Chapter 2
ASHER
The next morning I woke to find Leah standing in the kitchen with her back to me.
She was wearing one of my old tour T-shirts, the hem falling to mid-thigh, her hair twisted loosely at the back of her neck.
The coffee maker hummed quietly; one hand rested on the counter while the other moved across a black notebook.
Morning light cut through the gap in the curtains and landed on her bare calves.
I stood at the bedroom doorway and watched her for a moment.
For the past three months, I’d usually woken up already in a hotel room, a recording studio, or a tour van.
Sabrina would send stage clips at two in the morning; my manager would send presale numbers at six.
Leah rarely asked what time I’d be home.
She’d just leave a light on in the kitchen, or put the honey water my throat needed in the refrigerator.
I had taken that quiet as proof that we were fine.
“What are you writing?” I walked over and wrapped my arms around her from behind.
Leah closed the notebook immediately. “Nothing for this album.”
Her voice didn’t harden, but I heard the boundary anyway.
“I didn’t ask if it was for me.”
“Every time you ask, it ends up being for you.”
I buried my face against the side of her neck. She smelled like coffee and last night’s shampoo, familiar enough that the wire that had been pulled taut in my chest for weeks finally went slack. “Then I won’t ask today.”
“Don’t you have a meeting today?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“That’s rare.”
She turned around at last. We were standing too close, so she had to tilt her head back slightly to look at me. There were faint signs of exhaustion beneath her eyes too—the emotion she’d held down at the venue yesterday hadn’t disappeared because of my promises.
I knew I should talk to her about the final release.
I also knew that if I brought it up now, the only quiet morning we’d had between us in weeks would end immediately.
“I’ll handle it,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment. “I trust you.”
That should have made me feel lighter. Instead I bent down and kissed her.
At first it was only a brush. Leah’s hand was still pressed against my chest, and I gave her time to step back.
She didn’t step back—she just grabbed my T-shirt and pulled me toward her again.
The second kiss quickly lost its hesitation.
Her lips softened against mine, and my hands slid down along her sides and lifted her onto the counter.
The coffee maker beeped. Neither of us paid attention.
“Asher.” She said my name when I kissed the spot behind her ear, her voice barely above a whisper, but it made my whole body tighten.
Thirteen years, and I knew every one of her responses. I knew when she only wanted to be held, and when she would part her knees as my palm pressed against her thigh; I knew that the quieter she went, the closer she usually was to losing control.
I also knew we hadn’t touched each other like this in far too long.
Her breath grazed my jaw, and I carried her back to the bedroom.
At the edge of the bed she pulled my shirt off me, and her fingertips paused for a moment when they found the old scar along my ribs.
That was from the years we’d toured in a beat-up van.
She used to kiss it every time, like a habit that belonged only to the two of us.
This time was no different.
I pressed her down into the mattress and kissed along her collarbone, her chest, the taut plane of her stomach.
Her hands slid into my hair and tightened suddenly when I kept moving lower.
She twisted the sheets in her fists, tipped her head back, and finally stopped controlling the sounds she made.
In that moment I wasn’t thinking about the comeback, or the presale numbers, or the credit line on that screen. I only wanted her to say my name one more time.
She opened her eyes when I came back up to her, and pressed her palm against my face. “Look at me.”
I did.
There was no stranger’s uncertainty between us—only the precision left behind by too many shared years. She knew how to break my rhythm, and she knew when to pull me closer. I stopped again before I entered her, waiting for her nod, waiting for her legs to wrap around my waist.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
That wasn’t to put her at ease, and it wasn’t to cover anything up. At least not in that moment.
Leah kissed me. “Then come back.”
My movement stilled for a beat.
She hadn’t asked where I’d been. We both knew she wasn’t talking about this house.
I kissed her again and turned my answer into something deeper. When she trembled in my arms, I told myself that was the answer. I loved her. I had come back to her. I hadn’t touched Sabrina, and I had never intended to leave this marriage.
So I was still a faithful husband.
Afterward Leah lay with her cheek against my chest, her breathing slowly evening out. I ran my fingers up and down her bare spine, and my phone vibrated twice on the nightstand.
She didn’t lift her head. “You can look.”
“I don’t need to.”
When the phone vibrated a third time, I still didn’t move. For those few minutes I almost believed I could actually keep everything outside the door.
Then the screen lit up, and beneath my manager’s name there was a single preview line: FINAL CREDIT MEETING MOVED TO 9:30.
Leah followed my gaze. “Go.”
“There’s still time.”
“You’ll drive everyone insane if you’re late.” She sat up, pulled the sheet around herself, and leaned down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “Come home for dinner tonight.”
I held the back of her neck and kissed her longer than she’d kissed me. “I will.”
She believed me.
At 9:42 a.m., I walked into the label’s conference room to find the final release already laid out in front of everyone.
Four options were listed on the screen. Legal had kept them simple—simple enough that no one could pretend there was no choice.
Option one: Sabrina retains performance credit only; songwriting credit to Asher Vale.
Option two: Delay the single release and resubmit authorship information.
Option three: Publicly credit Leah Morgan as songwriter and restructure the entire comeback campaign.
Option four: Maintain joint songwriting credit for Asher Vale and Sabrina Knox; preserve the creative soulmate campaign, the documentary narrative, and the stadium tour package.
“If we go with one, Sabrina’s team pulls out of the follow-up promotion,” my manager said. “If we go with two, we miss the awards eligibility window. Three means the back catalog could get questioned too. The press won’t stop at asking who wrote this one song.”
“What’s the sponsors’ position?” I asked.
“They’ll only accept four.”
The sponsors wanted a marketing story about “two co-creators”; making the official credit follow the campaign was a choice our team and the label made together—it wasn’t theirs to decide who the actual author was.
The label executive pressed his fingertips to the figures laid out on the table.
North American venue presales, documentary licensing rights, a joint campaign with two luxury brands, and a global tour upgrade agreement that would only take effect once this release hit its targets.
Those numbers weren’t abstract. They represented work for more than three hundred people.
They represented my last real chance, after three years without a song that had truly broken through, to get back to where I’d been.
They also represented the fact that if this failed, everyone would know I might never write like the old Asher Vale again.
“Leah doesn’t need to be on camera,” I said. “Crediting her as the author doesn’t have to change the stage lineup.”
“Of course it changes things.” Sabrina was sitting diagonally across from me.
She wasn’t wearing stage makeup today—her blond hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and she looked younger than she did on camera, and more serious.
“The entire campaign says you and I made this song together. If I only sang part of it, the public won’t believe in that kind of connection. ”
“You did only sing part of it,” legal said.
Sabrina’s gaze didn’t leave me. “I rebuilt the harmonies, I was at every rehearsal, and I made people start talking about him again. You can list me as featured singer, but don’t pretend my value was just walking into a studio and singing someone else’s words.”
I liked the way she looked at me. Her gaze was like an arena with every light already blazing: in that light, I was still the person who could make an entire venue lose its mind, the way I had at thirty.
I had no desire to kiss her. I used that restraint as proof that everything else was still safe.
She had never seen my blank documents; she had never been there at four in the morning when I asked Leah how a chorus should end.
She believed I deserved this comeback at its largest possible scale, as though that were something that needed no proof.
Leah had witnessed every moment that couldn’t be proven.
“There’s a middle path,” I said. “Keep the joint credit through this promotional cycle. After the tour, correct the songwriting credit and the royalty split, or set up a separate independent label for Leah. She doesn’t want the exposure.”
Legal frowned. “A songwriting credit isn’t a temporary advertising slot.”
But my manager sat up straighter. “If it’s a private arrangement, we can negotiate.”
I heard my own promise to Leah from the night before. The plaque, the credit listings, the press release—none of it.
I also remembered what she’d said in bed. Then come back.
I had come back. I loved her. Our house, our accounts, thirteen years, nine years of marriage—all of it was still there.
What Sabrina was getting was one promotional cycle, a few months of a story told in front of cameras.
Leah had the real me, the home I would return to when the tour was over.
I could put her name first on the next album.
I could write a higher royalty split and creative control into the paperwork.
I could wait until this comeback was stable, and then explain everything to the world.
I could still have it all.
“If I don’t sign, what’s the latest we can cancel the release event?” I asked.
“Noon today,” my manager said. “The documentary team gets notified first, then the sponsors. Sabrina’s team has the right to issue a statement about their withdrawal.”
The conference room went quiet. No one pushed me. No one even slid a pen across the table.
The choice was just sitting there.
I picked up the pen and signed my name on the option four final release.
My hand was steady as the ink went down.
“The plaque is already made.” My manager turned his phone toward me. In the photo, two lines of names were engraved on silver metal, light reflecting along the edges. “It’ll be delivered to the venue tonight. You’ll present it to Sabrina yourself at the release event.”
Something tightened in my chest for a moment. I chalked it up to lack of sleep.
“Don’t send this to Leah before the release,” I said.
Legal looked up at me.
“I’ll talk to her myself.”
After I walked out of the conference room, I opened my text thread with Leah. Half an hour ago she’d sent a photo of the kitchen—my favorite sourdough sitting next to the coffee—with a message underneath: Seven o’clock tonight. Don’t make me eat alone.
I typed three different replies and deleted all of them.
The final visual preview came through to my phone shortly after.
STILL BURNING
Written by Asher Vale & Sabrina Knox
I stared at that line, then deleted the preview.