Oh, my God.”

My head whips up and I quickly push away from the wall when I hear Shelby’s quietly muttered words as she stops in the doorway of her studio.

My nerves have been shot to hell since I sent her a text message earlier and then spent the rest of the day in here. What if that wasn’t her cell phone number anymore? What if she didn’t show up? What if she hated it and hated me, thinking I was trying to force her back into the person she used to be?

Wiping my sweaty palms on the front of my jeans, I walk in her direction as she enters the room slowly, her eyes taking it in as mine take in her. Without any windows in this room, I couldn’t see what was going on outside, but I heard a few cracks of thunder while I’d been working. Staring at Shelby as she spins slowly in a circle in bare feet, I realize it must have been pouring outside and I feel bad that I made her go out in the storm. I want to apologize, but my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth as I look at her.

Her long, strawberry blond hair is wet and stuck to her cheeks, shoulders, and down her back. She’s wearing a teal-colored sleeveless dress that hugs her chest and falls to just above her knees, the wet material clinging to her thighs as she turns. With a small gold belt tied around her waist, thin gold straps over her shoulders matching a line of gold at the edge of the low scooped top of the dress, and the way the material lies on her body, she looks like a fucking Greek goddess. I think about all those days, months, and years I dreamed of her just to help me get through another night, and it takes me a minute to realize this isn’t a dream. She really is standing right here in front of me, close enough to touch.

“Did you do all this?” she asks softly when she finally finishes looking around.

“You’re stunning,” I blurt out, unable to think about anything else but how beautiful she is and how thankful I am to be alive and here with her right now.

She pulls the wet skirt of the dress away from her thighs and shakes it a little, then runs her fingers through her long, wet hair.

“I’m a mess. I didn’t realize how hard it was coming down until I got outside,” she tells me with a nervous laugh.

Moving slowly, I walk toward her and stop when I’m a few inches away. The rain has amplified the peach smell of her skin and surrounds me like a piece of heaven.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that bad out there. Why didn’t you just drive over?”

The corners of her mouth tipped up in a small smile quickly fall and she drops her head, avoiding my eyes.

“I can’t…I don’t like to drive when it rains,” she whispers.

My heart drops right down into my stomach and I move, sliding my hands around her waist and pulling her against me.

“Shit. I’m such an asshole. I’m sorry, Shelby,” I mutter as I press my lips to the side of her head.

I close my eyes and sigh when her hands slide through my arms and wrap around me, her palms flattening against my back.

“It’s okay. I’m fine. Now, can you please answer my question. Did you do all of this?” she asks again.

I can hear the smile in her voice, and when she presses her cheek to my chest, I forget what the hell she just asked, what day it is, and my own name. She’s so warm and soft and I don’t know how in the hell I lived without having her right here where she belongs, holding me so tight.

She pulls her head away from my chest and looks up at me, the smile coming back to her face, letting me know the plan I came up with after talking to Paul was a good one and she doesn’t hate me.

“It’s not that big of a deal. I just cleaned it up a little,” I tell her with a shrug, tightening my arms around her.

“Eli, this place was a dirty mess. There was so much dust on the mirrors and the floor you could have built a sandcastle with all of it,” she replies.

I’m definitely downplaying how much work it took to get her studio back to looking like an actual studio and not like something out of a horror film. It took three bottles of Windex to get all the layers of dirt and film off the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that line the entire back wall. I wound up having to rent a commercial floor buffer and sander after I swept the wood dance floor and saw what condition it was in. After a few coats of wax, replacing all the lightbulbs in the ceiling, and setting up her table by the door with fresh towels and bottled water, it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Seeing the smile on her face makes it all worth it.

“But wait, there’s more!” I tell her in my best infomercial voice as I let go of her with one arm, reaching into my back pocket.

Pulling out the small black remote, I aim it in the direction of the new sound system I set up in the corner of the room and hit Play. As soon as the first few notes of the pop song blast out into the room, it happens.

Shelby’s head tips back and she laughs. Her entire body shakes in my arms and I have the sudden urge to drop down to my knees and cry like a fucking baby when I hear the sound that haunted my dreams for six years.

“I don’t see what’s so funny. I’ve heard this is a really popular song,” I tell her, deciding to go with doing whatever I can to keep that smile on her face before I turn into a pussy right at her feet.

“It’s popular all right. It’s also very Biebery,” she tells me with another laugh.

“I seem to recall you liking this Bieber guy at one time.”

Her smile is so bright I shouldn’t have bothered replacing the lightbulbs. She could light up this entire room with that thing.

“And I seem to recall that he made your ears bleed.”

I shrug, sliding the remote back into my pocket and wrapping my arm back around her, slowly starting to rock us from side to side. “Eh, he’s kind of growing on me. And anyway, the lyrics aren’t half bad.”

She shakes her head at me and lets out another small laugh.

“Do I even want to ask how you know what the lyrics are, or that this is a popular song?” she asks, swaying with me to the music, not even realizing she’s doing it.

“One of the things my shrink suggested to me when I first got home and couldn’t sleep for more than a couple of minutes at a time was to do stupid, mindless shit like catch up on current events,” I explain. “Stuff like read about celebrity gossip, look up the Billboard charts for the last few years, and listen to the new songs and watch reality TV. Anything that didn’t require much brain power so I could settle my thoughts and just fucking relax.”

Her smile softens and she cocks her head as she looks up at me.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you that. You don’t have to talk about that stuff if you don’t want to.”

With our bodies still gently moving to the music, I slide one hand from around her waist and bring it up between us, smoothing off a few pieces of hair that are still stuck to her cheek and tucking the strands behind her ear.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Shelby. All you have to do is ask. I’m okay talking about it. It’s easier with you,” I tell her with a reassuring smile, unable to stop myself from running the tips of my fingers down her cheek.

The chorus of the song picks up and the Biebs starts singing about being sorry, knowing he let his girl down and wondering if it’s too late to say he’s sorry. The kid might be a punk, but he says the words I want Shelby to hear and feel and know.

Moving my fingertips down until they slide off her jaw, I reach my arm behind me, grab one of her hands, and pull it around up by her shoulder. Lacing my fingers through hers, I take the swaying one step further and start to move my feet, my hold on her body forcing her to move with me.

She licks her lips nervously and lets out a shaky breath.

“Eli, I can’t dance,” she mumbles so softly that I barely hear her over the music.

Leaning down without stopping the movement of our bodies, I press my lips to her ear and speak just above a whisper. “Close your eyes.”

I pull back just enough to watch her do as I said, her eyelids slowly lowering until her long, black lashes are resting against the skin of her upper cheekbones.

Kissing the tip of her nose, I slide my lips across her cheek and place another kiss right in the middle of it before pressing our cheeks together and speaking again.

“You just need to feel the music, Beautiful. Close your eyes and just feel the music.”

I push her a little further, my palm against her back sliding down and around to her hip. With my hand splayed against the side of her body, I start swaying and rocking my own hips to the beat of the music, pushing my palm against her just enough to guide her movements to match mine.

“I can’t do this. I’m scared,” she tells me quietly.

Her hips are moving perfectly with mine, all on their own, just as fluid and natural as always.

“Does your leg hurt?”

She pulls her cheek away from mine to look up at me, shaking her head no.

“It doesn’t hurt, it just feels…bruised. It always feels like this when it rains.”

The song ends and the silence in the room only lasts long enough for a loud crack of thunder to be heard from outside before the next song I put on the playlist starts right up. As fate would have it, the next song is called “Barefoot and Bruised.”

When I added the song to the playlist for tonight, I had no idea Shelby would show up here, so beautiful and perfect in her wet sundress and bare feet, with her leg feeling bruised. I added it because the words to this song were a thousand times better than the stupid Bieber one.

“If your leg starts to hurt, you tell me, okay? I’m right here beside you,” I remind her, echoing the words of the song.

She nods her head and takes a deep breath as we once again start swaying to the music in perfect sync.

“You saved me, Shelby,” I whisper, pressing my forehead against hers. “For five years, you saved me, and you didn’t even know it. Now it’s my turn to save you.”

I feel her breath against my face when she lets out a shaky sigh.

“Close your eyes, Shelby. Just close your eyes and feel the music.”

When her eyes close once again, I push my lips forward and press them against hers.