“A guy?” he asked.
“A beautiful man. I couldn’t help but stare at him the entire time I was singing.”
The pink in his cheeks deepened and streaked down his neck. It was like watching a shy flower bloom. He didn’t take his eyes off my hand. “He was probably staring at you, too,” he said softly. “Mesmerized by your performance.”
“Why were you alone that night?” I asked, unable to stand it any longer. I closed my hand around his and held on.
Winter’s eyes widened. “You really noticed me?”
I studied him for a moment to try and determine whether he was flighty or simply insecure. My guess was insecure. “I did.” I took a breath. What the hell did I have to lose?
“I more than noticed you.”
4
Winter
I was in a dream. Yes, it was cliché, but what else explained the impossible situation of Gentry Kane looking at me with those famous honey-brown eyes?
And I was touching him. Touching him.
His hand was warm and smooth. I tried not to close my eyes and imagine all the times he’d used these fingers to stroke the strings of his guitar.
“You normally wear a ring on this hand,” I murmured without thinking. “Did you have it on when you punched the wall?” I turned his hand over and ran my fingertip down his long middle finger as his previous words finally sank in. “Wait. Wait, what?”
Gentry’s smile was devastating. It made my stomach clench with desire and panicky desperation. I’d always imagined the force of it if it’d ever been used on me, and… ugh. It was enough to make me shake with the effort to hold myself back from jumping him.
“Why were you alone?” he repeated. “Why did you leave?”
I shook my head. “Shitty boyfriend.”
After reaching for a squeezable ball, I placed it in his hand and curled his fingers around it. His skin was impossibly warm, and now that I was sitting so close, I noticed how good he smelled, too. Like gingerbread and fresh pine. “Nice, slow squeezes. We’re just going to warm up. Tell me if it’s uncomfortable at all.”
I had a hard time looking at him. It was a bit like staring directly into the sun.
“Did your boyfriend stand you up for the concert?” he asked after a few minutes of squeezing the ball.
I opened a new tub of therapy putty. “No. I bought the ticket before we started seeing each other. It wasn’t anything serious.” I glanced up at him and noticed his eyes focused on me. Like what I said mattered. “Anyway, he, uh… well, not him, really, but someone texted me during the concert.”
After glancing at him again to judge whether or not I was crossing a professional line, I saw his jaw tighten imperceptibly. Instead of apologizing, I simply stopped talking and focused on warming up the therapy putty.
I hadn’t noticed a lock of hair had fallen over my forehead until Gentry’s long index finger brushed it back. “And that made you leave the concert?”
Something about this man made me want to crawl into his lap and cry, and wasn’t that the silliest thought ever? I was one of those ridiculous fans who’d built a celebrity up into being something he wasn’t. In my mind, Gentry Kane was my safe space. But in reality, he was my patient.
I sat up straight and tilted my neck back and forth to try and force myself to relax. “Let’s just say it was a photo of boyfriends behaving badly and leave it at that. Moving on to your next exercise… what you’ve been doing so far is called a power grip. Now I want you to do a pinching motion like this.” I took the ball out of his hand and showed him the exercise before handing the ball back to him.
“Tell me more about how you ended up in Aster Valley,” I asked. “I would have expected a celebrity to pick someplace more well-known like Vail or Steamboat.”
His hand went through the pinching motion with only a little obvious discomfort. “Don’t want to be recognized. Did you break up with him?” he asked. “The badly behaving boyfriend?”
“Yes.” I took another sip of coffee to keep from saying more.
“And was it worth missing the second half of the GUS concert?”
The edge of his lips turned up in a teasing smirk that made my stomach twirl. “It wasn’t him. If it’d just been that jackass, I would have stayed. It was the fact my front door was hanging wide open in the photo. I have a cat and…”
“You needed to make sure it was okay,” he suggested in a gentle voice. “I get it.”
My eyes got a little braver. I checked out his dark hair, overgrown enough to be wavy at the ends. It set off his blue irises and the tiny dark mole under one of his eyes. I still couldn’t believe I was sitting here with the Gentry Kane.