Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The dive bar in Brighton had a stage no bigger than a coffin lid, illuminated by spotlights that flickered as if they were afraid of the dark. Milo Harrison tuned in the half-shadow, testing a string with his thumb until the note settled.
He opened with something upbeat because that was what this place liked: four chords, and a chorus they could pretend to know.
But even the bright songs bruised in his throat.
His voice came out aching and textured, as if it had learned to carry grief the way some people carried keys.
When he climbed a line, it wasn’t to show off; it was to see if there was air up there.
The crowd was small, comprising couples pressed into corners, a cluster at the bar, and a drag queen still in half-contour, nodding along as though she was measuring time for him.
They didn’t cheer much, but they listened.
Milo sang as if he was alone, because that was how the songs came—private at first, only public after they’d stopped hurting quite so loud.
Halfway through, he let a silence sit where a bridge should go.
He could feel the old habit of apology on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t give it voice.
He strummed once, twice, and let the room breathe with him.
The amp buzzed faintly, a second heartbeat.
Someone laughed softly at the bar, then someone else shushed them, and the admonition felt like a blessing.
He finished on a held note that bled into a beat of quiet. Then palms, not many but warm, gathered him back from wherever he’d just gone.
The bartender handed him water. “On the house.”
Milo smiled. “Cheers.” He did his best to look grateful.
He packed the set list first, then the guitar went next, its strings muted with a palm so they didn’t ring as he moved.
A woman with glitter still clinging to her cheeks touched his sleeve. “Your voice hurts,” she said, her brow furrowed as if she was searching for the right words. “In a good way, though.”
Milo huffed a laugh that wasn’t unkind. “That’s all I’ve got,” he said, and meant it. “Thanks for listening.”
He waited until the room turned its attention back to pints, pop music leaking from the speakers, and the slow drag of Saturday night before he slipped off the stage and into the tiny back room that smelled faintly of stale beer and salt water.
Milo set his guitar down and rubbed the pads of his fingers, raw from the strings. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
A DM from James, an old uni friend he hadn’t spoken to in months. The message was just a screenshot: a flyer, grainy but bold.
HOT LEATHER GUYS
Ten voices. One filthy harmony.
James’s caption underneath: This screams you. Leather a cappella. All gay. Do it.
Milo snorted, shaking his head. “Yeah, right.” He wasn’t exactly group material. He’d tried harmony before, tried trust before, too.
Neither had ended well.
But his thumb lingered on the flyer, tracing the words all gay. And leather. The honesty of it hit too close, as if someone had taken what he hid best and plastered it in neon letters for all the world to see.
He opened his voice memo app, hummed a rough line that was half melody, half ache, then layered it with a harmony that curled like smoke. He played it back, listening to the way his voice folded against itself.
The flyer glared up from the screen, demanding his attention. Milo’s chest tightened.
Jake would laugh his head off if he saw this.
The thought was sharp as glass, and as quickly as it rose in his mind, he shoved it down. He closed his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and without giving himself time to think, tapped over to Trainline.
A ticket to London.
The confirmation email chimed a second later. He stared at it, his heart thumping, and whispered to the empty room.
“Guess I’m doing it.”
It was time to get out of here.
Outside, the sea smell muscled its way up the street, briny and insistent. He took it in, his shoulders loosening a notch. The guitar case was heavy in his hand.
Or maybe that’s just the evening.
On the walk back to his bedsit, he tried not to hum, but it wouldn’t be contained. Just a line, enough to keep the ghosts from getting clever. When they did, they always found the lake house in his head, the raised voices, the door slamming like a drum.
“Your voice hurts in a good way,” he repeated under his breath, as if the words were a spell that might soften the edges.
At the corner, a night bus sighed past. Someone inside was laughing too loudly. Milo stood in the wash of its headlights and counted to eight the way he’d been taught, letting his breath catch up with him.
One more gig. One more ghost. He kept moving.
The train rattled north, the countryside smearing into greens and greys against the glass.
Milo sat with his guitar case wedged against his knee, his fingers drumming the latches in a restless rhythm.
A low hum worked its way out of his chest, snatches of harmony to keep him steady, keep him anchored.
But ghosts never needed permission.
They slid in between the notes: Jake’s mouth, tasting of lake water and cheap beer. The way Jake’s hand skimmed down his spine, rough and certain, nothing like a friend’s touch.
Then Noah’s shadow cutting across them, the rage in his voice louder than Milo’s racing heart.
What the fuck are you doing?
Milo jerked back into the present, his breath caught in his throat. The train hummed on, oblivious. He pressed his forehead to the cold windowpane, forcing himself to look at the blur of fields instead of the lake replaying in his head.
He pulled out his phone, his thumbs moving before his brain could catch up. A new note. One line only:
If you burn down the house, don’t cry over smoke.
He stared at it, the words bitter and sharp, then saved them. No edits. No polish.
His hum returned, quieter this time, but even so, the ghost of lake water clung to his tongue.
The studio was on the first floor. Milo climbed the stairs, aware of how he looked with his scuffed boots and his guitar slung across his back like a shield. He slipped into the room in silence, head dipped.
A guy with light brown hair and cool eyes stared at him. “Milo Harrison?” Milo nodded. “I’m Theo Sinclair, and this is Max Rivers.” Theo peered at the guitar, his pen stilling over his notes. “You’re here to sing, not play.”
Milo kept his eyes on the tuning pegs as he twisted one, listening to the string tighten. “I know.” He plucked and adjusted. “It helps me breathe, that’s all.” Then he glanced at the two men.
Max didn’t bother to rein in his smirk, which earned him a look from Theo, who settled back in his chair. “When you’re ready.”
Milo began with simple first chords, the kind any busker might strum outside a train station.
But when his voice slid in, aching and textured, carried on the smallest tremor, he felt something shift in the air.
He focused on making the melody lean, haunting, as though every note had been dragged through salt water before reaching his lips.
He built carefully, weaving a second line of harmony against the guitar’s, layering his own loneliness into stereo. The silence around him became part of the song, his breath filling the gaps as if the absence itself were another instrument.
And then, without warning, he turned the song on its head. His guitar muted, his mouth transformed into rhythm, clicks, thuds, and sharp bursts of vocal percussion that stacked beneath the melody. A one-man rhythm section rising under his own falsetto, every beat precise and alive.
The effect was stunning, and better than he’d expected. Rawer, too.
The last harmony hung in the room like smoke as Milo lowered his guitar, his fingers trembling slightly against the neck, his eyes fixed on the floor.
The silence that followed was not emptiness. It smacked of reverence. Milo’s pulse thudded in his ears, and when he couldn’t stand the quiet a moment longer, he raised his chin.
Max leaned back, a low whistle escaping his lips. “Okay. Well. Damn.”
Theo didn’t smile, however. His pen hovered over the page. “Do you arrange?”
“Yes. And I write too. I find music easier than people.”
Max snorted, shaking his head. “That’s not always true. You just made us shut up.”
Theo’s gaze finally softened. “Do you wear leather?”
Milo’s throat tightened. “I have done…” His voice dropped. “Not since…” He couldn’t finish.
Something flickered in Max’s expression. “You don’t have to tell us.” His voice was low, his tone compassionate.
The sentence landed like a hand on his shoulder, unexpected and solid.
Theo cleared his throat. “If you’re in, rehearsal’s next week on Thursday.”
Milo nodded. Then the words hit home. “If I’m in? Then… you want me?”
Max smiled. “I thought that was a given. I mean, you don’t have to accept, but yeah, we want you.”
Milo allowed himself to smile. What echoed in his head were Max’s words.
Okay. Well. Damn.
The Thames rushed dark and restless alongside him as he walked the embankment, the city lights scattering across the surface like spilled glitter. Milo’s guitar case bumped against his hip, his breath syncing with the rhythm of the river. London smelled of wet stone and exhaust, sharp and alive.
He stopped under a streetlamp and thumbed open his phone. The voice memo app glowed. He spoke softly, half-singing the thought before it disappeared:
“New lyric: sing with strangers / until they become your shelter.”
The line hung in the air, and he saved it, slid the phone back into his pocket, then resumed walking.
Later, in his small but clean room in the one-star hotel near London Bridge, Milo sat cross-legged on the bed with his guitar.
He tuned it carefully, string by string, the ritual soothing him back into himself.
Then he played the song from the audition, soft at first, then fuller, letting a second voice curl over the melody in harmony.
The sound filled the small room, richer than he expected, something larger than himself pressing against the walls. For the first time in years, it didn’t feel as though he was singing into emptiness.
It feels like my voice might belong somewhere again.
The door closed softly, leaving a faint trace of Milo’s last harmony, like a ghost still in the air.
Theo exhaled. “There’s a restraint to him. Did you hear it?”
Max cocked his head. “I heard pain. Anger. Hunger. He holds it tight, as if he’s afraid to spill too much. But when he lets go…” He let the thought trail.
Theo’s brow furrowed. “That kind of intensity can anchor a group. It can also fracture it. People like him… they need careful handling.”
Max’s eyes gleamed. “Or careful un-handling. Let him crack and see what beauty comes out.”
Theo shot him a dry look. “You’re already plotting ways to push him, aren’t you?”
“Not push—invite.” Max leaned back, his arms crossed. “There’s a difference. And don’t pretend you didn’t feel it too. He shut us both up. That’s not nothing.”
Theo allowed a reluctant smile. “True. He could be the quiet centre we need.”
Max’s grin faded. “It feels to me as if he’s looking for shelter.” He gave a shrug. “If he thinks he’s found it here, he’ll stay.”
Theo scribbled in his notebook, then stilled. “Hang on, though. We can’t just be a group of soloists fighting for space. Harmony means compromise. Trust. You think Milo can trust us?”
Max tilted his head, his gaze sharp. “Depends if we earn it. Trust is a kink all its own. You know that.”
Theo rolled his eyes, unable to stop his lips twitching. “Leave it to you to drag everything back to kink.”
Max smiled. “It’s not just kink. It’s control. Vulnerability. The same things that make harmony work.” He pinned Theo with a look. “And you know all about control.”
For a moment, neither of them filled the contemplative silence.
Theo closed his notebook with a snap. “We’ll see if he shows up next week.”
Max murmured, “Oh, he will. He needs this as much as we do.”