Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
FLETCH
I never thought routine could feel like grace.
But here we are—two weeks deep into this quiet rhythm we’ve built between hospital corridors and ranch fences, NICU monitors and midnight melodies. Mya’s hair smells like lavender and stubbornness when I help her into the wheelchair every morning. Her fingers still tremble a little when she holds Kingston or Kody, but there’s steel under the softness now. She’s healing. Slowly. Fiercely.
And somehow, she’s letting me be here to witness it.
We don’t talk much on the drive in anymore. Some mornings we hum along to whatever’s playing on the radio, and some mornings the silence is its own kind of comfort. I like the quiet. It’s less dangerous than words. Words can turn into confessions. Into apologies. Into admissions I’m not sure I have the right to speak yet.
But watching her through the NICU glass? Watching her press a kiss to each twin’s forehead like it’s the last one she’ll ever get? That’s a kind of poetry I can understand.
Today, Kingston’s eyes track her voice. Just barely, but enough to make Mya cry in that silent way she does now—like her heart’s too full and too fractured to figure out the difference.
“Hey, buddy,” I whisper, crouching beside the incubator, watching Kody’s chest rise in slow, careful rhythm. “You and your brother keep proving me wrong.”
Imani meets us just before we leave, clipboard in hand, her scrubs the color of fresh sage. She smiles—a soft, serious smile that makes my pulse skip a beat.
“Good news,” she says gently. “Kingston’s hit the weight milestone. He’s regulating his body temp without support and feeding well. If he maintains this for the next seventy-two hours, we’ll be prepping for discharge.”
I blink.
Mya’s hand tightens around mine like she needs confirmation this is real, like if she breathes too hard, it’ll all blow away.
“We’re not there yet,” Imani adds, reading us like an open book. “But we’re close.”
Close. Close is a sunrise peeking over a horizon we didn’t think we’d make it to. Close is hope with a heartbeat.
Later, while Mya curls up in the rocking chair next to Kingston’s incubator—her fingers tangled with his impossibly tiny ones—I sit by the window with my beat-up journal, the one I found in my guitar case the day Mya woke up.
I don’t usually write lyrics in hospitals.
But something about this place—about them—undoes me enough to try.
I scribble down the words slowly, carefully, like if I rush them, I’ll miss something sacred:
Didn’t mean to fall for you, but there you were ? —
In a dream I never wanted to wake from.
I thought I’d lost you under pale white light,
But love’s got a heartbeat stronger than silence.
You forgave me in whispers,
Held me in pieces,
Taught me that home isn’t bricks—it’s breath.
And I’ll spend the rest of forever proving
You were worth every song I never wrote ? —
Until now.
When I look up, Mya’s watching me. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but steady.
She doesn’t ask what I wrote.
She just whispers, “They’re going to make it, aren’t they?”
I nod, throat tight. “Yeah, Mya. They are.”
* * *
The porch creaks beneath us as we settle into the twin rocking chairs that face the long, open stretch of the backyard. Mya’s tucked into a hoodie three sizes too big—mine—and nursing a cup of tea that’s more honey than actual tea, her fingers wrapped tight around the mug like it’s the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth. The moon’s high, silver and soft, bathing the barn in a kind of light that makes everything look gentler than it feels.
I lean back, stretch my legs, and exhale slowly through my nose.
“You notice it’s quieter lately?” I ask, glancing at her.
Her gaze stays on the horizon. “You mean here, or in general?”
“Both,” I say. “But I meant the barn. Carson and Benji… they bought a place in town.”
That gets her attention. She turns, eyebrows raised. “Really?”
“Yeah. Closed a few days ago. Wanted to be closer to the studio. Less driving, more jamming. Imani’s brother-in-law did the inspection, apparently it’s got this insane back deck and a soundproof garage they’re gonna turn into a rehearsal space.”
Her lips tug into a soft smile, but her eyes dim a little, and I can tell the absence of them hits the same way it hit me—like a note missing from a chord.
“That’s why they haven’t been around,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me.
“Yup.”
We fall into silence again, the kind that’s comfortable but heavy. The cicadas hum somewhere in the trees. A screen door slams in the distance. I know I should probably say something else, but I’m not ready to shift the weight in the air. Not yet.
“So how’s the album coming?” she asks after a beat, voice low, steady.
I huff out a laugh and run a hand over my jaw. “Fastest we’ve ever started tracking one, actually.”
“Really?”
“Mhm.” I angle toward her. “Usually it’s months of ideas in a voice note or jotted lyrics on napkins, and Thorin dragging his feet until something lights a fire under his ass. But this time… I dunno. We all came back different.”
She tucks her knees up onto the chair and rests her chin on them, that soft curiosity she wears when she’s really listening all over her face. “What’s it usually like?”
It’s such a simple question, but for some reason it stuns me. No one’s ever asked me that. No one’s wanted to know.
“I mean, I don’t usually write,” I admit, suddenly hyperaware of the calluses on my fingers, the scratch of denim against my knee. “I’ve always just been the guy who lays down rhythm. The guy who keeps the beat so everyone else can shine. But after everything with you—” I break off, swallow. “I couldn’t not write.”
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t interrupt. Just watches me with those eyes that have always seen more than I’m comfortable with.
“The first song was messy as hell,” I continue. “Didn’t rhyme, didn’t follow structure. It wasn’t even meant to be a song. Just… noise in my head I couldn’t turn off. And then Carson read it and said it was the best thing I’ve ever written.”
A breeze lifts the hem of her hoodie and carries the smell of chamomile and earth across the porch. I can feel her gaze on me like gravity.
“What was it about?” she asks, almost a whisper.
“You.”
Her breath hitches. Her tea goes still in her hands.
“You, and how I didn’t mean to fall for you but I did. And how losing you was worse than any song I could ever write. Worse than silence.”
I reach across the space between us and curl my fingers over hers where they cling to the mug.
“Let me prove it, Mya,” I say softly. “Let me prove that all I want is you… and our sons.”
The porch groans under the weight of emotion we’re both holding up like scaffolding. But for the first time in a long time, she doesn’t pull away.
And that’s enough—for now.
* * *
There’s a kind of high that comes from nailing a take in the studio.
It’s not the same adrenaline I get on stage, sweat-soaked and deaf from the roar of a crowd. No, this is quieter. Deeper. Like striking a match in the dark and watching it catch. A slow burn that spreads from your chest outward until you’re shaking from the inside out.
That’s what today feels like.
The barn smells like dust and cables and stale Red Bull, and the walls practically vibrate with the hum of amps and the ghost of songs we haven’t finished yet. We’ve been locked in here for hours, laying down layers like scaffolding—drums, bass, rhythm guitar—each one building toward the thing I’ve been too scared to name.
My song.
Benji finishes his final harmony with a guttural “fuck yes” into the mic before yanking off his headphones and clapping Thorin on the back. “You’re disgusting, bro. That bridge gave me actual chills.”
“Good.” Thorin grins, breathless. “It should hurt a little.”
Carson swivels in his chair at the soundboard, all loose limbs and laser focus. “Levels are clean. Benji, your mix is layered but not overpowering. Thorin, I’m isolating your harmonies on the bridge for a double back—we’ll lift that into the chorus and cut it with the chorus gang vocals.”
He cracks his knuckles. “That just leaves you, Fletcher.”
Everyone turns toward me.
My throat goes dry.
I’ve played hundreds of sets. I’ve backed dozens of tracks. I’ve never had to be the voice. Not like this.
I tug my beanie lower over my ears, roll my shoulders, and step into the booth.
Mya’s curled on the worn-out couch just outside the glass, one knee pulled up under her, eyes glued to me. She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t say a word.
But she sees me.
And suddenly, I can breathe again.
“Mic’s hot,” Carson calls through the monitor. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I exhale and let the first beat roll in—Benji’s soft chord progression easing me into the memory I haven’t been able to outrun since Mya woke up.
I close my eyes.
And I sing.
I didn’t know I was falling
’Til I was already on the ground
You were the sky I never reached for
Until silence was the only sound
I told myself you were better off
Without the mess I make of things
But I watched you breathe for both of us
And it broke me clean at the seams
The first verse bleeds into the chorus, and my voice cracks where it’s supposed to. Honest. Raw. Like every word costs something. Because it does.
You loved me when I wasn’t worthy
Waited when I couldn’t wait
I tried to run, you stayed steady
Even when I came too late
You were the anchor, I was the wave
Now I just want to stay
Let me be the name
You choose to say
I open my eyes on the last line, and through the glass, I see her.
Mya.
Hand pressed to her mouth. Shoulders trembling.
Carson doesn’t cut in. No one says a word. Not even when I step out, shaking, still caught in the aftershock of what I just gave away.
The guys pat me on the back, rough and wordless. They know. They feel it.
But it’s Mya who meets me halfway across the room, eyes shining.
“That was you,” she whispers.
I nod once. “Every syllable.”
Her breath catches, and for a second, I think she might walk away.
Instead, she steps into my space, presses her forehead to mine, and just holds me there.
The studio still hums behind us.
But I swear the loudest sound in the room is her heartbeat against mine.
The room goes still when the final note fades into the hush of playback.
No one speaks.
Not Benji, who’s usually the first to toss out a “hell yeah” before the last chord even rings out. Not Thorin, who fiddles when he’s nervous. Not Carson, who normally scrubs his fingers through his hair like a man possessed while muttering about layering and tempo like he’s exorcising a demon.
Everyone’s just… silent.
The kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty.
It feels like a reckoning.
Like something sacred just happened, and we’re all too afraid to break it.
Mya’s back on the couch, one hand over her heart like it’s trying not to jump out of her chest. Her eyes are glassy, like maybe she cried a little while the track played—but she’s holding her composure now like it’s a thin glass plate and she knows the slightest crack will shatter it completely.
The song echoes faintly in the monitors as the last bit of reverb fades.
Then Carson, seated behind the soundboard, exhales a stunned, “Jesus.”
“Not even being dramatic,” Benji says, sitting forward with elbows on his knees, “but that might be the best thing we’ve ever fucking done.”
Thorin nods slowly, like he’s still processing. “There’s something in it, man. Something real.”
Carson turns to me, hands hovering over the console. “You meant every word of that, didn’t you?”
I meet his eyes. My voice comes out low. Honest. “Yeah.”
A beat.
“You didn’t just write a song,” Benji says. “You carved out a piece of your soul and handed it to the world in three minutes and forty-two seconds.”
“And we felt it,” Thorin adds, his voice hoarse. “Fuck, Fletch. You wrecked me.”
I laugh, shaky, rubbing the back of my neck. “I didn’t think it would sound like that.”
“Like what?” Carson asks.
“Like… I meant it.” My voice cracks halfway through.
No one laughs. No one smirks. These are the guys who’ve seen me drunk on tour buses and passed out in the back of vans. Who’ve watched me spiral and shut down and pretend I didn’t care when I cared too damn much.
They know me.
And for the first time, I let them know all of me.
“That second verse,” Benji says, glancing over at Mya. “That line—what was it again? ‘You forgave me in whispers / Held me in pieces.’”
My throat tightens.
Carson pushes a button, rewinding. “Let’s hear it again.”
You forgave me in whispers
Held me in pieces
Taught me that home isn’t bricks—it’s breath.
Mya lets out a soft sound, barely audible, like she’s exhaling a weight she didn’t realize she’d been carrying.
Benji blinks hard. “It’s like a prayer and a confession and a love letter all tangled into one.”
“Man,” Carson says, spinning halfway in his chair, “you write like you’ve been doing this your whole life.”
“I haven’t,” I admit. “But she’s the reason I started.”
I don’t say her name.
I don’t need to.
Everyone in this room knows it’s her. It’s always her.
Mya catches my eye.
And the look she gives me?
It’s not a smile. It’s not forgiveness. It’s not even certainty.
It’s something else entirely—raw, unfiltered belief.
Like maybe she’s finally starting to believe this isn’t just a song.
It’s a promise.
And I’m not walking away from it.
Not this time.