Deleted scene from The Musician and the Muse

Living with Jesse was pretty fucking great. 

Of course, we’d basically only decided this two days ago, but still. Once I’d calmed down and Jesse agreed to help me out with Danny’s house payment, I’d moved my one bag with my few meager belongings into Jesse’s room, and that was that. I’d also decided to start joining him for his morning workouts, which I thought would result in some sweaty gym floor sex, or at least a blow job in between sets, but I was sorely disappointed in that department. It turned out Jesse was quite focused when he worked out.

It was pretty fucking hot.

As was the post-workout shower.

It had been years since something as simple as a hand job had felt so incredibly mind-blowing, but with Jesse everything was elevated. He teased me until I was begging for release, and then stopped and nonchalantly washed his hair while I stood there shaking and trying not to come from the simple sight of soap bubbles running down the contours of his back and disappearing into the crack of his ass. 

It wasn’t until he had washed every inch of skin on his body and mine, most of the time one-handed while his other hand slowly stroked me into oblivion, that he finally took mercy on me and my poor dick. I was hard enough to cut through the tile covering his shower walls, my dick as red as those briefs I’d spotted in the back of his underwear drawer, but the resulting orgasm was worth every frustrating moment.

Yes, living with Jesse was going to work out just fine.

Afterward he went off to the garage to work on the Nomad, so after catching up on the store’s finances I decided to make myself useful and do some laundry. I had only packed a week’s worth of clothes, which had actually run out yesterday. Fortunately Jesse and I were close in size, and it was hot as hell wearing his old jeans and smelling his scent on the T-shirt I’d commandeered.

Jesse was fairly neat, which surprised me. After having to parent his younger brother for so many years I would’ve figured him for the type to backslide into slovenly territory, but no. He had a hamper in the closet, which he was meticulous about using, and a separate hamper in the bathroom for towels. I was also quite surprised to learn he did not have a cleaning service; I thought millionaires like him would all have people to do those things for them, but not my Jesse.

I started a load of towels, then went to grab the hamper out of the closet to begin sorting. The way my clothes were intermingled with his made me smile, and I wondered if there would ever come a time when we would forget whose shirts were whose. As I picked up the hamper, I noticed a stray sock hiding on the floor and chuckled. I’d have to tease Jesse for being such a slob. I bent down to pick it up, and that’s when I saw it: a box stuffed into the farthest corner, with the overhead light reflecting off something gold and shiny inside.

I knew I shouldn’t snoop, but Jesse hadn’t specifically told me anything in his house was off limits. In fact, we had both agreed there would be no secrets between us, and I had to admit curiosity got the better of me. I set down the hamper and crossed over to the corner, kneeling down to peek in the box.

I peeled back the box flap to find a glimmer of gold, gasping when I realized it was a golden gramophone. I pulled the box further away from the wall and opened it all the way just to be sure I was looking at what I thought I was looking at, and sure enough. Several of the golden statuettes stared back at me. I pulled one out and read the inscription.

National Academy of

Recording Arts and Sciences

Jesse Sutton

Best New Artist

I almost dropped it as the significance of what I was holding fully hit me. This was a Grammy award. I checked in the box, pulling out another, then another, then another. Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rock Song—four in total. Sitting in a cardboard box in the corner of his closet.

That wasn’t all, though. There were two Billboard Music Awards and three American Music Awards in there as well. I recognized the Album of the Year title Leaving Leighton as the one song of Jesse’s I had heard all those years ago before hearing his voice became too painful. But the Song of the Year “When My Life Began” was one I hadn’t ever listened to.

I had heard the name before, of course, but his previous song had been heartbreaking enough to listen to. My 24-year-old self had figured, after hearing the title of his follow-up single, that Jesse’s life began the day he’d left town for good, never to return. It wasn’t something I’d wanted to relive in music form. 

Now, of course, I knew there was more to it than that. I smiled to myself, remembering Jesse’s story about Esther and Ernest lending him their fishing gear, and how he knew that day everything would be okay. Was that when his life began? My fingers suddenly itched to pull out my phone and pull up the song on YouTube.

“I see you found my stash.” Jesse’s gruff voice startled me, and I almost dropped the golden statue in my hands.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay.” Jesse came down and sat next to me, crossing his legs so our knees touched. “I never said you couldn’t look around. And I wasn’t trying to hide these from you or anything; I just don’t like looking at them every day, you know?”

No, I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine winning something like this and not wanting to display it. “Why not?”

Jesse shrugged. “It always seemed like, I don’t know, too vain or something. Like I’d be bragging to everyone, ‘Hey look at me! Look at how much better I am than you!’ And when it’s just me, I mean… it’s not like I need a reminder of how different my life is now, or where my money came from.”

“It’s not vanity to be proud of your accomplishments,” I told him.

“No, I am proud. Damn proud of what I’ve done, considering where I came from. But you know what makes me even more proud? That kid who told me my songs gave him the courage not to kill himself because I helped him see life gets better. That’s something to be proud of. This?” He waved at the row of statues on the floor. “This is just stuff.”

The raw honesty in his face shot right through me and squeezed my heart. If I hadn’t already known how much I loved this man sitting next to me, that statement right there would’ve convinced me. It made me wonder if all the people in this town who wanted a piece of him at every turn, the press and the paparazzi and the occasional rabid fan, knew what a good, decent person he was. How big his heart was. How much he had given up over the years, not so he could be where he was right now, but so Jake could be where he was.

I set the statue down on the floor before me and pulled Jesse’s lips to mine, pouring all the love and admiration and awe I held for him into the kiss. Jesse threaded his fingers through my hair, something that had always sent shivers down my spine, and kissed me back with the fervor of a starving man. We had both gotten off just a few hours ago, but already we were desperate for more. But before we indulged ourselves in another round right here on the closet floor, there was one thing I had to get out.

I pulled away, fighting to catch my breath as my hands refused to let go of him. “I love you, Jesse. I love you, and I am so proud of you. And not because of all this stuff, but because you’re kind, and selfless, because you sacrificed everything so your brother could have a future, and you still managed to write some beautiful music—”

“You don’t listen to my music.” Jesse gave a watery laugh.

“True,” I laughed with him. I had no idea how he even knew that, but then again I never could hide anything from him. Jesse knew my soul. “But I didn’t stop listening because I thought your music was terrible. I stopped because it evoked such strong emotions, it was too painful to listen to and not be able to reach out and hold you and make it better. All I have ever wanted for you was for your life to be better than it was.”

Jesse reached down and took my hand, lacing our fingers together, and brought my hand up to his lips, kissing the delicate skin between my knuckles. “My life is better than it was, now that you’re in it.”

We kissed again, as passionate and full of promise as the very first time. I was tempted to lay down on the floor and pull Jesse down on top of me to get more comfortable, as this seated-side-by-side position was never my favorite, but Jesse pulled away with one last peck of his lips to mine. “You know what this one’s about?” he asked, picking up the Song of the Year Grammy for “When My Life Began.”

“No.”

“You remember Christmas night, when you gave me those guitar strings and I gave you those CDs I’d labelled ‘church music’?”

“Yeah, I remember.” I felt my cheeks heat at the memory of what came after, wondering what it had to do with the song in question.

“You know, after you kissed me and ran off to your room, I was devastated. Not because I hadn’t wanted you to kiss me, but because you thought you’d made a mistake and that I would hate you for it, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you hating me.”

I closed my eyes for a moment as the memory surfaced. I had begged him to go away and leave me, but he didn’t.

Jesse idly fingered the statue in his hands. “I remember going to your door, but it was locked. I was so sure you wouldn’t let me in, that I’d never get to see you again. So I put my hand on the door, wishing like hell I was holding you instead of some piece of cold wood, and I sang that song.”

“‘Wild Horses’,” I murmured. The song always brought tears to my eyes.

“And then you opened the door and let me in, and that was it. I finally knew I loved you, and I knew you loved me back.” He rubbed his thumb across the placard with the song title etched into it. “When you first kissed me, that’s when my life began. The song’s about you.”

My breath left my body as those words hit me. Jesse had written a song about me? One that had become wildly popular and had earned him a Grammy award, no less?

The emotions warred within me. Part of me wanted desperately to hear the song now, to know what it was in me that Jesse saw. But there was another part of me that was grateful to my core I had decided to stop listening to the radio and had stayed blissfully ignorant of the song. If I had heard it back then, either I would have recognized it was about me and I would have been devastated I’d let someone like that walk out of my life, or I would’ve decided it was about someone else, which would’ve hurt even worse.

“I don’t know what to say,” I confessed.

“You don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to listen to it. I just wanted you to know.” He set the statue down on the floor alongside the others. “I actually didn’t even want it on the album. No one was ever supposed to hear it. But one day when we were recording the album I’d left my notebook with all my lyrics sitting out, and one of the higher-ups from the label started flipping through it, saw this song, and demanded to hear it. Then he threatened to axe all the other stuff I’d written unless I included it.”

“That’s awful.”

“Yep. My first lesson in the reality of the music biz: never trust someone who promises they’re gonna make you a shit ton of money. Because what they really mean is, they’re gonna use you to make a shit ton of money for themselves, and they don’t give a damn about what happens to you in the process.”

I wrapped my arms around Jesse and held him close to me, my heart going out to that young kid who had no one in his corner fighting for him. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“It’s okay.” Jesse shrugged it off. “It was a long time ago. And it worked out, I guess, ‘cause here I am. With you.”

“You would’ve been with me either way.” Because I couldn’t imagine any scenario in which Jesse wouldn’t have come back to Leighton for Danny’s funeral, no matter where he was in life.

“True. We might just be sitting in that crappy studio apartment in Palo Alto instead of here.”

“Well then, you would’ve just had to entertain me with free concerts in your living room instead of watching movies in your fancy movie room.”

Jesse seemed to melt just a little, his face full of emotion as he pulled my mouth to his in a kiss which went from sweet to scorching in no time at all. My cock began to thicken in my pants as his tongue stroked masterfully over mine, all the heaviness of our conversation rapidly being replaced with raw lust and need. We tumbled down onto the floor in a heap of limbs and raw need as we fumbled with our pants, his hands just as desperate as mine to get the barrier of clothing out from between us.

“Shit,” he said suddenly as he pulled back, panting. “I completely forgot why I came in here in the first place. Layla just called. She has the mortgage paperwork all ready to sign. She’s on her way over.”

My insistent erection was not happy with that news. “Does she know what a damn cockblock she is?”

“Oh, believe me. I plan on telling her.”

I let out a sigh as I pulled my pants back up, doing my best to ignore the way the fabric grazed my sensitive dick. “Well, I guess mortgage paperwork will be as good as a cold shower, right?”

“Not too good, I hope. Because as soon as she’s gone, I plan to continue right where we left off.”

“Right here on the floor?”

The heated look Jesse gave me was full of promise. “You’d better believe it.”