I expected many things tonight. He wasn’t one of them. I can feel the surprise moving up my skin, setting every nerve ending on fire.

Ari slides a hand under my elbow and guides me forward, out of the doorway and toward the stage that holds a man I haven’t seen in twenty-six years. I can feel my breath leaking out of me in stuttering, shaky spurts, and I try to pull myself together. It’s a losing battle. Twenty-six years hasn’t dimmed what he does to me at all.

“I take it you know each other,” says Ari quietly.

That’s far too weak a word. “We did, once. It’s been a long time.”

She doesn’t say anything else. She just delivers me to the edge of the stage and melts backward into the crowd.

Eli hops down, a move that reminds me of the boy I once knew so well. He comes to a stop in front of me, his eyes the same soft, piercing gray they were at sixteen, and touches his fingers to my cheek. “Chloe?”

He asks it like it’s a question, but we both know it isn’t. My entire being sinks into his fingers. I reach up, taking his hand in mine. “Eli.” I glance at the stage behind him, at the keyboard he just left. “You did it. You’re still playing music.” I’m careful with my words. We were once two army brats, and he was the one with the parents who didn’t understand the calling inside him at all. Maybe this is just a gig he does once in a while. It doesn’t feel that way, though. He feels like a man who knows what it is to live his dream.

The dream that once fluttered wildly in the chest of a boy and that I blew on with every bit of strength in my sixteen-year-old soul. Even when it meant I had to say goodbye.

He swallows, like he can remember that boy just as well as I can. “Yes. This is a side thing I do for fun. I’m first cello in the Seattle Symphony when I’m not here.”

I can feel the tears rising. “You picked the cello?” He played four instruments well enough to be accepted to Juilliard, but the cello was my favorite, the one that spoke to the very depths of my teenage self.

He tips his forehead into mine. “Yes. I didn’t bring it tonight. I didn’t know you were coming.”

I feel my laughter, shaky and jittery and real. “I didn’t know until earlier today either.”

He pulls me into his arms, and I can feel the boy—and the man he’s become. The one who has all the boy’s passion and none of his doubts. The arms around me are strong and certain and inviting something far less tentative than the Eli I once knew.

I exhale and lean into the hug. I feel his hand slide up my back, into my hair. Holding me against his chest. His breath teases the top of my head. “I really missed you, shorty.”

I laugh. Even in spiky heels, he’s still got more height on me than he once did. “That nickname is never going away, huh?”

I feel his chuckle rumbling against my ear. “Do you want it to?”

I don’t. Growing up, moving from base to base every couple of years, I never had a history with people. I do now, but it’s adult history. He knows parts of me I don’t want to forget. “No. But I really don’t think it’s fair that you got taller.” And a lot more built. I have my arms wrapped around one sexy musician.

“They fed me a lot at Juilliard.” His voice is quiet.

I lean back in his arms, trying to reconcile the man with the boy who cried in my arms the night before he left. “You were supposed to go, Eli. I still believe that.”

He nods. “I was. You were so much surer than I was back then.”

I knew he needed to leave so the music that made him beautiful didn’t have to die. “You got sure.” I’d seen it in his letters. The ones we’d eventually agreed to stop writing.

They hurt too much.

And that isn’t somewhere I want to go in a room full of people. I reach up and touch the scruff on his chin. The boy I remember would have killed for that much facial hair. “We’ll talk.”

He eyes me carefully, not letting go of his snug hold around my waist. “Are you staying a while?”

I nod, feeling short of words. “Yes.”

The smile holds so much of the boy. “I’ll come find you at my break.”

His arms let go and I step back. I watch him walk onto the stage like he owns it—and like he doesn’t need to be the star. Instead, a woman wearing torn jeans and a corset I designed steps up to the mike, electric guitar in her hands. She gives me a look that says she didn’t miss a second of what just happened between me and her keyboard player, and then she strums a loud chord as she grins out at the audience.

I miss what she says next. I’m too distracted by the man rolling up his shirt sleeves in the background.