My brain screams for me to do something, say something, stop him from doing what I know he’s about to do, but I can’t move. I’m transfixed by the sight of him wrapping his fingers around the neck of my guitar, using the muscles in his arms to lift my guitar from its case and bring it out into the open in front of so many people. This is MY secret, MY private love and obsession that I don’t share with anyone anymore. How dare he waltz up on this stage and reveal the one skeleton in my closet that can do me the most harm?

I watch him with wide, unblinking eyes as he cradles the guitar close to him and perches himself on the stool. When he strums a few notes and the sound reaches my ears, it lights a fire of fury under my ass, and I jump down off of my own stool and move to stand directly in front of him.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hiss angrily at him as he lazily continues to pluck the strings.

“I’m accompanying you on guitar. Isn’t that what the whole nod was for?” he asks nonchalantly without looking up.

His careless attitude just pisses me off even more, and I reach out and yank the guitar away from him roughly before he can play it a second longer.

He crosses his arms in front of him and stares me down as I stand there holding my guitar awkwardly, out away from my body like it has a disease and I don’t want to get it too close to it for fear that it will rub off on me.

“This is MY guitar. It stays in MY house and no one plays it but ME,” I tell him angrily, sounding like a five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. I should just stomp my foot and hold my breath while I’m at it. I don’t care how juvenile I’m behaving. He knows how important this instrument is to me, and he knows why it stays hidden away in a closet where no one can see it.

“Then play it.”

Finn speaks softly, his eyes never leaving mine. The crowd in the bar has disappeared and now it’s only the two of us on stage: two friends who know everything about the other and who are slowly using those things to destroy years of love and trust.

“What?” I ask dumbly.

He nods in the direction of my outstretched hand.

“Then. Play. It,” he repeats again slowly, enunciating each word. “If that piece of wood means so much to you, prove it.”

My hands start to shake and the weight of the guitar is beginning to hurt my arm, so I bring it in close to my body, swallowing roughly and trying not to cry.

“You treat that fucking thing like it’s the Holy Grail, but you never show it off. You want more out of your life, but you never do a God damned thing to make it happen,” he argues.

“You know why,” I whisper to him angrily. “You know why I can’t do this. You of all people should understand.”

He laughs cynically and shakes his head at me.

“You can’t use Eve as an excuse. Not this time. She’s not here. It’s just you, me, and a handful of people who just want to drink and listen to some good music. Stop being afraid for once in your fucking life. Stop listening to all of the voices in your head telling you why this is a bad idea and just listen to your heart. Bring out that firecracker I saw this morning that stood her ground, told me where to go, and smacked me across the face.”

Shame washes through me when he brings up what I did this morning. Shame for letting myself get so worked up over his words and letting my emotions take over.

“Wipe that look off your face right now,” Finn reprimands as he unfolds his arms and leans towards me. “I said some things I shouldn’t have, and you put me in my place. I deserved it. End of story. Do you want to always be the woman who does what she’s told or the woman who does what she loves and to hell with everything else? Because now is your chance to make that decision. Who do you want to be, Layla?”

My heart is pounding and the hands wrapped around the neck of my guitar are sweating as I contemplate his words. I know who I want to be. I’ve always known who I want to be. Could it really be as simple as making a decision and jumping off of the ledge into the unknown?

I turn away from Finn and scan the crowd. They are all laughing and having a good time, slinging back drinks with friends, and listening to the music piped through the sound system. They have no idea that a monumental decision is being made up here on this stage.

“Who do you want to be, Layla?”

I want to be free. For one moment in time, I just want to be free.

I clear my throat, my decision made, and perch on the edge of my stool with my guitar resting in my lap, one foot hooked on the top rung of the stool to balance my guitar and the other one planted on the ground. I hum a few warm-up bars softly to myself while I hear Finn tinkering with the strings of the extra guitar, making sure it’s in tune. I see June walk out from behind the bar and over to the jukebox, unplugging the machine and giving me a huge smile and a thumbs up. She glances at the guitar in my hand questioningly, silently asking me if I’m okay, and I nod confidently in her direction. I’m okay. This is okay. I can do this.

In a normal bar when you turn off the music, people will boo and complain and shout profanities. But in June’s bar, everyone just goes with the flow. They continue downing their shots of Jack and sipping their drafts of beer, and once in a while, they glance around to see why the music isn’t playing. They don’t care if a stranger is up on stage, and they don’t bat an eye when the music starts back up again, switching from recorded music to live music. They have no idea the woman standing on the stage in front of them is petrified. They are unaware that for the first time in years, she will be playing an instrument given to her by her father and she's putting her heart and soul right smack in the middle of the stage for all to see and judge.

It’s absolutely perfect.

I take a deep breath and a grin of excitement takes over my face as I wrap my arms around my guitar and pluck a few random chords to get my fingers warmed up. Finn chooses the first song, just like he always does when we’re here, and I smile to myself as he strums the first few notes to Janis Joplin’s Piece of my Heart and starts us off. This is our song―the first one we ever performed together at June’s bar and the first time I ever found out Finn could play the guitar. He is amazingly talented and I never understood why he settled for the military instead of pursuing a career in music. The many times I’ve asked him about it, he just grunts and replies that I'm the star, not him, and that’s the way it should be.

I close my eyes and let the beauty of Finn’s playing wash over me. With my eyes still closed, I forget about the fact that I haven’t played on stage since my father was alive; I forget about the fact that I’ve kept this part of myself locked behind closed doors for so long that I almost lost it. I've almost allowed the one part of myself that I actually love to be snuffed out like a candle.

I gently rest my fingers on the strings and familiarize myself with the rough texture of the wire and how natural it feels to have it brushing against the tips of my fingers. I listen to Finn’s playing with my head cocked to the side, waiting for the perfect moment to jump in with him, like a child standing on the playground as her friends swing the Double Dutch jump ropes. Almost, almost, one more time around, there it is: the perfect opening.

I take a deep breath and join in with Finn’s strumming, flawlessly. The vibrations from the guitar work their way up my hands and arms until I can practically feel them wrapping around my heart and shocking it back to life like a defibrillator. Easing into the first line of the song while I play, I use my real, raspy voice instead of the bubble gum pop voice I usually use.

We make our way through the song effortlessly, and I put everything I have into belting out the song and strumming the guitar, letting the words and the music flow through me and take me away. As Finn closes out the song with the last few guitar notes, he barely takes a pause before jumping right in to the next song. By the time we finish a half hour later, I’ve played and sung covers from Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow, to Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails. I finally let my eyes scan the crowd after singing the last note of Something in the Way by Nirvana and a huge smile takes over my face as I see the patrons in the bar standing on their feet, hooting, hollering, and whistling for me.

For ME. Not Layla Carlysle the pop singer. Layla Carlysle who sings whatever the hell she wants and enjoys every minute of it.

I tip my head forward in thanks but when I look back up, my heart skips a beat, and I feel my face flush with nerves. Standing right in front of me, with a look of awe on his face, clapping and whistling louder than everyone else, is Brady.

I stand there like an idiot, clutching the microphone tightly with one hand and my guitar with the other, while he shakes his head at me in surprise. I come here to sing when I’m home because I can be anonymous. Having Brady here watching me enjoy what I do without having to put on an act sets a swarm of butterflies loose in my stomach, and I have to let go of the microphone and press my hand against it to calm my nerves. It suddenly means more than anything to me that he likes what I just did. I realize I want to impress him. I want him to think of me as something other than a pop princess who sings shitty songs that a teenager can write in her sleep. I want him to see that I have talent, even if I rarely exhibit it.

As the crowd continues to shout and demand for more, my eyes don’t leave Brady’s as he walks the few feet needed to bring him right up to the platform I’m standing on. He’s so damn tall that it’s strange to be standing above him looking down. It makes me feel powerful all of a sudden, and all I can think about is being above him somewhere else, preferably a bed, where I can be in charge, taking him inside me, and riding us both to the edge.

He crooks his finger at me, and I lean forward until his lips are brushing up against my ear.

“You up on this stage singing your heart out with a voice dripping with sex is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Did you seriously just rock out a Nirvana song? And play a God damned guitar better than Jimi Hendrix?”

I pull away from him just enough so I can look at his face and give him the most seductive smile I can muster, running my tongue slowly across my top lip before biting down on the bottom one. He lets out a heavy breath as his eyes zero in on my lips. I don’t know what’s got into me tonight, but I feel a boldness flowing through me that isn’t usually there when I’m not pretending to be The Layla Carlysle. I want to jump down off of the stage, drag him to the back room, and rip his shirt off of his body. I want to push him against the wall, drop down on my knees, and take him in my mouth. I want to do everything to this man, and I don’t care about the consequences.

“You keep looking at me like that, and I’m going to haul you off of this stage and bury myself inside of you before we even get outside,” Brady groans softly, reading my mind as he finally tears his eyes away from my mouth.

Without answering him, I stand up and lean the guitar against my stool. I turn around and give Finn a nod of thanks for playing for me, for bringing my guitar, for knowing me better than anyone else, and for pushing me to finally take a stand. He smiles softly at me, and it makes me happy to know that no matter what happens between us, he will always have my back.

Turning back around, I jump down off of the stage, grab Brady’s hand, pull him through the bar and out the front door, and wave goodbye to June as I go.

I guide us across the parking lot to Brady’s dark blue Ford F150 extended cab and let go of his hand to walk around to the passenger side and climb inside.

Brady gets in behind the wheel and looks over at me with a confused raise of his eyebrows.

“Did I offend you in there or something? Because―”

Leaning across the seat and hooking my hand behind his head, I pull him towards me and crash my mouth against his, cutting off his words and letting my tongue say everything that needs to be said.

Without moving my mouth away from his, I deepen the kiss and slide one knee underneath me on the seat, pushing myself up, and swing my other leg over his lap until I’m straddling him.

He recovers quickly from the shock of me taking over like this and wraps both of his arms completely around me, pulling my body tightly against him.

Both of my hands go to the back of his head, and I clutch handfuls of his hair in my fists as I sink my body down lower on his lap, thankful that I decided to wear a fun, short, flowing black skirt tonight.

As soon as Brady spoke against my ear in the bar, I felt myself getting wet with need. He groans into my mouth as I slide the wet satin of my underwear against his denim covered erection. The smoothness of my underwear combined with the roughness of his jeans creates the most amazing friction that causes a shiver to run through my body.

With his arms still wrapped securely around me, he slides one hand inside the back of my skirt until he’s palming my bare ass, pushing and pulling me back and forth over him. His other hand moves up my back until his fingers slide under my hair, wrapping it securely around the back of my neck. I angle my head and push my tongue deeper into his mouth, rocking my hips and grinding myself harder against him.

I’ve never been the outrageous type of person that just screws someone in a car in a dark parking lot. My handful of sexual encounters have all been in a bed, soft and slow, and lacking something I never knew was missing until right this minute: all consuming passion. There is a fire burning through my body, and I need this right now; I need him and only him.

I bring my hand down from the back of Brady’s head and wedge it between us, lifting my hips up just enough so I can jerk open the button of his pants and quickly slide his zipper down.

Brady pulls his mouth away from mine and breathes heavily against my lips as I reach inside his pants and pull his erection free, pressing it against my soaked panties and thrusting my hips, moving against him a few more times until he groans.