Unlocking Melodies (Oakwood Grove #3)

Prologue

Y ou know those moments that change everything? The ones that split your life into neat little “before” and “after” categories? Mine happened at exactly 11:47 PM on a Tuesday in September, and it started with wrong turn.

I'd been wandering the arts building like a sleep-deprived zombie, trying to find my way back to the business school after a late study group. Leave it to me to get lost on a campus I'd been on for two years. But then I heard it—piano music floating down the hallway, raw and beautiful and absolutely not what you'd expect to hear in a mostly empty building close to midnight.

I followed the sound because, well, wouldn't you? The music pulled me along like I was caught in its gravity, leading me to Practice Room C. Through the narrow window in the door, I could see him: hunched over the keys, completely lost in whatever he was playing. His dark hair fell across his forehead, and his fingers moved across the keys like he was born to do exactly this.

I stood there for way too long, just watching. The piece wasn't anything I recognized—and trust me, after fifteen years of classical piano lessons, I knew most of them. This was something else. Something raw and honest and alive.

When he finally stopped playing, I did what any normal person would do: I knocked on the door like a complete idiot.

He jumped about a foot in the air, spinning around on the bench. “Jesus Christ!”

“Sorry!” I held up my hands in surrender. “I didn't mean to startle you. I just... I heard you playing.”

He ran a hand through his already messy hair, making it stick up even more. “Yeah, well, usually people don't lurk outside practice rooms at midnight.”

“Usually people aren't playing in practice rooms at midnight either,” I pointed out, and something in his expression shifted—not quite a smile, but close.

“Fair point.” He studied me for a moment, then gestured to the room. “You coming in, or are you just going to stand there looking expensive?”

I glanced down at my outfit—okay, yes, the cashmere sweater might have been a bit much for a late-night study session—and stepped inside. “I'm Ethan.”

“Jimmy,” he replied, sliding over on the bench. “You play?”

“Classically trained since I was five.” I tried not to sound like I was bragging. From the way he rolled his eyes, I failed.

“Of course you were.” He hit a few random keys. “Let me guess—your parents made you take lessons because it would look good on your college applications?”

“Actually, I wanted to learn.” I sat down next to him, careful to leave enough space between us. “Though the college application thing didn't hurt.”

He snorted. “Rich kid problems.”

I should have been offended. Instead, I found myself fighting back a smile. “Play something else?”

He hesitated, fingers hovering over the keys. “It's not... I mean, I never had formal training. I just play what I feel.”

“That's what I liked about it.”

His eyes met mine, startled and searching. Then he nodded and started to play again. It was different this time—softer, more tentative. Like he was trying to figure something out through the music.

That was the beginning. We fell into a routine after that: midnight meetings in Practice Room C, him teaching me to play by ear, me showing him theory. He brought coffee from the twenty-four-hour diner where he worked weekends; I brought fancy pastries from the French bakery downtown that my mother swore by.

“You're such a snob,” he'd say, but he always ate them.

October bled into November, and somewhere between teaching him about chord progressions and him showing me how to improvise, I realized I was in trouble. It wasn't just the way he played—though that was part of it. It was the way he'd catch my eye and grin when he hit a particularly complex run perfectly. The way he'd lean against my shoulder when he was tired, claiming he needed to see the sheet music better. The way he made me forget about board meetings and family expectations and the perfectly planned future that had been laid out for me since birth.

It happened on a Wednesday night in November. We were working on a piece together—his melody, my arrangement. Our hands kept brushing on the keys, and each time it felt like static electricity running up my arm.

“You're distracted,” he accused, nudging my shoulder.

“You're distracting,” I shot back without thinking.

The silence that followed was deafening. He turned to look at me, and I couldn't read his expression in the dim light of the practice room. “Am I?”

I kissed him. Or maybe he kissed me. To this day, I'm still not sure who moved first. All I know is that one moment we were staring at each other, and the next his hands were in my hair and mine were gripping his shirt and everything else just... disappeared.

It was messy and awkward and perfect. When we finally pulled apart, he let out a shaky laugh. “Well, that's one way to handle sexual tension.”

“Shut up,” I muttered, but I was smiling too hard for it to have any heat.

We were careful after that. We had to be. But it was like once we crossed that line, there was no going back. Every touch, every glance, every late-night conversation carried more weight. More meaning.

Then December came, and with it, my father's surprise visit to campus.

I saw him from across the quad—impeccable in his tailored suit, radiating the kind of authority that made people instinctively step out of his way. And he saw me. More importantly, he saw Jimmy, who had just finished telling me a story that had me laughing so hard I had to lean against him to stay upright.

“Ethan.” My father's voice could freeze hell. “Who's your friend?”

I straightened immediately, stepping away from Jimmy. The lie came easily, practiced. “This is Jimmy Reed, Father. I've been tutoring him in music theory.”

Jimmy played along perfectly, all “yes sir” and “thank you for your time, sir.” But later that night, in our practice room, he was quiet.

“We should talk about it,” he finally said, not looking at me.

“About what?”

“About the fact that your father looked at me like something he scraped off his shoe. About the fact that you introduced me as your student, not your friend. About the fact that this—“ he gestured between us “—isn't exactly going to fit into the perfect life plan your family has for you.”

“I don't care about their plan.”

“Liar.” But he said it gently. “You care. You care so much it's eating you alive.”

I couldn't deny it. Instead, I reached for his hand. “You're worth it.”

He intertwined our fingers, studying them like they held some kind of answer. “You can't know that.”

“I do.”

Winter break was torture. Three weeks of endless family functions, where every conversation felt like a minefield of expectations and thinly veiled demands. The only thing keeping me sane was Jimmy's texts—random observations about his shifts at the diner, voice notes of new melodies he was working on, stupid memes that made me snort laugh during my father's business dinners.

Me

Just sat through another lecture about the “Cole legacy”

Jimmy

Drink every time they mention responsibility

Me

I'd die of alcohol poisoning in 10 minutes

Jimmy

Weak. i expected better from someone who drinks $12 coffee

Me

It's $8 and you know it

Jimmy

Sure mr. rockefeller, whatever you say

By February, we were both going crazy with the midnight-only routine. It was Jimmy who finally said what we were both thinking.

“So,” he started one night, deliberately casual as he played with my fingers. “There's this coffee shop off campus that does open mic nights on Thursdays.”

I turned to look at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He kept his eyes on our hands. “I was thinking about performing something. Maybe that piece we've been working on?”

My heart did a weird little skip. “You mean... during actual daylight hours? With people watching?”

“Unless you'd rather keep me as your dirty little midnight secret,” he teased, but I could hear the uncertainty underneath.

I kissed him quiet. “What time on Thursday?”

The coffee shop was packed when we walked in together. I felt every eye on us. Jimmy squeezed my hand once before heading to the small stage area, and I found a spot near the back, trying to ignore the whispers.

When he started playing our piece the whispers died. Because here's the thing about Jimmy: when he plays, everything else disappears. He has this way of making you forget about everything except the music.

After his performance, some guy from my Business Ethics class made a crack about “slumming it.” Before I could think, I was in his face.

“Want to say that again?”

He backed up, hands raised. “Chill, man. Just looking out for you.”

“Yeah? Look out for yourself instead.” I didn't recognize my own voice. “And while you're at it, work on your fucking portfolio analysis. Your last presentation was embarrassing.”

Jimmy found me later, eyes dancing. “Did you really tell Brad his SWOT analysis was, and I quote, 'what you'd expect from someone who thinks Excel is just expensive spreadsheet paper'?”

I groaned. “Who told you that?”

“Are you kidding? The whole business school is talking about how Ethan Cole finally grew a pair.” He tugged me closer. “It was hot.”

The story spread, of course. But somehow, the more people talked, the less we cared. We turned their judgment into private jokes, their sneers into strength. By April, when our collaborative piece got selected for the spring showcase, it almost felt normal.

Almost.

Practice Room C became our daytime home as we prepared for the showcase. It was different, seeing Jimmy in sunlight—the way it caught his eyes, the freckles I'd never noticed before, the dimple that appeared when he really smiled. We were running on too much coffee and too little sleep, trying to perfect every note.

“No, no, the transition needs to be smoother,” I insisted, reaching across him to demonstrate. He shoved my hands away.

“The transition is fine, you perfectionist gremlin.”

“Perfectionist gremlin?” I tried to sound offended, but he was already launching into a truly terrible impression of me.

“'Oh no, Jimmy, that note was 0.3 seconds too long, we'll never make it into Carnegie Hall now!'”

“I do not sound like that!” I made a grab for him, but he was faster, sliding to the other end of the bench.

“'Jimmy, your posture is atrocious, what would Chopin say?'”

What followed was probably the least dignified piano bench chase in musical history. It ended with both of us on the floor, laughing too hard to breathe.

“I love you,” I said, without meaning to. The words just fell out, as natural as breathing.

Jimmy went still. For one horrible moment, I thought I'd ruined everything. Then he smiled—not his usual smirk, but something softer, more vulnerable. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that's convenient,” he murmured, leaning closer. “Because I?—“

The door crashed open. We jumped apart like startled cats as the janitor walked in, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

“Room's closing in five minutes,” he announced, then paused. “And whatever you spilled better be cleaned up before you leave.”

We waited until he left before dissolving into hysterical laughter.

“What did he think we spilled?” Jimmy wheezed.

“I don't want to know,” I managed, pulling him up. “But you were saying something?”

He kissed me instead of answering. I decided that was answer enough.

Summer arrived like a bucket of cold water. The Cole internship wasn't optional. Jimmy saw me off with a playlist he'd made: “Songs to Remember Me By (When You're Busy Being a Corporate Sellout).”

I listened to it during mind-numbing meetings, sneaking texts under the conference table.

Me

Kill me now. Someone just used “synergize” unironically

Jimmy

did you do the drink thing?

Me

Can't. Have to present quarterly projections after this

Jimmy

Boring. i just wrote a song about how much i miss your stupid face

Me

Send it to me?

Jimmy

Never. it's embarrassingly sappy. your ego's big enough

The voice notes he sent became my lifeline—little pieces of him scattered throughout my days. But as June turned to July, my father's “casual” comments became more frequent.

“The Board was impressed with your presentation,” he said one evening. “Reuben's daughter will be interning with us next summer. Lovely girl. Very suitable background.”

The word “suitable” felt like a knife. I thought about Jimmy, about music at midnight and coffee shop performances and love confessed on practice room floors. About how none of it fit into the life my family had planned.

“I'm seeing someone,” I said quietly.

My father didn't look up from his papers. “The scholarship boy? Yes, I know. It's time to end that little rebellion, don't you think?”

I should have argued. Should have defended what Jimmy and I had. Instead, I sat there in silence, feeling the weight of generations of expectations crushing the air from my lungs.

That night, I listened to Jimmy's latest voice note on repeat: a new piece, something hopeful and sweet that made my chest ache. I fell asleep with his music in my ears, trying not to think about how things that burn brightest often burn fastest.

Senior year started like a dream. Having Jimmy back felt like finally being able to breathe properly after three months of holding my breath. We fell back into our routines—midnight music, coffee shop performances, study sessions that turned into makeout sessions—but everything felt deeper somehow. More real.

“I've been looking at graduate programs,” I told him one night in September, watching him compose at the piano. He was working on something new, something that felt like us—technical precision mixed with raw emotion, structure and chaos finding harmony.

“Yeah?” His fingers didn't stop moving across the keys. “Let me guess—Harvard Business School? Wharton?”

“Berklee College of Music, actually. The campus is right in Boston's tech hub.”

His hands stilled. “Ethan...”

“I could work at a tech startup,” I continued quickly. “Or maybe even start my own company. And you could pursue artist management—there's a huge music scene in Boston.”

He turned to face me, expression unreadable. “What about Cole?”

“What about it?”

“It's your family's company. Your legacy.”

“Maybe I want to build my own legacy.” I moved closer, pulling him away from the piano. “With you.”

The kiss that followed was different from our others—deeper, more desperate, like we were both trying to say things we couldn't put into words.

We threw ourselves into our music after that. The piece we were working on became everything—our past, our present, our hoped-for future woven into melody and harmony. Jimmy started talking about his dreams more openly, about discovering new artists and helping them find their voice.

“Like you did with me,” I teased, and he rolled his eyes.

“Please. You already had a voice. You just needed someone to help you use it for something other than Chopin.”

October flew by in a blur of coffee-fueled composition sessions and stolen moments between classes. I started making plans—researching music industry contacts, looking into startup incubators in Boston, drafting business plans that combined tech and music management.

Then November happened.

My father's office hadn't changed since I was a kid—all dark wood and leather, designed to intimidate. He had the company's quarterly reports spread across his desk, my name prominently featured on several succession planning documents.

“The Board meeting went well today,” he said without looking up. “They're excited about having you join full-time after graduation. Reuben was particularly impressed with your summer work.”

“Dad—“

“This isn't just about you anymore, Ethan.” His voice was steel. “We have over ten thousand employees depending on strong leadership. Your little musical rebellion was charming in college, but it's time to grow up. The company needs you focused, not distracted by some temporary infatuation.”

“Jimmy isn't a distraction?—“

“Isn't he?” He finally met my eyes. “Tell me honestly—do you really think you can run a Fortune 500 company while playing house with a wannabe musician? Do you think the Board will take you seriously? That our partners will respect you? That you can handle the responsibility of thousands of people's livelihoods while indulging in these... artistic pursuits?”

I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like. I was wrong.

The next few weeks were a slow torture. I started missing our practice sessions, making excuses about project deadlines and family obligations. Jimmy knew something was wrong—of course he did. He could read me better than anyone.

“Talk to me,” he pleaded one night, catching me after class. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out together.”

I couldn't look at him. “I have to focus on my future right now.”

“I thought I was part of your future.”

“Jimmy...”

“No, you know what? This is bullshit.” He grabbed my arm, forcing me to face him. “You don't get to just check out without an explanation. Not after everything.”

I wanted to tell him everything. About my father's threats, about the fear keeping me awake at night, about how every time I looked at him all I could think about was how much damage my world could do to his.

Instead, I said, “Maybe we want different things.”

The hurt in his eyes felt like a physical blow. “You don't mean that.”

“I have responsibilities, Jimmy. A path I have to follow.”

“Since when? The Ethan I know makes his own path.”

“Maybe you don't know me as well as you think.”

Our final performance was at the winter showcase. The piece we'd been working on all semester was still unfinished. We played an older composition instead, one from happier days.

I kept my eyes on the keys, playing like a robot. I could feel Jimmy trying to draw me out, adding flourishes and variations that normally would have made me smile. I didn't respond.

The letter took me seventeen drafts to write. In the end, it was cold, formal, nothing like us:

Jimmy,

Sometimes paths that seem meant to cross are only meant to run parallel for a while. You have your dreams, and I have my responsibilities. Thank you for the music.

Ethan

I left it in Practice Room C with his favorite coffee and the books he'd loaned me. Then I walked away, telling myself it was for the best, that I was protecting him, that sometimes love means letting go.

I didn't know then how much damage running away could do. Didn't know that leaving someone “for their own good” usually just leaves them with scars that never quite heal. Didn't know that my attempt to be responsible would end up being the most irresponsible thing I could have done.

I didn't know a lot of things back then.

But I remember everything about that last night—the fluorescent lights flickering, the out-of-tune A-flat key, the way his hands shook slightly on the piano.

I remember thinking, “This is it. This is the moment I'll replay in my head for the rest of my life.”

I was right about that, at least.