Soulmates ✓

20 | Not Only In Grief

***

Her mother was the one to flip first when Shay told her about Arnab's disrespectful behavior. It took her a good one hour to calm her mother down and convince her not to sue his sorry ass.

Now Shay flops down on the couch face first, tired from a two-hour-long facetime session with her mom. Her limbs are still sore from the recently cured flu, and her head still feels heavy. She groans and looks at the coffee machine longingly but then decides to take a nap instead. After all, Ryan's still asleep, and she doesn't feel so energetic herself.

***

She wakes up to the drumming sound. It's faint and filtering to her from far away. Shay isn't in the same position as she fell asleep. A blanket is covering her body, much to her relief because damn, the living room is freezing. She takes a look at the weather outside, and it's practically the same as the last few days, cloudy and drizzling.

She wipes the sleep, and the tangled waves from her eyes, jumps out of the couch and wraps the blanket around her shivering frame. Her feet bounces with each step due to freezing tiles as she climbs up the stairs to the second floor. The sound of the drums gets closer as she walks down the hallway to the last room.

Ryan is behind the drums, wearing loose track pants and nothing to cover up his artistic torso, a tangle of black hair sweeping across his forehead. God, she feels like throwing away the blankets, because damn, her cheeks are on fire. Covered in sweat, eyes lost in the musical instrument in front of him and the drumsticks between his skilled fingers with those damn rings, he looks ravishing. He's drumming with raw passion, his face twisting, brows knitting as he hits the drums like they are an outlet for his pain or whatever he keeps hiding behind his stern demeanor. A bottle of Jack sits on the floor next to him within reach, which he has taken twice since she walked into the room.

Shay doesn't want to interrupt him because, while she leans on the door and listens to his angry music, she feels he is reaching out to her. It's like what he can't say- he is drumming those words out.

She can't follow the tune, but it's sad, very, very sad, and agonizingly intense.

He ends with a thundering rumble, a painful one, and it almost grips her heart in a life-ending hold. She doesn't even realize when tears pool her eyes, rolling down as Ryan hits the cymbal with an ending clash, breathing hard, his chest heaving wild and his hands shaking. He rakes his hand through his sweaty hair and reaches down for the bottle of liquor, noticing Shay in the process. "Hey, little Shally, were you here the whole time?"

Shay shakes her head and gives him a weak smile. But the sad smile barely resting on the corners of his lips makes it difficult not to walk over and cry holding him. After all, he held her through her nightmares and showed her how not to hold on to pain. Can't she do the same for him?

He brings the bottle to his lips, but before he can down the whiskey, Shay walks up to him and takes it out of his hold. "You don't have to pretend in front of me, Ry. I know you miss him too. A hell of a lot more than me."

Since there is only one chair in the room, Shay goes on to sit on the floor. Ryan doesn't let her, though. He holds her shoulder and stops her. At this point, Shay doesn't feel uncomfortable or guilty or even reluctant to sit on his lap and curl fingers around his neck.

"What are you doing, Shay?" He mumbles, going still for a second, but his muscles relax against her when she buries her head in his neck, warm pools of her eyes mixing with his sweat. "Why are you crying?"

This man.

"Stop it, Ry. Just stop it. Stop asking so many questions." She grits out against his neck. "Let me hold you, okay?"