Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Hello, hello. Greetings from the inside. Hello, hello framed in all your lies…”
I pivot my chair further from Luke, grateful he’s staring at the lyrics on his phone. He can’t see my face right now. The way my soul is spilling out in barely tempered emotion as his familiar voice cuts through every part of me.
“Hello, hello. How you love to see me cry…”
More tears slip down my cheeks, and I discreetly wipe them away.
I never thought I’d hear him sing again. I never thought my melodies and his words would twist together in the magical formula that shot us to the top. I thought we lost the future of our music, but here it is, pouring out and filling a crowded room that’s much too small to contain it.
His voice needs to be heard. The raw emotion only he can bring to a song takes me back to the basement of his aunt’s house, where two troubled teens found healing and purpose. Bonds were formed that seemed impossible to break.
Until they did.
Until the night they tore apart and were left hanging as severed shards of what they should have been.
“Always so… Hang on, stop it for a sec? ”
I clear my throat and press the space bar to pause the track.
“I’m not getting the timing on that part. Is it…”
He quiets, and I rub at my eyes.
“You okay? What’s wrong?”
I make the mistake of glancing at him, but seeing him there, in-ears hanging around his neck like we’re backstage again, it’s too much.
“Nothing, man. It sounds great,” I say in a strained voice.
“Seriously, Case. If this isn’t working you can?—”
“No!” I rush out, swiveling to face him. “No. It’s amazing. It’s…”
I don’t have words for what this is. Hell, I don’t even know what this is yet, and his expression softens with understanding.
“Yeah, man,” he says quietly. “I get it. I feel it too.”
“You do?”
My gaze lifts to his and he returns a weak smile. “I’m not ready to make promises or put labels on it, but yeah, I feel it.” Moisture fills his eyes when he directs an absent stare at the desk. “And for someone who stopped feeling anything months ago, it’s…”
His voice fades out. He scrubs at his eyes before directing them to me. “Do you know how good it is to feel something again? Anything? Shit.” More tears cloud his gaze. He shakes his head, looking lost.
I push up from the desk chair, and he pulls me in for a hug. For a long time neither of us moves. We just stand there and let the music heal us like it did all those years ago. Like it will the next time we need it to do what nothing else can .
“I don’t want to do this without you anymore, dude,” I whisper, breaking the silence. “I don’t think I can.”
His arms tighten around me, and I’m praying he feels how much I need him.
After a long silence, we separate with an awkward smile and turn back to the laptop in unison.
“Can we change the lyrics in verse two?” he asks. His voice is as raspy and damaged from emotion as mine.
“Of course. What are you thinking?” I pull up the notepad app with the lyrics.
When I glance back at him, he’s staring at the diner chair again. His gaze is distant, like he’s somewhere else.
“The mirror needs to break,” he says faintly. “No… It needs to shatter.”
I swallow a mass in my throat. “Yeah, man.” I try for casual, but my hoarse tone gives me away. “How about, ‘mirror mirror you’re shattering, there’s more than meets the eye with me’?”
His gaze cuts back to me. He searches my face.
“Let’s try it,” he says. “You want to run it again? I think I’m ready to record this time.”
I’m exhausted by the time we wrap our session. Mentally, physically, emotionally… but I wouldn’t trade a single second for the world. This is the shit we live for, and being back in the studio with Luke—even if it’s a hotel room—is everything.
I’m not surprised when he heads back to his bedroom to recover.
I feel drained as well when I find Callie in the living room.
Based on how depleted I am, I can’t even imagine what that session did to him.
But it’s different this time. I’m not scared when we part ways.
I know he’ll be back. And it’s the first time since he left me alone in a hospital room a year ago that I can say that with any certainty .
“Want a beer?” I ask Callie on my way to the kitchen.
She’s alone, so Eli and Sweeny must have gone to their rooms… or somewhere else to cause trouble. Secretly, I’m glad. Luke isn’t the only one who needs time to recover from what just happened.
“Sure,” Callie says. “Sounds like it’s going well.”
She takes the bottle I hand her as I join her on the couch.
“We’re both pretty happy with the direction. It’s going to sound awesome with our actual gear in the studio.”
“I can’t wait to see you play drums.”
I go still at the thought. “That’s right. I guess you haven’t even seen me play yet.”
“Just violin and that weird string-choir-air sounding thing.”
I bite back a grin. “Pads.”
“Huh?”
“That sound. It’s called a pad.”
“Oh.” She settles against me, and I tuck my arm around her. “How’s Luke?” she asks softly.
“Good. Better than I’ve seen him in a long time. It was like…”
I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. It wasn’t like anything. It wasn’t even like before. Nothing can ever be like the past once the present gets in the way.
Her fingers lace with mine, and I breathe a sigh.
“It’s going to be slow, but it’s going, Casey. I think it’s finally going,” she says, reading my mind like always.
I turn my head and rest my lips on her hair. “You’re amazing, Callie. I don’t know how you got through to him, but you did.”
She’s quiet as she considers everything.
“All I did was force myself into his life and refuse to let him hurt me.”
I almost laugh at her ridiculous attempt to downplay the impossible. “Yeah, well, no one else managed to do that.”
“How many people really tried besides you?” she returns .
I cringe and study the bottle in my other hand.
“It was timing, too, Casey,” she continues. “It was a lot of things. Sometimes it takes a stranger. Friends know too much.”
“True. You hold on too tight with friends.”
“Although, let’s be honest. I’m the one who got the best deal out of all this.”
A smile threatens my lips. “Oh yeah?”
“No question.”
She twists toward me and blasts beautiful hazel eyes at me.
I don’t move, desperate to take in as much as I can. We exchange a smile, and she lifts up enough for a soft kiss. It’s the perfect explanation. No words necessary.
“Promise me one thing though, Callie,” I say when we pull back. Her brow furrows as she meets my gaze. “No matter what happens with the two of us, we will always be there for him.” Emotion is pressing on my chest again. “I can’t lose him, too. I can’t .”
Her grip tightens on my hand. “Neither can I.”
Even though I know as much, it feels better to hear her say it. Maybe there’s finally a reason to hope. Maybe I can start thinking about promises and a future again.
“Want to hear what we’ve got so far?” I ask.
It’s her art as much as ours, and I’m giddy at the thought of showing her what we’ve done with her words.
“Are you kidding? Since the second I left the room.”
Callie loves the early preview, but I knew she would. She always looks to the heart behind everything she sees, and there is nothing more beautiful and pure than the soul of this song.
The real viability test will be Eli and Sweeny. They haven’t lived our experience and will be coming at it from an outside artistic perspective much closer to what the average listener will hear.
Part of me is nervous when we gather later that evening for the reveal. This isn’t the average first listen—this is freaking everything. Luke’s relaxed confidence as he lounges on the couch goes a long way in soothing my nerves. If he’s confident, I know we have something good.
Eli and Sweeny scale back their energy to a rare pensive state while I cue up the song. As soon as I press play, I watch for clues, but their uncharacteristic somber expressions make it hard to judge their thoughts. Even when the outro rings out, I don’t have a solid read on where they’re at.
“Play it again?” Sweeny says with a furrowed brow.
I run it again, my jaw tight with nerves.
Eli’s fingers are moving in imaginary basslines, giving me some encouragement. Sweeny is?—
“There! Right there! Stop it!” he bellows, making us jump.
I pause the song, my heart racing. I don’t know what I’ll do if they’re not on board with this after everything it took to get here.
Luke shoots me an encouraging smile, as if he knows what’s going through my head. Of course he does.
“You’re going to hit the kick hard on that build, right Case?”
My gaze darts back to Sweeny with a hint of confusion. “On the bridge into the chorus? Yeah. Definitely a fill too at the end. I was thinking Eli would come in hard with some killer run too.”
Sweeny leans back. “Okay. Yeah. That lead guitar riff is sick. Wanted to make sure we were supporting it.”
He’s in! I finally take a full breath.
“Absolutely. You can thank Luke for the riff.”
Luke smirks. “It’s nothing. Casey did everything else.”
“And Callie,” I add.
“And Callie,” Luke echoes .
Callie looks ready to shrink into the cushion, but I love that she’s part of this. I especially love that the guys have welcomed her into the band without hesitation.
“Love it, Case. Really,” Sweeny says. “You know, I like that for an album title, too. Greetings from the Inside .”
“ Greetings from the Inside ,” I muse out loud. Has a ring to it. “Yeah. I like that.”
“Luke, you slayed the vocal,” Eli says.
Luke returns a casual shrug, but I see the smile fighting to come out.
“You sound like a rockstar or something,” I tease, just to draw it to the surface. It feels like more than a victory when he aims it at me.
Eli pulls out his phone, and I shoot my gaze to him. “What are you doing?”
“Calling TJ.”
I wince. “TJ? Why?”
“To see if he can get our trailer here by tomorrow instead. I want my bass.”