Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
The week that follows is a blur of sweat, strings, and sneaked moments I shouldn’t want as much as I do.
Busy doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m either in class, grinding through assignments I barely care about, slinging lattes at the café until my brain’s soaked in espresso steam, or rehearsing with the guys.
If I’m not doing one of those things, I’m finding a way to wedge myself into Ollie’s insane schedule.
And he’s just as bad. In fact, his schedule is worse. Mornings in the weight room, afternoons on the court, nights reviewing plays or pretending to study. Yet somehow he still shows up. For me. For this.
We don’t call it anything. Not dating. Not together.
Just two people orbiting closer than we should.
Sometimes it’s a couple of hours hidden in the practice room, guitars in our laps, voices tangling in chords until the world outside disappears.
Occasionally it’s him knocking on my apartment door at midnight, Drew blinking blearily before disappearing into his room, leaving us alone on the couch with whatever’s on TV as an excuse.
Sometimes it’s just coffee after his team meetings, sitting shoulder to shoulder while we talk about nothing and everything.
It’s not enough, and it’s too much all at once.
He’s still Ollie: steady, careful, cautious as hell.
He doesn’t touch me in public. Doesn’t let his mask slip.
But in private? He laughs easier. Smiles more.
And when he lets himself lean against me, or when his eyes soften mid-song, it’s like he’s giving me pieces nobody else gets to see.
I’m addicted to those cracks, even when they’re torture.
Tonight, it’s just us and Drew—who’s sprawled in his room with headphones on, the faint sound of his guitar bleeding through the wall—and Ollie and I are camped in the living room.
Guitars across our laps, sheets of scribbled lyrics scattered across the coffee table, and two mugs of coffee going cold beside them.
Ollie’s bent over his acoustic, brow furrowed, working through a progression I showed him earlier. The sound is clean, steady, patient—very him. He hates when he misses a chord, frowns like the world’s ending, then goes back to nail it again. Watching him, I almost forget to keep writing.
Almost.
My pen scratches across the paper, words spilling out like they have every time I’ve been around him since that night.
He lit a fire under me, and I can’t stop feeding it.
My notebook’s filling with songs that wouldn’t exist if not for him.
Dark eyes. Red flushes. The kind of restraint that makes you want to rip it open just to see what’s underneath.
My phone buzzes against the couch cushion, jolting me. Unknown number. I glance at it, ready to ignore it like I always do, but something makes me swipe.
“Hello?”
“Is this Rafael?” The voice is male, older but not ancient, with the casual briskness of someone who spends too much time on the phone.
“Yeah. Who’s asking?”
“This is Carl, manager over at The Lantern. You and your band sent a demo a while back?”
For a second, my brain blanks. Then everything kicks in at once—blood rushing, chest tight, pen slipping out of my fingers. “Yeah. Yeah, that was us.”
“Well, I gave it another listen this week. I like the sound. We’ve got an opening Friday next week—ten days out. Half-hour set. You interested?”
Interested? My pulse spikes so hard I nearly laugh. “Hell yes, we’re interested.”
“Good. You’ll bring your own gear. Load-in at seven, doors open at eight, you’re on at nine thirty. Payment’s modest, but if you guys pull a crowd, there’ll be repeat opportunities. Think of it as an audition for more.”
“Got it.” I’m pacing now, the guitar forgotten, Ollie staring at me like he’s trying to piece together the puzzle. “We’ll be there.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ll email the details to the address you gave with the demo.”
“Perfect. Thanks, man.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Just bring it.”
The call ends. I lower the phone, staring at the screen like it might bite me. Then I look at Ollie, and the grin cracks my face so hard it hurts.
“The Lantern,” I say, breathless. “We’re in.”
His brows rise, and then—slowly, like he’s absorbing the weight of my words—he smiles. And fuck, that smile does something to me.
I’m too wired to sit. I’m pacing the living room, weaving between the coffee table and the couch, words tumbling out faster than I can control.
“Ten days, man. We’ve got ten days to polish everything, to nail the setlist, to make sure we’re unforgettable.
This is it—this is the kind of break we’ve been waiting for. ”
Ollie sets his guitar aside, resting his elbows on his knees as he watches me burn a groove into the carpet. His eyes are steady, calm in the middle of my storm.
“You’re ready,” he says simply.
The words stop me cold. Because he doesn’t say you will be or you could be. He says you’re ready. Present tense and so fucking certain.
I sink back onto the couch, my chest heaving with adrenaline, and I laugh—half wild, half disbelieving. “You really think so?”
His mouth tips into a small, sure smile. “I’ve watched you onstage. You’ve got it.”
I can’t breathe for a second. Not because of The Lantern, not because of the gig. Because Ollie Marshall, the guy who spends his whole life under pressure and still never cracks, just told me I’ve got it. And the way he says it, firm and serious, makes me believe it more than I ever have before.
I scrub a hand over my face, dragging in a breath, then lean back against the couch, close enough that our knees bump. “Ten days,” I whisper, the words tasting like fire. “We’ve got ten days to blow the roof off that place.”
And sitting here, guitar strings humming faint in the air from the stereo, Ollie’s heat seeping into my side, I feel it—that pulse I’ve been chasing since the day I met him. Music and him. Him and music. The heartbeat I can’t ignore.
I don’t realize I’m still grinning until my face starts to ache. Ollie’s watching me like he’s memorizing this version of me—the hopped-up, vibrating, can’t-sit-still idiot who just got told a door finally opened.
“Text the guys,” he says, calm as a metronome.
“Already on it.” My thumbs are moving before my brain catches up.
Me: LANTERN CALLED. WE’RE IN. 10 DAYS. FRIDAY. 9:30 SET.
Miles: SHUT. UP.
Eli: HE’S LYING. HE’S LYING.
Miles: Confirm details. Is this real?
Me: Load-in 7. Doors 8. 30 min set. Bring gear. Carl’s emailing.
Eli: CARL??? HE SOUNDS LIKE A MAN WHO WEARS VESTS.
Miles: I don’t care what he wears if he pays. I’m making a checklist.
Eli: I’m at Manny’s. I’m buying new sticks. Don’t stop me.
Me: No marching sticks unless you want your wrists to die.
Eli: You never let me have joy.
I’m halfway through a victory lap around the couch when Drew’s door swings open, and I realize he can’t have picked up the texts. He’s shirtless, hair sticking up like he licked a socket. He yanks off his headphones, squints. “Why are you yelling?”
“Lantern gig,” I say. “Ten days.”
He blinks, then whoops so loud the upstairs neighbor stomps the ceiling in protest. He barrels into me, and for one horrifying second, I think he’s going to try to hug Ollie, too, but he veers, throws himself onto the couch arm, and starts smacking the cushions like they wronged him.
“Setlist,” he declares. “We need a setlist. Fast opener, hooky mid, closer that murders.”
“‘Blackout’ opens,” I say automatically. “It’s a freight train.”
“Agreed,” Miles says from the doorway—because apparently he ghosted into the apartment during the screaming. He’s got his laptop under one arm and a pen behind his ear. “We anchor center with ‘Cinder’ and close with ‘Wire.’ It’s new, it’s mean, it sticks.”
Drew points at me. “Front man, pick your poison.”
“Those three,” I say. “We need three more. Plus thirty seconds of intro noise to make the room look up, and no dead air between songs.”
Miles nods, already typing. “We’ll need a click track for transitions. And we should run it like a single piece—no chatter, minimal tuning.”
Eli bursts through the front door with a paper bag clutched like a newborn. “I heard shouting,” he pants. “Is the shouting about us being famous?”
“Work first. Famous later,” Miles says.
“Work now,” I echo, but I’m still buzzing too hard to sit. I turn back to Ollie and, without thinking, put my hand on his knee—just a quick squeeze, a silent you saw that. His eyes flick down, then up. The corners soften.
I want to kiss him. I don’t. The room is too full of assholes who notice everything and nothing at once.
“Okay,” I say, clapping once. “Rehearsal tonight. Full run. Tomorrow we refine. We’ve got ten days to be the band they can’t forget.”
Drew salutes with a couch cushion. “Aye aye, Captain Ego.”
“Better than Rhythm Boy,” I shoot back.
He points at me like I’ve proved his argument. “Hey, rhythm makes the song. Try vibing without me and see how fast the whole thing falls apart.”
The rehearsal space is a garage with delusions of grandeur, the kind you can smell before you see: old wood, hot dust, metal that’s been hit too hard. We rent it by the hour from a jazz drummer who never asks questions as long as the cash is in his palm and we don’t blow the breaker.
We load in like we’ve done this a thousand times.
Drew coils cables with the care of a man braiding hair.
Eli wedges pads under his kick drum and tapes an X on the floor where his throne goes—superstition disguised as organization.
Miles builds a little tech island: interface, mics, a serpent of labeled cables.
I tune, then tune again, because nerves make strings lie.