Decades

Walls

The next couple of days passed peacefully and somewhat productively. They slipped into a comfortable shorthand that only those who share a past can do. With no one around to require more information, they were able to strip away a lot of the extra effort that comes with being with people they haven't known their whole lives.

Their voices weren't the same as they were when they'd originally recorded the Buckingham Nicks album. But, the years had informed a lot of the depth of feeling they shared, and Lindsey hoped that would add poignancy to the final product.

When Lindsey worked on Stevie's songs, he could easily understand the direction she wanted to go. He understood the sounds she wanted to convey when she painted her word pictures for him. He genuinely loved the creative process and the window into her soul and mind that it had always allowed him.

It was fun getting back to that. As the two became more comfortable, Lindsey hoped that their feelings would become less guarded so that their authentic emotions would be felt by their listeners. To do this, they'd have to both trust one another enough to be vulnerable. This was a challenge. Walls had been built brick by brick over the decades to protect themselves from each other.

The feelings they'd once allowed themselves to experience so completely had nearly consumed them at times. From giddy romance to passionate obsession, and inescapable sexual tension to crippling heartbreak, bitter hatred, and jealous rage, the pair had every emotion on the human spectrum except apathy, which is the opposite of love. They'd never experienced apathy where the other was concerned.

Lindsey and Stevie had experienced what it was to feel one with each other truly. When they inevitably separated as they repeatedly had done, they knew a bottomless aching void of loneliness and yearning for the other would take its place. In the past several years, pain had been the dominant emotion when it came to the other.

Pain and anger.

The fortresses they'd erected around their hearts felt ancient and enormous, though never quite stable enough to offer any true protection. There was always a way back in.

Always with hopeful hearts, they took tentative steps toward each other. For all they'd gotten wrong, they'd forever make beautiful music together.