Chapter Thirty-Two
The studio smelled like stale air conditioning and the particular kind of creative anxiety that came from spending too many hours in a windowless room. But mostly it smelled like sweat.
Raven sat on the worn leather sofa in the control room, guitar across her lap, while Jem, the sound engineer, fiddled with levels on the board. They'd been at it for three hours, laying down tracks for what would hopefully become the backbone of her first solo album.
It should have felt triumphant. Exciting. Like everything she'd worked toward since leaving Bankton a week ago.
Instead, it just felt… hollow.
"That last take was solid," Jem said, not looking up from the glowing screens. "Want to do another pass on the bridge, or should we move on?"
"Whatever you think." Raven's phone buzzed on the table beside her. She ignored it.
"Your call. You're the artist."
The artist. Right. That's what she was now. Not one quarter of Krimson Khaos. Not Alissa's girlfriend or writing partner or any of the other things she'd been for five years. Just Raven. Solo.
Terrifying, that.
Her phone buzzed again. And again.
"You need to get that?" Jem asked.
"Probably Claire checking in. She's called twice already today."
"Manager?"
"Unfortunately."
Jem laughed. "They're all like that. Mine texts me at two in the morning with 'brilliant ideas' that are never actually brilliant."
Raven picked up her phone, intending to silence it, when she saw the notification wasn't from Claire at all.
New Email from Annabelle Swift.
Her stomach dropped.
She stared at the notification for a long moment, her thumb hovering over the screen. Part of her wanted to delete it unread. The rest of her couldn't look away.
"Actually," she said, standing abruptly. "I need five minutes."
"Sure. I'll grab more coffee."
Raven walked out into the corridor, phone clutched in her hand like it might explode. The hallway was empty, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the distant thump of bass from another studio vibrating through the walls.
She opened the email.
And then she read it. Once. Twice. Three times.
By the fourth read, she'd slid down the wall until she was sitting on the industrial carpet, phone still in her hand, something cracking wide open in her chest.
I'm not okay.
I love you.
Annabelle had been honest in a way Raven never let herself be. Vulnerable in a way Raven had spent her entire life avoiding. She'd admitted she was scared, that she'd made mistakes, that she was hurting.
She hadn't tried to fix anything. Hadn't offered solutions or compromises or ways to make it work.
She'd just told the truth.
And sitting there in that sterile corridor, Raven realized with sudden, devastating clarity that she'd done the exact same thing to Annabelle that she'd done to her music.
She'd left before she could fail.
Before she could be rejected. Before she could try and discover she wasn't good enough.
With Krimson Khaos, she'd walked away the moment things got difficult.
Convinced herself it was about Alissa, about the breakup, about not being able to work together anymore.
But the truth? The truth was that going solo meant risking everything.
Meant putting herself out there without the safety net of three other people to share the blame if it all went wrong.
And with Annabelle…
Christ. With Annabelle, she'd done exactly the same thing.
She'd felt something real. Something that made her feel safe and terrified in equal measure. Something that made her want to stay in a tiny village and teach guitar to sad eight-year-olds and eat lemon biscuits until she weighed as much as a small elephant.
So she'd run. Dressed it up as career ambition and protecting Annabelle from the press and all the other excuses she'd been telling herself. But really, she'd just been scared.
Scared that if she stayed, if she tried, if she let herself actually love someone who loved her back, it wouldn't be enough. She wouldn't be enough.
Better to leave first. Better to control the narrative. Better to walk away before she could be left behind.
"Fuck," Raven whispered to the empty hallway.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. This time it actually was Claire.
She stared at the screen for a moment, then pressed ‘ignore’ and called Arty instead.
He answered on the third ring. "Raven. How's London treating you?"
"I'm sitting on the floor of a recording studio hallway having an existential crisis. So, brilliantly."
"Sounds about right." She could hear the smile in his voice. "What's happened?"
"Annabelle sent me an email."
Silence. Then: "And?"
"And she told me she loves me. And that she's not okay. And that she made it too easy for me to leave because she was too busy trying to be perfect."
"Sounds like Annabelle's been doing some thinking."
"Sounds like I'm a complete coward," Raven said.
"Well, yes. But we've established that already." Arty's tone was gentle despite the words. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. I'm here. I'm working. I'm finally making music again. This is what I came to London for. This is the plan."
"Is it what you want?"
The question stopped her cold.
"I…" Raven pressed her palm against her forehead.
"I want both. I want my music career. I want to make this album and tour and do all the things I've been working toward my entire life.
But I also want… I want Annabelle. I want to go back to Bankton and keep teaching Jamie guitar and eat biscuits on Annabelle's disgustingly cheerful sofa and listen to her talk about fundraisers and children's literacy rates and all the things I pretended to find annoying but actually… "
She trailed off.
"Actually what?" Arty prompted.
"Actually made me feel like I belonged somewhere," Raven finished quietly. "For the first time in my life."
"Right. So you want both."
"Yes."
"So why are you acting like you have to choose?"
Raven blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. Why are you acting like wanting your career and wanting Annabelle are mutually exclusive? Last I checked, London wasn't on a different planet from Bankton. It's a two-hour drive."
"But the studio time, and the press commitments, and…"
"And you'll have days off. Weeks off, probably, between recording and promotion.
You think every musician lives in London full-time?
" Arty asked. "Besides, you've spent the last few months proving you can write anywhere.
Why does making music suddenly require you to abandon everyone you care about? "
"It doesn't," Raven said slowly. "I just assumed…"
"You assumed that success meant sacrifice.
That you couldn't have both. That loving someone meant giving up your dreams or vice versa.
" Arty's voice was kind but firm. "Raven, you're not in Krimson Khaos anymore.
You're not living with your ex-girlfriend and trying to separate your personal life from your professional one.
You're solo now. Which means you get to decide what your life looks like. "
The words landed with the weight of truth.
"I've been doing it again," Raven said. "Haven't I? Running away from every mess I create."
"Little bit, yeah."
"You're supposed to be more supportive than this."
"I am being supportive. I'm supporting you in recognizing your patterns so you can actually do something different for once.
" She could hear him moving around, probably back behind the bar.
"At some point, you're going to have to see things through instead of bolting the moment it gets complicated. "
Raven closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall.
He was right. Of course he was right.
She'd run from foster home to foster home as a kid, always finding a reason to leave before they could send her away. She'd run from relationships, from the band, from anything that required her to be vulnerable or dependent on someone else.
And the only reason she was sitting in this studio at all, the only reason she'd begun writing an entire album's worth of material in the past few weeks, was because of Annabelle.
Something about Annabelle had made it okay to try again. To pick up a guitar and risk writing something terrible. To let someone see her without all the armor she usually wore.
Annabelle had made her feel safe.
No. It was more than that.
Annabelle had made her feel loved.
Not loved in the desperate, consuming way she'd loved Alissa, where every emotion was turned up to eleven and nothing ever felt stable. But loved in a way that was steady and sure and somehow made Raven want to be better. Want to try harder. Want to stay instead of run.
"You still there?" Arty asked.
"Yeah. I'm here."
"And?"
"And I think I've been an idiot."
"Progress."
"I need to… I need to do something. Something to show her that I'm not just running away again. Something that proves I'm actually trying to see this through."
"What did you have in mind?"
An idea was forming. Hazy at first, then sharper. Something that would require her to be vulnerable in exactly the way she'd been avoiding her entire life. Something that would be absolutely terrifying and possibly a complete disaster.
But also something that might actually work.
"I'm not sure yet," Raven said slowly. "But I think… I think I know what I need to do."
"Good. Now get off the floor and go do it."
"I'm still in the middle of a recording session."
"So finish the session. Then go." Arty paused. "For what it's worth, Raven, I think you're doing the right thing. Scary as hell, but right."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. And Raven?"
"Yeah?"
"She loves you. Not the rockstar, not the Grammy winner. Just you. Don't forget that."
The call ended, and Raven sat there for another moment, phone still pressed to her ear.
Then she stood up, brushed the dust off her jeans, and walked back into the studio.
Jem looked up from the sound board. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah," Raven said, picking up her guitar. "Actually, I think it might be. Let's finish this track. I've got somewhere I need to be."
"Another session?"
"Something like that."
She settled back onto the sofa, fingers finding the strings, and for the first time in a week, she felt the music flow without resistance.
Because she wasn't running anymore. She was choosing.
Both the music and Annabelle. The career and the village and the ridiculous, wonderful woman who baked lemon biscuits and believed that everything would work out fine in the end.
Raven had spent her whole life thinking she had to choose between being loved and being herself. Between stability and ambition. Between the parts of her that needed people and the parts that needed solitude.
But maybe, just maybe, she didn't have to choose at all.
Maybe she could have both.
The track came together quickly after that, Jem calling it some of her best work. And as Raven packed up her guitar, an idea crystallizing in her mind with perfect, terrifying clarity, she realized something else.
Annabelle had given her back her music.
And now it was time to return the favor.
She didn't know if it would work. Didn't know if Annabelle would forgive her for leaving, for being a coward, for assuming she had to do everything alone.
But she was going to try.
For the first time in her life, Raven was going to actually see something through instead of running away when it got hard.
And if that wasn't terrifying enough on its own, she was going to do it in the most public, vulnerable way possible.
She smiled as she walked out of the studio into the London evening, guitar case in hand.
Time to make a grand gesture.