2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Hunter - Three Months Before
Three months before the Hollywood Bowl, Hunter tore another perfectly fine song in half.
The paper landed beside three earlier attempts on the rug of his Hidden Hills music room. Each song was clean, expensive, and empty. Any one of them could’ve gone to radio. That was the problem. He could already hear the polite reviews calling the work polished, mature, and predictable.
Predictable was what people called a man before they stopped calling him anything.
The evidence had arrived in numbers no one discussed unless Hunter forced them to.
His last album’s first-month streams were down thirty-eight percent from the one before it.
Four arena dates had quietly curtained their upper levels.
Two longtime sponsors had declined to renew, and the label had proposed a greatest-hits package while postponing any commitment to another studio album.
No one used the word finished. They called him a legacy artist and praised the catalog as if his best work already belonged to the past.
Hunter leaned back in his leather chair and rubbed both hands over his face. Guitars lined one wall in careful rows. Gold and platinum records covered another. A glass case held his first cheap microphone between the awards.
None of it helped him write one honest line.
He picked up the old guitar case at his feet and opened the side pocket, searching for a notebook he hadn’t used in years. A photograph slid out with it and landed faceup on his boot.
He and Wendy stood beside his rust-red truck on a road beyond Aria Springs.
They were both soaked, her blonde hair clinging to her cheeks, and his shirt plastered to his chest. The hood was raised, and the driver’s door hung open.
Wendy had one hand pressed to her stomach as she laughed, while Hunter leaned into the cab and pointed accusingly at the empty fuel gauge.
The windows had jammed down before the rain started.
The gauge had been hovering near empty for miles, but Hunter had insisted it was broken because he’d been too proud to admit he couldn’t afford to fill the tank.
When the engine died, he’d raised the hood and searched for any other explanation.
Wendy had laughed until she cried, then kissed him in the rain and told him being stranded with him was the best date she’d ever had.
They’d had almost nothing. No plan, no audience, no reason to believe Hunter would become anything more than a man with a guitar and a truck that barely ran. Wendy had looked at him as if that was enough.
Hunter set the photograph on the music stand and reached for his guitar.
The first chords came easily. A loose rhythm, open and fast, like tires on a back road. He found the melody before the words, then followed it to the memory of Wendy with her wet face lifted toward his.
“You make me twenty with the windows down,” he sang quietly.
His fingers stopped. That line had blood in it. He played it again, and more words followed. Empty fuel, the edge of town, laughing at rain. Loving as if forever couldn’t change. By the time he reached the last line, his heart was beating hard enough to remind him why he’d started making music.
He set his phone on the desk and recorded the chorus while he remembered it clearly.
The rough voice memo had chair noise, a missed chord, and Hunter breathing too close to the phone.
He listened to it five times anyway. The song wasn’t finished, but he felt more in it than anything he’d written since critics started using the word predictable.
His first instinct was to go upstairs and wake Wendy. He pictured her sitting up against the pillows, sleepy and smiling while he played. She’d hear the weak line in the second half before he did. She’d tip her head, ask for the melody again, and give him the exact question he needed.
But their fifteenth anniversary as a couple fell a few weeks after the retrospective.
Every year, no matter where they were, they ate cheap Chinese takeout in memory of their first real date.
This year, he could put the finished song next to the cartons, play it only for her, and watch her recognize the life inside it.
He saved the recording under TWENTY AGAIN – WENDY and closed the music-room door behind him.
Billy, his manager, heard the demo soon afterward. He sat across from Hunter in the music room, lean body fitted into a dark suit, pale eyes closed through the final chorus. When the recording ended, Billy opened them and held out his hand.
“Play it again.”
Hunter did. Billy listened without moving. His easy salesman’s smile appeared on the last line.
“That’s the record,” he said.
“It’s not a record yet.”
“It will be.” Billy picked up the phone, read the file name, and glanced at Hunter. “Wendy heard it?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
Hunter’s shoulders tightened. “Good?”
“Surprises sell. Sentiment sells better. We keep the subject quiet, build curiosity, and unveil it at the Bowl.”
“I’m playing it for Wendy on our anniversary.”
“Which comes after the Bowl.” Billy leaned forward. “You asked me how good it is. It’s the biggest song you’ve written in years. Maybe the biggest you’ve ever written. Don’t make it smaller because you got romantic about the delivery.”
Hunter looked at the photograph on the music stand. “I didn’t ask for a launch plan.”
“No. You asked whether you’ve still got it.” Billy’s voice softened. “You do.”
That answer reached the hungry part of Hunter before good sense could stop it.
Soon, Canyonlight Studios had the demo. Before it entered Canyonlight’s system, Billy renamed the file TWENTY AGAIN – MASTER DEMO and required every musician, engineer, assistant, and contractor on the project to sign campaign-specific confidentiality terms.
And from there, things moved quickly.
The studio cost a fortune but looked casually comfortable. Low couches faced a rare-wood mixing desk. Warm lamps and vintage rugs softened the space. Hunter knew every relaxed detail had been planned as carefully as the sound.
Serena Gene arrived with her waist-length blonde hair loose, dark eyes bright, and her phone already recording.
“No music on that,” Billy told her.
She turned the screen toward him. “It’s only my boots.”
“Keep it that way.”
“I did.” She ended the clip and looked at Hunter. “You going to play me this career-saving miracle, or do I have to guess?”
“Billy called it that?” Hunter asked, smirking.
“Billy used more words,” Serena smiled.
From the far side of the control room, Eli, his longtime bandleader and guitarist, snorted. Silver touched his dark hair at the temples, but he still wore the same plain shirts he’d favored when they played small clubs together.
Hunter sat with his guitar. “It’s not a duet.”
“Then I’ll try not to ruin it.” Serena dropped into the chair across from him. “Go ahead.”
He played the song.
Serena didn’t offer the soft praise most younger artists gave him. She listened with her chin propped on one hand, then frowned when he finished the second verse.
“The chorus is honest,” she said. “That verse isn’t.”
Hunter looked up. “What does that mean?”
“It means you got scared.”
“Of my own verse?”
“Of sounding like you want something.” She pointed at the lyric sheet. “The chorus feels real. Then you start explaining yourself like somebody’s lawyer walked in.”
Billy’s smile widened near the mixing desk.
Hunter should’ve been annoyed. Instead, he looked at the verse and saw exactly where he’d pulled back.
“All right,” he said. “Sing the chorus.”
Serena’s brows rose. “Thought it wasn’t a duet.”
“It isn’t. I’m checking whether you can carry your opinion in tune.”
“Dangerous thing to ask a woman with perfect pitch.”
She stepped to the microphone. The red recording light came on.
Serena sang the first two lines softly, then opened her voice on the image of running on empty.
Hunter answered without planning to. She changed the rhythm of one phrase, he followed, and the chorus became a conversation instead of a confession.
The players leaned forward. One of the engineers lifted both hands from the controls and grinned. Billy checked something on his tablet, already measuring a reaction that hadn’t reached the public.
Heat moved through Hunter’s chest and down his arms. He knew this feeling. Necessary. Dangerous. Alive.
Serena finished and removed the headphones. “Still not a duet?”
Hunter looked through the glass at Billy, then at the musicians waiting for his answer.
“Take it from the top,” he said.
They didn’t change the memories or the composition at the heart of the song.
Those belonged to Wendy. Serena did help reshape the duet arrangement and performance.
She challenged every careful pause, traded lines instead of hiding under his voice, and laughed when Hunter reached for an arrangement he’d used before.
“You know that’s safe, right?” she asked.
“You know I built a career with those instincts, right?”
“And now you’ve got enough awards to build a fence. Congratulations.”
Hunter laughed in spite of himself and tried her idea.
Eli didn’t laugh. When Serena left the booth to take a call, he came to stand beside Hunter.
“Does Wendy know she’s singing it?” Eli asked.
“Wendy doesn’t know about the song. It’s an anniversary surprise.”
“Then why’s Billy arranging a camera test?”
Hunter glanced toward the control room. Billy and two executives were talking beside the screens.
“We’re testing the arrangement,” Hunter said.
“You’re moving something private into a marketing room,” Eli countered.
“It’s a song, Eli. I wrote it. Wendy will still know what it means.”
Eli’s weathered face stayed calm. That made the question worse when it came.
“Before or after everybody else tells her?”
Hunter’s temper tightened. “We’re not releasing anything.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Hunter turned back toward the booth. “We need another pass.”