7. Chapter Seven #2
“No,” I say, stepping around him before my face gives me away. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Jett lets me pass. He has never been the kind of man who grabs for what is already pulling away.
“I’m here if you need to talk, Wills,” he says quietly.
I don’t turn around. I can’t afford to.
The day crawls forward with its hands around my throat.
Damon wants revisions. The engineer wants cleaner levels. Jax wants to know whether the bridge is meant to hit harder or whether Phoenix is being a dramatic drama queen for sport. Cruz wants to finish the track before his fingers file a formal complaint.
I sit in the corner of the live room, my notebook balanced on my thigh, pen moving across the page as the band runs the track again.
Damon’s voice comes through the talkback. “Again, from the second verse. Willow, have you got those two lines fixed yet?”
My pen stills above the page.
Before I can answer, Phoenix directs his gaze at me. “What fucking lines is he talking about?”
His voice cuts through the room in that dangerous way men get when they are two seconds from becoming a problem.
Damon looks at him through the glass. “The first two lines of the third verse. Willow is fixing them.”
“No,” Phoenix says.
Damon lets out a breath, clearly annoyed. “They don’t work.”
“They do fucking work,” Phoenix says. “If she sharpens them, it fucks up the whole thing.”
“The label wants the verse to hit harder.”
“The label is not fucking singing it, are they?”
“No,” Damon says. “You are. Which means it needs to sell when it leaves your mouth.”
The room goes quiet in that careful way studios do when nobody wants to be the first idiot to breathe too loudly.
Jax leans back behind the drums, eyebrows raised as if someone just handed him front-row seats to a fistfight. Jett stands with his bass, watching Phoenix. Cruz stops picking at his guitar strings and lifts his head as a slow grin forms.
Phoenix ignores all of them, focusing his gaze on Damon.
“If she changes those lyrics, I’m not singing them.”
Damon laughs once, without humour. “You don’t get to make that call.”
“Pretty fucking sure I do when it is my mouth on the mic.”
“It is the band’s album.”
“And it sounds better when I’m not singing lyrics approved by men in suits who think heartbreak needs a cleaner hook.”
Damon steps closer to the glass. “We are tweaking it for God’s sake.”
Phoenix’s jaw shifts. “It doesn’t need fucking tweaking.”
“It does if I say it does.”
A hot, stupid thing moves under my ribs, because Phoenix is fighting for the lyrics. My lyrics.
Damon turns his attention toward me. “Willow, tell him.”
Phoenix’s voice snaps before I have a chance to agree with him.
“Don’t put this on fucking Willow.”
Damon’s eyes cut back to him. “She is the songwriter.”
“Exactly.” Phoenix’s stare is hard enough to bruise. “She wrote the lines. They work. So stop fucking sanding the teeth off every song she writes because the label gets nervous when something sounds honest.”
Cruz lets out a low whistle. “Well, shit. Tell him how you really feel.”
Jax points a drumstick toward the glass. “For once, the dramatic prick has a point.”
Damon ignores him. “Phoenix.”
“No.” Phoenix’s smile vanishes. “You wanted the kind of song people feel in their fucking ribs. Willow gave you that and now you want to change it because some label fuckhead with soft hands and a softer cock got nervous. Has he ever written anything that didn’t come with a profit margin and a lunch meeting?
No. So when he wants changes, you can tell him to shut the fuck up and learn what a real song sounds like. ”
I stare down at my notebook because looking at Phoenix would be a mistake. Looking at him would make me feel things I have spent two days trying to bury beneath sarcasm, caffeine, and not nearly enough sleep.
“Run it again from the second verse,” Phoenix says. “Nothing fucking changes.”
Damon’s stare hardens through the glass. “That’s not your decision, you arrogant prick.”
“It is if you want the vocals today.” Phoenix’s mouth curves.
The room goes still.
Jett’s gaze flicks to me.
Damon holds Phoenix’s stare, and for one long second, the whole studio is poised on the edge of something ugly. Jax stops tapping his stick against his thigh. Cruz’s grin fades to something watchful. Even the engineer keeps his hand above the board, not touching anything.
Damon presses the talkback again. “You really want to hold up a session over two lines?”
Phoenix leans closer to the mic—his rings catching the low studio light. “I’ll hold up the whole fucking album if you keep trying to turn her songs into label-approved shit with no teeth.”
Damon’s jaw flexes. “Careful.”
Phoenix lets out a low, dark, humorless laugh. “Why? You going to put me in time-out? Call the label and tell them the big bad singer hurt your feelings?”
Damon exhales through his nose before he presses the talkback with two fingers. “Fine. We will keep the lines for now.”
“Smart man.” Phoenix’s mouth hooks at one corner.
“Don’t push me.”
“Don’t give me shit lyrics to sing.”
Damon looks toward the engineer. “Again from the second verse.”
The room breathes again, but nothing about it is easy.
By night, the studio has grown feverish. Everyone is exhausted. Empty coffee cups sit in sad little clusters. Someone’s leather jacket hangs over the back of the couch, forgotten or abandoned.
My head is starting to split again. Just a slow, mean pressure behind my eyes, a tightness in my jaw, and an ache creeping down the back of my neck, as if the day has decided to put its hands there and squeeze.
I glance at the clock on the wall behind the soundboard.
8:47.
I wait until everyone has turned away before I slip out.
The bathroom near the back hallway is small. I lock the door, set my bag on the sink, and carefully unzip the inside pocket.
I tip a pill into my palm and stare at it for half a second.
It’s just to take the edge off. That’s what I tell myself anyway. Just enough to quiet the ache, walk back into that room, and keep being the girl who always has another lyric ready.
I swallow it with water from the tap, then straighten up. I smooth my hair, fix the lipstick on the corner of my mouth with my thumb, and by the time I return, nobody looks up.
Time continues to pass in bright red numbers.
9:03 soon becomes 9:26. Then 9:51 is right behind it.
Damon’s voice still cuts through the room.
“Okay,” he says, leaning over the console. “We need one clean pass on the verse from last week.”
The engineer nods and pulls up the track. “Second verse?”
“Yeah,” Damon says. “There are a few rough spots in the vocal. We patch those, clean the edit, and call it.”
My stomach tightens. Of course, it’s that fucking verse.
The one with the line I wish I had never written and still know is one of the best things I have ever dragged out of myself.
You looked prettier cruel than you ever did kind.