Anxiety twisted through me as I stepped onto Zee’s elevator. He’d been strained since he’d shown up unannounced at my house five days ago. Questions so evident in his eyes. His direction unclear. His path obscured.

The thing was, I could see it shining all around him. Beckoning him forward. Calling to all his brilliance and talent that I felt bleeding from his soul and through his fingers every time he sat in front of the piano.

I wanted him to embrace it. Find it.

I jabbed the button for the sixth floor, maybe a little too eagerly as I waited for it to carry me to him.

The metal doors slid open, and I started forward only to stumble on my surprise when a woman shouldered past me, a grin on her face.

A grin that was pure menace.

Like somehow I’d been caught red-handed and she was all too happy to be the one to bring me in.

I held her malicious glare as she climbed onto the elevator, her smirk widening as she punched at the button and the doors slid closed.

Warily, I turned back to where Zee was standing in his doorway. Every inch of him was rigid, muscles bulging and bristling with throttled rage.

I blinked at him, hating the way my feet fumbled as I forced myself to take a step, the sinking fear that seeped through the surface of my skin as I tried to process the scene.

His jaw ticked beneath his beard when I stopped two feet in front of him.

“You said to come,” I forced out, every emotion I was feeling exposed when the words cracked.

It seemed to snap him from the wall of fury, and he looked down at me.

Grief lashed across his face as he stepped back. “Please, come inside.”

Something fierce and severe climbed into the air.

So thick it made it difficult to breathe as I dropped my head and entered his loft. I swallowed around the thick knot of emotion, moving toward the windows, to the light that poured in like a crashing, ravaging wave.

I stood in the midst of it, panting for the breaths the mood had stolen.

“Alexis.” He whispered it from directly behind me. My hair was up in a high ponytail, and his fingertips trailed the star dangling down the back of my neck.

“Who was she?”

“No one.” It was hard.

Slowly, I turned to face him. To watch his lie. “Don’t tell me she is no one when she’s so obviously someone.”

This had gotten complicated.

Because there I stood, making demands I’d promised him I wouldn’t make. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that I’d fallen.

Fallen hard and fast.

I was terrified of hitting the ground.

His jaw tightened. “She’s the past.”

I reached out and fisted my hands in his shirt. “Then tell me I’m the future.”

He flinched. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I already told you I couldn’t do this, Alexis. You already knew this was temporary. Fuck…it never should’ve even gotten started. Told you I couldn’t do this…and here I am.”

“What if this is exactly where you’re supposed to be?”

“And what if it ruins me?”

“What if you’re breaking my heart?”

He edged me closer to the window. Heat blanketed my back and poured into my spirit as he wound an errant piece of hair around his finger, brushing at the side of my neck.

It made the room spin and my breaths heavy. How did one man exert this much control over me? I was supposed to be the strong one.

The brave one.

Instead I was trembling at his feet.

He murmured rough words at the side of my face. “Last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you, Alexis. I was supposed to protect you. Take care of you.”

Right then, I knew the only thing in danger was my heart.

“What if I want to take care of you, too? Do you think I don’t feel it, Zee? Do you think I don’t know you need me, too?”

“Sometimes the things we think we need only hurt us in the end.”

I felt the warning behind it.

I placed both hands on his waist. “And sometimes those things are exactly what we’ve been waiting for.”

His eyes closed, as if he needed to shield himself from this. From us. From this out-of-control train we were riding.

Unstoppable.

I had no idea how to prepare myself for the devastation of when we finally crashed.

He buried his face in my neck. “What I need to do is let you go, and I don’t fucking know how to do it.”

Anguish rose in his throat, so thick when he grated the words. “Last show is next week. I need you there, Alexis. I need you there when I tell it all goodbye. You make it real again. You make me feel it. Tell me you’ll be there.”

I let him wind me in his arms, my cheek pressed to his chest. “Why does it feel like it will be our goodbye?”