“If you need some quiet time or something, I can leave you be.”

He shook his head. “Now you’re ready to leave me alone? What happened to me having to peel your fingers from the door frame?”

“Maybe you driving like a maniac through town has showed me the error of my ways.”

His leg jerked up off the accelerator and the odometer dropped by at least twenty miles per hour.

“Dare…” I rested my hand on his bicep. It bunched under my hold. “You can talk to me. Let me help.”

His gaze didn’t flash ‘back the hell off’ like it did when he’d first stepped out of the house. Now it was more lost, as if the situation with me in front of him was something hopeless.

“Or not.” I sank back into my seat and stared at the window. The trees whipped by, and he didn’t show any signs of slowing down. Dots of rain splattered the windshield, but not enough to need wipers.

“When you played…”

He licked his lips and pressed them together. “When you played it shook me, Bay.” His gaze cut to mine.

I sucked in a sharp breath. My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. I gathered up my courage to ask, “Shook you? Shook you how?”

“I don’t let many people close to me. I just don’t. But you walked straight into my life like it was no big deal.”

“You had a part in that, I think.”

He let out a huffy laugh. “True. When you sang that first night, I was dealing with some stuff.”

“What kind—”

“It doesn’t matter, but your voice pulled me back from a bad place and I needed to hear it again.”

I turned in my seat angling myself toward him. “And when I played, I took you back to that bad place?” My stomach knotted and clenched that my playing had made him feel bad, so he ran from my house.

“No.” He shook his head and pulled off to the side of the road. Although he wasn’t driving anymore, he wasn’t looking at me. “It didn’t.” He flung open his door and stood on the side of the road with his fingers interlocked behind his head, staring up at the sky.

Clouds gathered, wanting front row seats to my confusion. The spitting rain had turned into a drizzle, drumming on the car roof.

I threw my door open, tired of this dance of miscommunication we were doing. “It took you to a good place. Don’t we all want to be happy? Why is that a bad thing?”

“Because you’re like an unpredictable opponent out on the field and I’ve got no idea how to cover you.”

As if him saying the words opened the literal flood gates, the skies opened and the drizzle turned into a downpour. I shielded my eyes and charged ahead.

“I’m someone you need protecting from?”

He jerked his arms from behind his head and spun to face me. “Probably the only one.”