Chapter 1
ONE
brEAKING STRINGS
The practice room smells like stale coffee, dust, and a thousand hours of ambition that went nowhere.
It’s the kind of room where dreams either get sharpened or die.
Half the fluorescent lights overhead buzz like they’re short-circuiting, but the acoustics are decent, and it’s ours for another hour if we keep the door locked and pretend we don’t hear anyone banging on it.
I sit on the amp, bass across my lap, pick balanced between my fingers. My voice is rough from the last run-through, and my throat still carries the burn of it. We’ve been chasing the same song all afternoon, but it keeps slipping sideways—like a shadow that disappears when you look at it straight.
“Again,” I say.
Eli groans but twirls his sticks, already tapping out the count. He’s all restless energy, blond curls damp with sweat, T-shirt dark at the chest. He lives for speed, loves it when the tempo gets away from us. “Fuck, Rafe. Okay. One, two, three, four—”
Drew slams into the riff, his sunburst Strat snarling through the cheap amp.
He’s lanky, hair too long in his eyes, the kind of guy who’ll play until his fingertips split and then keep going.
Miles follows, steady as stone, dropping in the lead like he’s planting a flag. He doesn’t talk much, but his solos do.
We hit it hard, the sound bouncing off cinder block walls. It’s tinny as fuck, but still alive. Eli drives the beat like he’s trying to outrun something, Drew’s rhythm thick and grinding, Miles’s line cutting sharp above it. I push my voice into the cracks.
“I won’t wear your weather, I’ll outrun your rain…”
But halfway through the chorus, it falls apart. Drew misses the change, Miles winces, and Eli throws a stick that bounces off the wall.
“Fuck!” Eli yells. “That’s the third time.”
“No shit,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face. My notebook sits open on the floor beside me, page half filled with scrawled lyrics. Black ink, jagged lines, angry smudges. None of it feels right.
“We need new material,” Drew says, dropping onto the floor, guitar balanced on his knees. “We’ve been hammering this one for weeks, and it still sounds like shit.”
“It doesn’t sound like shit,” Miles says quietly, adjusting a knob on his amp. “It sounds unfinished.”
“Which is the same thing when we’ve got a gig Saturday,” Eli says. “Nobody wants to hear half a song.”
I lean back against the wall, the bass heavy in my hands. They’re right. We’ve been circling the same track, and it still doesn’t land. The words aren’t there, not the way they should be. And that’s on me.
“I’ll figure out the lyrics,” I say, trying not to sound defensive.
Eli arches a brow. “You’ve been saying that for a month.”
“Yeah? You want to write them?”
He grins, sharky. “I’d just put fuck in every other line.”
“Could be a hit,” Drew says, deadpan.
I flip them both off, but there’s no heat in it.
These are my guys. We’re four broke students with borrowed gear and duct-taped dreams, and somehow it feels like enough.
Steel Saints—that’s what we call ourselves, because it sounds like the kind of band you’d pay to see in a shitty dive bar at midnight. It’s not nothing.
My family thinks it’s more than that. My mamá, especially—she swears we’re headed somewhere.
She and my papá came here from Mexico with nothing but a suitcase and two kids, and somehow built a life out of stubbornness and late nights.
They don’t understand the music business, but they understand hustle.
My scholarship pays tuition, my parents cover the scraps I can’t, and I cover the rest with gigs and shifts at a coffee shop.
I think about them sometimes when I’m sitting here, sweating under dull lights, trying to force lyrics out of my skull. About how much faith they’ve put in me. About how easy it would be to let that faith slip through my fingers.
“Let’s take five,” I say finally. My voice scrapes low. “I need air.”
Eli collapses on the drum throne like he’s been shot. Drew lies flat on his back on the carpet, guitar still across his chest. Miles just nods, eyes closed, hands resting on the fretboard like it’s an extension of him.
I slide the bass back into its case, stand and stretch. My shirt clings with sweat as I do so.
The hall outside the practice rooms hums with end-of-day noise.
Students drag their bags, laughter bounces off the walls, somebody’s blasting EDM from a Bluetooth speaker.
It’s December, which in LA means palm trees against a cold sky and students bundled in hoodies pretending it’s winter.
The air smells like orange blossoms from the quad, sharp and sweet under the chill.
I’m halfway to the exit when I hear them.
Loud voices. Easy swagger. A cluster of guys in letterman jackets, moving as a pack. Basketball players. You can spot them a mile away: tall, broad, dripping confidence like sweat. Everyone knows who they are—the Sentinals.
I should look away. I don’t.
My gaze snags on the captain.
Ollie Marshall. I’ve seen him around—posters plastered in the union, highlight reels on the TV in the cafeteria, his name in the campus paper.
Up close he’s taller than I realized, shoulders squared under his jacket, stride clean like he was built for it.
His hair is dark, cropped close, his face sharp with focus.
He doesn’t joke as much as the others. Doesn’t shout.
And from what I’ve noticed, when he talks, people shut up.
I’ve heard his voice once—low, steady, not the cocky bark you expect from a jock. It stuck.
And now his eyes catch mine.
It should be nothing. A glance in a crowded space.
But it isn’t. His gaze holds for a beat too long, a string pulled taut between us.
His cheeks flush, sudden and bright, the color blooming high on his skin—crimson, almost luminous under the harsh hallway light, like a lyric I didn’t know I was reaching for.
It fucking stops me.
He looks away first, back at his teammates. They laugh about something, voices echoing, sneakers squeaking against the tile. But I’m not hearing them. I’m tracking him. The way he moves, controlled but not stiff. The way his hands flex against the strap of his bag.
It’s the first time I’ve really paid attention to him. Definitely the first time he’s ever seen me. And yet something about that flush, that startled look—it sticks.
I lean against the wall, watching until they disappear around the corner. My pulse is faster than it should be. My fingers itch, not for the strings this time, but for a pen. For the notebook waiting back in the practice room.
Dark, serious eyes. The red flush of cheeks. A face that’s supposed to be carved out of confidence, caught off guard instead.
My muse walks away in a letterman jacket, and fuck if I don’t follow his every step.
I push off the wall and head back to the practice room before the feeling fades. The corridor smells like floor cleaner and someone’s cheap body spray. A trombone squeals from a room down the hall, then dies. My boots thud a steady pace that matches the new pulse in my head.
Inside, Eli’s doing a stick trick with the kind of concentration that should be illegal.
Drew is flat on his back, phone hovering above his face, scrolling with the slack-fingered stare of a man forgetting he has a future.
Miles is perched on an amp with his guitar silent in his lap, eyes half lidded like he’s meditating.
He isn’t. He’s composing in his head. He always is.
“Break’s over,” I say, closing the door with my heel.
Eli drops the stick, snatches it before it hits the floor, and points it at me. “Well? Did the air give you a chorus?”
“Maybe.” I grab the notebook off the carpet and squat by the amp. The paper is freckled with old coffee stains and ripped corners. It looks like it’s been in a fight. It has. “Shut up for a minute.”
“Oh, Rafe the Artist is here.” Drew lifts the phone just enough to smirk, then goes back to whatever hole he’s doom-scrolling down.
“Give him sixty seconds,” Miles says, voice calm as a lake. “When his jaw is clenched like that, it means something stuck.”
I don’t argue. I anchor the notebook with my palm and let the pen touch down. The first line lands easy, like it’s been waiting.
Eyes like a locked door, I miss the handle twice
Captain with the quiet voice, steady as advice
Crimson catching high and hot, proof you feel it too—
I wasn’t looking, I swear I wasn’t. Then I saw you.
I stop and look at the words. Too on-the-nose? Maybe. But there’s a charge in my fingers I’ve been chasing for weeks, and now it’s here, steady and warm. I keep going.
You don’t talk loud, you don’t take up the space
But every hallway turns and looks to follow your face
I’m not a fan of your game, don’t know one rule
But I changed my day because you walked past school.
I scratch that last line, rewrite it cleaner.
But I changed my day because you crossed my line.
Miles leans forward. “What’s the tempo in your head?”
“Mid,” I say. “Not a sprint. Let it breathe.”
Eli taps the pattern on his knee without asking: soft snare, kick in a patient heartbeat, hi-hat open just enough to whisper. He is annoyingly good at reading my brain.
I flip to a fresh page and write faster.
I’ve loved boys, I’ve loved girls, I’m not a secret to my friends
But I never planned for you to happen, never planned the way it bends
The light when you look over, the heat you try to hide
That red that climbs your cheekbones like I caught you from the side.
The pen pauses on cheekbones. I cross it out, write skin. It’s simpler and sits better.
“Okay,” Drew says from the floor, voice muffled by apathy. “Who is this about?”
“No one,” I say too fast, even though he can’t actually see the words I’m scratching down.
Eli barks a laugh. “So defensive.”
I keep writing.
I don’t do poster boys, I don’t do varsity pride