Chapter 7 #2
“The truth?” She said it like it was simple, like telling Rowan the truth wouldn't mean ripping open every wound I'd spent years trying to keep closed. “He deserves to know what happened, Soren. And maybe you deserve to stop carrying it alone.”
I wanted to argue with her. But Talia knew me too well for that. She'd been there through the worst of it, had seen me at my absolute lowest, and she'd never once let me pretend I was fine when I wasn't.
“I'll think about it,” I said eventually, which was about as much commitment as I could manage right now.
She looked at me for a long moment, and then she picked up her bag and headed for the door. “Don't think too long. Some things don't get easier the longer you wait.”
And then she was gone, leaving me alone in the apartment with the breakfast dishes and the weight of her words sitting heavy on my shoulders.
The address Luca had given me led to a house that was way too big for what I'd been expecting.
Not mansion-level huge, but definitely the kind of place that said the family living here had money and weren't shy about showing it.
I sat in my car for a minute staring at the perfectly manicured lawn and the three-car garage, wondering what the hell I was doing here.
I grabbed my bag off the passenger seat and walked up to the front door, pressed the doorbell, and listened to it chime inside. A few seconds later the door opened to reveal an elderly man with white hair and a smile that made his whole face light up.
“You must be Soren!” He said it with so much enthusiasm that I couldn't help smiling back. “Come in, come in. We've been looking forward to meeting you.”
“Thanks for having me.” I stepped inside and tried not to gawk at the entryway, which was bigger than our entire living room back at the apartment. “Happy to help however I can.”
“Wonderful. My grandson is very excited to meet you. He's been practicing his signs all morning.” The man led me through the house, chattering about his grandson and how bright he was and how much they appreciated someone taking the time to work with him properly.
We walked into a spacious living room, and that was when I saw him.
Finn Callahan. Sitting on the couch with a kid who couldn't have been more than eight, both of them looking up as we entered.
Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
This was a complication. A huge one, because Finn played for the Wolves with Rook, and the last thing I needed was this getting back to him before I'd figured out what the hell I was going to say.
But I needed the money. Needed it badly enough to swallow the panic rising in my throat and force a smile onto my face.
“Hey,” Finn said, standing and offering his hand. “You're the drum teacher Luca mentioned?”
“Yep.” I shook his hand and tried to look casual instead of like I was internally screaming. “Soren Vale. Nice to meet you.”
“Finn Callahan.” He didn't ask if I knew who he was, which I appreciated. “This is my little brother, Jamie.”
The kid waved at me from the couch, bright-eyed and curious, and then immediately started signing something so fast my brain took a second to catch up. When it did I had to bite back a laugh, because he'd just told me “his hair looked like a bird's nest.”
I glanced at Finn — whose hair was admittedly pretty chaotic — and signed back, “I think it looks more like a tornado hit it.”
Jamie's grin went absolutely feral. “Tornado bird nest?”
“Perfect description,” I agreed, and Jamie dissolved into silent giggles while Finn looked between us with suspicious eyes.
“What are you two saying about me?” Finn demanded. “I know that look. That's the 'we're making fun of Finn' look.”
“We're just bonding,” I said innocently. “Getting to know each other. Very professional.”
“You've been here thirty seconds and you're already ganging up on me with an eight-year-old.” Finn shook his head but he was grinning. “This is why I don't trust drummers.”
Jamie tugged on Finn's sleeve and signed something, and Finn's expression shifted to fond exasperation.
“He says you seem cool and he already likes you better than his last teacher.” He caught my look and shrugged.
“I've been around Jamie long enough to read most of what he signs.
Can't sign back properly to save my life, but I can understand him well enough.”
“The last teacher was boring,” Jamie signed directly to me. “She didn't let me make jokes.”
“I can work with jokes,” I told him, matching my words with my hands. “As long as you learn something in between them.”
Jamie considered this with the gravity of someone weighing a serious business proposition, then signed, “Deal. But I'm making fun of Finn at least a little bit.”
“That's fair,” I agreed.
Finn threw his hands up. “You're both conspiring against me in a language I can't fully produce. This is discrimination.”
“You could learn to sign properly,” I pointed out.
“I know some,” Finn said defensively. “I can say 'hi' and 'food' and 'stop being a menace.'”
“Very useful vocabulary,” I said, deadpan.
Jamie signed something quickly and Finn groaned. “He says my signing looks like a confused chicken. See what I deal with?”
I was starting to really like this kid. He had that particular brand of clever-kid humor that came from being underestimated by people who assumed deaf meant less capable.
“Alright,” I said, setting my bag down and pulling out the small practice pad I'd brought. I looked at Jamie and signed, “Let's see what you've got. You ever worked with drums before?”
Jamie shook his head, but his eyes were locked on the practice pad with the kind of focus that told me he was already interested.
I signed as I spoke. “Music doesn't require hearing. It requires feeling. And anyone can feel if you've got the right approach.”
I spent the next hour working with Jamie, and honestly it was one of the best teaching sessions I'd had in months.
We started simple. I placed the practice pad on the coffee table and had Jamie put his hands flat against the surface while I tapped out a basic rhythm.
His eyes went wide the first time he felt the vibrations travel through the wood, and he looked up at me with this expression of pure wonder that made my chest do something I wasn't expecting.
“You feel that?” I signed.
He nodded enthusiastically. “It's like the drum is talking.”
“Exactly. That's how music works. It's not just sound. It's movement. Energy. You can feel it in your whole body if you pay attention.”
I demonstrated a simple beat — boom, tap-tap, boom, tap-tap — and watched Jamie's face as he concentrated on the vibrations. After a few repetitions I handed him the sticks.
“Your turn. Copy what I just did.”
Jamie took the sticks with the kind of careful focus that told me he was taking this seriously, and then he tried to replicate the pattern.
His first attempt was close but the timing was off, so I adjusted his grip and showed him again, exaggerating the movements so he could see the difference between a strong beat and a light one.
On his third try, he nailed it.
“Holy shit,” Finn said from the couch, and I glanced over to see him staring at his brother with obvious pride. The TV behind him was playing a hockey game on mute, but Finn wasn't paying attention to it at all.
“Language,” the grandfather called from somewhere deeper in the house.
“Sorry, Gramps!” Finn yelled back, then looked at me and mouthed, “He's a genius.”
I grinned and turned back to Jamie, who was already trying a more complicated variation on his own. Good instincts. He was adjusting his technique without being told, feeling out the rhythm through the vibrations rather than trying to force it.
“You're a natural,” I signed. “How does it feel?”
Jamie thought about it, then signed, “Like my hands know what to do before my brain does.”
That was exactly right. That was the whole point of drumming — getting out of your head and letting your body take over. Most kids took weeks to understand that concept. Jamie had just articulated it perfectly after twenty minutes.
We moved on to more complex patterns after that.
I showed him how to layer rhythms on top of each other, how to feel the space between beats, how to use dynamics to create texture.
He absorbed everything like a sponge, asking smart questions and experimenting with variations I hadn't even suggested yet.
At one point he hit a particularly tricky combination and looked up at me with a huge grin. “That was cool!”
“That was very cool. You just played a paradiddle. Most drummers don't learn that until they've been playing for months.”
“What's a paradiddle?” Finn called from the couch. “It sounds made up.”
“It's a rudiment. A basic pattern that you build other stuff on. Right hand, left hand, right-right. Left hand, right hand, left-left. Jamie just nailed it on his second try.”
“Of course he did.” Finn's grin was so fond it was almost embarrassing. “Kid's better than me at everything. It's honestly unfair.”
Jamie signed something at Finn that translated pretty clearly to I'm just cooler than you, and Finn threw a couch pillow at him in retaliation. Jamie dodged it easily and stuck his tongue out.
“Focus, troublemaker,” I signed, fighting not to laugh. “Let's try something harder.”
Jamie's eyes lit up. “How hard?”
“Pretty hard. Think you can handle it?”
“I can handle anything,” he signed, with the unshakeable confidence of an eight-year-old who'd just discovered he was good at something.