Chapter 7
The chapel made a terrible teaching studio.
Jessica stood in the center of the room, hands on her hips, evaluating what she had to work with.
Brick walls that would create harsh acoustics.
A massive table that dominated the space.
Industrial lighting that flickered when the AC kicked on.
No mirrors for students to check their hand positioning, no whiteboard for diagramming chord shapes, no comfortable seating for hour-long lessons.
But it had a door that locked, walls that contained sound, and nobody trying to kill her for being inside.
She'd work with what she had.
Two folding chairs from the common room.
A music stand she'd borrowed from the garage, where someone had been using it to hold shop manuals.
Her guitar case propped open on the table, serving double duty as a visual anchor and a reminder that this was a professional space, even if it didn't look like one.
She'd texted Matty's mother last night, explaining she'd had to relocate temporarily but could still teach if they were willing to make the drive.
Mrs. Davidson had agreed without asking questions—military spouse, used to strange circumstances and sudden changes.
She'd drop Matty at the compound gate at nine and pick him up at ten.
One student. One hour. One small piece of her life reclaimed from the men who were trying to erase her.
It wasn't much.
But it was something.
Matty Davidson was twelve years old with a mop of brown hair and fingers that were finally starting to stretch across the fretboard properly.
Jessica met him at the gate, walking him through the compound with a casual confidence she didn't entirely feel. Brothers nodded as they passed. Matty stared at the bikes in the garage with the kind of reverence only a pre-teen boy could muster for chrome and horsepower.
"This place is awesome," he said.
"It's temporary."
"Can I look at the motorcycles after?"
"Ask your mom."
The chapel door closed behind them, and the lesson began.
Matty had been working on "House of the Rising Sun" for three weeks—the arpeggio pattern that gave beginners fits, the chord transitions that required finger independence he was still developing.
Jessica sat across from him, her own guitar in her lap, demonstrating the movement he kept getting wrong.
"You're lifting your index finger too early. See?" She played the transition slowly, exaggerating the motion. "Keep it planted until the last possible second. The A minor to C transition is all about that pivot point."
"It's hard."
"Everything's hard until it isn't. Play it again."
He played it again. Better this time. Not perfect, but progress.
They worked through the full hour, breaking down each section of the song until Matty could play the first verse without stopping. His face lit up when he finally nailed the E-to-A minor transition—that moment of triumph that made teaching worth the low pay and long hours.
"Same time next week?" he asked, packing up his student guitar.
"Same time next week. Practice the arpeggio pattern twenty minutes a day. And don't rush—speed comes from accuracy, not the other way around."
Mrs. Davidson was waiting at the gate, waving from the window of her SUV. Matty jogged toward her with his guitar bouncing against his back, and Jessica watched until the vehicle disappeared down the access road.
One lesson completed. One small victory.
She walked back to the chapel and closed the door behind her.
The old strings came off in coils of tarnished bronze.
Jessica sat cross-legged on the chapel floor, her Martin cradled in her lap, working through the methodical process of restringing. She'd been stretching this set for a month—longer than she should have, but new strings cost money she didn't have to spare.
Now she had a fresh pack, courtesy of the compound's surprisingly well-stocked supply room. Someone had bought them months ago and never used them. Phosphor bronze, light gauge, exactly what she preferred.
She wound the low E first, feeding the string through the tuning peg and wrapping it with the precision of someone who'd done this a thousand times. Three wraps above the hole, snug against the post, tension building as she turned the key.
The string stretched and settled. She tuned it by ear, adjusting until the pitch sat exactly where it should.
A string next. D. G. B. High E.
Each one wound, stretched, tuned. The process was meditative—her hands knew the motions without conscious thought, leaving her mind free to wander through the chaos of the past week.
Five days since she'd fled her studio. Four days since learning her gig calendar had been systematically destroyed. One night since Raven had killed the man who'd been following her and walked into the chapel with blood on his sleeve and something hungry in his eyes.
Good, she'd said when he told her Lunsford was dead.
She'd meant it. Still meant it now, in the quiet of the chapel with fresh strings humming under her fingers.
The man who'd stalked her to venues, who'd threatened bar owners into dropping her, who'd treated her life like a problem to be solved with intimidation—he was gone. And she couldn't find it in herself to feel anything but relief.
What did that say about her?
She finished tuning the high E and ran a test scale up the fretboard.
The new strings rang bright and clear, the Martin's voice restored after weeks of muddy tone.
She played a few chords, adjusting the truss rod slightly to account for the fresh tension, settling the action until it felt right under her fingers.
Better.
She pulled her notebook from her guitar case and flipped to the song she'd been working on—the one that had started as a melody three weeks ago and was slowly becoming something real.
The verses were solid. The chorus needed work. And the bridge...
The bridge was the problem.
She'd been stuck on it for days, trying to find the transition that connected the emotional peak of the chorus to the resolution of the final verse. Everything she tried felt forced—too obvious, too predictable, too much like every other song she'd written before her life exploded.
She played through the progression she'd sketched out yesterday, listening for the flaw she couldn't quite identify. The chords were right. The rhythm was right. But something was missing—some emotional truth that the music hadn't found yet.
She played it again, softer this time, letting the notes hang in the chapel's strange acoustics. Brick walls bounced the sound back at her, creating a slight reverb that smoothed the edges.
There. That transition from the four chord to the minor six. It needed to breathe more. Needed space.
She grabbed her pencil and scratched out two measures, rewriting the progression with a dotted rhythm that created the pause she'd been looking for. Played it through once, twice, adjusting until the flow felt natural.
Better. Not perfect, but closer.
She lost herself in the work, playing the bridge over and over, making small adjustments, chasing the version that lived somewhere in her head but hadn't quite made it to her fingers yet.
Time blurred. The chapel held her music like a secret.
The knock came without warning.
Jessica looked up, startled, as the door swung open. Raven stood in the threshold, still in the same clothes from this morning, shadows under his eyes that said he hadn't slept much.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to interrupt."
"You're not interrupting." She set the guitar aside and stretched muscles that had stiffened from hours of sitting. "What time is it?"
"Almost five."
"Shit." She'd been playing for six hours. "I lost track."
"Sounded like you were working on something."
"A song. Bridge is giving me trouble." She hesitated, then picked up the guitar again. "Want to hear it?"
Raven stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn't sit—just leaned against the wall near the entrance, arms crossed, watching her with that focused attention that made her feel seen in ways she wasn't sure she wanted.
"Play."
She positioned her fingers and started from the beginning of the bridge. The new progression flowed under her hands, the dotted rhythm creating space where there had been clutter before. She played it through once without singing, letting the music speak for itself.
When she finished, the chapel was silent.
"What's it about?" Raven asked.
Jessica looked down at her hands on the fretboard. The calluses on her fingertips. The worn spots on the guitar's neck where thousands of hours of practice had polished the wood smooth.
"I don't know yet," she said. Which wasn't entirely a lie.
Raven studied her for a long moment. She could feel him reading her—that unsettling ability he had to see through the things people said to the things they meant.
"You're lying."
"I'm not ready to tell you."
"Fair enough." He pushed off the wall and moved closer. "Sounds good, whatever it is."
"It sounds unfinished."
"Most things worth building are."
He stopped a few feet away, close enough that she could see the exhaustion carved into his features. He'd been up all night analyzing phones, mapping communications, doing whatever it was that men like him did when they were hunting other men.
"Did you sleep at all?" she asked.
"A few hours."
"Liar."
His mouth curved. "Fair enough."
The air between them felt charged—the same tension that had crackled in the chapel last night, when he'd shown up with blood on his sleeve and something broken in his eyes. She'd told him not to be lonely. He'd walked away anyway.
But he was here now. Listening to her music. Looking at her like she was something worth protecting.
"I taught a lesson this morning," she said, filling the silence. "Matty, the twelve-year-old. His mom dropped him at the gate and picked him up an hour later. Nobody followed them. Nobody threatened anyone."
"We've got eyes on the compound perimeter. If Slade's people came anywhere near, we'd know."
"That's not what I meant." She set the guitar down carefully. "I meant that I did something normal today. Taught a kid how to play a chord transition. Restrung my guitar. Wrote some music. It felt like my life again, even if the setting was wrong."
"That's good."
"Is it?" She met his eyes. "Because it also felt like pretending. Like I was playing at being a musician while men with guns watched the gates."
Raven was quiet for a moment. Then he crossed the remaining distance between them and crouched in front of her chair, putting himself at eye level the way he had last time they'd talked in this room.
"You're not pretending," he said. "You're surviving. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Pretending is doing things you don't care about because you're too scared to do anything else.
Surviving is doing the things that matter while the world burns around you.
" His hand came up, brushing her jaw with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the violence she knew he was capable of.
"You taught a kid guitar today. You worked on a song that's going to be beautiful when it's finished.
That's not pretending. That's choosing to live. "
Her breath caught. His fingers were warm against her skin, rough with calluses she hadn't noticed before.
"You sound very sure of yourself."
"I'm sure of you."
The words landed in her chest like a weight she hadn't known she was waiting to carry.
"Raven—"
"Victor." His voice dropped. "When we're alone like this, you can call me Victor."
She'd known his real name for months—had called him Victor in her head the whole time she'd known him as a mediocre guitar student with more persistence than talent. But hearing him offer it now, in the quiet of the chapel with his hand on her face, felt different.
It felt like a door opening.
"Victor," she said softly.
His eyes darkened. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her—could feel the want radiating off him like heat from sun-baked asphalt.
Instead, he pulled back.
"Dinner's in an hour," he said, standing. "You should eat something."
"That's it? You're just going to—"
"I'm going to wait." He backed toward the door, putting distance between them that felt deliberate. "Until this is over. Until you're not dependent on me for safety. Until you can choose me because you want to, not because I'm the only thing standing between you and men who want to hurt you."
"And if I want to choose you now?"
"Then I'll ask you again when Slade is dead and you're free." He reached the door. "Can you wait that long?"
It wasn't fair. None of this was fair—the threat, the hiding, the slow-building tension between them that kept getting interrupted by violence and survival.
But she understood what he was offering. Time. Space. The chance to choose without pressure.
"I can wait," she said.
"Good." He opened the door. "Because I'm going to make sure you have a life worth choosing when this is over."
He left without looking back.
Jessica sat alone in the chapel, her guitar silent in her lap, the bridge of her unfinished song still echoing in her ears.
She knew what the song was about now.
She just wasn't ready to tell him.