Chapter Twelve #2
“He doesn’t ask me to stay...but he makes me want to...”
The words cracked on the last syllable. She swallowed hard and kept playing, letting the chords roll under her fingers while her mind spun.
She’d spent years convincing herself she didn’t need anyone.
Her mother’s disappointment with her divorce had taught her early that the only person you could count on was yourself.
Every boyfriend who got tired of her late nights and sharp edges had only reinforced the lesson. She was better alone. Safer. Stronger.
But last night—onstage with Vic—she hadn’t felt alone. She’d felt seen. Matched. Challenged in a way that made the music feel brand-new again. And afterward, tangled up in her sheets with his heartbeat steady under her ear, she’d felt something even scarier.
Wanted.
Not just wanted for sex or for the way she could make a crowd lose their minds. Wanted for her. The messy, guarded, workaholic version. The one who wrote songs at four in the morning and still couldn’t fix the muffler on her van. The one who pushed everyone away before they could leave first.
Bonnie’s fingers stilled on the strings.
She picked up the pen again and scrawled another fragment across the top of a fresh page.
Grace in the chaos, power in the fall
He plays like he knows I’m terrified of it all
She stared at the words until they blurred.
That was the part she couldn’t get past. Vic didn’t just play well.
He played with grace—even when he was slamming the kit so hard the stage vibrated.
There was control in it. Care. The same control he’d shown when he let her set the pace in bed, then took over exactly when she needed him to.
The same care when he’d brushed her hair off her face afterward and looked at her like she was something worth protecting.
She hated how much she liked the thought.
Bonnie stood up again, restless, and walked to the window. The street outside was waking up—someone’s dog barking, a car door slamming, the distant rumble of a city bus. Normal life. The kind she’d always told herself she didn’t want.
She thought about calling Meg back. About asking for Vic’s number again, this time not for a gig but for...what? A conversation? Another night? She didn’t even know.
Instead, she picked up her phone and opened a new voice memo. Hit Record. Spoke the scraps she’d written, her voice low and rough with the morning.
“Thunder in the pocket...steady when I break...”
Pause.
“He doesn’t ask me to stay...but he makes me want to...”
Longer pause.
“Grace in the chaos...power in the fall...he plays like he knows I’m terrified of it all...”
She stopped the recording and set the phone down.
The truth sat heavy in her chest.
She was terrified.
Terrified of how right it had felt to have him behind her onstage.
Terrified of how easy it had been to let him into her bed and her body and—God help her—maybe even a corner of her heart.
Terrified that if she let him stay the morning after, he’d see all the cracks she worked so hard to hide and decide she wasn’t worth the effort.
She’d kicked him out because it was safer. Because the alternative—waking up next to him, making coffee together, letting him see her without the armor—felt like handing someone a loaded gun and asking them not to pull the trigger.
Bonnie walked back to the desk and picked up the pen one more time. She didn’t cross anything out this time. She just wrote, letting the words spill out however they came.
I spent my life learning how to stand alone
Guitar on my back, heart locked up at home
But last night you sat down and the whole damn room changed
You played like you meant it, like the music was sacred, like I wasn’t deranged
She laughed softly at the last line—self-mocking, honest.
You matched every fire, every risk that I took
Left me shaking and raw with the way that you looked
At me like I mattered, like I wasn’t too much
Like maybe, just maybe, I could let down my guard for once
Bonnie set the pen down and stared at the page. Her eyes stung.
She didn’t know if she could do this. Didn’t know if she was brave enough to let someone in after spending so long keeping them out. But the music—the way it had felt with him behind the kit—had cracked something open inside her. Something she couldn’t just slam shut again.
She picked up her guitar again. Strummed the progression once more, slower this time. Let her voice settle into the lower, huskier register she saved for the songs that scared her.
“Thunder in the pocket...steady when I break...”
She sang the whole scrap she’d written, letting the chords carry her.
When she finished, the house was quiet again. But it didn’t feel empty the way it usually did after a one-night stand. It felt...full. Charged. Like the ghost of last night’s groove was still humming in the walls.
Bonnie closed the notebook and set it on top of the pile. She didn’t delete the voice memo. She left it there, raw and unfinished, like everything else she was feeling.
She walked into the bedroom, stripped the sheets off the bed, and stuffed them into the washer.
The cedarwood scent hit her again as she shoved the fabric in.
She paused, fingers buried in the cotton, and let herself remember the way Vic’s arms had felt around her when she’d fallen asleep for those few stolen hours before panic set in.
Then she closed the washer lid, turned it on, and stood there listening to the water rush in.
She wasn’t ready to call him. She’d realized his number still existed in the text thread with Meg, so she had access when she was ready. If she ever became ready.
She wasn’t ready to admit how much she already missed the steady thump of his bass drum lifting under her guitar.
But for the first time in years, she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep running either.
Bonnie went back to the desk, opened the notebook, picked up the pen, and wrote one last line across the bottom of the page in small, careful letters.
Maybe grace looks like letting someone stay
She stared at it for a long time.
Then she closed the notebook once more, set the guitar back in its stand, and went to make a fresh pot of coffee.
The day was waiting. Gigs to book. Songs to finish. Walls to keep standing.
But somewhere in the back of her mind, a new rhythm had started.