29. The cost
THE COST
SENIOR YEAR
“ O ne more time from the top,” Preston clamored.
He could sense the frustration of the engineer. He was off tonight. Thursday night. Spring wasn’t in the studio. That alone threw everything off.
Preston tried to tell himself it shouldn’t matter. She wasn’t his manager. Wasn’t his producer. Wasn’t even officially part of the session. But the chair she usually sat in – half-turned toward the booth, notebook open, eyes locked on him like she could see through sound – was empty.
He sang anyway.
The notes were right. The pitch was clean. The room said he was good.
But nothing landed.
Mack leaned back against the console, gold chain glinting, arms folded like he was watching a sparring match.
After Preston cut himself off mid-line for the third time, Mack laughed. “You thinking too much, Superstar,” Mack said. “Sing.”
“I am singing,” Preston snapped.
“No,” Mack replied smoothly. “You performing. Big difference. And that’s coming across on tape.”
Preston adjusted his headphones. Tried again. Missed the feeling. Pulled the mic away.
Mack shook his head. “You off tonight.”
“Maybe because something’s off,” Preston said.
Mack smirked. “Or maybe because your little muse ain’t in the room.”
Preston stiffened.
Mack stepped closer, voice low but amused.
“Listen, Superstar, you can’t be depending on one girl to unlock you, man.
Once you hit the road, there’s gonna be a hundred Springs.
Hell, Summers, Winters, you name it. Different cities, different seasons.
” He grinned. “You can have every season you want.”
That did it.
Preston pulled the headphones off. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
Mack held his hands up, still smiling. “Relax. I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about the reality of this business.”
“That’s not business,” Preston shot back. “That’s you being slick.”
Mack’s smile thinned just a touch. “I’m just saying, you wanna be great, you gotta learn how to sing without needing anybody in the room.”
Preston didn’t answer.
He walked out, the side door slamming shut behind him.
Night air hit his lungs hard. He leaned against the brick wall, hands on his knees, trying to shake off the heat crawling up his spine. He hadn’t even been looking for anything – just space. That’s when headlights cut across the lot.
A car rolled in slow, hugging the far edge of the studio parking area. Not the main entrance, but the back.
Preston straightened. It was Ralph Ellison’s car. The car that should be in Beaumont was outside his studio. Spring’s dad stepped out.
Preston froze where he was, half-hidden in shadow near the side exit. The man wasn’t looking for him. In fact, he didn’t seem to have a care in the world . He was smiling.
Then the passenger door opened.
The woman stayed seated at first. Leaned toward him. Said something that made him laugh – a quiet, private laugh, the kind you don’t give the world.
She finally stepped out. Put together, composed. Not nervous or sneaking, but clearly not new either.
From the distance he’d been at the fair, he couldn’t make it out, but now it was unmistakable. The woman laughed, and the light caught her face just long enough. A dark-skinned woman with lavender eyes, almost blue.
Preston’s stomach dropped.
That half-remembered word Spring once said out loud – like a joke, like it meant nothing – came back to him.
Yabluidbytch.
Not a name. A description.
A woman Spring’s mother could see clearly – even if Spring never had.
Your blue-eyed bitch.
He gasped at the revelation.
The man leaned in, said something low. The woman touched his arm – brief, familiar. Then she got back into the car as Ralph went inside the studio.
They didn’t see Preston. They weren’t worried about being seen. He stood in the shadows to process, to make sure. It wasn’t long before Ralph jotted back to the car and pulled away just as calmly as he’d arrived.
Preston stayed where he was long after the taillights disappeared. He went back inside with the image still lodged behind his eyes.
The studio lights felt harsher now. Too bright. Too exposed.
Mack was already flipping through something on his phone, unfazed, like the night hadn’t shifted at all. Preston didn’t sit down. He stood near the doorway, arms crossed, gaze unfocused.
“Was that Spring’s dad here just now?” he asked.
Mack looked up, casual. “Yeah. You just missed him. Came by to drop something off.”
Preston’s expression hardened. “Drop off what?”
Mack shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know – paperwork, legal stuff. He had a file I needed to sign by the end of the day.”
“Did he know that I was going to be here?”
“I don’t know, man, now can we get back to work? Or should we just call up Ralph and have him sing the songs?”
Preston didn’t ask. He already didn’t like the answer forming in his head.
Mack studied him for a beat longer, then exhaled through his nose like he’d just decided. “Yeah, nah,” he said, waving a hand toward the booth. “This ain’t the night.”
Preston blinked. “What?”
“You distracted. The whole room’s off,” Mack said, already shutting down equipment. “We forcing it now, and that means tomorrow, we gonna hate everything we make.”
He glanced at Preston again, tone smoothing. “Go home. Get your head right. We’ll run it back tomorrow – focused.”
Preston nodded, grateful and unsettled at the same time. “Cool,” he said quietly.
Mack clapped him once on the shoulder as he passed. “Get some rest, Superstar. You’re about to change the world.”
Preston grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
As he stepped out into the night again, the silence felt heavier than before.
Not because of the failed session, but because what he’d seen refused to leave him alone. And for the first time, he wasn’t sure whether telling Spring would protect her, or break something that couldn’t be put back together.
He walked out to find Talia waiting on him. She went in to say a few words to Mack then the pair got into her car.
Streetlights slid across the windshield in slow intervals, the city humming low around them. Preston stared out the passenger window, jaw clenched, fingers drumming once against his thigh before going still.
His mother didn’t say anything at first. She never rushed him when he went quiet. She waited. After a spell she said, “Heard you had a rough night in there.”
Finally, he exhaled hard. “Mack’s getting on my nerves.”
She briefly glanced at him. “Mm.”
“He keep talking like everything’s a chess move,” Preston continued. “Like the music gonna just fall out the sky if I stop thinking so much.”
She nodded, patient. “That so?”
Preston shook his head. “I don’t know. It just… ain’t clicking tonight.”
She drove another block before speaking. “That’s not what this is about.”
He stiffened. “Yes, it is.”
She gave a knowing smile. “Baby, I raised you. You don’t project when you mad at music. You project when you worried.”
Silence filled the air again. Harder this time.
Then, quieter, almost carefully, he asked, “Do you know if Spring’s dad is dating?”
His mother’s brows knit slightly. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“I thought I saw him with somebody earlier,” Preston said. “Could’ve been nothing. I didn’t even get a good look.”
She studied the road. “And why that got you twisted?”
Preston hesitated. “I don’t know how Spring would feel about that.”
His mother let out a soft huff. “What make you think she don’t already know?”
He turned toward her. “Ma, are you serious?”
She smirked faintly. “I know. That’s the problem.” Then, lightly, with just enough shade to land, “You two so joined at the hip you starting to worry about things that ain’t even yours.”
He didn’t laugh.
She glanced at him again, her tone shifting, gentler now. “Listen to me: if her daddy wanted her to know something, he’d tell her. You don’t really know who that woman was.”
He said nothing as they drove. She was right, he didn’t know. But he was certain Spring didn’t either.
She shrugged. “Could be a client. Could be a colleague. Could be anybody.”
Preston looked back out the window, jaw working.
“And even if it was something,” she continued, steady and firm, “that’s grown folks’ business. You stay out of it.”
He sighed. “I just don’t want her blindsided.”
His mother reached over, squeezing his arm once. “She’s stronger than you think. And they been through a lot already.” She paused. “Don’t go borrowing trouble that don’t belong to you.”
Preston nodded slowly, though the knot in his chest didn’t loosen.
The car kept moving.
And even with his mother’s certainty filling the space between them, the question stayed with him, quiet, unresolved, waiting. Haunting him the way it began on the side of Beaumont Road where tragedy struck.