My jaw clenched. “Wouldn’t you? Every time you felt the fire in your arm. Every time you had to see the ugly, ripped-up skin on your body?”

Brody’s hands gripped me a little bit harder. “Not one thing about you is ugly. The only thing those scars prove is that you can walk through fire and survive. I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that.”

My pulse thrummed in my neck, and blood roared in my ears as he held me captive within those dark depths. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even look away. Brody leaned closer, moving millimeter by millimeter until he was just a breath away. He gave me all the time in the world to retreat, but I didn’t. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to feel his lips on mine.

I closed the final distance. Demolished the last barrier I’d been so determined to keep intact. None of the reasons seemed to matter in the moment. Nothing mattered except Brody and me.

One of his hands slid down my neck, slipping under my fall of hair as our lips met. Everything about the contact was a jolt to the system. A beautiful juxtaposition of all that was Brody and me. Gentle yet strong. Hungry yet tender.

I lost myself in his kiss the same way I disappeared into my music—instantly and all-consumed. We found that same exploration, too. The slow builds and beautifully desperate spirals down. It was a composition I wanted to play forever.

Too soon, I was coming out of it, reality breaking in as Brody’s foot knocked over a can of paint. I pulled back, breathless. “Wait.” I placed a hand on his chest. “I need a minute. To get my head together and—hell. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that.”

Brody smirked. “I told myself the same. But sometimes, life makes other plans.”

Dumb, dumb, dumb. It was all I could think as I stared into Brody’s gorgeous face. The list of things that could go wrong if we moved into this shift in our relationship was endless. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. Can we just pretend this never happened?”

Just saying the words aloud had pain sifting through my chest. I waited for Brody’s anger. Instead, he simply smiled at me. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know that’s true. There’s something between us. It pulled at me from the second I got off that boat. A strand of something, weaving us together. And I’m not cutting that cord. And you could try, but I don’t think it would work.”