Sweet Solace (The Seattle Sound Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

in some dry sand. I sat next to her, leaning back on my elbows. Her head settled on my shoulder. I was sure it must be very late, well after midnight now. I needed to get her home, but I sat still, enjoying the warmth of her body, the brush of her long hair against my arm, the clean, soft smell of her skin. Floral. I smiled, picturing dahlias. I doubted she’d wear that fragrance, but she was subversive enough to enjoy the sly humor.
    “I’m going to pull out this memory often,” she murmured. “The last few years haven’t been good. This is tender.”
    “Real relationships are probably what I miss most from my life before,” I said. I hadn’t meant to tell her that. I hadn’t meant to tell her most of what I had tonight, but after seeing her so vulnerable, I couldn’t stop myself. “Jessica doesn’t understand why I don’t want to be out there all the time, lapping up the attention. Doling out pieces of me. A story, an old guitar. It’s always something.”
    “That’s exhausting. You have no place to just be . Is that what you meant about trust and staying power? That your needs are just too different?”
    “If not for Mason . . .”
    “Your son?”
    “Yeah.” I tilted my head down so I could see her upturned face. “You do know a lot about me.”
    I’d quit following up on her years ago after she married Doug. Tried to move on. I nearly snorted. Because that had worked out so well.
    She shrugged, turning to look out into the dark water. The moonlight glittered across the waves. “Lots of late nights. Not much sleeping. The Internet offered an escape.”
    “You, like, cyber-stalked me?” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice.
    She fidgeted, sitting up. “I joined your mailing list and found a few old interviews.”
    I gripped my hands around my knees, rocking back and forth. “And just what else did you find out about me in your stalking?” Oh, this was too good to pass up.
    She looked down at her fingers, dragged them through the sand. “Mmm. This is very uncomfortable for me.”
    “I’m not the stalker.”
    “It was completely harmless. It’s not like I walked up to your table in a bar.”
    “I thought— Never mind.” No way I could tell her what I’d really thought. Not even on this night of honesty.
    “What?”
    I kept my eyes on hers, hoping she’d understand now what I couldn’t say when she was seventeen. I’d been too old for her then. “I’ve never forgotten you, Dahlia.”
    “Puh-lease,” she said, rolling her eyes, unwilling to consider I was serious. But I was. I always had been about her.
    “I regretted for years you were Doug’s girl.”
    Her eyes snapped to mine. She forced a smile and looked down at the sand. I missed those bright gray eyes focused on me. I gazed out into Puget Sound.
    “Favorite song?” I asked, needing to break the tension.
    “‘Sweet Solace.’”
    “That’s not what I would’ve guessed. That one almost didn’t end up on the album because it was so different from what we were doing then.”
    “I’m glad it did. That song lets me know that you’ve experienced pain and loss. ‘Sweet solace in the dreams that can never be . . . You left too soon and I’m struggling to see . . . The beauty in a life without your smile.’“
    She would be drawn to those words. “Sounds prettier when you say it.”
    “Don’t ask me to sing because I won’t.” She bumped me with her hip. “Not when I’m sitting next to a legend.”
    “Funny. But you never struck me as someone who’d want to make music. Or perform.”
    “I like to listen. I’ve never yearned for the limelight.” Her brow furrowed as she weighed her words. “Those are real emotions in your lyrics, expressing that you know what it’s like to lose someone you love. That song helped me get through those early days and months after Doug died.”
    I opened my mouth. Shut it. Cleared my throat as I decided on a partial truth. “I wrote it when my mom got sick. Breast