The Muse
NATE
The studio lights hum softly when I step inside, their familiar glow wrapping around me and it feels like home. This place has always been my refuge—the one space where I don't have to perform, explain, or pretend.
I move to the piano, not because I have something to say, but because the keys have always known how to speak for me when I can't. My fingers hover above them. There's a strange hesitation there—like my hands are asking permission from my heart to break open.
Then I press down and the first chord comes out low and heavy, vibrating through the room. The second softens, unsure of itself. By the third, my chest feels tight in that familiar, dangerous way.
Because every note carries her.
How she looks at things when she thinks no one's paying attention. How her smile breaks before it fully lands. How she touches her collarbone when she's anxious.
I don't plan the song. I never have, it just comes as it needs to. The final note lingers, vibrating through the air like something unfinished.
"Damn." Tommy's voice is quiet. Not joking. Not careless. Just honest. "That one sounds like it hurt."
My gaze stays fixed on the piano keys. "Just needed to get it out."
He walks closer, leaning against the soundboard.
"Who's it about?"
I exhale slowly.
“A girl.”
Tommy doesn't laugh. Doesn't even try to make a joke.
“Always is.”
We stand there in a silence that feels full rather than empty.
Then he says, “Hey, listen, I know I've been a fucking nightmare to deal with lately."
I glance at him now.
His eyes look tired—not hungover tired, not overworked tired.
Soul tired. The kind of exhaustion that comes from fighting yourself and losing. The kind I recognize because I wore it for years.
"Want to tell me what's been going on lately?" I ask.
He rubs the back of his neck, as he struggles with whatever he's about to say.
Tommy's never been good at this part—the vulnerability, the asking for help. He'd rather burn everything down or disappear than admit something's wrong.
"It's not because I don't care about the band and the future or whatever."
"Then what?"
He's quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks again, there's an edge to his voice. Like he's daring me to judge him.
"I got someone pregnant."
The confession lands between us like a grenade.
My chest tightens. My pulse spikes.
"Tommy—"
"Before you give me some lecture on responsibility and all that bullshit," he cuts me off, and there's something bitter in his laugh. "She's not keeping it. She told me a week ago, said she wasn't ready and didn't want to be tied to some fuck-up musician who can barely keep his shit together."
He shrugs, but the gesture is too sharp, too forced. “Can't really blame her, now can I?"
I stay quiet, let him work through it.
"And the fucked up part?" His hands are shaking more visibly now as he runs them through his hair.
“She’s right. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do with a kid?
I'm out here drowning in all this fame bullshit—everyone watching, everyone expecting me to be something I'm not.
I can't even take care of myself half the time. "
"But?"
"But knowing she's giving it up..." His voice cracks, just for a second, before he forces it back to that hard edge. "Knowing there was this... this possibility of something real and now there's just fucking nothing. It made me feel like him. Like I'm already the same piece of shit my dad was."
Just for a second, the armour slips and the kid underneath is visible—terrified, hurting, desperate.
"So yeah, I started using again," he says, and now the words come faster, angrier. "Because what else was I supposed to do? Sit around and feel all this shit? I'm turning into the exact bastard who fucked me up in the first place.”
He laughs, sharp and hollow.
"At least when I'm high, I don't have to think about it. Don't have to feel like a complete fuck up.”
I feel for the kid because I was that kid.
"I didn't want to," he adds, and there's something almost pleading underneath the bravado now.
Something raw. "But I didn't know what else to do.
And now I'm scared I'm going to lose everything—the band, the music.
I'm more worried I'm going to become him and there's not a goddamn thing I can do to stop it because it seems to be my fucking fate. "
"You're not him," I say firmly. "And it isn't your fate to become him either."
"How the fuck do you know?" His voice rises, defensive and desperate all at once. "How do you know I'm not just going to repeat the same shit? Make the same mistakes? Hurt people the same way he hurt me?"
I turn to face him fully, give him my complete attention.
"Because you just admitted you're scared of becoming him, which means you're nothing like him."
He looks away, and his jaw clenches.
"Yeah, well. Doesn't feel like much."
"Tommy, it's everything," I say.
He's quiet for a moment, then: "You ever look in the mirror and see your old man staring back?"
"Every day for years." I admit.
"Then how the fuck do you stop it?" There's desperation bleeding through the anger now. "How do you break something that feels like it's coded into your fucking DNA?"
"By understanding that you're not your father's sins," I say carefully.
"You're not the sum of what he did to you or what he failed to be.
You're you. And maybe—" I pause, "—maybe your whole purpose in this lifetime is to break all those old narratives that got passed down to you.
To take all that pain and fear and anger and turn it into something that looks nothing like what he gave you. "
He's listening now, even though his arms are still crossed defensively across his chest.
"Scott used to tell me that I'd never amount to anything. That I was weak and pathetic and everything wrong with the world. And for a long time, I believed him. I thought I was destined to be exactly what he said I was."
"But you're not."
"No. But it took me years to understand that his voice in my head wasn't truth—it was just trauma. That I got to choose who I became, even if it meant fighting every instinct he'd beaten into me."
"What if I can't fight it? What if I'm already too far gone?"
"You're not," I say. "But you don't fight it alone either."
"You're making it sound a lot easier than it actually is." The sarcasm is back, but it's weaker now. More defense mechanism than genuine dismissal.
"Oh, it's far from easy. But you show up every day and try to be one percent better than you were yesterday.
You fuck up and you forgive yourself and you try again, you do that one hundred times before you might see some shift.
You let people who give a shit about you hold you up when you can't stand on your own. That's all any of us can do."
He's quiet for a long moment, staring at the floor.
When he speaks again, his voice is so small, so unlike the confident musician who performs in front of thousands.
"I don't know if I can do this Nate."
"You can," I say with certainty. "Because you already did the hardest part. You're asking for help."
"Even after how shitty I've been to you and the guys?" he asks, and the vulnerability in those words costs him everything.
Here was a guy asking not to drown. And suddenly I'm back in that place—twenty-one years old and dying slowly, being pulled out of a drug den by Nick and Jay.
Being given a second chance I didn't think I deserved. Being shown that asking for help isn't weakness, it's the bravest thing you can do.
"Yeah Tommy," I say without hesitation. “We’ve all got your back. Whatever you need.”
He lets out a breath like he's been holding it for weeks, and his whole body seems to sag with relief. The armor comes down completely now.
"I know a good program with good people that saved my life."
"What if I fuck it up?"
"If you fuck up, we try again. Recovery isn't a straight line, Tommy. It's messy and hard and sometimes you take two steps back for every one forward. But the point is you keep moving. You keep trying. And you let the people who love you hold you up when you can't stand on your own."
"You really think I can do that?" There's something fragile in the question. Like he's desperate to believe it but terrified to hope.
"Yeah, I do," I say. "Because I've watched you grow into someone your younger self would be proud of. Someone who cares about his music, his brothers, his future. That's not who your father was. That's who you are. And that person deserves a chance to heal."
"Thank you," he says into my shoulder, voice muffled.
"Always," I say, and I mean it.
"I'll uhh… I’ll see you tomorrow? For rehearsal?" he asks. There's still uncertainty there, like he's afraid I'll change my mind.
“See you tomorrow, kid.”
He nods, manages something close to a smile—small and broken but real—and heads for the door.
But he pauses at the threshold, turns back.
The armor's starting to rebuild itself already, piece by piece.
"Nate?"
"Yeah?"
"That song you were playing. About the girl you never stopped loving." He's quiet for a moment. "If she's worth writing songs about, she might be worth holding onto."
Before I can respond, the door slams open behind him and Ollie storms in, chest heaving, face flushed.
"Why is my sister getting on a plane back to shitsville?”
He stops short, seeing Tommy's red eyes and registers that he just interrupted something.
Tommy clears his throat, wiping at his face one more time.
"Looks like your twelve o'clock is here," he says, voice rough. "So I'm gonna go."
He squeezes Ollie's shoulder on the way out. Ollie watches him leave, concerned, then turns back to me.
“Shit. Did I just—is he okay?"
"He will be."
Ollie nods slowly, processing, then seems to remember why he came. His expression hardens again.
"So?" he says. "You gonna answer my question?"
I move to the mixing board, hands gripping the edge.
"She made her choice."
"That's it? That's all you've got?"
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Don't." He points at me. "Don't do that thing where you act like you don't know what I'm talking about."
I cross my arms. “She made her choice, Ollie.”
"Did she? Or did you make it for her? Again."
The word "again" lands heavy.
My chest tightens.
"I'm not doing this with you."
"Yeah, you are." He moves closer. "Because I'm done watching you do this. To yourself. To her."
"I told her to figure out what she wants—"
"You told her to leave."
His voice cuts through mine, and I can't respond.
He’s starting to piss me off now.
"You think I can't see it?" Ollie says, quieter now. "Every time she walks away? Every time you let her go because you think that's what love looks like?"
"It's called respecting her choices."
"It's called being a fucking coward."
"Careful."
"Why?" He steps closer, and there's desperation in his eyes now. "What are you going to do? Hit me? At least that would be something. At least that would be you actually feeling instead of this—" he gestures at me, "—this martyr act you've perfected."
My hands shake with the effort not to grab him.
"I'm trying to do what's right for her. I’ve always tried to do what’s right for her.”
"No. You're doing what's safe for you. What lets you avoid getting destroyed."
I turn away, stare at the mixing board.
At the work that's always been easier than this.
"She said she has nothing here. That her career, that’s important to her, is there and that’s where she needs to be right now. What am I supposed to do with that?"
“Uhh… show her she's wrong?”
"How?"
"The fucking letters Nate.”
He's holding a stack of envelopes. Ones with stamps I recognize because I bought them.
“I told you go get rid of them.”
“Yeah, well I’m glad I never listened to you.” He holds them out to me, waiting for me to take them. "Show her, tell her, but she needs to know you never stopped loving her.”
"No."
"Nate—"
"I said no. Those letters were from a different person. A different time."
"You were fighting for your life and pouring your heart out because you thought she'd read them."
"Yeah, well, she didn't." The bitterness surprises even me. "Because you kept them from her."
There it is.
The thing we've been dancing around for five years. Since his wedding when he got drunk enough to confess what he'd done.
It was why she never wrote back, why she thought I just stopped.
Ollie flinches and his shoulders drop.
"I know."
"You took that choice from her. You decided she was better off not knowing. You decided that—”
"I was trying to protect her!" His voice rises.
“Exactly Ol. Exactly.”
"I fucked up. And I've carried that guilt every single day."
He stops. Breathes and when he speaks again, his voice is quieter but more intense.
“But you know what's worse than what I did? You knowing the truth and still not telling her."
"You want to know why I never said anything?"
Ollie stays silent.
"It would destroy her relationship with you."
"So? Maybe it should. Maybe I deserve that. But at least she'd know. At least she could make a real choice instead of one based on a lie."
We stare at each other.
Brothers in everything but blood. Brothers who know each other well enough that words are almost unnecessary.
"I'm tired, man." My voice cracks. My shoulders slump. "I'm so fucking tired of wanting her and watching her walk away. I'm tired of being the guy who waits."
He moves closer, puts a hand on my shoulder.
"You've been showing up for everyone else for as long as I've known you. For this town. The band. Your mom. Everyone except yourself."
I close my eyes.
See her face. Those green eyes.
"She's already gone."
"She's in LA. Not on Mars.” Ollie squeezes my shoulder. "And something tells me she's not going there to stay."
"What do you mean?"
"I saw her face when she left. That wasn't someone running away. That was someone trying to figure out how to come back."
He heads for the door, letters in hand and pauses.
"My sister's been in love with you since we were kids. Nothing—not distance, not time—has changed that."
The door closes.
I stand there in the quiet studio, the mixing board humming softly.
I let myself consider the possibility that Ollie might be right.
When she comes back—not if, but when—I'm going to tell her everything.
About the letters. About Ollie. About why she never heard from me. About the fact that I never stopped fighting for her, even when she didn't know I was fighting.