been in my thoughts a lot lately—more than she should’ve been—came close to knocking me onto my ass for the second time that day.

I quietly unlocked my apartment door, in case Logan was already asleep. Light spilled from his room, as did Jared’s deep voice as he read from one of Logan’s favorite picture books.

I closed my eyes for a moment and let his sexy voice fill me with love, desire, and a wish that everything was different between us. That instead of Jared reading to my nephew, he was reading to
our
son.

But I had long since learned—after Jared started dating my sister, after my parents died, after Logan got meningitis—that wishes came true only in fairy tales.

Or maybe they just didn’t come true for me.

Tiptoeing so as not to disturb them, I walked to the doorway and peered in. Logan was under his covers. Jared sat next to him on the bed. The two together—father and son—made an adorable picture. And that made my heart squeeze tightly, both in joy and in sadness. How would Jared feel if he knew Logan was his son? What would he do if he found out that I had known all these years and never told him?

But I couldn’t have even if I had wanted to. I couldn’t break the promise I’d made to my sister. I had loved her too much to go against her wishes. She had been there for me whenever I needed her. She had taught me how to apply makeup. She had helped me with my math homework. She had encouraged me with my artwork whenever I got frustrated because something about the picture I was working on wasn’t right.

Even though she had died and I was struggling to figure everything out myself, I couldn’t tell Jared the truth. Maybe part of that had to do with how long it had been since I’d last talked to him. And what would I have said to him anyway? Talk about an awkward conversation. In the end, it had been easier pretending Logan’s father didn’t exist.

Besides, I didn’t even know if he wanted a child. He hadn’t when Alexis had told him she was pregnant. It was one thing to hang out with a friend’s child. It was another when you were the one responsible for the child.

I also couldn’t tell him, because what if Jared decided he wanted Logan in his life and won custody of his son? I couldn’t risk losing yet another person that I loved.

Jared glanced up from the book. He nudged Logan. “Look who’s home.”

“Mommy! Jared read to us.”

I climbed onto the bed with them, with Logan sandwiched between us on the twin bed. “What is he reading?” I already knew. It was one of Logan’s favorite books.

“It’s
Storm Is Coming!
”

“Logan’s been teaching me the signs for the different animals.” Jared demonstrated his new skill, signing “cow,” “sheep,” “duck,” “dog,” and “cat.”

“That’s really good,” I said and signed. All the while, my ovaries were screaming,
Daddy material alert!
Damn ovaries. They must not have read the memo.

Jared read the book again, and I did my best to look at the pictures and not sneak sidelong glances at him. Did my best not to wonder if Logan would look even more like his father when he was older. I was doomed if he did. I was just surprised Jared hadn’t noticed the similarities.

Jared finished the story and I tucked Logan in.

“Did you have fun today?” I asked.

Logan nodded. “Jared play guitar and I get lots of money.”

“You did? Jared paid you to watch him?”

“No. When Mason say ‘fuckin’.’ ” He smiled, proud of his newfound income.

Jared had the decency to at least look sheepish. “Sorry ’bout that. Mason isn’t used to being around kids. If it makes you feel better, he mostly swore while Logan couldn’t hear him, but Kirk still made him cough up the money because it was the principle of it that mattered.”

There were so many choice words on the tip of my tongue, but I managed to rein them in. “Just because an adult swears,” I said to Logan instead, “it doesn’t mean you’re allowed to. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I kissed his cheek. “I’m glad you had fun today.”

Jared and I said goodnight to him. After I removed his audio processor and put it in the drying box, we left his room.

“Do you want me to leave or do you want to hang out for a bit?” Jared asked in the hallway.

I had assignments due soon, not to mention I had a few projects clients were waiting for, but all I had the energy to do was to watch TV.

I grabbed us some drinks, and Jared and I settled on the couch. I curled up at one end. He sat in the middle. At one point during the show, he lifted my feet onto his lap and removed my socks.

“What are you doing?” I asked, relieved I had at least bothered to redo my nail polish last night. Not that I’d expected anyone—least of all Jared—to see my red toenails.

“You worked twelve hours, so I bet your feet are sore.”

My feet. My shoulders. My entire body.

“So I’m going to massage them,” he explained.

“And I’m guessing you’re a pro at that?”

He smiled, and as usual his dimples almost did me in.

At his expert touch, my feet turned to liquid—not to mention a few other body parts. Each nerve fiber came alive, which said a lot after how dead my feet had been since midway through my shift. If Jared ever gave up playing the guitar and creating songs, he could make a great living giving foot massages, with me as his number one customer.

“Are your feet the only parts that are sore?” he asked, after finishing with my now very happy feet.

“
Were
sore. Past tense. You cured them.”

“Good to hear. Anywhere else?”

“My shoulders and back are sore,” I said without hesitation.

He spread his legs and patted the spot between them. This time I did hesitate. The nerves in my feet weren’t the only ones that had come alive. The nerves between my legs had ventured closer to happy land. Who knew what would happen if his magic fingers touched any more of me?

“I don’t bite,” he pointed out.

“Nice to know.” With a deep breath, which failed to do what I had aimed for, I moved between his legs.

His hands kneaded my shoulder muscles. I winced at his touch, but then let myself go as he continued working on them, releasing all the knots. The man was magic when it came to his hands.

I moaned. I couldn’t help it.

Jared’s hands stilled for a second. “You okay?”

“Oh, definitely.” My voice came out low and husky. Now
that
was unexpected.

Working with a game plan different from the one my brain had agreed to, my head moved to the side, exposing my neck. I closed my eyes.

Lips, warm and soft, hovered over the exposed skin, teasing me. I leaned back against his hard chest. I couldn’t remember the last time a guy had touched me this way. It felt good, better than I remembered.

His hands drifted up along my ribs, lightly tracing them. A shiver ran though me. I was dreaming this. I was so tired from work, I must have fallen asleep on the couch. Now I was dreaming that Jared was touching me in the way I longed for.

His hands cupped my breasts and his thumbs brushed against my nipples. My very happy, perky nipples. I groaned.

Best. Dream. Ever.

The lips moved to the shell of my ear. The tip of a tongue trailed along the outside. My panties grew damp with want.

My eyes still closed, I turned my head to taste those lips. Sadly, they were just part of my active imagination, but that was okay. A girl couldn’t be too fussy.

The kiss was a brief touch of the lips. Nothing more than a tease. Against my wishes, my eyes opened a crack.

Then they snapped open fully.

I scrambled off the couch, but in my haste to escape Jared—the real Jared, not the dream Jared—I tripped over his leg and landed on my ass. Nice.

“Sorry,” I croaked, “I thought you were someone else.” Jared was the guitarist of a popular band who spent a lot of their time touring. He didn’t have room in his life for a girlfriend, especially one with a child. Which meant this was about him getting laid—like I was nothing more than another of his groupies.

That thought was a bucket of icy water between the legs.

He frowned. “Who the hell did you think I was? Logan’s father?”

I laughed, the sound bitter. At least he had no idea how he had nailed the truth square on its nose. “Of course not. I’m…tired.” My butt smarted from the impromptu landing, slightly eclipsing the smarting of my pride at his reaction. “But you have to agree that what just happened was a mistake, right?”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re right. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

At his cold tone, my heart tore into several pieces. But that was okay. There was only room in it for one person anyway. At least that was what I kept telling myself.

I mentally straightened the
NO VACANCY
sign on my heart and walked Jared to the front door. “Thanks for helping me today.” I gave him a bright smile even though I felt anything but happy. “Miserable” was a better word for it. “It meant everything to me when you brought him to the diner. I miss him a lot when I’m working, and…Well, thank you.”

He returned my smile, but it seemed as forced as mine felt. “You’re welcome.”

Everything between us had suddenly shifted, and if I could have rewound time to get a redo, I would’ve jumped at the chance. Only this time my body wouldn’t have experienced his touch. My lips wouldn’t have experienced his kiss.

And I wouldn’t have been left craving more—a more I’d never get to have.