Free The Song in My Heart by Tracey Richardson

booze or drugs. The years of self-centeredness and hard work had stolen the chance to make lasting friendships and to build an enduring relationship with a woman. Those were years she could never get back.
    “No, it didn’t destroy me, but that might have been more by luck than anything else. Look, I don’t mean for it to sound all bad, because it’s not. But surviving cancer, it changes your perspective. It makes you focus on what’s important, makes you take stock of things so that you can make the kind of decisions you need to make, for the sake of your own survival.”
    “Is that why you left the music business? Because of the cancer?”
    Dess focused on a distant fishing trawler. “I left it, and it left me. Because of the cancer, yes. I needed to focus all my energy on fighting for my life, because that’s all that mattered. Not the awards, not the records, not the money, not the crowds.” She swung her moist gaze back to Erika, the subject more emotional than she would have expected, given that she barely knew Erika and typically didn’t confide in strangers. “And then I discovered that the radiation had killed my voice. So that sealed my fate. The business didn’t want me anymore if I couldn’t sing.”
    “But you didn’t need to disappear completely from the music business, did you? I mean, you still had your fans. You still had other things in the business you could do?”
    “I’d given it all. There wasn’t anything else I could contribute that filled me up the way singing did.”
    “But look at your guitar playing, your songwriting. All the experience and knowledge you have. You could have reinvented yourself. You still can.”
    Dess smiled to lighten the mood. “I did reinvent myself. For me . And I am contributing to the business again. I’m joining you this summer, remember?”
    Eyebrows rose from behind the dark sunglasses. “I don’t know what to say. Except thank you.” Erika placed a hand on Dess’s forearm and squeezed lightly. “It means more than you’ll ever know. It’s an honor, Dess.”
    The genuineness in Erika’s touch, in her voice, brought Dess back to her own youth, when all that mattered was the dream. And the dream’s fulfillment. She stopped, faced Erika, and clutched Erika’s hands in hers, squeezing harder than she intended, before letting go and dropping her hands to her sides.
    “Then promise me you will trust me. Question me, yes. Argue with me, sure. But don’t doubt me, okay?”
    “Of course. Anything.”
    “There’ll be temptations, you know.”
    “I already know about those. Especially lately.” Her smile was slightly wolfish, enough to indicate that she’d perhaps had a fantasy or two about Dess, and the soft flesh behind Dess’s knees tingled in response.
    “I’m serious.”
    Erika raised her glasses onto her head. Dess expected a cheeky expression, more of the predatory grinning, but what she got was dead-eye seriousness.
    Barely above a whisper, Erika said, “So am I.”
    Oh shit , Dess thought, without any clear idea why she was so scared of the many layers—the many wants—within Erika Alvarez’s walls. Those wants, Dess was sure, came with a very intensely spirited determination. A determination that might be hard to rebuff. And there wouldn’t be much, she suspected, that would derail Erika from the things she desired.
    “C’mon, honey,” Dess said to Maggie, bending to pet her drenched head. She couldn’t look into Erika’s eyes anymore because they were web-like in their silky pull. “Let’s get you back to the house and dry you off.”
    * * *
    Erika marveled at how effortlessly they were able to put the finishing touches on the song, “I Want What You Got.” It was clear Dess was a pro at this. She knew exactly where to make the adjustments—when to add a guitar lick, when to change the tempo, how much emotion to put into the words, how to tweak the words themselves for a better fit. On her own, it would have taken