Chapter 15
The Dare
Maisie
It’s early evening and the town is gathered in the music hall. It’s some sort of truth-or-dare party Tess dragged me to.
Barbie Trina is daring everyone to sing boy band songs. A voice from the quilt club hollers, “Only if you know the choreography!”
The Newly-Deads deadpan every truth question with the solemnity of delivering eulogies.
Gretchen and Greg are together again, judging by the way they serve each other punch then drink from the other’s Styrofoam cups.
Amanda and Luis are fighting, also near the punch table.
“You always ruin group events!”
“At least I show up!”
Does this summer’s matchmaking festival need to haunt Sweetpines forever?
Peaches tries to sneak a cookie off the refreshment table but ends up with a party hat on her head instead.
I’m not sure how I ended up here with a twinkling name tag and a cup of pink punch. But here I am, smiling too brightly, pretending my heart isn’t still spinning from Beau’s song that I overheard a day ago.
My chest aches every time I remember his voice, the way it felt. He was singing straight from his soul. I’m trying to play it cool, but everything inside me feels shaky, yet anxiously excited also.
Unexpectedly, he is next to me, what looks like a quilt folded under one arm. We still haven’t spoken, but he didn’t just appear. I sense that he was looking for me and found me.
Someone calls for a new round of dares. Beau and I stand just outside the tangle of movement and chatter. Laughter rings nearby, nerves prickle the air, and anticipation pulses around us. It brushes our shoulders, but doesn’t pull us in. Not yet.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I lift my chin, look at him, and speak strongly. “Beau Callahan, I dare you to sing a song you wrote.”
The second the words are out, my stomach sinks hard.
An electric jolt shoots through me, hot and breath-snatching.
My fingers twitch, pulse racing ahead of my thoughts.
Hope and dread wrestle in my throat, each one goading me to look away.
I don’t know which would be worse: his refusal or his acceptance.
What did I just do? Have I impulsively betrayed him? Been big in a way that will wound him?
He’s guarded his music, carefully choosing when and who to share it with. And I know why. The last time he let someone in, they used it for themselves and left him behind. Part of me panics at what I’ve done, afraid he’ll see this not as belief in him, but as mockery of his pain.
My dare isn’t to call him out. I do it because I can’t keep standing here, pretending I didn’t hear the most vulnerable, beautiful thing spill out of him last night.
Because when he sang, I felt it, not simply a song, but a call. Raw and searching. The way a wild thing calls for its mate in the dark. Or a mother animal, keening for what was lost, trying to call it home.
And now I need to know if his call was true. If it came from the part of him I think it did.
If he sings now, in front of everyone, it means he’s not running from that part of himself. That part he let me see. The part that seemed to be loving me.
And I believe he has it in him. Not just the music, but the courage to share it again.
But what if he doesn’t?
What if he doesn’t sing, and it means I got it wrong?
I glance over.
Beau’s staring at me, stunned. The quilt drops to the floor, unnoticed. His eyes flicker with wariness that makes my stomach trip, confusion and maybe hurt. I give him the smallest shrug, like it doesn’t matter either way, like this was all in fun.
But it wasn’t.
The crowd waits. Beau blinks. Our eyes lock. They’re an entrancing, restless gray swirled with steel blue, and they search mine, seeking steadiness in the chaos. Looking for something solid before he steps out into open air.
He hesitates. And I can tell he’s weighing something much deeper than a touch of stage fright. He might be remembering the night I walked away after hearing him play. Maybe his musical journey is playing in his mind, image by image.
And then, I watch it: a flame jumps to life in his eyes.
He’s made a decision, grounding himself with quiet resolve. He’s done protecting himself. Done hiding behind careful silences and sidestepping the past. Whatever this might cost him, he seems to have decided I’m worth it. That the truth is worth it. Even if it opens every wound again.
Beau’s gaze remains on me for one second longer, gathering courage to take his first tentative step onto a tightrope, each heartbeat a choice between staying safe and risking the fall. His jaw ticks, fingers flexing at his side.
Then he moves, turning slowly away. He walks to the front of the room, near the steps to the stage, where a guitar leans against the wall. It’s his spare, the one he keeps on hand in case a student forgets his or hers or needs help without a scheduled session.
I barely register Tess sneak behind me, picking the quilt up off the floor.
He raises the guitar and secures it in place with the strap, instinctively adjusting it across his shoulder and chest, while he climbs the stairs and steps up onto the stage.
Not moving toward the mic.
The moment drags on, shedding its calm and creeping closer, thick with unspoken stakes, a shift in the air that tightens every sense. One more step, and something in both of us will change forever.
He rocks the guitar gently while he tunes it with a few quiet strums, each one echoing louder than it should in the silence that’s fallen. He’s commanding the town’s attention as though he’s done this all his life.
Then—only then—does he step to center stage, one pace behind the microphone.
The first few notes hush the hall completely. Even Jasper and Maribel go silent mid-laugh. Team Tune-Up stops arguing. I forget to breathe.
I know this song.
It’s the one he played for me on the porch just out front, haltingly at first, but with growing conviction as he went. I remember how the song stayed with me afterward, even though he barely said a word about where it came from. I thought I’d imagined how deeply it tugged at something inside me.
But hearing it now, in front of everyone, it becomes a revelation, the careful lifting of a lid from something long buried. He’s not hiding it anymore.
He’s offering it up and letting it be known.
It’s unvarnished. Bare-boned. Alive in a way I hadn’t understood before.
And suddenly, it clicks. There’s a reason it stuck with me that night on the porch. Why it felt like déjà vu. I have heard this song before. Not just from him. I’ve heard it on the radio, slipped into playlists, drifting softly in the background of stores.
I’ve heard it sung by Sabi Vale.
I remember hearing the song once in a coffee shop in San Diego, about a week after Gray broke off our engagement.
The lyrics held my attention, but the voice hadn’t matched the ache they carried.
It resembled a toddler draped in her mom’s dress-up jewelry, all dazzle and embellishment, too carefully rehearsed to feel genuine. Now it makes sense.
The song Beau’s performing is “Beyond the Chords,” the breakout single that made Sabi Vale a star.
But she didn’t sing it the same. This version—his version—that he’s playing right now is something else entirely.
There’s rough sincerity in the way he shapes the melody, his delivery free of performance, stripped of polish, shaped only by instinctive truth.
Where Sabi’s version felt polished and studio-slick, this one feels lived-in, vulnerable. He sings every word with the passion of someone who’s been in each line. The lyrics strike deeper. The melody wraps closer, more intimate, as if this version has always needed to be heard.
People around me start whispering:
“Wait… isn’t this a Sabi Vale song?”
“That verse wasn’t in her version.”
“Did she change the lyrics?”
“Guys…maybe he wrote it.”
I already know the answer.
A pressure squeezes behind my ribs when he reaches the final verse about the words he never said, the ache he carried, the woman who touched that pain and still called him worthy.
It’s as if my heart’s expanding too fast for the space it’s in.
I sense something deep taking root in the core of me, not painful as some healing can be, but transforming.
It’s not just that I understand what the song means.
I absorb it from his tone and eye contact. From every word, every note.
I’m already moving toward the stage before I realize it, pulled toward him with the same unthinking urgency that draws a hummingbird to vivid blooms needled with color: red, orange, and pink, impossible to resist.
When the last chord floats off into the breeze through the open windows, Dr. Brooks’s niece, Bethany Gilbert, speaks up from the front of the room. “That was an amazing cover, but why did you choose a Sabi Vale song?”
Beau lowers his guitar gradually, adjusting the strap so the instrument settles by his side. He steps up close to the microphone and stands tall. He clears his throat and his voice is quiet, but he’s not hiding.
“Sweetpines knows me as Beau Callahan. But when I was younger, I went by my stage name, Cal Rivers. I played in a folk-rock band called Northern Chord. We weren’t famous.
We pretty much just played gigs in small venues, but Sabrina Vale was our lead singer.
She recorded this song and called it hers.
The polished radio-friendly version got her a record deal.
It made her famous. But the song…it was mine. Always mine. It still is.”
A ripple moves through the room.
And then Beau looks at me.
“I wrote ‘Beyond the Chords’ thinking I was trying to process a feeling. Turns out, I was writing about the woman I’d fall madly in love with. I just didn’t know it yet.”
He slips the guitar off his shoulder and hands it to one of his awe-struck music students as if he’s done it a thousand times. Then Beau lowers himself with calm intention over the edge of the stage and strides the last few steps between us.
He’s not performing. He’s not proving anything.
He’s merely a man, telling the truth.
He leans in, his lips close to my ear with a rich, low timbre.
The slightest tremble tucks itself under each word.
The warmth of his whisper grazes the side of my neck.
It’s not flirtatious or possessive. It’s purposeful, threading between us, silk drawn through fingers with the reverence of a vow.
His question transfers care of himself to me, trusting me to be and do what he needs.
I hear, “Was any of this real for you?”
But I know that what he really means is, “What will you do with the heart I just handed you?”