17. Senna #2
“Show me the ending,” he says. “What are you hearing?”
I sing it for him - soft, almost under my breath, demonstrating the shape of what I want. And then he sings it back, not copying but interpreting, adding something of his own that makes it better.
“There,” I say. “Right there. What was that?”
“I don’t know. It just felt right.”
“Do it again. I want to remember it.”
He sings the phrase again, and I hum the harmony, and for a moment we’re making something together in this tiny room, our voices blending the way they used to before everything fell apart.
The phrase ends. Neither of us starts another one.
“Senna,” he says.
“I know.”
“I’m not going to push. I told you I wouldn’t, and I meant it. But I need you to know that being here with you, making music with you - this is all I’ve wanted for months. Just this. Just being allowed in.”
“You’re in.”
“Am I?”
I look at him - really look - and I see the man I married, the one who used to make me laugh, the one who forgot me for eighteen months and is trying so hard not to forget me again.
I see the apology he’s been living instead of just saying.
I see the fear that I’ll send him away and the hope that I won’t.
“The door’s open,” I say. “You could leave if you wanted.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Neither do I.”
He doesn’t move. I don’t either. We just stand there, closer than we need to be, the unlatched door a reminder that we’re choosing this. Whatever this is.
“I’ve been fighting this for weeks,” I finally say. “Fighting how much I want you here. How much I want-”
“What do you want?”
“You. Just you. Not fixing anything, not promising anything. Just this.”
He reaches out and touches my face - gentle, tentative, giving me every chance to pull away.
I don’t pull away.
“Stay,” I whisper.
He kisses me, and it’s soft at first, a question more than a statement. I answer it by pulling him closer, and then we’re not being soft anymore.
The booth is small - smaller than it has any right to be with two adults inside it, the mic stand between us and the foam-padded walls swallowing every sound - and the door is still half-open behind him, the latch that never caught a reminder that we could stop this.
That we should stop this. That weeks of careful boundaries and lunch left at the desk and I will not push are about to collapse in a room designed for singing, not for this.
I reach past him and push the door closed - not latched, just closed - and the soft click of wood on wood sounds louder than any chorus we’ve recorded today.
“Senna.” My name is a rasp against my lips. “Last chance to send me to the lobby.”
“Stay.” I fist his shirt. “If you walk out now I’ll never forgive either of us.”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
His hands are in my hair and I’m making sounds I forgot I could make, and for the first time in months I’m not thinking about anything except this moment and this man and the way his body still knows exactly how to fit against mine.
He backs me into the foam wall. The mic swings on its boom and I catch it with one hand, laughing breathlessly against his mouth, and he laughs too - short, disbelieving - and then the laugh turns into a groan when I bite his lower lip.
“Careful with the equipment,” I manage.
“Fuck the equipment.”
“That’s my job talking.”
“Then clock out.” His mouth finds my throat. “Right now I need a different kind of session.”
“What kind?”
“The kind where you stop producing every variable.” His hands find the hem of my sweater and push it up. “Just feel me. No talkback. No takes. Just us.”
I lift my arms. The sweater comes off. Underneath I’m wearing a simple bra - black, practical, the kind I put on when I thought today would be about waveforms and vocal takes - and his eyes go dark when he sees it.
He cups my breasts through the fabric, thumbs dragging over my nipples until they tighten, and I tip my head back against the foam and let myself make noise because the booth is built for that, because nobody outside can hear us unless the talkback is open, and it isn’t.
“Weeks,” he says against my collarbone. “Weeks of bringing you lunch and walking away. Weeks of wanting to put my hands on you and not doing it because I promised. Do you know what that does to a man?”
“Tell me.”
“It makes him fucking ravenous.” He unhooks my bra with a clumsiness that would be funny if it weren’t so earnest, and then his mouth is on my bare breast, sucking, and my knees nearly give out.
“It makes him stand in lobbies with paper bags inventing reasons to see your face. It makes him sing your unfinished songs like they’re love letters. ”
“They are love letters,” I gasp. “You just didn’t know it.”
Something fractures in his expression. He drops to his knees on the booth floor - Rocco Zangari, the man whose voice fills arenas, kneeling on industrial carpet with his hands on my hips and his mouth pressed to the soft of my stomach. He breathes there. Just breathes. Like he’s remembering how.
“Jeans. Off.” His fingers are already at the button. “Then I’m going to ruin you with my tongue until the glass fog. And then I’m going to take you against this foam with the door shut and unlocked, because I need you to know we could stop and we’re choosing not to.”
“Ambitious agenda.”
“I intend to clear every item.”
He works my jeans down. I kick them off, nearly trip on my own boots, catch myself on his shoulders laughing, and he peels my underwear down with a reverence that makes my throat tight.
When I’m bare in front of him in this tiny soundproofed box he makes a sound low in his throat - something between a groan and a curse - and then he’s spreading my thighs with his palms and looking at me like I’m the first song he’s written in years.
“Christ.” The word is almost prayer. “Wet for me in a recording booth. My wife. The woman I’ve been trying to earn my way back to.”
“Less sermon,” I say, and my voice shakes. “More tongue.”
He grins - that half-smile I fell in love with a decade ago - and then his mouth is on me.
No careful circling. Just heat and hunger - he licks into me like a man who’s been humming the melody for weeks and has finally been handed the instrument.
I gasp - loud, unrestrained, because the foam eats the sound and there’s no one to hear and I’ve been quiet too long about everything.
He groans against me at the vibration of it, and then he’s working me properly, thumbs holding me open, the rough edge of his stubble scraping the inside of my thighs.
“Rocco - oh-”
“Louder.” Muffled. Demanding. “The booth can take it. Say my name like a take you want on the reel.”
I give him volume. He works my clit with ruthless focus, two fingers sliding into me and curling against that place that makes my back arch off the wall.
My hand finds the mic stand for balance.
The other fists in his hair. Outside the glass, the control room is empty and dark and waiting, and inside this booth we’re making a different kind of music entirely.
“You’ve been this soaked for me and sending me to the lobby,” he growls against my thigh, then returns to my cunt like a man addicted. “Fucking criminal. I should have stayed. Should have locked this door weeks ago and made you come until you forgot every reason you had to keep me out.”
“Then do it now-” My voice cracks. “Stop narrating and-”