Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Alec
The studio smells like polished wood and new equipment. Barret finished this place right before we had to fly to Los Angeles for Dexter, and we’ve been using it since we came back . . . almost two months now.
Which is scary if I think about how it’s also been the same amount of time since Mara walked into my world and rearranged things I didn’t even know were loose in my life.
I shouldn’t call it my life—not when half the time I still feel like I’m watching it from the outside.
But whatever this thing is between us, whatever rhythm we’ve fallen into without discussing it—more like avoiding the subject.
It feels close enough to a relationship that.
. . honestly, if I look straight at it, I might bolt and never come back.
As I always say, I don’t do people.
“So what are we here for?” I ask, because there’s always a reason someone summons the drummer and the grump when they need backup vocals or a new arrangement for a chorus.
Barret is actually good at producing—infuriatingly good.
The problem is that the artists he attracts are too green.
Wide-eyed kids with trembling hands, big dreams, no timing, and zero understanding of why passion isn’t enough.
So he summons Dexter and me to “offer support,” which is basically code for “fix this before I commit arson.”
Dex smooths out vocals, I fix their rhythm disasters, and Barret pretends he’s not one meltdown away from tossing a microphone through the window.
I do it because I’m still waiting for life to start, and this is the closest thing I’ve got to forward motion.
It’s not a job—no one’s writing me checks—but it fills the hours, keeps my hands busy while I pretend I’m on the verge of discovering my thing.
Everyone else already knows. Eddie with his empire, Barret with his soundboard.
Roderick and his chickens and that strangely intense sense of purpose that only poultry seems to inspire.
Even Dexter—who spent years hiding—is going back to school, mapping out his plan to bend the music industry to his will.
And then there’s me. Floating. Waiting. Hoping something clicks.
And I . . . I do nothing. Unless we count writing in journals, practicing drums, and—apparently—becoming the unofficial emotional support person for my neighbor. Is that a hobby? A vocation? A curse?
No.
Definitely not.
I shouldn’t be thinking about her right now.
She’s off-limits.
Single mom, carrying loss she hasn’t even begun to unpack, trying to build a stable life for her kid. She deserves peace. She deserves someone with a clean slate.
And I’m . . . well, me.
But my brain doesn’t listen. It never has.
All I see is Mara on her balcony in the mornings—hair pulled up, breath fogging the air, limbs stretching toward a sun that barely exists in this city.
The curve of her waist when she bends. The determination in her eyes when she tries to hold herself together.
The light she doesn’t realize she radiates.
The part of her I ache to reach.
To taste.
To lose myself in it might quiet everything else.
And that’s what terrifies me the most.
Because the closer she gets, the more it builds—not just lust, not just curiosity, but a pull that hums beneath my skin. It spreads low and slow whenever she says my name, or passes close enough in the kitchen for her sleeve to graze mine, or looks at me like she hasn’t decided to disappear yet.
I shouldn’t want this.
I shouldn’t want her.
But I do.
Fuck, someone help me with this need because pretending I don’t want her is getting harder every damn day.
Barret is already fiddling with the soundboard like it’s a bomb he’s trying to disarm, muttering about levels and saying, “Dexter was off-key humming the last time you were here. We need to fix that.”
“I didn’t hum,” Dexter protests. “I breathe rhythmically. There’s a difference.”
Barret doesn’t glance up. “You were off-key while breathing.”
“You need someone better at the microphone?” Dexter glares at him. “Call Roderick.”
“I would, but he’s too busy with his chickens,” Barret responds.
I bark a laugh. “Those chickens have more emotional availability than you two combined.”
Dexter rolls his eyes. “Wow, imagine being compared to poultry by your own best friend.”
“Nobody compared you to chickens,” Barret groans. “And if you’re this cranky, maybe you just need to—” He wiggles his eyebrows. “—wink a little, remind Aly you’re good.”
“Don’t bring up my sex life in here,” Dexter snaps. “Aly and I are actually . . . you know . . . dating. Taking it slow. Building something meaningful. I want this to be about love, not just—”
I scoff, loud enough that the sound bounces off the studio walls. “Everything is about sex. There’s no way you’ll last.”
Barret looks at me with an eyebrow arched high enough to reach the ceiling. “Says the man who’s basically playing house with the widow next door.”
I freeze for half a second.
“I’m not—” I point at nothing because nothing is safe to point at. “That’s different.”
“How?” Barret challenges, arms crossed, grin feral. Like he got me, and I can’t escape.
Fucking fantastic.
This is absolutely the conversation I’m not having today.
Or ever.
The silence stretches.
Dexter leans against the console, smirking. “Yeah, Alec. Explain how it’s different between you and Ms. ‘Beautiful, you know, but in not an obvious way.’”
“Is that how he described her to you?” Barret cackles.
I narrow my gaze, exasperated with the two of them. Mostly because I don’t know how to respond. It’s not different.
It’s also nothing.
Right?
I rub the back of my neck, annoyed at the way my pulse kicks up, annoyed at the way their eyes drill into me like I’m an exhibit they’ve been waiting to examine.
“It’s not what you think,” I mutter, already bracing for the looks I know are coming.
Barret snorts without looking up. “It’s exactly what I think.”
“Shut up,” I snap, though it’s weak—because I have no counterargument and we all know it. They’ve seen and heard too much already.
Barret keeps going. “You walk her kid to lessons like you’ve been doing it for years. You moved your goddamn studio sessions around to fit her schedule. You make tea. You check on her. And you made mixtapes, Alec. Fucking mixtapes.”
Dex raises a brow. “Tapes, man? That’s practically a series of love letters. That’s practically you standing in the rain holding up a boom box.”
I glare at both of them, because sarcasm is safer than the truth. “I’m being neighborly. That’s all.”
Except it’s not. It hasn’t been for a long time. It’s not neighborly when you memorize the sound of someone’s footsteps. Not when her voice drags you back from the places your mind usually spirals toward.
Definitely not when you listen to every single one of her sighs like they’re telling you secrets no one else is listening for. I’ve spent so much time with her that I can almost tell when she’s happy, annoyed, or sad. That’s . . . fucked up.
Me helping her isn’t really about kindness. It’s about her.
It’s about showing up when I could’ve stayed home. About watching the way she curls inward when she thinks no one notices. About how she clutches her mug too tightly on the days she can’t quite hold herself together.
It’s knowing her patterns—when she pretends to be okay and when she’s about to crack. And it’s caring anyway, even when I have no right to. Even when she hasn’t asked for any of it.
Fuck, it’s probably about last night.
She was reading those letters, hands shaking, breath catching, her voice so quiet I could barely hear her—but I felt it.
Every word soaked in grief, every bruise she didn’t want to show me.
Those letters hurt her in ways she can’t understand, and I’m not sure if it’s that her aunt never shared any of her past with Mara, or that she hasn’t loved with the intensity those two people professed in their letters.
All I could think—all I could fucking think—was how badly I wanted to kiss her.
Not to distract her, but to comfort her, and take away the pain.
I wanted to press my mouth to hers like it meant something. Like I could absorb her sorrow if I just held her close enough. Like the hunger I’ve been choking down for weeks wouldn’t wreck both of us if I just let it out.
I wanted to kiss her until she stopped pretending she wasn’t drowning. Until she stopped holding the whole world inside her ribs like it was her job to carry grief alone.
But I didn’t.
Because she was breaking.
And she deserves more than someone who can’t even figure out what to do with his own damage.
So I just sat there—close enough to feel her shaking, close enough to lose my mind over the curve of her mouth—and did nothing.
Which might be the most intimate thing I’ve ever done, but also the most impossible one. Because I want her.
Badly.
I want her pinned to my mattress, hair tangled in my sheets, legs wrapped around my waist like I belong to her. I want her gasping into my mouth, begging for more, her body aching for something only I can give her. And not just for sex—not just for the easy release.
I want to know how she falls apart. How she lets someone help her put it back together.
I want to be the reason she stops pretending she’s fine.
And yeah. That’s the part continues to terrify the fuck out of me.
Because I know how this ends.
It’s the emotional equivalent of loading a gun, handing it over, and saying, Here, try not to shoot me. But it’s fine if you do. I’ll already be gone by the time it hits.
So I sit there. I pretend it’s nothing.
I call it neighborly, like that word will save me from the truth.
But it won’t.
Not when I already know I’m too far gone.
I drag a hand down my face.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Maybe I am fucked.”
Dex raises both brows, smug as hell. “Told you.”
Barret leans back in the chair like he’s settling in to watch a train derail in real time. “So what are you gonna do about it?”
What am I going to do?