Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Jami woke before the alarm, to his phone buzzing on the nightstand like it had opinions.
He rolled over, scrubbed a hand down his face, and reached for it. A string of notifications glowed across the screen: news mentions, tagged posts, a half-dozen texts from Tony, and one short line from Carlene.
Holding steady. No action yet.
He exhaled through a breath. The air in the farmhouse smelled like coffee grounds and sea air, the kind of morning that usually meant a good day. Except today carried the weight of the night before.
He padded barefoot into the kitchen, poured a mug of coffee, and scrolled through the feed.
The dock photo sat front and center on the band’s page. Evening on the water. Nothing else. No hashtags, no names, no hint of a story.
The comments were calm. Predictable even. Locals saying they’d seen the two of them walking.
A few fans arguing whether he looked happier.
No one was screaming, no one was accusing.
The quiet was almost unnerving.
By the time he walked across the dewy grass to the barn, the band was already filtering in. The open doors let in sunlight, and dust motes floated through the beams like lazy fireflies.
Axel sat on one sofa, tapping a rhythm on his thigh with his fingers. Sean tuned a guitar, and Maddyn leaned against the door frame, half-listening and half-staring out toward the water.
Livia and Tony stood near the bar, phones in hand, talking numbers.
Carlene was where she always was lately, in her corner at the end of the bar, laptop open, posture calm, eyes alert.
She looked up when he walked in, and the smallest smile flickered across her mouth before she caught it. “Morning.”
“Morning,” he said, setting his coffee beside Sunday’s case. “We still steady?”
“Steady,” she said. “Engagement’s high, sentiment’s positive, and the label has stopped calling every fifteen minutes.”
He grinned. “That’s a miracle.”
“Miracles require planning,” she replied, typing something quickly.
He laughed softly and sat on the arm of a sofa. “How’d you sleep?”
“Enough to form sentences.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was honest. She had a way of keeping her walls neatly up without ever sounding cold.
Tony looked up from his phone. “Analytics are good. That walk at the marina did its job. We’re back in control of the narrative.
Carlene, the label says we should post a rehearsal clip to reinforce the connection.
Though Vivian's been asking for the raw data files. She never usually gets that granular.”
“I’ve got a cut ready,” she said. “Thirty seconds. Honest, not polished.”
Jami nodded. "Why don't we start rehearsing?"
They moved into the studio room in the front of the barn and began running through their usual set. The music filled the barn, sunlight pooling across the floorboards. He loved it here. He loved the way the barn felt and smelled when everyone was here and the barn was filled with music.
Axel’s drumming grounded everything. Livia and Maddyn’s harmonies blended soft and strong, and Sean’s guitar work tied it all together.
But it was Jami’s voice that shifted the air.
He sang like the last few days had scraped him raw in a way that made the lyrics mean more.
Carlene moved into the studio to watch them rehearse. Her head tilted slightly, listening. She wasn’t just hearing the notes; she was reading the man beneath them. Every time he looked up, she was already looking away, pretending to check something on her screen. It made him grin.
They ran the entire set, then moved into the next before Tony called for a break.
“Thirty-second clip goes live at noon,” Carlene said, unplugging her laptop. “Soft push, no captions beyond rehearsal day. Keep it natural.”
Jami nodded. “Works for me.”
When the break came, Tony suggested a quick run to the Sandbar.
“Margo’s making lunch,” he said. “She told me if we don’t eat it there, she’ll hunt us down.”
No one argued. His heart swelled with pride at the friends he had. They cared, all of them. In his mind, Hart the smell of fried shrimp and citrus hung in the air.
They took the back deck, wooden tables, sea breeze, and the soft sound of waves rolling close enough to touch.
Margo herself brought out plates and dropped a dish in front of Jami. “Fried grouper and fries. And key lime pie because you look like a man who needs sugar more than sleep.”
He grinned. “You’re not wrong.”
Carlene sat across from him again, the sunlight catching her hair, turning the ends to gold. She wasn’t dressed for photos, no polish, no performance. Just jeans, a soft top, and quiet confidence.
“You okay?” he asked quietly once the conversation drifted down the table.
She looked at him, studying him for longer than she probably meant to. “I think so. The internet didn’t burn down. That’s progress.”
“You held the line,” he said. “You always do.”
“Someone has to,” she replied.
He leaned back, watching the ocean. “Last night felt strange. Like pretending to be something we weren’t… but not wrong.”
Her lips curved, almost a smile. “You handled it better than most. Half the people I’ve worked with would’ve turned it into a spectacle.”
“Guess I’m not most.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re not.”
That quiet between them wasn’t awkward. It was charged, the kind of silence that hummed just beneath the skin.
He looked away first, mostly because if he didn’t, he wasn’t sure what she’d see in his eyes.
A handful of locals at the bar waved but didn’t intrude. Jace made sure of that. The Sandbar was protective that way; it was one of the many reasons Jami liked the place. It gave him room to be a person, not a headline.
After lunch, they lingered. Axel stole Maddyn’s hushpuppies, earning a mock punch. Livia teased Sean about his guitar obsession. Tony leaned against the rail, answering an email while smiling.
Carlene sipped her iced tea and glanced toward Jami, the wind lifting strands of her hair. Something in the way she watched the water reminded him of how he felt before every show: steady outside, chaos underneath.
When they returned to the barn, the noon post had gone live.
The rehearsal clip—the chorus, raw and unfiltered—was spreading faster than expected. A well-known music blogger had shared it with the caption:
No theatrics. Just truth. This is what rock should sound like.
Tony read it aloud, grinning. “Guess someone noticed.”
Jami exhaled slowly, feeling something close to relief. For once, the story wasn’t noise. It was the music.
He caught Carlene’s gaze across the room. She was smiling, small, real, and tired in a way that made him want to take some of the weight off her shoulders.
“You did this,” he said quietly.
Her eyes flicked up. “We did this.”
He wanted to tell her it wasn’t just about the campaign or the song. That something had shifted the moment she’d walked beside him on that dock, their hands brushing in the dark like an accident that still felt deliberate.
But saying it out loud would make it something he couldn’t take back.
Instead, he gave her a soft nod and turned toward the studio. “Let’s make sure the next song’s worth their attention.”
Carlene closed her laptop and sat back, watching him tune. He didn’t see her eyes linger, but he thought she probably did.
The sun dipped lower through the barn’s wide doors, painting the floor gold. When the first note rang out, it sounded like a beginning.
And for the first time since fame had found him, Jami Hart wasn’t sure if what he wanted next was the stage or the woman quietly rewriting his life one steady choice at a time.