Conquest (22 page)
One more time,
That’s all I ask.
One more time,
That’s all I need.
It’ll be my greatest treasure forever, To see you smile one more time.
One more time,
For all my life.
One more time
For all our pain.
It’ll bring me just enough hope, To face one more day…”
Evan’s fingers drifted over the piano in the interlude, playing high and mid-range notes, weaving them into soft, mournful harmonies. He took another breath, letting his smooth baritone flow out again,
My loneliness has become the seasons,
Continuing on
It never weakens
Leaving me haunted by the memory, Of your spirit broken in your eyes, The night I walked away.
I know my lies
Were truths to you.
And the truths I spoke, Were so very few.
I’ll never hurt you again, By looking in your eyes With betrayal on my lips. I’ll go away forever,
If it would make you smile, Just one more time.
One more time,
That’s all I ask.
One more time,
That’s all I need.
Can’t you see my joy is gone forever? That’s why I need your smile one more time.
One more time,
For all my life.
One more time,
For all our pain.
To remind me of what I’ve lost, And get me through one more day…”
Evan’s voice hushed as he finished the song, his fingers caressed the final gentle notes from the piano.
Jesse stood mesmerized in the doorway. All the times he had listened to the ballad on CD or the radio seemed distorted compared to the clarity with which Evan had just sung.
“Did I sound that bad?” Evan asked with an anxious chuckle.
Jesse realized he should breathe. “You sounded beautiful.”
“Well, I’m a little rusty. You don’t get much practice just singing in the shower.” Evan winked at him. “But you never got to hear me sing live, so now you’ve had your own private little performance.”
Jesse laughed softly and walked to him. He wrapped his arms around Evan’s shoulders from behind, watching him play. Evan played whatever his ear thought sounded right. Jesse sat beside him, caught the melody and harmonies Evan did, and laid his fingers on the keys to play along with him.
Evan looked over at him. “Aren’t you going to start pestering me to answer why I quit performing?”
Jesse shook his head and stretched his long fingers over the keys. “I’ve come to the decision that when you want to tell me, you’ll tell me. I’m just going to say this. Even though I don’t know why you quit performing, whatever it was that made you leave it all behind couldn’t have been worth sacrificing your gift, and you
are
gifted, Ev. What your music gives to the world is far too beautiful and precious for you to throw it away.”
Evan stopped playing. “There’s nothing beautiful or precious about my gift.” He stood up and walked away from the piano, gazing out the tall windows at Lake Michigan, his back to Jesse. “Do you remember during my last tour when my guitarist, Brian Carney, died?”
Jesse’s hands slipped off the piano to his lap. “Yeah, it was all over the place. He committed suicide. He only played with you because your regular guitarist, Jerry Jeffries, quit before the tour started since his wife was about to have a baby. But I thought Brian was just a fill-in until JJ was ready to catch up after the baby was born.”
Evan turned back to the piano and sat down on the bench beside Jesse. He took in as deep a breath as he could, letting out a shaky exhale. “Because I was sleeping with him and when I broke it off, he wouldn’t accept it, so I got rid of him. When I first met him I knew he wanted me, but it wasn’t because he was attracted to me for who I am, it was because he was attracted to the
idea
of me, the person he thought I was from seeing me on stage, in interviews, and all that bullshit. I tried to ignore the whole thing at first. He had a wife and two little girls, and I didn’t want to come in between that. But, he was persistent.”
Evan hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, his eyes focused on the floor. “So I decided, what the hell? If he wants it so bad, who am I to deny him? And I thought maybe after he was with me once he’d be satisfied and go back to his wife and kids. So, one night I showed up outside his hotel room door. But afterwards it didn’t work out the way I thought. He wanted to keep the affair going, and I’ll admit I caved a few more times. There’s only so much you can do when your mouth and mind are saying no, but your body is pleading yes, and I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of him.”
Jesse nodded slowly, not wanting to openly acknowledge how attractive the other man had been and trying to ignore the jealousy permeating every part of him at hearing Evan talk about a former lover.
“But things got out of control,” Evan said softly. “He would knock on my hotel room doors at all hours of the night. I didn’t get much sleep when I was on the road to begin with, so you can imagine how pissed I was getting, not to mention, I wasn’t always alone when he was pounding on the door. And he was starting to mess up a lot during concerts, which didn’t help my patience. Then during a show, I was doing my thing singing next to him, and he stopped playing, threw his arm around my neck, and tried to kiss me. That was it. I told him I was finished with him, that he was the worst lover I had ever had, and I fired him from the tour, then to add insult to injury, I got him cut from Phoenix so he couldn’t even be a studio musician with them anymore. I ruined him. I used my influence and ruined him.”
Evan cleared his throat, trying to find his voice again. “Except for Greg, no one knew the details of our relationship, but either way, I couldn’t risk letting any of it get out, so Greg begged JJ to leave his new son and come on tour as a cover-up, and like a true friend, he did. Then a week after I had fired him, Greg came to me and told me Brian had killed himself with a shotgun.
“I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t stop my tour. And when it was finished, I couldn’t bring myself to go back into the studio. How could I? I had destroyed a man’s life. I couldn’t stand the limelight and the adoration of everyone around me. It made me sick to think of all the people who admired me not knowing what kind of person I really was.
“And when I cut Brian’s wife a check to make sure that she and the little girls would be taken care of, people sang my praises thinking I was so generous and kind. Not a fucking one of them knew it was nothing but guilt money. I couldn’t handle it. So I left the country and went anywhere I thought people wouldn’t recognize me.”
As Evan finished, a protective rush surged through Jesse, and with it, a feeling that had been lingering below the surface of his consciousness waiting for him to acknowledge it. He turned his head toward Evan. All of Evan’s defenses, all his walls were down. His pain, his fear, bared raw and open. In that moment, he knew without a doubt he had fallen in love with him.
But there was one thing he had to know. Jesse drew in a long breath and said on the exhale, “Were you in love with him?”
Evan’s head snapped toward Jesse. “No,” he said quickly, desperately. He shook his head, his voice softened. “I wasn’t. I don’t know if that makes it worse or better. I’ve tried to answer that for years. Worse because he died for nothing, having never obtained my full affection, or better because I at least came to the conclusion that…” he swallowed hard and gripped his legs near his knees to hide the sudden trembling in his fingers. He forced his eyes to stay focused on Jesse’s. “That…the man I love would never receive such treatment from me.” He broke their gaze as soon as he finished the last word, his eyes going to the floor again.
Jesse slowly turned his eyes away from Evan, his heart pounding.
Evan eased to his feet and moved for the doorway. “So, now that you know, I understand if you don’t want to stay here or hang out with me anymore.”
Jesse jumped up and grabbed him by the shoulder. He spun Evan around to face him. “All this time I’ve been thinking you might just be smarter than me, and then you go and say something like that.”
“Because it wasn’t your fault he died, Ev. The guy clearly had some serious issues, and if you didn’t trip him off, someone or something else would have. How were you supposed to know what he was going to do? You couldn’t have. If you did, you would’ve gotten him help, I know it.”
Jesse laid his hand on Evan’s cheek, trying to tell him with his eyes what he felt in his heart. “If I am, then it’s because the only thing that matters about your past is that it brought you to me now. Nothing you’ve ever done will make me walk away from you.”
Joy, relief, pain, grief, choked Evan’s throat. He wrapped his arms around Jesse and leaned against him. “Jess,” he said, his voice hardly a whisper. “I don’t know why I’ve told you everything. It’s not the way I am to talk and express my feelings to someone else. But with you…you’ve broken me down. You make me feel so vulnerable.”
Jesse strengthened his hold on him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“No, it’s okay.” Evan pulled away enough to look into his eyes. “It shouldn’t be, but it is, because I know my vulnerability is safe with you.” He lowered his head and shook it. “I’m sorry. I’m not making sense.”
Jesse combed his fingers through Evan’s hair. “You are making sense, and you’re right. I’ll never do anything to hurt you.” He kissed Evan’s forehead, his cheeks, and lifted his chin to kiss him lightly on the lips. He drew back and kissed Evan on the tip of his nose. “Unless you keep dropping your head and making it hard for me to kiss you. Then I might be forced to get rough with you.”
A ghost of a smile flickered on Evan’s lips, and he rested his forehead against Jesse’s. “Can we go back upstairs? I really need to be close to you right now.”
Jesse startled at Evan asking if they could go back to bed. When Evan wanted it he took it, but he sounded so fragile, almost desperate. Jesse drew his fingertips across Evan’s chest, took him by the hand, and led him out of the music room and upstairs.
Evan sat on the edge of the bed with his back to him, listening as Jesse retrieved the lube. He stared down at his hands, wondering why he felt so nervous as if it was his first time. The answer flared in the front of his mind. He pushed it away, too fearful to face it.
Jesse glanced at Evan, his heart constricting at how strained he looked, so different from the confident man he had grown used to. It made him fully understand how much the guilt over Brian’s death had weighed Evan down as he carried the pain of it alone for nearly four years. He crawled across the bed and knelt behind him.
“Maybe we should wait until later,” he said softly. Evan turned his gaze back toward him. “No. Please, Jess.”
Jesse shifted to Evan’s side. He placed one hand on Evan’s chest, the other on his shoulder, and guided him back to lie on the bed. Evan moved at Jesse’s commands, lifting his hips up to push his running pants off. Jesse took over for him, shed his own boxers, and brought his body over him.
Jesse caressed Evan’s face with his fingertips, having so many things he wanted to say to him, to tell him he had fallen in love with him, that he could never picture any of his days to come without him, but feared saying the words so soon.
Evan gazed up at Jesse, seeing an emotion on his beautiful face, in his stunning indigo eyes, that he prayed was true, and at the same moment, knowing he didn’t deserve it. He lifted his hand, resting it on the side of Jesse’s face. Jesse closed his eyes. He turned his head toward Evan’s hand, laying a warm kiss in his palm.
Evan drew his legs along Jesse’s sides. Jesse leaned his weight down on his left elbow and slipped his right hand with lube-slicked fingers down Evan’s body. He gently massaged and worked Evan open, wanting to make him feel as physically special as he had become to Jesse emotionally. He felt Evan’s body melt under him. He slowly withdrew his fingers, took hold of his own arousal, and guided it into Evan.
Evan exhaled a ragged breath and wrapped his arms around Jesse. Jesse lowered his head, brushing his cheek against Evan’s and softly kissed his throat and neck, moving his hips in gentle thrusts. He took one of Evan’s hands and raised it to his lips, kissed along the back of it and locked their fingers together.
Evan buried his face against Jesse’s neck, realizing that for the first time in his life he wasn’t simply having sex, he was making love.
Jesse could feel Evan’s turmoil of emotions and lifted his voice in a comforting whisper. “It’s okay, Ev. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
Evan squeezed his eyes shut, allowing two tears to escape and roll down his temples. “Stay with me,” he said in a trembling voice.
Evan let his head fall back on the pillow and met his eyes. “Jesse.”
Evan’s soft murmuring of his name told Jesse he felt the same for him, that those three words were lingering on Evan’s tongue as well, and Evan held the same fear of saying it too soon. He didn’t understand how it was possible to feel something so powerful for someone he had only known a few days, but he did, and he knew from the sheer intensity of his emotions it was more than a crush, more than a fling. He gazed down into Evan’s azure eyes. Too soon or not, he didn’t care. A time frame shouldn’t be placed on when emotions should be articulated. When they were felt and known to be true, they should be expressed.
Jesse lowered his head, his lips touching Evan’s in the softest of caresses. “Evan, I love you.”
Evan pulled Jesse’s breath into his body. “I love you too, Jess. So very much.”
Jesse felt Evan’s pain and fears retreat against the joy their confession brought. He put his smiling lips to Evan’s and met him in a deep, slow kiss as he continued to make love to him.