Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Dexter
What do you do after what seemed like a once in-a-lifetime night where you so wanted to kiss the girl but abstained because that probably would fuck up the entire moment?
A night that feels like it might’ve changed something in you—something you didn’t even realize was waiting to shift?
After standing in the cool air with her so close you could count the rise and fall of her breath, after wanting to kiss her so fucking badly your hands almost forgot how to stay still—but you didn’t, because somehow you knew that crossing that line would break whatever fragile thing was building between you.
Something I don’t even know how to classify or to keep—if I even could.
The moment I almost leaned in still loops through my mind like a half-finished song as I walk back to Barret’s apartment. Her breath had hitched, soft and uncertain, and everything inside me surged toward her—every instinct, every ache I’ve learned to keep buried. But I stopped. Barely.
It wasn’t restraint, nor discipline.
It was fear.
Survival.
Because if I’d kissed her, it wouldn’t have been simple. It would’ve been an unraveling.
And I don’t know if I’d survive that again.
Now it’s just me, the silence, and the way her rhythm still lingers—her voice threading through my thoughts like a forgotten melody.
It’s maddening. Every word she said has turned into a lyric, every glance a chord progression I can’t stop replaying.
She doesn’t even realize how she carries tempo, how she speaks like she’s syncing to a song no one else can hear.
I walk faster. I need to get it out before it fades. Before her sound turns into something I can’t catch again.
By the time I reach Barret’s apartment, my pulse is thrumming with something close to panic. I fumble with the keys, curse under my breath, and step inside.
Thank fuck there’s a piano here. Rosie wouldn’t do her justice tonight—this isn’t a guitar song. Not yet. This needs something larger, something that can hold all the ache sitting in my chest.
The apartment is dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the blinds. I sink onto the bench, the air cold against my neck, and let my fingers fall to the keys.
The first note wavers. The next one steadies it. Then I stop thinking.
The melody builds itself—trembling, uneven, raw—but it’s hers. Her laugh sits in the high notes, her sighs in the rests. The quiet between them carries the ache that followed her goodnight.
It’s been years since a song came this easily.
Years since it felt like creating instead of numbing.
Somewhere between the verses, I realize I stopped writing music long before I quit drinking and using.
I let other people fill the silence for me—Roderick or Barret got it.
They cared more or . . . I don’t know what happened to me that I stopped giving two shits.
I was too busy chasing noise, trying to drown the ache that music once eased.
But this . . . this isn’t noise. It’s her.
It’s the way she overthinks every word, like she’s trying to find the right note in a song only she can hear—careful, quiet, as though speaking too soon might pull everything off balance.
The way she bites the inside of her lip—not out of nerves, but precision—like she’s editing everything in her head before it ever hits the air.
It’s the way she walks into a space and something shifts, like the lighting was off until she arrived.
She’s not loud, but somehow she tunes the whole fucking room—brighter, warmer, more in key.
Like she sees where the tension lives and softens it.
Fixes things without needing credit. Offers comfort like it’s instinct, not performance.
She doesn't just walk in—she recalibrates.
Like a new chord that changes everything that came before it.
And it isn’t just that she feels everything. It’s that she does something about it. She gives a damn. Even when she pretends not to. Even when she’s pretending not to look back.
There’s something symphonic about her—layered, unrushed, with those hidden swells of emotion beneath all the control. She makes you want to listen closer. And fuck, I do.
I press harder on the keys, letting the sound carry through the room. It vibrates in my chest, in my hands, everywhere.
I should sleep, but if I stop, I’ll lose it.
Whatever this is—this pulse, this ache—it’ll vanish by morning.
I’m afraid of losing this feeling because if I fuck it up, or if she leaves like everyone does, it won’t matter how much I pretend it doesn’t hurt.
She’ll live in these lyrics forever—in the melodies her soul inspires. That’s how I’ll keep her—trapped between verses and breaths, hidden in melodies no one will know were ever about her.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her at that doorway again—her fingers curling around the key, her voice soft, careful, her eyes saying what her mouth couldn’t.
And maybe that’s all songs ever are—things we were too afraid to say when it mattered.
I shouldn’t be thinking about her. She doesn’t know who I am—yet. She’s starting to see past Dexter Vaughn, the fuck-up who sells headlines and rehab gossip, into something closer to my true-self. She’s all order and control, color-coded schedules and rules that keep her world from slipping.
And I’m the opposite. Everything I touch burns too fast and too bright.
But fuck, she’s more than that now.
She’s become the pause between my verses. The reason I’m sitting here at three in the morning chasing a song that won’t let me go.
The last note fades, but it doesn’t leave me.
It hums beneath my skin, quiet but alive.
I lean back, exhale, and reach for Rosie.
My girl’s been through everything with me—from dingy clubs to sold-out stadiums to nights I shouldn’t have survived.
She sings effortlessly under my fingers, like no time has passed between us.
I start slow. A rough rhythm, low and searching.
Something that sounds like the moment before you say what you mean but stop yourself anyway.
The words come next, half-formed, clumsy:
I almost said it in the silence
when the night leaned close enough to hear.
You smiled like you knew it anyway
like the truth had been waiting between us all along.
It drifts off-key in spots. Misses a beat. But it still holds her rhythm better than anything else I’ve written.
I keep going—verse after verse, confession after confession—until the sky outside lightens to a dull, indifferent gray. My fingers throb, my throat’s raw, but I don't stop. I can’t. The melody keeps pulling truths out of me I didn’t know I still carried.
By now, I’ve written half a song and a hundred excuses to walk away from her.
None of those reasons holds up. Not under the sound of her laugh still echoing in the rests. Not when her memory hums through every chord like a promise I wasn’t supposed to keep.
The lyrics? They’re not polished. They wander and ache and trip over what I’m too scared to say out loud.
But they feel like her.
They feel like me if I let myself be seen.
They feel like what it means to almost touch something good and know you might ruin it just by holding on too tight.
When the city begins to stir—muffled footsteps, a distant siren, the hush before traffic really starts—I let the last note trail off and press my palm against the strings to quiet her.
Rosie’s body is warm beneath my hand, like she’s still holding everything I just poured out. Like she knows the ache in the chords wasn’t just for the song—it was for the girl, too.
I sit there for a moment, caught in the quiet. The kind that creeps in after you say too much and realize it was never enough.
Then I set her gently back in her case, fingers lingering on the worn wood like I’m afraid she’ll forget the music we made tonight if I let go too fast. I don’t latch the case right away.
I just look at her, at the guitar that’s carried me through every version of myself, and wonder if she’ll be able to carry this one too.
Because this one—the part of me that’s thinking in her voice, aching in her tempo—feels fucking frightening.
Feels permanent. And permanent has never been my thing.
Never.
There’s something about this silence that unnerves me.
Something that feels like it could be the beginning of everything.
Or the place you wait, right before it all slips away.
She’s already a song in my head, and I know how this goes.
Every song that starts like this ends with a fall.
But maybe this time, I’ll let it.