Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
The red light came on, and the barn settled. He held the opening chord until his hands stopped buzzing, then counted himself in with a nod. Sean fell under him with easy harmony. Axel tapped the rim and slid into the pocket like he had been waiting there all morning.
They reached the bridge that had bucked him earlier, and he aimed at the truth again, not the trick. The melody caught. He rode it through, landed clean on the last word, and let the chord die on its own.
Maddyn nodded. “Keep that. Don’t touch a thing.”
“Copy.” He set the guitar on his thigh and breathed once. “Again for safety.”
They did it again. And again. By the third pass, his shoulders had lowered to where they belonged.
Tony saved the song and angled the screen. “We’re good here.”
Jami looked through the glass. Carlene sat at the bar, earbuds in, one hand on a legal pad, the other on her trackpad. Tony had called her precise. He had not been wrong. She never wasted a word or a move.
Axel stood and stretched. “Ten-minute break?”
“Take it,” Jami said.
He stepped out of the live room and crossed to the bar. She took out one earbud and lifted her chin in greeting.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Better than I deserve.” He tapped the pad with his knuckle. “You win your round?”
“Half a round.” She turned the screen toward him. “Standstill draft came through. They softened yesterday’s language and agreed to remove it from their site. We wrangled the bios into an approval window with a default to our last clean copy if they miss it. No tour mentions. No dates. No art.”
He read the paragraph twice. The words weren’t an apology, but they also weren’t a knife. His jaw eased. “You did that.”
“Tony did half,” she said. “Grant did the legal spine. I kept the verbs short.”
He grinned. “That’s you doing most of it.”
She didn’t argue. She slid a mug toward him. “Drink. You sounded tight on the first pass of the bridge.”
“I hate that you can hear that.”
“I love that I can hear that.” She took a sip of her own coffee and checked a timer on her phone. “Two hours for bios starts now.”
He folded his arms on the bar and leaned in. “So we hold. They edit. We approve. No noise.”
“That’s the plan.” She reached for his forearm and drew her thumb across the tendons once. “Go make the songs that make this worth it.”
He caught her hand before she pulled away and pressed his mouth to her palm. “Dinner at the table tonight.”
“Already on my list.” She slid her palm free with one last swipe like she wasn’t quite ready to stop touching him. “Go.”
He turned to walk away, stopped, and moved back to her.
"Think about this full-time. Hart Records can pay you.
You will be our full-time PR person. Tony is our manager.
Together, we'll get all of our wants and needs, and you and I won't have to face weeks apart. Don't answer now, just think about it."
He turned and left her sitting there with that. She couldn't see him, but he grinned all the way back to the studio.
Back in the live room, Sean tuned, eyes on him. “How’s the diplomacy?”
“Not a war today.” Jami slung on his guitar. “We got what we needed most.”
“Which is?”
“Room.” He stepped to the mic. “Count us.”
They worked the afternoon in pieces. Sean found a counter line that folded under the chorus without crowding it.
Axel carved a drum part that breathed. Maddyn tested harmonies, soft then stronger, until the lift felt like something you could stand on.
Between takes, the barn sounded like pencils scratching and cords shifting and the small yeses he lived for.
Tony stood two hours later. “Update.”
Jami rested the guitar on a stand, and they all left the studio to stretch and see what was happening in the real world. Carlene joined them from across the room, laptop under her arm.
Carlene pointed to two separate screens. “Summit removed the old headlines. They posted a neutral note and scheduled a joint statement for later today. No dates. No art. They used our language.”
Carlene tapped a finger against her trackpad. “And their international team signed off on the points adjustment in concept. Numbers to follow.”
Jami read the note again, then looked at her. “You kept them off us without lighting another fire.”
“That was the assignment.” She angled her head at the studio. “Do you want to keep cutting or take a minute to breathe?”
“I breathe there.” He jerked a thumb at the mic. “But I want one thing first.”
She waited.
He set his hand on the small of her back and guided her to the window between rooms. “Listen from here.”
“Bossy.”
“Only with the important things.”
She smiled without showing teeth. “Fine. Play.”
They went back in. Sean met his eyes and nodded once.
Axel lifted a stick. They took “Keys” from top to tail, no stops, no fixes.
He sang it the way he had sung it in the house last night, soft in the living room light, not trying to impress anyone, least of all himself.
When the last note faded, he looked up at the glass.
Carlene had her hand flat on the window frame as if she needed the wood to keep from moving forward. Her mouth made a quiet “yes” that he felt in his chest.
He took off the headphones and pushed the door open. “That?”
“That.” She leaned in, voice low. “Keep the second verse. Do not tidy the crack on ‘open.’ It sounds like a person.”
“Done.”
Tony flipped switches. “Give me one more chorus, just vocals, backed off the mic a hair. I want options.”
Jami did it, then let the guitar dangle while the track rolled. When the save icon stopped spinning, he set the instrument down and splayed his fingers to work out the ache.
Axel checked his watch. “Food?”
Jami looked toward the bar. “Twenty minutes. Let me mark one thing in the back room.”
Sean groaned. “The tape measure again.”
“Vision requires inches.” Jami grinned and headed to the empty space behind the existing studio.
The cement floor showed old paint scars and years of stories.
He pulled the measure from the shelf and extended it along the wall where the new control room might live one day soon. Not promises. Just lines.
Tony’s footsteps joined him. “You really want the glass here?”
“Here.” Jami pointed to the corner facing the main room. “I want to see them and still hear the truth. If we’re building our own thing, we build it with eyes.”
Tony scribbled a note. “Quinn will be here in an hour. We can phase it in if we have to.”
“We will.” Jami rewound the tape measure and hooked it to his belt. “I don’t want this to swallow the music. The music leads.”
“That’s built into your bones.” Tony tucked his notebook away. “Food?”
“Food.”
They regrouped at the bar. Clamshells from the Sandbar smelled like good choices had already been made. Jami and Carlene took the end of the counter. He slid her the container with her name scrawled on the lid.
“Jace wrote Boss on mine,” she said.
“He wasn’t wrong.”
She opened it and speared a bite. “How’s your head?”
“Quieter.” He chewed and swallowed. “Yours?”
“Stacked.” She held up two fingers close together. “Less than it was.”
His phone buzzed on the wood. He didn’t look. She noticed. Her eyes warmed an inch.
Tony settled near them with his box. “Grant says their retraction language is acceptable if they post it on all owned platforms and push it to partners.”
“When?” Jami asked.
“Before close,” Tony said. “We’ll watch.”
“Do not let me watch,” Jami said to Carlene.
“I won’t.” She snapped the lid back on her empty box and wiped her fingers. “After this, I want one studio shot for tomorrow morning. No faces. Mics and coffee. That’s it.”
“You have it.”
They finished and cleared the bar the way they had cleared the kitchen last night, without a plan, without bumping, like they had done it a dozen times. It felt like rhythm, not routine.
Back in the studio, the afternoon shifted into building blocks.
A new idea came out of nowhere when Axel flipped his sticks, changing the feel.
Sean chased him. Jami followed, then led.
The song that wasn’t a song yet started whispering its name, and they pretended not to hear it, like you do with something shy.
Between takes, he caught sight of Carlene on the stairs to the loft, phone at her ear, voice low. She listened more than she spoke. He liked that about her. She did not fill a space to prove she owned it.
She came back down and lifted a thumb. “Bios clear.”
He saluted with his pick and faced the mic. “From the top.”
They played until the light in the barn started to tilt. Tony called last save. Sean set his guitar in the stand with care that bordered on affection. Axel gathered his sticks and tapped the case twice like a benediction. Maddyn and Livia stretched and stepped away from the stage.
Carlene met Jami by the door. “Summit’s neutral note is live. The old language is gone. Our joint statement posts in an hour. And the stills clause made it in.”
He let out a breath. “Good day.”
“A hard one,” she said. “But good.”
“Table?” he asked.
“Table.” She glanced at his hands. “You can still hold a fork?”
“I can hold whatever you hand me.”
That earned him a look he wanted to draw out of her again. She slid her fingers into his and squeezed once. “Let’s go home.”
They left Tony to lock up. The phones stayed on the entry table again, exactly where they should. He pulled leftovers into bowls and warmed them while she opened the drawer she had claimed and dropped a band of hair ties inside like a flag.
At the table, he waited until she had taken a bite. Then he asked the thing he had wanted to ask all afternoon. “What was your favorite part of today?”
She swallowed and thought before answering. “The moment you didn’t tidy the crack.”
He nodded because he had felt the same. “Yours?”
Her eyes flicked to his. “The key.”
He set his fork down. “It looked good in your hand.”
“It felt right in my pocket.” She reached for her water and took a slow drink.
“Did you have any other favorite parts today?”
She smiled. “My other favorite part was telling a room full of lawyers ‘no’ without raising my voice.”
“That belongs on a T-shirt,” he said.
“I’ll make one.” She pointed at his hands. “After you make the record.”
They finished and cleared. He washed. She dried.
The news on their phones could wait. The work did not.
He picked up the guitar in the living room and tested a line that had been tapping the back of his skull since lunch.
She leaned against the doorway and listened like it mattered, because to both of them it did.
He stopped and looked up. “We good?”
“We’re building,” she said. “That’s better than good.”