Love's Rhythm (20 page)

“Serious?” Josh turned to Lauren with a hopeful look. “Can I go, Mum? Please?”

Lauren noted his excitement, his fidgeting anticipation. Eight days was a long time to go without a best mate at fifteen. An even longer time when you were stuck with just your unhinged mother for company and no Wii or Playstation to escape to. She chuckled, nodding her head. He needed to be away from her for a bit. She understood that. He may not have completely forgiven her for the secret she’d kept from him, but he’d moved on. Wasn’t it time she did that same?

In what way? Even if the world has found something else far more interesting than you, even if Nick has given up his foolish notion of the fantasy happy-ever-after and gone back to the life of a rock star, do you really think you’ll be able to move on? Do you?

The question was the most vexing and one she’d yet to find an answer to. But that shouldn’t stop her son getting on with his life. Whether his father was in it or not.

With a grin, Josh gave her another one of his rare hugs. “Love you, Mum,” he whispered. “You are the best, you know that? A bit messed up, but still the best.”

He bounded away before she could crush him in a bear hug. Without any sign of remorse or despair for deserting his mother in favour of his best friend, he pulled his overnight bag from the back of Lauren’s car and hurried to Jennifer’s pickup.

Lauren watched him, a sigh welling in her chest. Tears prickled at the back of her eyes. Happy tears.

“Ah, the resilience of youth.” Jen chuckled. She slipped her arm around Lauren’s waist and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Doesn’t it make you sick?”

“Thanks, Jen.” Lauren nudged her friend’s hip with hers. “He needed this.”

Jennifer fixed her with a sideward gaze. “You need it too.” She tapped the bottle of champagne in Lauren’s hand. “And this. A glass or two to celebrate coming through the most amazing…shit without losing your mind.”

Lauren pulled a face. “Didn’t I? I have to admit, my mind feels kinda unhinged at the moment.”

Jennifer pulled a face back, equally dismissive. “No, you didn’t. You wouldn’t be standing here if you had, letting your son spend a night at his best friend’s.” She dropped a kiss on Lauren’s cheek and gave her another squeeze. “Now get yourself inside, teach. You’ve got school tomorrow and a room full of six-year-olds who haven’t seen their famous teacher for a whole week. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing my arse off out here.”

Two minutes later, Lauren climbed the steps of her front porch, the sound of Jennifer’s pickup rumbling down the road fading behind her. Opening her door, she was greeted with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the crackling whispers of a fire. She smiled, entering her toasty-warm home. She had to give it to Jennifer she really knew how to look after dumb animals like her.

Stripping off her jacket and scarf, she made her way into the living room, dropped onto her old sofa and toed off her boots. An ice bucket sat on the coffee table, along with two glasses from Lauren’s rather forlorn crystal collection.

Lauren cocked an eyebrow at them. Okay, so Jen was brilliant with dumb animals but she couldn’t count for shit.

A glass of champagne later, Lauren settled back into her sofa, crossed her ankles beside the remaining glass and closed her eyes. And heard the singing. A male voice the entire world knew singing words she didn’t know, accompanied by the simple strings of an acoustic guitar.

Her heart thumped its way into her throat. Hard. Fast. Her eyes snapped open.

Nick.

Nick Blackthorne was outside her door. Singing.

“…
make you mine.

I never should…”

Lauren caught her bottom lip with her teeth, the soft, barely heard words playing over her senses. Making her breath quicken, her palms tingle and the pit of her belly flip.

“In the hearts of fools and men

Love will come undone again.”

He was here. On the other side of her door, singing about love and regret and mistakes. Singing about them.

Oh, Lord. Did she really want to open the door?

Of course you do.

He stopped playing the second she did. Stood staring at her through the artful mess of his black hair, his jaw darkened with a shadow well past five o’clock, his tall, lean body dressed in black, his guitar—the one his mum had given him for his eighteenth birthday—hanging from his shoulder on a wide band, the very band Lauren had given him as a present for the same birthday. The epitome of a rock star.

She gazed at him. Ate him up with her eyes. And knew, there and then, she could never be what he needed. He was song and she was roll call.

He was a gift to the world. She was on playground duty.

She opened her lips, ready to tell him, accepting the truth as much as she hated that it was so. She loved him, Lord, she loved him. And because she loved him she couldn’t be with him.

He was music and she was small-town and that was the way it would always be.

She opened her lips and he stepped across the threshold and kissed her.

His lips made love to hers. There was no other way to describe the kiss. It wasn’t fierce and it wasn’t dominating. It wasn’t urgent or hungry or desperate. It was love. It was passion in its purest form. He kissed her, only his lips touching her. Only his lips. The cold night air from outside swirled around her ankles, her legs, and she burned anyway, Nick’s kiss setting her on fire. A kiss unlike any he’d ever given her before.

He kissed her and when she stepped back into her house, he moved with her, his lips still making love to hers. He kissed her and when she whimpered into his mouth, he closed the door behind him with his foot and kissed her some more.

He kissed her, just kissed her, until her head spun and her knees trembled and she could barely think who she was.

And somewhere between her front door and her living room, he stopped his kiss long enough to remove his guitar, but Lauren didn’t know when. Somewhere between the front door and her sofa, he stopped his kiss long enough to strip her of her clothes, to strip himself of his clothes. Long enough to bury his face between her thighs, to use his tongue to bring her to an orgasm so powerful she felt sure the whole world heard, and then he was kissing her again. Then his lips were making love to hers again and music and playground duty were the furthest thing from her mind.

He slid inside her, his body moving over hers as she lay stretched out on her sofa, his kiss worshipping her mouth, his length embedded deep in her heat. He slid inside her, moved inside her, and there were no words. There were no words, no music, nothing but the rhythm of their hearts beating, the moans of their pleasure, the sound of their lovemaking. It was the most haunting, beautiful song Lauren had ever heard.

And it was enough. It was all she needed. For now, it was all she needed.

They climaxed together, both silent. Nick tore his lips from hers, gazing into her eyes as their releases shuddered through them, his nostrils flaring, his forehead slicked with perspiration. They came together and before her climax left her, he withdrew from her sex and brought her to climax again with his lips and tongue and teeth. Again and again. Never saying a word.

He drew one orgasm after another from her until he was hard once more. So hard, and then he thrust back inside her, filling her, completing her, and they began the exquisite, rapturous journey to release together all over again.

Time ceased to exist. All there was for Lauren was Nick and the pleasure he gave her. Pleasure so raw and elemental even if she wanted to tell him this was their last night, their last moment, words failed her. At some point, they moved to her bedroom, but she didn’t know when. Only when the soft kiss of her duvet on her flush skin told her so, did she realize where they were. How many orgasms after the living room? She didn’t know. Didn’t care.

They made love to each other over and over again, their pleasure keeping them warm, their bodies twin entities of molten desire fuelling each other. They made love and they kissed and sometimes they just held each other and that was as perfect and powerful and right as everything else. And finally, when there was no more strength in their bodies, Nick tucked her into the curve of his body, laying his arm over her waist, his long thighs pressing to the backs of hers, his lips pressed to the back of her head.

“Nick,” she began. She had to tell him this was goodbye. She had to. It tore her apart to do so, but she had to.

“Shh, babe,” he murmured, tugging her closer to his body. “No words tonight, okay? There’ll be time for words tomorrow, but not now. Let it just be this now. Just us. Please, Lauren?”

The request made her throat tight. She closed her eyes and smoothed her hand over his arm, finding his fingers and threading hers through them. “Just this,” she whispered, even as her heart ached.

When she woke the next morning, but a few hours later, he was gone, a small note left on the pillow where his head had lain.
Have a performance to prepare for. N.

She stared at the note, at the six simple words that spoke the truth louder than any either of them had uttered since Nick had returned to Murriundah. She bit back a choked sob. He’d chosen his music over her, as she knew he eventually would. As she knew he should. Damn it, why was she so upset? This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? This was what she knew had to be.

But it wasn’t. Somewhere during the night, somewhere between the first moment she’d heard him singing on her front porch and the last moment she’d heard him whisper her name, she’d let herself believe their fantasy could come true.

Because she was an idiot.

Climbing out of bed, she hurried to the shower. The pipes groaned, protesting the chill strangling them, refusing to give her anything more than a tepid stream of water. “Welcome back to reality, Lauren.” She dashed from the bathroom, refusing to look at her clock as she dressed for school. She knew what it would tell her—that she was late—but it wasn’t that which caused her to keep her gaze from the time device on her bedside table. It was the simple fact there was no way she could look at the clock and not see her bed. Her bed and the tousled sheets and the indent on the pillow where Nick’s head had been.

She let out a growl, shoved her feet into a pair of black knee high boots and ran from her room. If she was really lucky the gods of idiotic females would come into her house while she was at school and take her bed away, replacing it with a nice new one, preferably single and not smelling of Nick.

Her students were waiting for her when she walked into her room five minutes after the bell for class chimed. They watched her enter the room from their desks, silent, their eyes wide, their stares following her as she crossed to her desk and deposited her satchel beside her chair. A giggle slipped from someone, followed by someone else going, “shush”. Lauren felt her cheeks turn red.

Great. She was embarrassed by a kindergartener. Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.

Turning to her class, she gave them all a big, cheery smile. “Good morning, KR.”

“Good morning, Miss Robbins,” they chorused back. Someone giggled again.

“Did you miss me?” she asked, perching herself on the edge of her desk and casting them all a slow inspection before pulling a wounded-puppy expression. “Or did you have so much fun with Ms. Affleck you didn’t want me to come back?”

“We missed you, Miss Robbins,” Thomas Missen called out.

She smiled, affecting a relieved sigh. “Ah, that’s good. I missed you too. Now, who can tell me what we are going to—”

A long bell cut her short, followed by another. The Special Assembly bell.

Lauren frowned, straightening from her desk. “What’s going on?” she asked her class as she crossed to her room’s door. There wasn’t a special assembly scheduled for today, not that she knew of. She turned back to KR, more than a little surprised to find them all standing in a nice, neat row behind her, their faces fighting wide grins to stay serious.

She raised her eyebrows, and then started when a loud whoop shattered the quiet playground beyond her door and Mr. Kransky’s Year Six class went running, in their normal helter-skelter way, past her room toward the assembly area.

Lauren turned back to her class and shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “Looks like something fun is happening.”

She led her students out the door and along the walkway, more than impressed with how straight and controlled they were. Rarely did they walk to assembly with such determined poise. Rachel Jones slid her gaze to Lauren, a giggle bubbling past her lips before Thomas Missen gave her a nudge with his elbow, a glowering glare and another fierce, “
shhh
”.

Lauren narrowed her eyes. Something was going on. Something…

The thought didn’t finish forming in Lauren’s mind. It faded away to be replaced by stunned confusion. The assembly area was packed with people. Not just school people, not just students and teachers, but parents and members of the Murriundah population as well. Standing around the edges of the area as the other classes marched into their assigned places, chatting to each other, waving to their children, some taking photos.

Lauren frowned. What the hell was going on?

She jerked her attention from the unexpected sight back to her own class, and blinked.

KR weren’t sitting on the two straight purple lines that indicated their place for assembly. KR were organizing themselves on the assembly stage at the front of the school, standing in neat rows, tallest students at the back, their faces no longer serious but beaming. Beaming.

They all looked at her, and with a quick glance to someone Lauren couldn’t see, Thomas Missen stepped forward, his cheeks growing bright red, his spine growing straighter.

“Good morning, teachers, students and guests to Murriundah Public School.” His young voice rose above the noise of the crowd, trembling with nerves. Everyone fell silent. Everyone. An event Lauren had never, ever experienced in her entire twelve-and-a-half years of teaching. “Today, we, Miss Robbins’s kindergarten class, would like to present to you a special musical performance conducted by a special guest who was once a student of our school.”